An Army for Kosovo?

AN ARMY FOR KOSOVO? Europe Report N°174 – 28 July 2006 TABLE OF CONTENTS EXECUTIVE SUMMARY AND RECOMMENDATIONS ............................................................. i I. INTRODUCTION .......................................................................................................... 1 II. THE INTERIM SECURITY ARCHITECTURE........................................................ 1 A. THE OFFICIAL SECURITY CAPACITY......................................................................................2 1. Indigenous bodies created and overseen by UNMIK ................................................2 2. Kosovo government capacity.....................................................................................4 B. AGENTS OF INTERNAL INSTABILITY ......................................................................................6 1. Informal Albanian actors ...........................................................................................6 2. Serb structures and the north .....................................................................................8 C. INTERNATIONAL SECURITY FORCES ......................................................................................9 1. KFOR.......................................................................................................................10 2. UNMIK police.........................................................................................................10 III. THE KOSOVO PROTECTION CORPS: ALBATROSS OR CINDERELLA?.... 12 A. MANDATE...........................................................................................................................12 B. COMPOSITION AND CAPACITY.............................................................................................14 C. THE KPC AND KOSOVO SOCIETY........................................................................................17 D. RELATIONS WITH THE INTERNATIONAL COMMUNITY ..........................................................19 IV. LOOKING FORWARD............................................................................................... 23 A. THE REGIONAL MILITARY CONTEXT ....................................................................................23 1. Albanian and Serb perceptions of NATO ..................................................................23 2. Serbia’s military concerns and deployments ...........................................................24 3. Toward collective security.......................................................................................25 4. An army as antidote to paramilitaries......................................................................26 B. MILITARY OPTIONS.............................................................................................................26 1. Uses of an army .......................................................................................................27 2. The ideas of the KPC...............................................................................................28 3. Perils of the halfway house......................................................................................28 4. With or without the KPC? .......................................................................................29 5. Between disbandment and transformation...............................................................30 6. Securing the “right stuff”.........................................................................................30 7. Representing Serbia’s interest .................................................................................31 8. Respecting traditions ...............................................................................................32 9. The merits of delay ..................................................................................................33 V. CONCLUSION ............................................................................................................. 34 APPENDICES A. MAP OF KOSOVO ................................................................................................................36 B. GLOSSARY OF ABBREVIATIONS AND ACRONYMS ...............................................................37 C. ABOUT THE INTERNATIONAL CRISIS GROUP .......................................................................39 D. CRISIS GROUP REPORTS AND BRIEFING PAPERS ON EUROPE SINCE 2003 ............................40 E. CRISIS GROUP BOARD OF TRUSTEES ...................................................................................42 Europe Report N°174 28 July 2006 AN ARMY FOR KOSOVO? EXECUTIVE SUMMARY AND RECOMMENDATIONS The international community is just months away from A small official army, developed under NATO oversight, decisions that are expected to make Kosovo a state, but is the most appropriate tool, both to prompt the gradual planning for the security ramifications has not kept pace. demilitarisation of society and to enable Kosovo’s entry It must avoid creating a weak state; the future Kosovo into regional collective security arrangements, which are needs adequate institutions to ensure the rule of law and the key to sustainable demilitarisation and security. the inviolability of its borders, and to combat transnational organised crime and terrorism. Elements If managed well, an army can help develop a stable, important for building a sustainable state must not be multi-ethnic or at least ethnically neutral, identity for the traded away to achieve recognition of Kosovo’s new state. Fashioning a united, representative and independence. A key component of post-independence professional army for a state deeply divided between the security structures should be an army built in part upon Albanian majority and the rejectionist Serb minority the Kosovo Protection Corps (KPC), albeit a small one requires a careful choice of building blocks. Unwilling oriented to international missions like peacekeeping and elements cannot be forced to cohere but such an army subject in the first years to strict NATO control and also cannot be created without regard to existing limitations on its size and capabilities. institutions and the expectations of the majority, who invest hope and authority in the KLA-derived civil An independent Kosovo’s security needs are clear. It protection body, the KPC. requires internal stability and safety from external attack but at the same time, it must not be a threat to its Steering Kosovo’s post-status identity away from neighbours. Existing formal security structures must be exclusively Albanian markers is going to be an uphill placed under the control of the new institutions of task. The international community should be realistic democratic government. Existing informal armed and use the levers available to it in Kosovo society. With structures, both the legacy of the insurgent Kosovo its partial evolution from paramilitary roots, dependency Liberation Army (KLA) and those linked to organised on NATO expertise, and willingness to undergo substantial crime, must be minimised. Ethnic minorities – particularly change, the KPC offers it an opportunity to exercise a Kosovo’s Serbs – must be protected, not threatened, by free hand in moulding the army that it should not refuse. the state’s security structures. That army should be a small, lightly-equipped, multi- NATO should be prepared to maintain its Kosovo Force ethnic force of between 2,000 and 3,000 personnel, peacekeepers (KFOR) in the state for a long period to trained by a dedicated NATO mission to a transparent provide external protection and, to a lesser extent, plan and schedule, and brought to operational capability contribute to internal stability, resisting pressures to by 2011-2012. It should not duplicate any police functions reduce and then eliminate it altogether before the new but should instead be constructed with an outward state’s relations with Serbia are fully normalised and orientation, to take its first operational steps in regional both states have become members of the Partnership for initiatives and international peacekeeping operations, Peace (PfP) program. and eventually gain membership in PfP and NATO itself. An opportunity should be found as early as 2007 Some will argue that with KFOR there, a poor and divided for the first deployment abroad, drawing upon expertise place like Kosovo does not need its own military, but built up in the KPC, like demining. The army’s internal full demilitarisation is impracticable. There is insufficient security tasks should be severely limited, not much trust to sustain it. It would become a façade, behind beyond the KPC’s present civil protection, engineering which unofficial paramilitary groups would coalesce, and reconstruction mandate. making the new state – and its neighbours – less rather than more secure, and less amenable to the rule of law. An Army for Kosovo? Crisis Group Europe Report N°174, 28 July 2006 Page ii All this should be framed by accords reached as part of Interim capacity building: Kosovo’s final status settlement. These should also specify a range of limitations on the army’s numbers and 4. KFOR should develop a closer partnership with capabilities, and NATO’s role in its governance. Not the KPC, deepening and standardising the training necessarily negotiated with Pristina and Belgrade, this relationship across Kosovo, with all Multinational could even take the form of a conclusion of NATO’s Task Forces taking cooperation down to unit level. North Atlantic

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