don’t break the principles - ceas

Don’t Break the Principles New CEAS report on Belgrade-Pristina relations and the

way towards formalization of relation

Belgrade | December 2019

1Don’t Break the Principles

Note: This Report is written in the form of Ms. Jelena Milić’s, director of Center for Euro-Atlantic Studies from Serbia open Letter to Albin Kurti, likely incoming Kosovo Prime Minister.

Esteemed Mr. Kurti, around this time last year in the article Own Goal by Haradinaj and Washington Post1 I deconstructed the tendentious and, in many aspects, incor-rect text Kosovo’s Prime Minister: We Will Not Accept Serbia’s Violation of Our Sov-

ereignty2 written by your outgoing Prime Minister Ramush Haradinaj, published in the Washington Post. No one has denied statements expressed then, just as no one refuted counterarguments and facts stated in the Center for Euro-Atlantic Studies (CEAS) report West Side Story,3 published in the spring 2018.

In my review of Mr. Haradinaj’s article I emphasized the following: “The text makes no mention of the indisputable fact that about 10,000 Kosovo Albanians, mostly civilians, were killed during the Kosovo war, while about 2,100 Serbs and about 500 Roma, Bos-niaks, Montenegrins and other non-Albanians also perished in the conflicts. The fate of the majority of missing Serbs has not yet been clarified. Although Serbia still has a lot of work to do prosecuting Serbian perpetrators for atrocities against Albanians and confronting the recent war-crimes past in general, it is undeniable that Serbia has fulfilled its obliga-tions to The Hague Tribunal in delivering high-ranking politicians and members of the military and the police for crimes in Kosovo. At the same time, almost twenty years after the end of the war, Kosovo has prosecuted practically no one for the killings of non-Alba-nians .”

Everything I wrote back then is still valid. I am addressing you now directly because of your recent “lessons” on how “the genocide, massacres and mass graves are the truths about Serbia that Vučić needs to start to deal with”.4

If you recall we met at the beginning of the year in Thessaloniki, at a conference where Mr. Shpend Ahmeti Mayor of Pris-tina, you and I were among speakers. A few years before, Mr. Ahmeti and I were toghether on the prominent magazine Po-litico’s list of 28 people from 28 countries shaping, shaking and stirring Europe, a rare privilege for public figures from our part of the world.5

You asked me back then what came over me, as director of CEAS, to publish the West Side Story report, observing that by then you could have signed every word in all the previous CEAS reports. When I asked you what was specifically inaccurate in the report in which one dared to, for the first time twenty years after the end of the conflict, present the facts concerning what was actually being done in the process of enforcing transitional justice in Kosovo and in Serbia, and to suggest solutions in line with trends and the arguments of the second decade of the twenty-first century, you provided no an-swer. You just said, “Partition will mean war.” No arguments were offered.

*POLITICO 28 most influential people in the annual POLITICO 28 list of people shaking and shaping the Europe for the 2017, with Ms. Jelena Milic and Mr.

Shpend Ahmeti, among others

2 Don’t Break the Principles

Incidentally, I came to Thessaloniki straight from the Munich Security Conference. Speak-ers there were Serbian President Aleksandar Vučić and the President of the Provisional Kosovo Institutions Hashim Thaci. The chance for a compromise that had emerged some-time earlier, which would have anchored Belgrade and Priština more firmly in the political West, had already been shattered and history would show how irresponsible that shatter-ing was. It has already proved damaging to Kosovo and the region, more than to Serbia.

I have to point out that the correction of the administrative line suggested by CEAS, is not a partition. Incidentally, since that option became legitimate as an element of a possible comprehensive multidimensional agreement between Belgrade and Priština, neither the war broke out, nor mass emigrations from Kosovo and southern Serbia were observed. North Macedonia, is formaly going to become a fullfledged NATO member soon, and Bos-nia and Herzegovina is about to have a new government and the agreement on the contin-uation of armed forces reforms will be delivered to NATO. Serbia has just adopted a new cycle of the Individual Partnership Action Plan (IPAP) with NATO.6 In addition, legitimizing this option brought many positive things to Serbia itself – first and foremost emphasis on the importance of renewing the strategic alliance between Serbia and the USA.7 Isn’t this great news for the whole Western Balkans and not just for Serbia?

I don’t know whether you are aware Mr. Kurti, that by the end of the year anoth-er chapter in the negotiations with the confused EU is likely to be opened, that President Vučić supported the compro-mise among all actors in Bosnia and Her-zegovina on forming a new government and adopting a program of armed forces reforms to be carried out in cooperation with NATO; that in Serbia several hun-dreds of refugee children from the Middle East and Asia are attending school; that we have regular, peaceful gay parades led by senior government officials ; that we had a suc-cessful visit of the President of France; that we are strengthening cooperation with most NATO’s eastern flank members, including the crucial player Turkey - to mention just some of the many positive developments happening in Serbia. For a more extensive breakdown of developments that are anchoring Serbia closer to the political West, against all odds, see readout of my speech delivered recently at CEAS annual international conference Belegrade NATO Week.8

All this is taking place in spite of the increasingly frequent obstructions of the Kremlin structures and the Kremlin associated self-proclaimed democratic opposition to Vučić, who oppose these trends as well as any compromise with Priština.9 Mr. Kurti, CEAS has published several reports about various aspects of Putin’s Russia influence in Serbia and the Region so far. We have spotted the trend and analysed extensively its forms and driv-ers even before it was donor driven activity.10 Our findings, including otherwise rarely addressed ones, like the role of Military Trade Unions, or a stalemate of dialogue with Kosovo in enabling malign Russian influence, are frequently quoted among established experts and prominent think tanks.11 At the moment, it is your radicalism, and not the official Belgrade, that is opening the door to Russia’s malign influence and its obstructions

*Serbian Prime Minister Ana Brnabic attended Belgrade Pride in September 2019


to stabilization and democratization of the entire region. I believe the West will soon became aware of this as well.

This letter, Mr. Kurti, is a wish of a person, who in the 1980s stopped listening to fa-mous singer-songwriter Đorđe Balašević because of the song Don’t break my acacias (see the note below the text about this and other local references that follow for bet-ter understanding of this letter), horrified by the audience’s nationalist reactions to Balašević’s inappropriate gesticulation during performance, as I was among the few here who believed it was a nationalis-tic allusion to Kosovars’ conduct towards the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugosla-via SFRY and Serbia, to bring things back on the track of talks about a possible com-promise, based on facts and current geo-political environment.

Since the spring of 2018, when CEAS pub-lished the aforementioned report entitled West Side Story, we have lost contact with some people from Kosovo who we thought were our friends, went through a hazing of sorts by the Western pundits, and most likely lost a couple of projects. Maybe for the same reason we were left to face alone the grueling court battles against Vojislav Šešelj, a per-son convicted of crimes against humanity; Nemanja Ristić, convicted of Kremlin-backed attempted coup in Montenegro; Ivan Ivanović, who composed a list of “Serb-haters”, in-cluding myself; Jugoslav Petrušić, who threatened and vilified us, and who is standing trial for the murder of two Albanians, plus most of the Serbian tabloids, without wider support of local and regional colleagues and NGOs. I mention only a portion of the pending cases, for the majority of which we had to file criminal and civil charges ourselves and finance our own defense. And for what reason exactly? Was it because we, apart from reporting extensively about Russian influence here for which we have been harassed by Putin trolls, both Russian and local, to the level that I was under police protection, or because we also deconstructed the false mantra about administrative line correction between Belgrade and Pristina as the creation of mono-ethnic states that other actors from our milieu have been propelling,12 or because we dared to ask how things stand concerning trials for war crimes against Serbs and other non-Albanians, and to name a number of new geopolitical and regional factors that significantly affect the possible outcome of the dialogue?

By the way, my and CEAS case of being harassed by pro-Kremlin structures and numerous pending court cases has not been attracting local and regional attention but is described thoroughly in a book Putin Trolls, written by prominent Finish journalist Jessikka Aro13 I eventually had to cancel my police protection because of the “Savamala case”, when the police failed to respond to citizens request for assistance14 as I did not want to be a privi-leged citizen.

*Tacan Ildem - NATO’s Assistant Secretary General for Public Diplomacy, Jelena Milic - CEAS Director and Ivica

Dacic - Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Serbia at the opening of CEAS’s international conference

VII Belgrade NATO Week in November 2019

*Opening of the CEAS’s high level international conference - VII Belgrade NATO Week, held at the Palace of Serbia


I write this in the days when I am party to the case against notorious mercenary Jugoslav Petrušić,15 who intimidated and slandered me, claiming that I boasted about the dismissal of General Ljubiša Diković, a retired Chief of General Staff of the Serbi-an Armed Forces, and that I was working against the interests of Serbia and conspired with the Albanian lobby in organizing terrorist attack with the inten-tion of offing President Trump, no less.

I believe that the entire Petrušić’s appearance on TV Happy16 that I am suing him for, was instigated by CEAS’s support and promotion of a report by the reputable Humanitarian Law Center, on the num-ber of civilian victims in Kosovo killed in the area of responsibility of the aforementioned Diković,17 who has now finally retired. By the end of his mili-tary service Diković was denied entry to the United States. His name should mean something to you. Just like the name of Petrušić, who is fac-ing charges for the killing of two Albanians. Although I am the plaintiff in the case, I was de facto interrogated for hours by Petrušić and his lawyer for, among other things, signing a letter requesting an investigation and justice for the murder of the Bytyqi brothers,18 three USA citizens of Albanian origin who were murdered – execution style – and dumped in a mass grave in Serbia at the end of the Kosovo war in 1999. The Bytyqi case has been close-ly monitored by the US government, which strongly urges Serbia to find the perpetrators.

A day later, I had to listen to Vojislav Šešelj, a person convicted of crimes against human-ity by a UN court The International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY),19 holler down the court corridor, “Where is NATO’s crabs Jelena Milić? There she is NATO’s crabs Jelena Milić…”, as he was coming to a preliminary hearing of, what was yet again, my lawsuit. Believe me, it was not easy to listen to. I sued him over a book called Jelena Milić NATO’s crabs, which he recently published and promoted on television stations with national frequency – which are a public good, and continued to insult me on the web-site of his parliamentary party, that CEAS and I are paying for from the national budget!20 None of the competent authorities reacted. I am not complaining to you, I am just trying to illustrate the circumstances behind and reasons why I am writing this open letter to you. Incidentally, according to Šešelj, as well as Serbian tabloids and televisions with national frequency, I was your, So-ros’s, Thaci’s, Haradinaj’s, and who knows who else’s – whore .

*Cover page of the book Putin Trolls , written by prominent Finish journalist Jessikka Aro, in which

she also presented the case of CEAS and its Director Jelena Milic being harassed by pro-Kremlin structures

*Titles of the Serbian tabloids on Jelena Milic: “Terrible NATO evil” and “Jelena Milic -Face of NATO evil”


I stand behind each of my positions on the causes, reasons and consequences of the NATO bombing, although due to them CEAS and I have been satanized and intimidated for years21 to the point that we no longer have time to record, let alone report it. I also stand by the fact that without the compromise with Kosovo, which will also reinforce Serbia’s position in the political West, there is no chance that the remaining issues of transitional justice that Serbia must answer to, including the difficult matter of the Bytyqi brothers’ murder, will be resolved.

I also stated the same before the Foreign Affairs Committees of both Houses of the Irish Parliament, as they were deciding whether Stabilization and Association Agreement (SAA) with the EU should be approved for Serbia, while Ratko Mladić, former Chief of the Gen-eral Staff of the Bosnian Serb Army (VRS) convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment by ICTY for genocide, crimes against humanity and violations of the laws or customs of war, and Radovan Karadžić, former President of Republika Srpska (RS) and Supreme Com-mander of its armed forces, convicted and sentenced to 40 years of imprisonment for genocide, crimes against humanity and violations of the laws or customs of war commit-ted by Serb forces during the armed conflict in Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH), from 1992 until 1995, where still at large. Fortunately, I was right. Serbia first concluded the SAA, strengthening its support for the EU, and then extradited the aforementioned indictees.

However, the recent Kosovo’s first-instance verdict against Ivan Todosijević, sentenced to two years imprisonment for “inciting national, racial, religious hatred, unrest or intolerance”22 for claiming that controver-sial Račak case, a massacre that is known as a trigger for NATO bombing of Former Republic of Yugoslavia back in 1999,23 was a fabricated event, is not a right step towards continuing to expose and punish crimes of the past. This measure comes at a time when Austrian Peter Handke, who denies the Srebrenica genocide and extols Slobodan Milošević, is awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature!24 I suspect that the purpose of this court decision, as well as your series of factually incorrect comments and insinuations about genocide and impunity for crimes which came as a reaction to Vučić’s stance on Račak, is to divert attention from the elephant in the room - the attitude of the Kosovo leadership, both previous and the incum-bent, and the society at large, towards the unpunished crimes against more than 2,500 Serbs and other non-Albanians, and the need to co-operate with the Specialist Chambers for the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) crimes that has been imposed on you and which you have long resisted. Loud silence is shattering the ears of all of us who have been lis-tening intently for years. The longstanding absence of Western pressure on Kosovo to deal with its share of the criminal past is also conspicuous and raising some questions. These circumstances deprive you of the right to reproach others for their attitude on crimes from a false moral high ground.

*The Grdelica train bombing occurred on 12 April 1999, when two missiles fired by NATO aircraft hit a passenger train while it was passing across a railway bridge over the Južna Morava river in

the Grdelica gorge. At least 20 civilian passengers were killed or declared missing. Estimates of the total death toll run as high as 60


President Vučić is entitled to his position on Račak, an event full of controversy. He did not take Serbia out of the UN, or stopped cooperating with The Hague or NATO because of his stance on Račak. A criminal complaint filed against him in Kosovo recently concerning his postion on Račak, in the age of Handke winning a Nobel Prize, seems completely out of time and place. This criminal complaint does not contribute to the continuation of the di-alogue. Mr. Kurti, avoidance of continuation of the dialogue is increasingly becoming your obvious goal.25 For the record I am in full public support of the fight and arguments against this prize of my colleague and friend Emir Suljagić,26 director of the Srebrenica-Potocari Memorial Center, and others.

Unfortunately, even excluding Račak, Serbian forces killed approximately 1,500 and ex-pelled some 400,000 Kosovars before the NATO bombing, according to the Humanitarian Law Center (HLC),27 the only organization in addition to The Hague Tribunal, CEAS and I use as the source to keep record and describe how civilians and other casualties have lost their lives during the Kosovo war and throughout the region. This gives legitimacy to the bombing, especially bearing in mind the genocides in Srebrenica and Rwanda just a few years before the Kosovo conflict, which the West did not prevent. Because of this view-point I suffered dire consequences living and working in Serbia for the past twenty years, but I stand by it.

However, Serbia is slowly changing for the better and has almost paid its dues, unlike Kosovo. For example, last spring in a TV show I participated in, President Vučić said that CEAS and HLC have the most accurate casualty records from the Kosovo war and NATO aggression.28 On the other hand, I do not see such progress in the positions of long-time Kosovo officials.

As you know, I worked at the Serbian Helsinki Committee for Human Rights when Naša Borba, anti-war and anti-Slobodan Milošević daily, gave you the Tolerance Award in the late 1990s. More importantly, I worked for the International Crisis Group (ICG) at a time when the late Serbian Prime Minister, Zoran Đinđić, was peacefully cooperating with NATO to calm the rebellion of the Liberation Army of Preševo, Bujanovac and Medveđa in southern Serbia, and simultaneously releasing Albanian political prisoners from Serbian prisons, including yourself, in the near impossible local circumstances.29 I still remember every second of the meeting between Đinđić and Morton Abramovic, one of the ICG found-ers,30 related to this topic, that I was present at. Goran Svilanović, my only party leader ever while I was a member of the Civic Alliance of Serbia political party (anti-nationalist, anti-war, anti-Milosević), my boss later on when he was a high level official at the Stabil-ity Pact for South East Europe, still my role model and a friend, at the mentioned time Minister of Foreign Affairs of the federal government, also significantly helped all these

*Images of Aleksinac after the NATO missiles attack in April 1999. At least 11 civilians were killed, 50 were injured and a medical clinic used by civilians was hit in the town, about 100 miles south of Belgrade


processes. He also paid a high internal political cost for conducting this policy, just like the late Prime Minister Đinđić. This is what sticking to good principles and being leaders mean. Aleksandar Vučić, current president of Serbia, is also in a tough position to maintain political majority while seeking compromise with Pristina that can be democratically vali-dated,31 but nonetheless he is pushing for it. I do not see any of this in Kosovo 2019-2020.

“I was a member of the Civic Alliance of Serbia political party (anti-nationalist, anti-war, anti-Milosević), my boss later on when he was a high level official at the Stability Pact for South East Europe, still my role model and a friend, at the mentioned time Minister of Foreign Affairs of the federal government, also significantly helped all these processes. He also paid a high internal political cost for conducting this policy, just like the late Prime Minister Đinđić. This is what sticking to good principles and being leaders mean. Aleksandar Vučić, current president of Serbia, is also in a tough position to maintain political majority while seeking compromise with Pristina that can be democratically validated,31 but nonetheless he is pushing for it. I do not see any of this in Kosovo 2019-2020.”

The mentioned meeting was, by the way, among my last longer encounters with the late Prime Minister. Shortly afterwards, he was assassinated by an anti-Hague lobby. Mr. Svilanović was on a hit list too. Because of the role my ex-husband and the father of my children, the then Serbian Deputy Minister of the Interior and before that chief of Prime Minister Zoran Đinđić’s cabinet, played in overthrowing the heinous regime of Slobodan Milosević and his extradition to the ICTY under difficult circumstances, assisted by the nonviolent Resistance movement OTPOR32 of which I was an active member and promoter of its legacy and knowledge after we top-pled Milošević,33 my children and I spent 79 days under heavy protection, in circumstanc-es similar to a house arrest, during the state of emergency that was declared a few hours after the assassination, under police operation “Sabre”.34

*Jelena Milic Director of CEAS at the cartoon created by the Serbian cartoonist Predrag Koraksić Korax

while she was a member of the Resistance movement OTPOR

*Funeral of the assassinated Prime Minister Zoran Djindjic. Serbia, March 2003


These days I fully agree with Mr. Svilanović, until recently longstanding chair of the Re-gional Cooperation Council35 (SPSEE spinoff) of which Kosovo is a member, for which Mr. Svilanović was instrumental, that we should move on with regard to the potential com-promise. He believes that the deal is urgent because the unresolved status is draining enormous energy from the Serbian society and deprives it not just of energy but media space as well, so that some other issues, of crucial importance for Serbia’s democracy and EU accession, do not get enough attention. However, as Svilanović points out, the same applies to Kosovo. People there have also voted for the change with the expectations that the new government would combat corruption and strive to develop the economy, but as long as there is no agreement with Belgrade and a status solution, the new Kosovo govern-ment would not be able to focus on solving such problems there either. I firmly agree with Svilanović that continuing talks and reaching a compromise agreement in the dialogue between Belgrade and Pristina are a matter of urgency for both sides.

I am writing to you now, Mr Kurti, mentioning even some semi-private things because I had enough - you went overboard, as Balašević would say in his popular song Don’t Break My Acacias. Isn’t it ironic that I’m quoting him now? At this moment when the facts are more important than ever before in defining a new form of relationship between Serbia and Kosovo, you state that Serbia did nothing to confront its crimes and you brand us as genocidal. Why is that?

I am convinced that you are well aware of the undisputed facts – even after the assassi-nation of Prime Minister Đinđić, Serbia continued to co-operate with The Hague Tribunal including during Prime Minister Vojislav Koštunica’s mandate. Six active military and po-lice generals and two presidents have been extradited to The Hague, mostly for crimes committed against Albanian civilians in Kosovo. Ratko Mladić and Radovan Karadžić were to follow, the military and political chiefs of Republika Srpska – entity of another state, Bosnia and Herzegovina, not Serbia, responsible for the siege of Sarajevo and the Srebreni-ca genocide. I remind you that, according to the decision of the Permanent Court of Justice, Serbia was found guilty of not preventing, and not committing, genocide in Srebrenica.36

There were no other genocides in the 1990s conflicts in the region, at least not according to the decisions of the relevant international courts, so it is not clear what exactly are you referring to these days. As I have stated, there were mass crimes com-mitted against Albanians as well as ethnic cleansing, for which a number of individ-uals in Serbia were held accountable for. However, in my opinion, ethnic cleansing was committed against the Serbs in Cro-atia during 1995 Operation Storm, when Croatian forces killed at least 1,800 Serbs and expelled 250,000,37 which was never adequately punished, as is the case with Ramush Haradinaj’s crimes, due to an outrageous trial at The Hague Tribunal, during which several witnesses were mysteriously killed.

*Photos of the victims of the Staro Gracko massacre - the mass killing of 14 Kosovo Serb farmers in the village of Staro Gracko in the Kosovo municipality of Lipljan on 23 July 1999


Mr. Kurti, how often do you and your col-leagues speak about the crimes against Serbs and other non-Albanians? Does Klečka38 or Radonjić Lake,39 mean any-thing to you, to mention just some of the toponyms related to the suffering of Serbs in Kosovo. Remember the 2004 pogrom40 in Kosovo when hundreds were wound-ed and at least 14 people were killed? It was reported that a number of Serbian churches and shrines in Kosovo had been damaged or destroyed by rioters. At least 30 sites were completely destroyed, more or less destroyed, or further destroyed (sites that had been previously damaged). Apart from the churches and monasteries, tens of support buildings (such as parish buildings, economical buildings and residences) were destroyed, bringing the number close to 100 buildings of the Serbian Orthodox Church destroyed. Does Staro Gracko,41 Orahovac,42 Niš Express43 mean anything to you? How many persons have been held accountable for all this and other crimes against Serbs in Kosovo?

Serbian Foreign Minister Ivica Dačić attended an HLC exhibition on the persecution of Kosovo civilians by Serb forces in Kosovo.44 When did one of yours do something similar when it comes to Serb victims? Many Serbian non-governmental organizations (NGOs), CEAS included, insist on confronting the criminal past, requesting a memorial to be built in Batajnica,45 a notorious police training centre close to Belgrade, where hundreds of bodies of Kosovo Albanians were found buried, the state is financing the production of films on crimes against Kosovars – and what is happening on your side? How vocal and persistent are Kosovo NGOs, with the exception of the prominent Humanitarian Law Cen-ter branch in Kosovo (HLC Kosovo), on this topic? Mr. Kurti, let me remind you, findings of the recent HLC report on trials for war crimes against Serbs in Kosovo, since the end of the conflict to the present day, are profoundly disappointing.46

Where is the support of leaders and the public for the set up and work of The Specialist Chambers and Prosecutor’s Office47 for the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) crimes? Are the 2,500 Serbs and other non-Albanians killed irrelevant, a statistical error? By what right do you claim, in rare occasions when you mention these crimes at all, that its up to Kosovo courts and not the Specialist Chamber to deal with such cases, when only two years ago you set off tear-gas in the Assembly of Kosovo calling it practically a “captured state”? What has really changed in Kosovo in the meantime, except the possibility of you coming to power? And meanwhile the time passes and the witnesses die.

*Relatives of murdered Serb abductees from villages Opteruša and Retimlje

At the moment, it is your radicalism, and not the official Belgrade, that is opening the door to Russia’s malign influence and its obstructions to stabilization and democratization of the entire region.


When comparing the ratio of Kosovar civilian victims, on one side, and Serbian and other non-Albanian on the other (roughly 4:1, but perhaps the victims of NATO bombing should be counted, which would make the ratio smaller) with the number of convictions for crimes against them, texts in the western printed media about Kosovo casualties in rela-tion to other victims, statements by the western politicians about one in comparison with the other, policies applied to Kosovo and to Serbia, the death toll and the cost of NATO ag-gression damages, expectations of you and many in the West that Serbia is going to simply recognize Kosovo as a matter of course, even though at this moment half of the UN mem-ber states have not done so, including 5 EU and 4 NATO member states, the ratio would certainly not be like the one concerning casualties, it would be much more “in your favor”.

Making and analyzing this inventory would be worthwhile, for the sake of sustainable peaceful relations in the future and for the sake of Serbian and other non-Albanian vic-tims. As well as for the sake of what Serbian diplomacy and the general public, including many NGOs, should do in the future, especially in relations to the US, and that is to form a more accurate picture of the causes and consequences of the conflict in Kosovo. It is also worth wondering why the pendulum has swung so much to one side.

Mr. Kurti, a victim’s privilege is a legiti-mate status for a period of time. But not forever. It is not honorable to abuse it. And not every victim is innocent. Why is Račak, as Thaci suggests,48 a worse crime on the European soil than the Tuzla Column, Op-eration Storm, Srebrenica, the camps at Prijedor, the massacre of Serbs in eastern Herzegovina? Or worse than the victims of Stalinism, that also perished after the World War II? By exaggerating in com-paring the Serbian accountability for the 1990s with German Nazism, are you, Kosovo leaders, not offending millions of victims of Nazism? If I were a raped Albanian woman I would feel terrible because of the exaggerated number of rapes by Serbian forces during the conflicts that your officials systematically insist upon, though being a woman is enough to feel that.49

“Mr. Kurti, a victim’s privilege is a legitimate status for a period of time. But not forever. It is not honorable to abuse it.”

Speaking of Germans, did you know that long-time German chancellor Angela Merkel has only recently visited Auschwitz, making her the first German chancellor to do so in the last 25 years?50

Since you are so adamantly and casually sticking genocidal labels around, please allow me to ask you, Mr. Kurti – what about Jasenovac,51 WW2 concentration camp where, according to the Jasenovac Memorial Site, the Croatian Ustasa killed over 83,000 Serbs, Jews, Roma and anti-fascists between 1941 and 1945? Have you, or any other Kosovo leader or a pub-lic figure, reacted to current shameless attempts coming from Croatia to call Jasenovac a

*Mr. Behgjet Pacolli, Kosovo’s outgoing Minister of Foreign Affairs, tweets/statements on “Serbian genocidal policy against Kosovo”


“collection” or “labor” camp.52 How and where do you draw the line? Are you not relativ-izing the genocide in Srebrenica by calling other war crimes of the 1990s that were not court determined as such - a genocide? And what does it matter whether a Serbian official used the word genocide or not? Has Serbia stopped cooperating with The Hague after the Srebrenica verdicts? No. Has Serbia fulfilled its remaining obligations? Yes. Could it be that you, Mr. Kurti, as well as Thaci, Haradinaj, and others, are spreading ethnic hatred at this moment with this amount of prejudicial inaccuracies and not the Serbian officials, as you claim?

Mr. Kurti, in your very recent interview to Financial Times you reiterated: “We should shift from [debating] control over territory towards the rights of the citizens and the needs of the communities. . . because maps are racist for sure.”53

It seems to me Mr. Kurti that you do not know what racism is, otherwise you would not insult millions of victims of racism with this inappropriate comparison. Stop with labeling so easily. Maps were for sure included when Czechia and Slovakia separated peaceful-ly, when Serbia and Montenegro were peacefully separating, when Sudan was splitting… When the communist regime of Josip Broz Tito after the WW2 was adding predominate-ly Serbs populated municipalities to become administrative parts of Kosovo province,54 which is still the case and seems to me you do not object it, was it racist? Are your and Cyprus flags racist?

And while on the subject of false analogies and comparisons let me address your “con-cerns” with regard partition of Serbian community, one of your false arguments against a comprehensive multidimensional compromise agreement, and let me ask you what hap-pened to the Bosniak community in Sandžak when it was administratively divided be-tween Serbia and Montenegro? Nothing. They are still Sandžak, with all its ups and downs. As it happens, one part is in NATO, and good for them. More stability for everyone.

Mr. Kurti, if you come to power in Kosovo, you will have to cooperate with the Specialist Chambers, which have already conducted a considerable number of interviews. The in-dictments and extraditions are to follow. You will get a chance to see what it means to ex-tradite while you encounter resistance to enforcement of the obligations and a conspiracy of silence by the security system, and the society fails to support you. Only then will you face the challenges that Serbia is now slowly leaving behind.

In addition to confronting your war-criminal past, you will also have to face another el-ement of the present times - that neither Serbia nor the world is the same as in the late 1990s. Until recently you have been very critical of the situation in Kosovo, and now you

*Rebellion and highway blockade by now-disbanded Special Operations Unit in a rebellion against the Serbian government of Zoran Djindjic in 2001, triggered by the extraditions of Serbian Army

officials to the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY)


are acting as if you are intentionally clos-ing your eyes to some of the flaws. The time of privilege of young “harmless” ro-mantic nationalisms over the old “danger-ous” nationalisms is passing, and they are now treated as one and the same. Some prison sentences have been served and you cannot forever invoke the crimes that have been punished and use them to jus-tify or obscure your own wrongdoings. Your youthful radicalism was understand-able, but adulthood requires a mature un-derstanding of things and mature actions. I sincerely hope that you are up to it, because the number of common challenges and threats is enormous. Your obstinacy increases the chances that due to a deadlock in the communication and exchange of data and intelli-gence, potential perpetrators or weapons to be used in a new terrorist act somewhere in the world, may well pass across our territory, to mention just one of the possible negative consequences.

Mr. Kurti, what you are doing now is breaking principles. Do not break our principles. Politics and law are not a buffet. Serbia has elected Aleksandar Vučić as the legitimate president, and the Serbs in Kosovo overwhelmingly voted for the Serbian List. Democracy is tough. Not many here are delighted with your electoral victory, but we have to deal with it, although some features of your election – the allegations of ethno-specific55 poisoned ballots and the manner you dealt with it – were totally unacceptable. Mr. Kurti, instead of excessively and inaccurately castigating Serbia of 2019,56 you should face democracy head-on. Take a look at the new CEAS-CESID public opinion poll and the possible options concerning the results of the dialogue with Priština.57 Any agreement between Belgrade and Priština must get democratic verification here too. I know it may come as a surprise to you, bearing in mind your numerous statements about inviolability of Kosovo Consti-tution, but we have one too. Fun fact, both can be amended. Serbia does not have to join neither the EU nor the NATO. Serbia is in the UN and a peaceful status quo in relations with Pristina is not going to kick it out of there. You in Kosovo are under more severe time pressure and in conflict with reality. You need to face it, too.

*After the Kosovo election in October 2019 Kosovo Central Election Commission (CIK) said the ballot papers for the

parliamentary elections that came from Serbia would be counted after the police completed their investigation into whether they contained any dangerous substance.

Investigation showed that the accusations were unfounded

*CEAS comprehensive research results “Serbia and the New Horizons – Citizens on Security Challenges, NATO, USA, Kosovo and Regional Cooperation” commissioned from

the Center for Free Elections and Democracy (CeSID), published in November 2019


And in closing, Mr. Kurti, just one more thing. Balašević has another song called We used to eat so well. In it he keeps enumerating on and on what kind of food was eaten and in what order, while on a road trip, finishing with a local brand of a chocolate cream “cipiripi” as the finale of a senseless overeating. Your list of conditions for continuing the dialogue is becoming like this overindulgent binge trip with cipiripi at the end. Mr. Kurti, you have the opportunity to contribute to setting us all on a road journey heading towards West togeth-er. Don’t overplay your hand and become another “hot-shot that went bust” as Balašević says in yet another song Boža the Jack because, after all, the successful gambler Boža the Jack is just another character from a Balašević’s songs.

Jelena Milić, CEAS Director Belgrade, December 2019

WOULD YOU AGREE WITH THE FOLLOWING STATEMENTS?

Kosovo should remain in Serbia at any cost

A compromise solution should involve a delimitation with four northern

municipalities remaining in Serbia albeit with a continued KFOR presence, and extensive

autonomy for Serbian municipalities in Kosovo

Kosovo is independent and Serbia should

accept this situation and turn to the future

Disagree 18 (22 in 2018) 24 58 (63 in 2018)

Neither agree nor disagree 14 (24 in 2018) 25 13 (12 in 2018)

Agree 66 (53 in 2018) 44 10 (24 in 2018)

DNK /Cannot estimate 1 (1 in 2018) 6 13 (1 in 2018)






PS. In the light of the recent similar unfounded allegations made by Mr. Behgjet Pacolli, Kosovo’s outgoing Minister of Foreign Affairs, I kindly ask you Mr. Kurti to forward this letter/report to him too.

Note 1: Cover page picture presents a rare and poorly attended anti-war in Kosovo rally organized by a handful NGOs like Humanitarian Law Center, Helsinki Committee for Human Rights in Serbia and Woman in Black back in 1998 that Jelena Milic attended. Photo was published in Dnevni Telegraf, daily whose owner and editor was shot dead by Milosevic’s assassins during the NATO bombing of the FRY. Poster in girls hands states: “I don’t want war”.

Note 2: Djordje Balašević is one of the most famous performers and singer-songwriters of popular music in the SFRY and Serbia. In 1986, he published a love song Don’t Break My Acacias, in which a farmer tells his neighbors, who for years have been stealing produce and crops from his estate, that they have gone overboard when they start breaking acacias “down there towards the road” of his estate, that remind him of a woman he loved and who had passed away; he tells them that he had enough and that he is going to take justice into his own hands. The song sparked controversy because some believed it was an allusion to Kosovars’ conduct towards the SFRY and Serbia. We used to eat so well (1991) is another Balašević ‘s song mentioned, referring to excessive eating in Serbian culture, in which sometimes even after a meal consisting of ten or more dishes, one reaches for the Serbian version of Nutella (Cipiripi) as a dessert. The third song mentioned is Boža the Jack (1982), about a successful and mysterious gambler who made his rivals go bankrupt.


References

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php?yyyy=2015&mm=02&dd=16&nav_id=9319244 Dačić: Its important to convict the perpetrators. HLC. December 2013. Available at: http://www.hlc-rdc.org/?p=2589145 Batajnica Memorial Initiative. Available at: http://www.batajnicamemorialinitiative.org/en/film46 Review of war crimes trials in Kosovo 1999-2018. HLC Kosovo. October 2018. Available at: https://www.hlc-kosovo.org/sr/

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kosovo-court-sentences-todosijevic-kosovo-officials-condemn-vucic/49 Kosovo / Priština claims that 20.000 Albanian women were raped during the war. Radio Sarajevo. May 2019. Available at:

https://www.radiosarajevo.ba/vijesti/regija/pristina-tvrdi-je-tokom-rata-silovano-20000-albanki/33647750 Merkel tours Auschwitz with a „sense of shame“and warns of resurgent anti-Semitism. NPR. Decembar 2019. Available at:

https://www.npr.org/2019/12/06/785572011/merkel-tours-auschwitz-with-sense-of-shame-and-warns-of-resurgent-anti-semitism

51 Commissioner commemorates the victims and survivors of the Jasenovac concentration camp in Croatia. Council of Europe. December 2019. Available at: https://www.coe.int/en/web/commissioner/-/commissioner-commemorates-the-victims-and-survivors-of-the-jasenovac-concentration-camp-in-croatia

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ABOUT JELENA MILIĆJelena Milić is among the most influential political analysts in Serbia and the Western Balkans region.

In December 2016 she was elected as one of the POLITICO 28 Most influential People in the annual POLITICO 28 list of people shaking, shaping and steering Europe, together with the mayor of London Sadiq Khan, the CEO of Ryanair Mi-chael O’Leary, the EU High Representative for Foreign Policy and Security Federica Mogherini, President of Turkey Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and founder and president of the Open Soci-ety Foundation George Soros.

In mid-2018 CEAS became one of the 22 leading international organizations, and the only one from the Western Balkans, which are partners of the Atlantic Council (AC USA) on the new strategic project DisinfoPortal. Ms Milic is enlisted as one of the experts on the Disinfo portal.

The key areas of her expertise and interest are: Transatlantic relations; US foreign politics; NATO affairs; EU affairs, NATO, policies of the EU and its member states towards South East Europe and Russia; Serbian foreign and security policies with a special focus on re-lations with NATO; Russian influence in the Western Balkans and Europe; Transitional justice and security sector reform; Contemporary social-liberalism; Democratic deficit of multiculturalism.

She is the leading researcher and author of CEAS reports, among which are most promi-nent: “Basic Instinct: The Case for More NATO in The Western Balkans” published in Sep-tember 2017 and “Eyes Wide Shut – Strengthening of the Russian Soft Power in Serbia – goals, instruments and effects” published in May 2016.

Her essays have been published in the bestselling book “Don’t leave me” by leading Serbi-an cultural sociologist Ratko Božović;

The Serbia-Kosovo agreement and the reform of National security issued in the confer-ence “Western Balkans - The futures of integration” published by the NATO Defense Col-lege Foundation in cooperation with the Italian Presidency of Council of the European Union and the Balkan Trust for Democracy in 2014;

“The Elephant in the Room” - Incomplete Security Sector Reform in Serbia and its Con-sequences for Serbian Domestic and Foreign Policies, issued in Unfinished Business: The Western Balkans and the International Community, published by the Center for Transat-lantic Relations Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies, Johns Hopkins University’ in Washington DC in 2012;

The European Union and Serbia issued in European standards in Serbia - collection of papers, published by the Center for Democracy in 2009;

Serbia: Between the walls issued in 1989-2009-2029 / 20 Years ago, 20 Years ahead – Young Liberal Ideas published by Friedrich Naumann Foundation for Freedom in 2009.


Milic served as the assistant to Goran Svilanović, the former Minister of Foreign Affairs of SCG and Serbia, during his mandate in the Stability Pact for South East Europe Department for Democracy and Human Rights. Previously she worked as a political analyst and re-searcher for the International Crisis Group and the Helsinki Committee for Human Rights in Serbia. In the late 1990s, Milic actively supported the work of the non-violent OTPOR movement, which significantly contributed to the fall of Slobodan Milosević’s regime. She was the regional producer of the film about OTPOR, Dictator Detection, which is part of the series A FORCE MORE POWERFUL, Produced by Steve York, Dalton Delan and Jack DuVall. She translated all films of the series into BHS languages.

She is an alumni of the Friedrich-Naumann- Stiftung International Academy for Leader-ship (IAF) and had internship with prestigious Paris based think-tank CERI of the Science Po University sponsored by the European Commission.

Milic has a degree in Engineering Security Management from Union Nikola Tesla Universi-ty in Belgrade. She is currently finishing her master’s thesis on NATO’s Crisis management system and emergency planning policies and structures.


ABOUT CEASThe Center for Euro-Atlantic Studies (CEAS) is an independent socio-liberal think-tank organization founded in 2007 in Belgrade, Serbia.

The motto which the CEAS follows in its work is “Progress, Determination, Influence”.

We stand for:

• Adoption of the principle of the precedence of individual over collective rights, without disregard for the rights which individuals can only achieve through collective action;

• Strengthening of the secular state principle and promotion of a faithless understanding of the world;

• Development and preservation of a more open, freer, more prosperous and more coop-erative international order founded on smart globalization.

Our advocacy and research work is mostly focused on:

• Contemporary Serbian, Regional and Trans-Atlantic Foreign and Security Policies;

• Full Serbian membership in EU and NATO;

• Russian and other non-democratic influences on the stabilization and democratization of Western Balkans;

• Importance of connection between security sector reform and transitional justice in the post-conflict Balkans;

• Promotion of Responsibility to Protect, the international humanitarian and security doctrine;

• Overcoming of the democratic deficits of multiculturalism.

Among CEAS’s most popular reports are: “Eyes wide shut – Strengthening of Russian Soft Power in Serbia– goals, instruments and effects” (2016), “The Missing Link: Security sec-tor reform, ‘military neutrality’ and EU-integration in Serbia” (2014), “Guide through in-formation security in the Republic of Serbia” (2016), “Keeping up with the private security sector – II” (2015), “Keeping up with the private security sector” (2013), “X Factor Serbia” (2013), “CEAS analysis - The Law on Classified Information” (2015), “CEAS analysis - Se-curity Vetting in Serbia” (2015), “CEAS analysis - Protection of Whistleblowers in Serbia” (2015), “Extreme Makeover” (2014), “10x in favor NATO” (2014), “CEAS analysis of the Law on Amendments of the Law on the Security Intelligence Agency” (2014), “Putin’s Or-chestra” (2014), “Putinization” (2014), etc.

CEAS is the only member from the Region of South-Eastern Europe to have full member-ship in ICRtoP- the International Coalition for the Responsibility to Protect. The coalition brings together non-governmental organizations from all over the world to collectively strengthen the normative consensus for the doctrine of Responsibility to Protect (RtoP), with the aim of better understanding this principle, pushing for the strengthened capac-ities of the international community to prevent and halt genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity, and to mobilize the non-governmental sector to push for action to save lives in RtoP country-specific situations.


CEAS is a member of the Coalition for RECOM – a coalition comprising more than 1,800 or-ganizations from Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Kosovo, Macedonia, Montenegro, Ser-bia and Slovenia, advocating for the founding of the Regional Commission for establishing facts about war crimes and other serious violations of human rights committed on the territory of the former Yugoslavia between 1991 and 2001.

CEAS is among the most visible think-tanks in the Balkans, with a wide media, institution-al and social outreach. CEAS has been quoted in leading prominent liberal media such as The New York Times, Washington Post, Politico, etc. In December 2016, CEAS Director Jelena Milic was elected as one of the POLITICO 28 Most influential People in the annual POLITICO 28 list of people who are shaping, shaking and stirring Europe.

In mid-2018 CEAS became one of the 22 leading international organizations, and the only one from the Western Balkans, which are partners of the Atlantic Council (AC USA) on the new strategic project DisinfoPortal. AC USA is considered one of the most influential think tank organizations in the world.

CEAS programs have been so far supported by: Open Society Fund (OSF); Think Tank Fund, Budapest; National Endowment for Democracy, USA; Rockefeller Brothers Fund, USA; European Commission; Balkan Trust for Democracy – GMF, Serbia; NATO Public Di-plomacy Division; Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE), Serbia; Royal Norwegian Embassy in Belgrade; Visegrad Fund, Slovakia; Friedrich Nauman Foun-dation, Serbia; Friedrich Ebert Foundation, Serbia; USA Embassy in Serbia.

For more information about CEAS, our team and activities please visit our web site www.ceas-serbia.org and more information of an overview of all pending and completed proj-ects can be found directly at https://www.ceas-serbia.org/en/projects.

Don’t Break the PrinciplesNew CEAS report on Belgrade-Pristina relations and the way towards formalization of relationDecember 2019

Center for Euro-Atlantic Studies (CEAS)Dr. Dragoslava Popovica 1511000 Belgrade, SerbiaTel/fax: +381 11 323 [email protected] | www.ceas-serbia.org | @CEASSerbia

don’t break the principles - ceas

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