A POST-STRUCTURALIST ACCOUNT OF INTERNATIONAL MISSIONS THE CASE OF KOSOVO Dissertation submitted by Vjosa Musliu in fulfillment of the degree ‘Doctor in EU studies’ Promoter and co-promoter: Prof. Dr. Jan Orbie and Dr. Eline De Ridder Academic year: 2014-2015 2 3 A POST-STRUCTURALIST ACCOUNT OF INTERNATIONAL MISSIONS THE CASE OF KOSOVO Dissertation submitted by Vjosa Musliu in fulfillment of the degree ‘Doctor in EU studies’ Promoter and co-promoter: Prof. Dr. Jan Orbie and Dr. Eline De Ridder Academic year: 2014-2015 4 A word of thanks! Over the past five years in my ‘Belgian experience’, I have been blessed with a lot of people without whom this project would have simply been impossible. At the outset of this PhD, it seemed that starting this whole journey was more difficult than finishing it. I am indefinitely indebted to the love, help and guidance of Brunilda Pali (there are no words), Stephan Parmentier and Sarah Bracke. For the cherished days in Leuven, Eda Özdek and Mareni Tattara. I am very grateful for the academic guidance and patience of first and foremost Jan Orbie. I want to thank him for his guidance, support, being a great promoter and most of all for creating the space for each and everyone one of us at the Centre to engage freely with our research. Thanks to Eline De Ridder, Dan Bulley, Dvora Yanow, Lilly Ling, Fabienne Bossuyt, Roxana Rodrigues for their comments, suggestions and constructive criticism on a number drafts and papers. For the immense help during the field work: Jusuf Thaçi, Anne Blanksma-Çeta, Artan Çollaku, Arif Muharremi, Nenad Maximović, Donikë Qerimi, Kaltrina Hoxha, Shqipe Neziri. To Catherine and Hans Van Laake, BASILEUS team, Dubi Kelmendi, Bella Murati, Erinda Mehmeti. Thank you to all my colleagues at the CEUS, for your friendship and the team spirit, particularly Bruno Vandecasteele and Bregt Saenen. All the thanks in the world to my parents, Sadije and Irfan Musliu, for their beautiful spirit, energy, love and patience. To my brother and sister, Vigan and Gresa - the frame of my happiness and love. To my extended family: Ylli Haliti (dashuria), Isuf Mushica, Mimoza Musliju, Thomas Moens, Dafina Qerimi, Betil Hafizmustafa, Engjëllushe Spahillari. Above all and most of all, to my love, Evrim! For his love, friendship, compassion, patience, academic guidance, and countless discussions over matters I talk about in this thesis. For being a promoter, an editor, a reviewer and a passionate thinker. There is no part in this journey that would have ever happened without you! 5 List of Abbreviations CEE – Central and Eastern Europe CFSP – Common Foreign and Security Policy CoE – Council of Europe EAR – European Agency for Reconstruction ENP – European Neighbourhood Policy EU - European Union EULEX – European Union Rule of Law Mission in Kosovo FPA – Foreign Policy Analysis ICTY – International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia IMF – International Monetary Fund IR – International Relations KDL – Kosovo Democratic League KFOR – Kosovo Force KLA – Kosovo Liberation Army NATO – North Atlantic Treaty Organisation NPE – Normative Power Europe OSCE – Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe SAA – Stabilisation and Association Agreement UNDP – United Nations Development Programme UNSCR – United Nations Security Council Resolution USAID – United States Agency for International Development UFO – Unidentified Flying Objects 6 Genealogy of the puzzle. A personal story “This is the hour of Europe” said Jacques Poos, former President of the Council of the European Union in 1992, at the beginning of the conflicts in former Yugoslavia, indicating that this is a European problem, thus requires a European solution. What followed in former Yugoslavia throughout the 90s and whose hour was it really, is less important in this part. Important to note is that the events of the 90s have made former Yugoslavia and to some extent the Balkans, a European matter. Since then, the idea of interventions and missions in the region was never off the table. What followed in the aftermath of Yugoslavia’s breakup and NATO intervention was a sequence of peace agreements, territorial arrangements, instalment of NATO forces, United Nations missions and agencies, EU missions and altogether a structural approach from the Western structures in changing the situation in the region. Growing up in a setting where discrimination towards certain groups was an established way of living, had influenced me to think of war, uprising and resisting as a form of liberation. During the war in Kosovo between what was then the third military power of Europe – Serbia - and a porous Albanian guerrilla movement, the very idea of military intervention was seen as salvation, as the right hand of God. I remember being thrilled the night NATO started bombing Serbia’s military sites. In my understanding of a 12 year old, that was something that would stop the massive flow of refugees, the abandoned, ghost cities and the bestial images of killings. The intervention did eventually ‘save’ my life and the lives of my family. The entrance of NATO soldiers after Milosević surrendered was followed by an unprecedented welcome of the remaining local Albanians in Kosovo. It was a sort of bestial happiness – as if God had landed in front of us. And there I was! Covering NATO tanks with flowers, thinking that they were there because my life mattered, like all human life should mater. What followed was the ‘making’ of Kosovo as a church or a worship site where everybody came to light a candle to clean their souls. Agencies, donors, sponsors, NGOs, humanitarian organisations, human rights groups, academics, volunteers of various causes were coming to Kosovo to help these poor people. The notion of a poor victim became statutory in our new social identity. It was later in high school during the philosophy classes that the notion of liberty had infected me with the very questions of what was really happening there. Later in Tirana, at an American university, what may seem ironic, surrounded by critical professors and literature, the rosy picture of those brave soldiers who saved me and my family was further 7 contextualized and de-mythicized. It took me years to understand the perverse nature of (non)interventions albeit with the right cause, after being acquainted with Rwanda 1994, Somalia 1993, the Kurdish issue, the Palestinian question and other places plagued by calamities like my own. In the late 90s, an anecdote was circulating that during the war in Kosovo the former Italian defence minister, while having dinner, saw footage of Kosovo refugees in peril and exclaimed “Oh my god, they are blonde”!. And this is perverse not just in the Freudian way but in its very concept, where the narrative of intervention is not just legitimized to save these human lives but how much their coloured eyes and blondish hair have moved you. Oversimplified, I was back in understanding that while humanitarian cause and intervention were a given, this was after all a struggle of ‘whose hour was it going to be’. What the intervention brought in Kosovo was an installation of two consequent foreign missions that de facto set the country’s path and its political choices to date. We were asked not to talk about the war, because that was not politically correct towards the ‘other’ (i.e. the Serbs). The word conflict was instilled instead. History was asked to be rewritten in ‘neutral’ and ‘objective’ tones. The ‘year zero’ had started for Kosovo, where memory, history, culture did not matter much before the democratic future awaiting us. I realised that if I was interested in any kind of question on freedom and liberation they would have to take a deep intellectual and epistemological question. It was a personal conflict in trying to find the balance how does one sees intervention as a human who was saved by it and by somebody who wants to go deeper in understanding how does intervention work? For whom there is an intervention? When does the intervention stop? What turns interventions into missions? How long do missions stay? Do they ever go away? Who signs their time frame? Later in Leuven, studying at a typical Western European university, a whole more complete picture of my emotional and intellectual puzzle with interventions and missions was revealed. Dots were connected between, on the one hand pathologizing the ‘other’ (the Balkans) as something intrinsically troubled due to regional deep seated, irrational hatred in the mainstream academic narrative, and having that narrative calling, justifying and legitimizing ‘interventions’ on the other hand. Nonetheless, this is not, and should be not read as a story for Kosovo. It is rather a story of the oppressed. The oppressed, the marginal silenced and tucked in, be that in faculties of knowledge, theoretical assumptions or the narrative of interventions itself. 8 Abstract This thesis offers a Derridean perspective to the notion of international interventions and missions by focusing on the case of Kosovo. It argues on a reconceptualization of ethics as foreign policy, interrogating questions of how to rethink ethics as justice and how to rethink the notion of (non)intervention. The structure is built around four primary questions that are dealt with in four consecutive articles utilizing four of Derrida’s concept: deconstruction, hospitality, autoimmunity and home respectively. The thesis is divided into three parts. The first part is dedicated to the introduction of the thesis, a theoretical and methodological discussion, data generation and interpretation and an overview of thesis’ structure. The second part is reserved for the four articles, each employing a particular concept of Derrida, to shed light on the dynamics of Western/EU missions in Kosovo. Part three provides a summary of main issues covered in the thesis, concluding remarks and a debate for further research.