RECOGNITION OF KOSOVA: The case of the portuguese government.

When I was in Prishtina last February, a friend found me a nice hotel to stay. The first place went to was a hotel that had a huge bilboard saying ‘Visitors from countries who support the independence will get a discount’, but there wee no available rooms anymore. Then he made some phone calls and got me a nice hotel and a nice discount. I don’t know who were his connection, so I don’t know who reccomended me, but I was treated better that in any 5 star hotel. When I left, I thanked them with the only albanian word I have managed to learn so far, Faleminderit, and they said that I was welcome because my country had helped Kosova liberate itself in the war. I don’t think that was the reason they were such good hosts. Albanians are traditionally good hosts, but of course I felt a bit flattered.

However, time has proven that, on the basis of my nationality, I was unworthed of the discount. On February 16th, the day before the declaration of Independence, the portuguese President, Aníbal Cavaco Silva, made a public statement saying that “he feared that the consequences of the declaration of independence would fall on EU’s back“. With this statement he successfully undermined the portuguese government strategy to deal with this issue.

The president latter reinforced his case against the independence of Kosova by claiming that all the experts on International Law that he consulted told him that it was illegal, and that Portugal had to bear in mind that it had 300 soldiers in the territory. I would like to know who were these experts and where were they when the portuguese population and its political leaders joined to support the independence of East-Timor (thus assuming its istorical responsabilities for having abandoned the territory in the most shameful way). I would also like to ask those experts if they ever read the Charter of the United Nations and where does it say that new countries may become independent only with prior consent of the Security Council. The argument of the portuguese military is flawed, because they are there precisely to garantee that any violent confrontation is prevented or sucessfully halted.

Curiously, it never bothered the portuguese president the fact that Portugal was providing de facto exile to the monstrous war criminal Jean Pierre Bemba, against whom the International Criminal Court issued an international warrant, and who had been confortably living in one of the most expensive and luxurious resorts in Portugal, Quinta do lago, in the Algarve. Bemba was arrested in Belgium in May 24th 2008.

My guess is that the military were the key factor in the presiden’t move. I had the opportunity of participating in a workshop some years ago in a military institution, I had several Professors in faculty who were military (some of them were excellent teachers with whom I learned a lot) and, more recently, I personally met some portuguese military officers that have experience in Kosova and Bosnia, so I pretty much have an idea of their mind set.

One of them actually tried to convince me that it was the Muslims and not the Serbs who shelled the Markale market in Sarajevo and that the Massacre of Srebrenica was a forgery. He actually flooded my email box with photos from Srebrenica, texts by genocide-deniers and and Draza Mihailovic admirers. His main argument to discredit Srebrenica was that, until then “”"”ONLY”"”" a bit less than two thousand bodies had been recovered.

Another one, a guy within the military secret services (how do I know that… well, he didn’t tell me, but my job as a researcher is to know things) who contacted me because he didn’t believe that a normal portuguese woman would ever be able to risk travelling alone to Kosova and back, so, with his brain full of conspiracy theories, he tried to ‘seduce’ me (poor guy, it takes much more …) into telling him the real reasons for my trips. At some point he told me that ‘we the portuguese military are pro-serb’. I am quoting. These were his exact words. ‘We the portuguese military are pro-serb’. I reminded him that that was not the official position of any portuguese government since it was decided in 1996 to send peace keeping missions to the Balkans, and asked him how could a peace keepin force take sides. I replied that if I knew the Muslims well I would understand why they were pro-serb. I didn’t bothered to reply to this, I just told him that if that was his perspective there was nothing to talk about with me. His last rhetorical trick was to say that I was obviously biased because of my emotional attachment to the Albanians. I simply can’t stand it when someone tells me that I am too emotional, especially if it is a man saying it…

(In March 17th, the portuguese military, who are deployed as a tactical reserve unit-I hope this is the right translation to the term- were called to intervene to stop the violent riots provocked by serbian-government backed occupation of a court in Mitrovica… on TV I had the opportunity to listen to a portuguese military saying that he didn’t understand how this could have happened, meaning that he had never expected the serbs to attack the UN and to resist to NATO forces. this is what happens when a peacekeeping force chooses sides…)

Back to the President, so far he managed to be successful where the chech president failed. Constitutionally, the recognition of states is an exclusive power of the government, and it is interesting to note that for someone who claims to be defending international law, exhoribitating his own legal powers is not problematic.

The portuguese government had made clear several times that the independence was the best possible solution, in fact the only possible solution given the failure of the negotiations between Belgrade and Prishtina. During the portuguese presidency of the EU, held in the second semester of 2007, the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Luís Amado, made several statements in that sense, and in February 17th 2008 the newspaper Público published statements by the Minister that implicitly rejected the idea of the declaration breaching International law, by saying that “recognition is a prerrogative of states and not of international organizations” thus rejecting the argument that prior consent by the UN SC was required.

The fact that the president strongly opposed to the recognition adds to internal opposition to such decision within the Socialist ruling party, where the most leftist faction indulges in primary anti-americanism, while the Minister is well known for its connections to the USA, and is therefore considered by this faction to be ‘a man of the americans’. Here it is important to say that when in 1975 Portugal was on the edge of Civil War, the US supported the Socialist Party in his opposition to the attempt that the Communist Party was making to coopt the state and create a new Cuba in Europe. By then being ‘agents of imperialism’ was not a problem to the socialists, and in most cases I am not only talking of the same party but also of the same persons.

All of this is aggravated by the belief that the Balkans are a nest for islamic terrorists.

Interestingly, it was to Portugal that the islamic terrorists came to buy the explosives that blew up the trains in Madrid in March 11 2004. The large amount of uncontrolled small factories of fireworks makes it very easy to find the type of explosives used in this tragedy.

It was also in Portugal that Tariq Ahmed Dar, the terrorist who killed 62 people in New Delhi in 2005, took shelter, before being arrested by the portuguese police.

Not to mention that there are suspicions that after France stopped tolerating ETA, Portugal has been used as a safe haven, and that some of the cars used in ETA’s terrorist acts were stolen or rented in Portugal…

The fact is that the portuguese government found itself in a position where it would need to ‘buy’ a conflict with the president over Kosova, which would undermine the constructive relation it has managed to keep with him, something that it was not willing to do, as there will be general elections next year. Kosova is not that important to the portuguese government.

This setback on the compromises Portugal had informally assumed with its allies was a major blow to the credibility of our foreign and european policy. The image that foreigners have about the Portuguese position is that it refrained from recognizing kosova not to bother its neighbour Spain. It is true that the government was never interested in being among the first countries to recognize Kosova, and the Foreign Minister himself stated that he would have preferred that the Declaration of kosova was postponed to a date after the general elections in Spain and Cyprus.

However, to submit our foreign policies to the interests of Spain is an unprecedented move that goes against the whole diplomatic tradition and the History of Portugal as an independent country. This subject will be develpod in another post somewhen, but for now sufice is to say that the portuguese military deployed in international missions never work with spanish military, Portugal does not work with spanish military in NATO’s military manouvres, and countries that have no Embassy in portugal are not allowed to use their embassies in Madrid to represent their countries in Portugal ( in this list you can see that countries with no Embassy in Lisbon use their embassies in Paris or London, but never Madrid).

By recognizing Kosova, Portugal would be reinforcing its role as a peaceful country committed to the values of justice and would be coherent with its post- April 25th shift from a colonialist country to a country that supports of self-determination and the idea that sovereignty belongs to the people. By not having recognized Kosova, Portugal once again missed an excellent opportunity to assume the autonomy of its foreign policy and build the reputation of an ‘honest broker’ who bases its decisions in democratic principles and goals.

Portugal will end up recognizing Kosova, because it is being pressured to do so by other european countries and the US. Kosova is not that important to the portuguese government, but neither is serbia to the portuguese president. I wished Portugal had recognized Kosova because it was the right thing to do to contribute to peace in the Wertern Balkans and to correct an historical injustice dating back to 1912, but at least I am happy if this country’s decision makers finally understand that between being agents of american imperialism or backing Russia’s move to undermine the European Union, the first option is the only one that suits our permanent national interests.

I just hope that this happens sooner rather than latter, otherwise I will feel obliged to give back my discount next time i visit Kosova, and i am not that well paid.