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81. Albania: State of the Nation

Publication Date:
03-2000
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
International Crisis Group
Abstract:
During the spring of 1999, more than 450,000 Kosovo Albanian refugees flooded into Albania, many of them forcibly deported by Serb forces in Kosovo. Despite Albania's acute poverty, many Albanians opened their homes to provide shelter to the incoming refugees and the government spared no effort, organising humanitarian relief and putting the entire country at the disposal of NATO. As a result, in the eyes of its people, Albania has secured its position as the spiritual motherland of all ethnic Albanians, and as such expects to play a prominent role in future pan-Albanian aspirations.
Topic:
Ethnic Conflict, Politics, and Poverty
Political Geography:
Eastern Europe, Kosovo, and Albania

82. Albanians in Serbian Prisons: Kosovo's Unfinished Business

Publication Date:
01-2000
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
International Crisis Group
Abstract:
With the immense challenges facing the international community in its effort to secure and rebuild Kosovo, one critical outstanding matter that has received very little attention is the ongoing detention in Serbian prisons of several thousand Kosovar Albanians. Arrested by Serbian forces in the course of the Kosovo conflict, these prisoners were hastily transferred to Serbian jails and penitentiaries in the wake of the Kumanovo military-technical agreement, which ended the NATO air campaign and established a timetable for the withdrawal from Kosovo of all Serb forces.
Topic:
International Relations, Ethnic Conflict, Human Rights, and Politics
Political Geography:
Eastern Europe, Kosovo, Serbia, and Albania

83. Blunder in the Balkans: The Clinton Administration's Bungled War against Serbia

Author:
Christopher Layne
Publication Date:
05-1999
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
The Cato Institute
Abstract:
The Clinton administration has made one miscalculation after another in dealing with the Kosovo crisis. U.S. officials and their NATO colleagues never understood the historical and emotional importance of Kosovo to the Serbia n people, believing instead that Belgrade's harsh repression of the ethnic Albanian secessionist movement in Kosovo merely reflected the will of President Slobodan Milosevic of Yugoslavia. The administration's foreign policy team mistakenly concluded that, under a threat of air strikes, the Yugoslav government would sign a dictate d peace accord (the Rambouillet agreement) to be implemented by a NATO peacekeeping force in Kosovo. Even if Milosevic initially refused to sign the Rambouillet agreement, administration leaders believed that Belgrade would relent after a brief “demonstration” bombing campaign. Those calculations proved to be disastrously wrong.
Topic:
Conflict Resolution, International Relations, Foreign Policy, NATO, and Ethnic Conflict
Political Geography:
Russia, United States, China, Europe, Eastern Europe, Asia, Kosovo, Yugoslavia, Serbia, Balkans, and Albania

84. Independent Task Force Report: Reconstructing the Balkans

Author:
Charles A. Kupchan, Morton I. Abramowitz, and Albert Fishlow
Publication Date:
07-1999
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Council on Foreign Relations
Abstract:
The last of the six Balkan Wars of the twentieth century is over. But it is by no means certain that a durable peace is at hand. After vast death, destruction, and savagery lasting almost a decade can the peoples of the former Yugoslavia live together again in peace? If so, the region will require sustained help and support from the West. The United States and its European partners are in the midst of mustering the necessary resources and political will. There are numerous uncertainties complicating efforts to proceed with the reconstruction of the area. Whatever the international community may proclaim, the borders of Serbia, Kosovo, Bosnia, and Croatia could well change. The management of Kosovo's status and its relationship to Serbia is likely to produce serious tensions within the Alliance and between NATO and Russia. What politically will emerge from a beaten and traumatized Serbia no one can predict. Nor is it clear that Montenegro will remain as part of Yugoslavia, particularly if Milosevic continues to rule. An ethically fragile Macedonia has been badly weakened by the war and the inflow of three hundred thousand Kosovar deportees. Albania barely hangs together as a state. Neighboring Rumania and Bulgaria have avoided violence and begun to remake their societies, but they have suffered economically from the wars. The area of reconstruction is small and the population limited; the task at hand certainly is not of the dimensions of restoring post-war Europe. But the problems are daunting. Without security there will be no development. NATO forces will be needed indefinitely to keep the peace in Bosnia and Kosovo. Much more must be done to promote political and economic reform in the region, requiring vision and planning. The states of the region will first need urgent help to stabilize their economies and manage enormous humanitarian problems. They must also be able to envisage a better future, one that holds out the prospect of bringing them into Europe's political and economic mainstream. Realizing that goal will require profound changes in their economies and institutions as well as in their relationships with each other. Faced with these challenges, Western countries and a host of international institutions have begun to address how to foster the broad reconstruction of the area. The EU-sponsored stability pact, adopted in Cologne in June, is the beginning attempt at a multifaceted, coordinated approach to the problem. The G-8 has agreed on a broad program of financial assistance, and the EU has pledged 1.5 billion dollars for aid to Kosovo alone. Numerous follow-up conferences are already planned. Much more work has to be done to give reality and coherence to such efforts. Balkan reconstruction will be a protracted undertaking. It will require extremely difficult commodities – a comprehensive approach and the will, resources, and mechanisms to implement the effort. It is mostly to such a long term approach that this preliminary working paper addresses itself. It does not deal with the immediate requirements of refugee return and humanitarian assistance nor the urgent repair of human and material infrastructure. The World Bank and the IMF in cooperation with many other international organizations and interested countries are coordinating the assessment of needs and costs and have issued preliminary reports. The purpose of this working paper is to provide a broad political approach and to highlight the three key components of a comprehensive, long-term strategy: building security, integrating the region into the European Union, and fostering economic and political reform. For the purposes of this paper, we consider the region to be Serbia, Kosovo, Montenegro, Bosnia, Bulgaria, Macedonia, Albania, Croatia, and Rumania. This is somewhat arbitrary and these states are at different stages of political and economic development. The problems of Rumania and Bulgaria are quite different than Serbia's and Kosovo's; Croatia is much further advanced than next door Serbia and Bosnia. They all have to be dealt with separately, and no single state should hold back the progress of others in entering Europe. But they also face a collective future and the region will enjoy a lasting peace only if all its states leave the past behind and move decidedly to join the wider community.
Topic:
NATO, Ethnic Conflict, International Cooperation, International Political Economy, and World Bank
Political Geography:
Russia, United States, Europe, Bosnia, Kosovo, Yugoslavia, Serbia, Bulgaria, Balkans, Macedonia, Albania, and Croatia

85. Overcoming Obstacles to Private Sector Investment in Macedonia and Albania

Publication Date:
11-1999
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
EastWest Institute
Abstract:
South Eastern Europe remains one of the most volatile regions in Europe today. The conflict in Yugoslavia has wide-reaching political, social and economic implications not only for the immediate region, but also for Europe as a whole. It is, hopefully, the last chapter of military conflicts that had previously engulfed Slovenia, Croatia and Bosnia- Herzegovina. It has added a new dimension to the already unfavorable external environment for many transition economies, worsening further their short-term economic outlook. The conflict-related economic damage already incurred is quite substantial.
Political Geography:
Europe, Bosnia, Herzegovina, Yugoslavia, Macedonia, Albania, and Slovenia

86. The Albanian Aromanians' Awakening: Identity Politics and Conflicts in Post-Communist Albania

Author:
Stephanie Schwandner-Sievers
Publication Date:
03-1999
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
European Centre for Minority Issues
Abstract:
Today, many thousands of Aromanians (also known as "Vlachs") live quite compactly in Northern Greece, Macedonia (FYROM) and southern Albania; and there are still traces of Vlach-Aromanian and Aromanian populations in Bulgaria, Serbia, Croatia and Romania. In Albania, they were recently estimated at about 200,000 by the English scholar Tom Winnifrith. In Albanian communist times, Aromanians were not recognised as a separate minority group, officially considered to be almost completely assimilated. However, in the early post-communist transition period, a vivid Aromanian ethnic movement emerged in Albania and it became part of a recent global Balkan Aromanian initiative. The Albanian Aromanians' new emphasis of their ethnicity can be seen as a pragmatic strategy of adjustment to successes and failures in the Albanian political transition and to globalisation. It is exactly the re-vitalisation of the conflict between followers of a pro-Greek and a pro-Romanian Aromanian identification that serves to broaden the scope of options for potential exploitation.
Topic:
Development, Ethnic Conflict, and Politics
Political Geography:
Eastern Europe and Albania

87. Montenegro Briefing: Calm Before the Storm

Publication Date:
08-1999
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
International Crisis Group
Abstract:
Just under a year ago a nervous Montenegrin President Milo Djukanovic warned the world that Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic was preparing to trigger a new Balkan war by launching a campaign of violence against the tiny republic of Montenegro. Djukanovic was right about Milosevic's intent, but wrong about the target. In March of this year, the dictator struck against ethnic Albanians in Kosovo and unleashed the barbarous Operation Horseshoe.
Topic:
Ethnic Conflict, Government, Politics, and War
Political Geography:
Eastern Europe, Kosovo, Yugoslavia, Balkans, Albania, and Montenegro

88. The State Of Albania

Publication Date:
01-1999
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
International Crisis Group
Abstract:
Premier Pandeli Majko's new coalition government is slowly consolidating its hold over the administration, though the overall power of the government remains weak after the country was rocked in September by the worst political violence since the uprising of March 1997. Within the cabinet the deputy premier Ilir Meta has emerged as the key power in most decision-making and policy implementation. The new government consists of representatives of the Socialist Party (PS), the Social Democratic Party (SDP), Union of Human Rights Party (PBDNj - this party represents the ethnic Greek minority), Democratic Alliance (AD), and the small Agrarian Party (AP). The largest opposition grouping the Democratic Party (DP), led by former president Sali Berisha, does not recognise the legitimacy of the Socialist-led government, is continuing its boycott of parliament and staging street rallies to push for early elections.
Topic:
Security, Economics, Government, and Politics
Political Geography:
Eastern Europe and Albania

89. Conflict in Kosovo: Failure of Prevention? An Analytical Documentation, 1992-1998.

Author:
Stefan Troebst
Publication Date:
05-1998
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
European Centre for Minority Issues
Abstract:
Not too much of inside knowledge of the Balkans was needed to realise that the winter of 1997/98 turned the formerly autonomous Yugoslav province of Kosovo inhabited predominantly by Albanians into one of the most violent-prone crisis zones in Europe. In September 1997, a massive protest movement of Albanian students gained momentum; from November 1997 on, an underground "Liberation Army of Kosovo" (UÇK)) with an estimated strength of several hundred fighters increased the number of attacks on and assassinations of Serbian officials and police officers; and the regime retaliated first by police violence, show trials, long-term sentences, and nationalist tirades, then by bringing more and more security forces into the central part of Kosovo. In January 1998, The Economist depicted Kosovo as "Europe's roughest neighbourhood”.
Topic:
Conflict Prevention, Ethnic Conflict, and International Organization
Political Geography:
Eastern Europe, Kosovo, Serbia, Balkans, and Albania

90. 1998 Elections In Macedonia

Publication Date:
10-1998
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
International Crisis Group
Abstract:
Macedonians go to the polls on 18 October 1998 in the first of two rounds of voting to elect 120 members of the country's parliament. The forthcoming poll is Macedonia's third general election since the disintegration of one-party communist rule. Moreover, it takes place in the shadow of ethnic violence between Serbs and ethnic Albanians in the neighbouring Serbian province of Kosovo and political instability in neighbouring Albania. Although Macedonia has managed to avoid the violent conflict which has afflicted the rest of the former Yugoslavia, its experience of democracy has so far been mixed. Politics is divided along ethnic lines and the last multi-party elections in 1994 were marred by accusations of fraud with two major parties boycotting the second round of voting.
Topic:
Demographics, Government, and Politics
Political Geography:
Eastern Europe, Yugoslavia, Macedonia, and Albania