By Fatos Radoniqi

Serbia has always maintained that Kosovo should remain under its rule. This, they argue, should happen for several reasons. Among others, they often claim that Kosovo would be better off economically if it remained a part of Serbia. In this short essay I will attempt to explain why this cannot be the case.

To say that Kosovo is better off economically if it remains part of Serbia is based on at least two very flawed assumptions.
    
Assumption 1:  Kosovo’s economic welfare is important to Serbia

This is far from credible, to say the least. Why?

Kosovo has been in some way a part of Serbia since 1918. It has, throughout the last 90 years as a part of Serbia, remained the poorest territory in the whole Europe, while other republics and autonomous regions of former Yugoslavia surrounding it have prospered. Belgrade’s disastrous treatment of Kosovo has shown that the ethnic makeup of Kosovo is more important than the Kosovo population’s economic wellbeing.

During the late 80’s and throughout the 90’s the government in Belgrade systematically ravaged Kosovo’s economy. As a part of a Yugoslav model of worker-run economic system, by 1989 the majority in Kosovo were employed in socially owned enterprises. On the same year, Serbia amended its constitution and revoked the autonomy that the province enjoyed until then. This enabled the government in Belgrade to make official its ongoing apartheid in Kosovo, whereby all Kosovo Albanians in order to keep their jobs had to give up their political conscience. Not many Albanians responded positively to this bigoted and assimilative move, which meant an almost complete dismissal of all Kosovar Albanians from their jobs. There could be no better recipe for economic disaster. The unemployment rate for them went from 18.6% in 1971 to 70% in 1990. While the trend for the Kosovo Serbs was the opposite; only 10% of them were unemployed in 1990.

Today Serbia blames the Milosevic regime for this disaster and claims that they should be given another shot in ruling Kosovo. Such a request is unreasonable and will only lead to more disaster. There are at least two reasons why the claim that Serbia of today is different from that of 1990’s does not hold water. First is the fact that the majority of Serbs have strongly supported Milosevic's actions of discrimination and apartheid fed on a propaganda that dehumanized Albanians of Kosovo. There were no protests or any other form of manifestation of the alleged dissatisfaction with the horror and injustice that was going on in Kosovo during the Milosevic era. And the Milosevic era was not centuries ago; barely 8 years have passed since his brutal rule came to a brutal end. And second, there is the fact that even today the Serb delegation claims that if Kosovo declares independence unilaterally, a package of retaliatory measures will follow from Serbia. Trade barriers, electricity and telecommunication interruptions, and other impediments to normal life are often mentioned. If Milosevic was still alive someone may easily confuse this talk as being his. To claim that they care about the people of Kosovo while at the same time they draw retaliatory measures to make their life unnecessarily difficult seems contradictory to me. Thus, Serbia has not changed and does not deserve another shot at running Kosovo.

Assumption 2: Albanians will obediently return to pre-1999 period and accept Serbia as their motherland

This is a very naïve disregard for the political segment of economic development. The suffering and the horror that Albanians experienced under Serb rule, which resulted with 12,000 Albanian civilians killed and 20,000 women raped cannot be erased easily. Serbia still today is withholding evidence about the fate of 3,000 people. And it is of no help to know that the majority of Serbs don’t believe that such atrocities even occurred in Kosovo and label such facts as “western media propaganda”. This en masse ignorance leads to increasingly grim prospects of a national reconciliation. What are the economic consequences of this?

There is vast literature on political stability and economic prosperity that undeniably relates strong economic growth to political stability, among other things. So, even if Serbia’s aim was genuine (which as stated previously is incredible) the dissatisfaction and huge mistrust of the 95% of the population of Kosovo would lead to political instability and lack of political freedom. The resulting mess will interfere with the creation of strong institutions, retarding foreign and domestic investment, fueling an underground economy, and instigating brain drain among other things. In short, the outcome would be far from a positive one.

Therefore, Serbia and some of its supporters in the West are wrong to assert that Kosovo should remain under Serbia’s rule for the sake of economic prosperity. There is no evidence to support such a claim. Quite the opposite is the case. Serbia’s treatment of Kosovo for the last 90 years, and constant threats made today of future obstacles reflect only one thing: Serbia has not yet abandoned the backward and xenophobic thinking that has caused hundreds of thousands of deaths for 10 years alone. As such, Serbia is not fit to rule itself, let alone Kosovo.


The author is a PhD candidate in Economics at the Claremont Graduate University in California.