Kosovo Diplomatic Observer Mission

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The Kosovo Diplomatic Observer Mission ( KDOM ; German : Diplomatic Observer Mission for Kosovo ) was a group of international observers who, from the summer of 1998, monitored the situation in Kosovo during the Kosovo conflict , which belonged to the Yugoslav Republic of Serbia as an "autonomous province" .

prehistory

In 1998 the clashes between the Yugoslav security forces and the Albanian rebel organization UÇK (“ Liberation Army of Kosovo ”) had escalated. On January 4, 1998, it had announced that it was the armed force of the Albanians until the unification of the Kosovo will fight with Albania .

The so-called international community and the Balkan Contact Group formed in 1994 and including Russia reacted split. The USA and Great Britain spoke out in favor of tougher action against the Yugoslav government and tried to use purely Western institutions such as the EU and NATO to do so. In the spring of 1998 NATO discussed military intervention, for which, however, the governments of France and Italy declared a corresponding UN mandate to be necessary in May 1998 . Nonetheless, on May 28, NATO announced a joint military maneuver with Albanian troops in Albania and Macedonia , which was carried out on June 15.

Boris Jelzin and Slobodan Milošević then agreed at a meeting on June 16, 1998 in the form of an unofficial gentlemen's agreement , the so-called Yeltsin-Milošević Agreement , to set up a “diplomatic observer mission for Kosovo”. In return for this concession by the Yugoslav side, Boris Yeltsin assured the Yugoslav leadership that Russia would block a NATO military operation in the UN Security Council .

procedure

On July 6, 1998, the establishment of the KDOM in Kosovo began and with it the first monitoring of the situation in Kosovo by international observers.

After the UN Security Council on 24 October 1998 with the resolution of 1203 the conditions for the implementation of negotiated on 5 and 16 October OSCE Kosovo Verification Mission had created (OSCE KVM), which decided Permanent Council of the OSCE on 25 October 1998 the establishment of a Kosovo mission. Since an immediate appearance of the OSCE verifiers on the spot was judged not to be possible under the given circumstances, and in order to nevertheless enable limited monitoring, it was agreed with the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia that the KDOM observers would be reinforced at short notice, that they would be fully Structure of the OSCE Mission will carry out the essential functions such as monitoring activities for the OSCE and that they will later be absorbed into the OSCE Mission. A limited international presence on site should be guaranteed at least for a transitional period. In fact, the KDOM structure remained in place until shortly before the start of the NATO attack on Yugoslavia. With the OSCE KVM, the international presence on site should no longer be limited to a passive role as with the KDOM. Holbrooke had enforced the term “verifier” as the name of the international KVM inspectors at Milošević, who wanted to use the term “monitor” or “observer” (German: “observer”). This should emphasize the active role of these KVM reviewers, who also had to assess whether obligations were being met.

The evacuation of the EU-KDOM monitors (observers) from Kosovo took place shortly before the start of the NATO air strikes on March 19, 1999. The evacuation of the EU-KDOM took place, as before on October 13, 1998, to Macedonia, where the EUMM had been located since 1993, and was justified internally as a political signal for the Serbian-Yugoslav side. The OSCE KVM observers have already been to Macedonia.

Structure and scope

The KDOM operated under the leadership of the ambassadors of the states of the so-called Balkan Contact Group ( Germany , France , Italy , Russia, Great Britain and the USA) as well as the representative of the EU Presidency (initially the Austrian ambassador in Belgrade ) and the representative of the OSCE Presidency (the ambassador of Poland ).

The EU , the USA and Russia formed the three components of the KDOM. The EU relied on the structure of the EUMM that had existed in the former Yugoslavia since 1991 . According to the agreement, however, they should not act as EUMM observers or wear white clothing, as the EUMM observers did in the former Yugoslav territories.

The four EU-KDOM teams in Kosovska Mitrovica , Prizren , Orahovac and in Peć had superiors organized on three hierarchical levels. The MO ( Mission Office ) in Belgrade was located above the regional office (RO = Regional Office ) in Priština, which was directly above the four teams (management from January 1, 1999: Lieutenant Colonel Dietmar Hartwig) and headed the headquarters (HQ = Head Quarter ) in Sarajevo , where there was a six-monthly change in management until the end of the 1990s. This was based on the presidency of the EU. The country that held the presidency also provided the head of the KDOM, the so-called HOM ( Head Of Mission ). It was always a diplomat from the respective country with the rank of ambassador.

The regional office of the EU-KDOM in Pristina, which is higher than the four external teams, also acted as the external team itself and was responsible for reporting the situation on political, economic and religious aspects in the entire Kosovo region. Whenever possible, each field team had to submit daily status reports to the regional office, which, along with its own information, analyzed these reports and submitted daily and weekly reports to the headquarters in Sarajevo. It had the task of observing and reporting according to political, economic and religious aspects. In addition, special reports were sent to Sarajevo on special occasions.

The EU-KDOM had access to light-colored Land Rover Defenders armored against rifle ammunition as vehicles . The vehicles were identified by international logos , by the words “Observer” in Serbian (“Посматрач”) and Albanian (“Vezhgues”) and by diplomatic license plates . B. next to the “BG” of the Belgrade license plate with the additional CD plate as a diplomatic license plate . Since the Serbian police also used light-colored armored Land Rovers and allegedly the UÇK also owned white SUVs, blue domes that could be illuminated from the inside were mounted on the roofs of the car in winter 1998 when operations in the dark due to the short period of daylight could not be ruled out. You should prevent mix-ups and accidental shelling of the vehicles. The electronic equipment of the EU KDOM teams included satellite phones , computers and generators . Serbian identity cards issued at the Serbian Foreign Ministry in Belgrade accredited the observers as diplomats.

In Germany, the EUMM monitors were initially provided by the Foreign Office . However, since diplomats are sought-after specialists, the Foreign Office later hired retired staff officers . The average age of the German monitors was well above that of the other nations. Even officers were hired, though, as in the cross-section of other nations also, in far smaller numbers. In the German contingent, the NCOs were also retirees. The monitors of the EUMM (and the KDOM) were unarmed and, as attachés to their embassies in Yugoslavia, in contrast to the interpreters accompanying them , had the rank of diplomats, so they enjoyed diplomatic immunity . In contrast to their use as EUMM observers, however, they did not have the status and protection of an international organization .

The number of EU-KDOM monitors was around 40 at the beginning of 1999 and around 18 at the time of the evacuation on March 19, 1999. According to the self-assessment of the head of the EU-KDOM regional office, Dietmar Hartwig, the advantage of the KDOM over the much more staffed OSCE-KVM was that it had been active in Kosovo for much longer and had established contacts with both parties to the conflict.

Intention and effect

The mission's task was to continuously monitor and document the events in the province of Kosovo. The civilian and unarmed observers made trips to the region and prepared reports on the security situation, the situation of the civilian population, the situation of the displaced persons , displaced persons and others.

In an instruction from the German delegation , the tasks of the KDOM monitors were summarized as:

  • Observation and neutral reporting of political, economic, humanitarian and security developments
  • Mediation and dispute resolution at all, especially at local levels
  • Support of trust-building measures on site
  • Supporting the international community's peace efforts.

The KDOM reports were edited by the ambassadors of the contact group states in Belgrade and thus offered a comprehensive and jointly developed picture of the situation.

Despite the shortness of its existence, the KDOM had a decisive influence on the further development of international engagement, which led to a military intervention, and with its situation reports laid the basis for the rapid implementation of the UN Security Council resolutions of September and October 1998: Resolution 1199 of 23. September pointed out that the excessive use of force by the Serbian security forces had caused over 230,000 people to leave their homes (“ displacement ”). On October 5, 1998, a reinforced observer mission of 2,000 OSCE observers was negotiated. On October 13, the Holbrooke-Milošević Agreement was concluded, in which Yugoslavia approved UN Resolution 1199, the OSCE verification mission and NATO aerial surveillance , which quickly led to individual agreements, for example between NATO on October 15 and Yugoslavia via the air observation system ( NATO Kosovo Verification Mission ) and on October 16 between the OSCE and Yugoslavia via the OSCE Kosovo Verification Mission (OSCE-KVM), into which the previous KDOM should also be transferred. On October 24th, UN Security Council Resolution 1203 confirmed the October 13th and 15th agreements.

In return for the concessions made by the Yugoslav government to expand international observation by the OSCE and NATO's active participation in air surveillance, the West should in return prevent the KLA from further acts of violence. The assurances of both the US special envoy, Richard Holbrookes , and the US KDOM leader, Shaun Byrnes ', that they would control the KLA and prevent its advance if the Yugoslav military withdrew to the pre-war level were fatal for further development would. It was only through this assurance that Slobodan Milošević agreed to the Holbrooke-Milošević Agreement and withdrew military forces. However, unhindered by the West, the UÇK used the retreat of the Yugoslav units to rearm and occupy the evacuated areas in targeted provocation. The further development finally led to the undeclared war of NATO against the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia without a corresponding UN mandate.

According to Wolfgang Petritsch , the Austrian ambassador and EU commissioner for Kosovo and the Kosovo negotiations, the presence and the “balanced” reporting of the KDOM in Kosovo resulted in “one of those rare cases in which reports were already carried out during a conflict Local representatives of the international community were objectively exposed to human rights violations "on a situation that accelerated the" reactions of the international community ", in particular the UN Security Council and the Balkans Contact Group, and ultimately promoted the change in international intervention paradigms:

“This new approach to dealing with a domestic conflict prepared the ground for the paradigm shift in international relations that followed shortly thereafter . Historically, the Kosovo conflict is one of the first cases in which the sovereignty of a state - the core element of the international order since the Peace of Westphalia in 1648 - was questioned by the international community. The continuing serious human rights violations by the Yugoslav security forces against the citizens of their own country triggered a fundamental rethinking of the traditional concept of absolute state sovereignty. The groundbreaking new concept of Responsibility to Protect , which was finally adopted a few years later at the UN World Summit in New York in 2005 , was actually first applied in Kosovo in 1998/99. [...] The KDOM was the ad hoc formation that introduced the troika model, so to speak, namely the informal cooperation between Brussels, Moscow and Washington on an equal footing. This format has since been used in the peace negotiations in Rambouillet and Paris in 1999 and in the most recent attempts at an agreement between Belgrade and Pristina. With the top German diplomat Wolfgang Ischinger as primus inter pares, the European-American-Russian triumvirate presented the last - so far - unsuccessful - Kosovo report to UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon. However, the troika format was not taken up by the UN special envoy Martti Ahtisaari in the negotiations on the future status of Kosovo in 2006 and 2007. [...] "

- Wolfgang Petritsch, EU special envoy for Kosovo

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Heinz Loquai: The Kosovo conflict - ways into an avoidable war: the period from the end of November 1997 to March 1999. Nomos Verlagsgesellschaft, Baden-Baden 2000, ISBN 3-7890-6681-8 , pp. 45, 170.
  2. ↑ Wolfgang Petritsch, Karl Kaser, Robert Pichler: Kosovo - Kosova: Myths, data, facts. 2nd Edition. Wieser, Klagenfurt 1999, ISBN 3-85129-304-5 , pp. 221f. Quotation: "The reactions of the international community to the recent military escalation were still divided. The USA and Great Britain, which held the EU presidency, plead for tough action against Belgrade [...]. Increased efforts were made to try purely western institutions like to instrumentalize the EU and NATO, as Russian resistance to sanctions was expected within the contact group. "
  3. ^ A b c d Carl Polónyi: Salvation and Destruction: National Myths and War using the Example of Yugoslavia 1980-2004. Berliner Wissenschafts-Verlag, 2010, ISBN 978-3-8305-1724-5 , pp. 279f.
  4. ↑ Wolfgang Petritsch, Karl Kaser, Robert Pichler: Kosovo - Kosova: Myths, data, facts. 2nd Edition. Wieser, Klagenfurt 1999, ISBN 3-85129-304-5 , pp. 221f.
  5. ^ A b Wolfgang Petritsch, Robert Pichler: Kosovo - Kosova - The long way to peace. Wieser, Klagenfurt et al. 2004, ISBN 3-85129-430-0 , p. 222f.
  6. ↑ a b Heinz Loquai: The Kosovo Conflict - Ways to an Avoidable War: the period from the end of November 1997 to March 1999. Nomos Verlagsgesellschaft, Baden-Baden 2000, ISBN 3-7890-6681-8 , p. 59.
  7. ↑ Wolfgang Petritsch, Karl Kaser, Robert Pichler: Kosovo - Kosova: Myths, data, facts. 2nd Edition. Wieser, Klagenfurt 1999, ISBN 3-85129-304-5 , p. 239.
  8. ↑ a b c d e Transcript for the hearing of witnesses by Dietmar Hartwig before the ICTY, March 2, 2005 , pp. 36982–37046; March 8, 2005 , pp. 37048-37151; March 9 , pp. 37152-37183.
  9. ↑ a b c d e Wednesday, March 2 - 09:00 - 13:45 ( RAM ; 0 kB), video of the ICTY meeting on March 2, 2005; Tuesday, March 8 - 9:00 am - 1:45 pm ( RAM ; 0 kB), video of the ICTY meeting on March 8, 2005, Wednesday, March 9 - 9:00 am - 1:45 pm ( RAM ; 0 kB), video the ICTY meeting on March 9, 2005; http://hague.bard.edu/past_video/03-2005.html
  10. ↑ Heinz Loquai: The Kosovo Conflict - Ways to an Avoidable War: the period from the end of November 1997 to March 1999. Nomos Verlagsgesellschaft, Baden-Baden 2000, ISBN 3-7890-6681-8 , p. 55.
  11. ↑ a b Less is more ( Memento from January 19, 2013 on WebCite ) (English). SENSE Agency, March 8, 2005, archived from the original on January 19, 2013.
  12. ↑ Wolfgang Kaufmann: The observer. Books on Demand, Norderstedt 2004, ISBN 3-8334-1200-3 , pp. 170f., 173.
  13. ↑ a b c Wolfgang Petritsch, Robert Pichler: Kosovo - Kosova - The long way to peace. Wieser, Klagenfurt et al. 2004, ISBN 3-85129-430-0 , p. 225.
  14. ↑ a b Wolfgang Kaufmann: The observers. Books on Demand, Norderstedt 2004, ISBN 3-8334-1200-3 , p. 18.
  15. ↑ Wolfgang Kaufmann: The observer. Books on Demand, Norderstedt 2004, ISBN 3-8334-1200-3 , p. 12f.
  16. ↑ Wolfgang Kaufmann: The observer. Books on Demand, Norderstedt 2004, ISBN 3-8334-1200-3 , front cover, pp. 85, 89, 160f., 222.
  17. ↑ Wolfgang Kaufmann: The observer. Books on Demand, Norderstedt 2004, ISBN 3-8334-1200-3 , p. 171.
  18. ↑ Wolfgang Kaufmann: The observer. Books on Demand, Norderstedt 2004, ISBN 3-8334-1200-3 , p. 52.
  19. ↑ Wolfgang Kaufmann: The observer. Books on Demand, Norderstedt 2004, ISBN 3-8334-1200-3 , pp. 11f, 18, 33, 257.
  20. ^ Carl Polónyi: Salvation and Destruction: National Myths and War using the Example of Yugoslavia 1980-2004. Berliner Wissenschafts-Verlag, 2010, ISBN 978-3-8305-1724-5 , p. 280.
  21. ↑ Wolfgang Petritsch, Robert Pichler: Kosovo - Kosova - The long way to peace. Wieser, Klagenfurt et al. 2004, ISBN 3-85129-430-0 , p. 121.
  22. ↑ a b Wolfgang Petritsch, Karl Kaser, Robert Pichler: Kosovo - Kosova: Myths, data, facts. 2nd Edition. Wieser, Klagenfurt 1999, ISBN 3-85129-304-5 , pp. 235f.
  23. ^ Carl Polónyi: Salvation and Destruction: National Myths and War using the Example of Yugoslavia 1980-2004. Berliner Wissenschafts-Verlag, 2010, ISBN 978-3-8305-1724-5 , pp. 280, 284-288.
  24. ↑ Heinz Loquai: The Kosovo Conflict - Paths to an Avoidable War: the period from the end of November 1997 to March 1999. Nomos Verlagsgesellschaft, Baden-Baden 2000, ISBN 3-7890-6681-8 , pp. 53–55, 171f.
  25. ↑ Wolfgang Petritsch, Robert Pichler: Kosovo - Kosova - The long way to peace. Wieser, Klagenfurt et al. 2004, ISBN 3-85129-430-0 , p. 148f.
  26. ^ Carl Polónyi: Salvation and Destruction: National Myths and War using the Example of Yugoslavia 1980-2004. Berliner Wissenschafts-Verlag, 2010, ISBN 978-3-8305-1724-5 , pp. 280, 290.
  27. ↑ a b Kosovo and the return of Russia to the Balkans ( Memento from January 13, 2013 on WebCite ) . Die Presse.com, February 22, 2008, by Wolfgang Petritsch, archived from the original on January 13, 2013.