we were caught in limbo."

skpdff24

Justin Vela Contributor
AOL News PRISTINA, Kosovo (Oct. 13) -- U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton was welcomed today in Kosovo with a rapturous greeting very different from the cooler response she received in ethnically divided Bosnia and largely anti-American Serbia, the two other stops on her Balkan tour.
Thousands of cheering Kosovo Albanians,[link widoczny dla zalogowanych], many of them waving American flags, met her in the capital, Pristina, where she stopped to eye the 12-foot-tall bronze statue of her husband on Bill Clinton Boulevard.
"I'm so glad to be back after 10 years; it's wonderful," Clinton said in front of the statue.
The U.S. remains very popular in Kosovo because former President Clinton led the campaign for the 1999 military intervention to stop the wholesale displacement of Kosovo Albanians by Serbs intent on ethnically reclaiming what was then a historic province of Serbia.
Clinton held a town-hall-style meeting with young Kosovo Albanians and met Prime Minister Hashim Thaci and Kosovo government representatives. She encouraged them to hold dialogue with Serbia, from which Kosovo declared independence in February 2008 with the backing of the U.S. and many European countries.
Yet while Kosovo appears in many ways to be a U.S. foreign policy success, the challenges still facing the new country are only too apparent nearly three years after self-declared independence. "I would be cautious in terms of calling it a success," said Ian Bancroft, executive director of TransConflict,[link widoczny dla zalogowanych], an organization that monitors Balkans affairs. "With respect to free and fair elections, there has been progress. With other key elements, such as the fight against organized crime and ensuring the rule of law, there have been many failures in Kosovo."
After the NATO bombing in 1999, the international community took charge of Kosovo, leaving a multinational force composed of U.S. and European troops to oversee security and nation-building in Serbia's former province.
Since then, many Kosovars feel there has not been enough progress with the building of social institutions and that the international community has too much control over their government.
"We are very critical toward the intervention in Kosovo," said Glauk Konjufca of the Vetevendosje or "self-determination" movement, in a telephone interview with AOL News. "There was a political agenda with no clear exit strategy. They turned us into a strategic geopolitical issue. As time went on, we were caught in limbo."
Konjufca said the international community is not putting enough emphasis on social issues such as education or the health care system, focusing instead on security in Kosovo, which Konjufca considered to be only one part of a larger equation. "The problem of how to normalize a country is not just an issue of stability and peace when you do not have bread to eat and schools to educate your children. We are reduced to a country that has a pure geopolitical military function."
According to the U.S. State Department, 45 percent of Kosovo's work force is unemployed, and 30 percent of the population lives beneath the poverty line.
The Vetevendosje movement contends that Washington's main interest in Kosovo is to maintain its influence not just in the Balkans but also in Europe. "Through Kosovo, the U.S. has a fundamental and big say into EU security policy. It is the same issue with Bosnia. These two weak states are U.S. creations,[link widoczny dla zalogowanych]," Konjufca said.
Such frustrations appear to be growing in Kosovo. "There is opposition to the international community in Kosovo because after 10 years it has a mixed legacy with both Serbs and Albanians," Bancroft said. "For that reason [Vetevendosje is] receiving a favorable hearing with the domestic audience."
While in Pristina, Clinton reaffirmed U.S. support for Kosovo's territorial integrity. A region in the Serb-dominated north refuses to recognize the Albanian-run government in Pristina. Some experts have suggested land swaps and even allowing northern Kosovo to rejoin with Serbia,[link widoczny dla zalogowanych], but a tenable solution has not yet been found.
"[The] status, sovereignty and territorial integrity of Kosovo are not up for discussion," Clinton said in a news conference with Thaci, a former leader of the ethnic Albanian militia that fought the Serbs in 1999. Speaking of the future of relations between Serbia and Kosovo,[link widoczny dla zalogowanych], Clinton said that only dialogue "offers a chance for these countries to settle practical problems and overcome obstacles to being good neighbors."
Dealing with Kosovo's Serb community,[link widoczny dla zalogowanych], which makes up 7 percent of the population, is only one of the challenges facing the young country. High levels of smuggling and crime are also an issue being aired as the country faces new elections in the wake of President Fatmir Sejdiu's resignation last month.
Despite those challenges,[link widoczny dla zalogowanych], Kosovo and the Balkans in general appear to be headed in a positive direction, with violence unlikely to reappear in the region.
"I think that [the region] will hold together as long as their perspective is with joining the EU,[link widoczny dla zalogowanych]," Bancroft said. "The big question is how long it will take for these countries to go into the EU. Also what it will cost. For Serbia, the cost is articulated in terms of Kosovo. Will they need to recognize Kosovo,[link widoczny dla zalogowanych], or will they have northern Kosovo integrate [with Serbia]? These are fundamental questions of national determination."
Though it refuses to recognize Kosovo as independent, Serbia has renounced its violent past and agreed to hold dialogue with the Kosovo government as part of advancing its bid toward joining the EU.
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