BBC Monitoring International Reports
April 5, 2005
HEADLINE: EXPERT ARGUES WHY SERBIA WOULD BE
BETTER OFF WITHOUT KOSOVO
A Serbian expert has argued that Serbia would be better off
without being tied to Kosovo within some kind of state
community. In any common state, Albanians would make up
20 per cent of the population and MPs and 30 per cent of the
army. "The demographic explosion of Albanians threatens to
fill the unpopulated areas of central Serbia", which would
happen within 20 years. In 40 years' time there could be 8m
Albanians in the common state. Kosovo, being far poorer
than Serbia, would be a big drain on funds. Serbia's overall
development would be held back and the country would fall
further behind its neighbours. "Reason and not myths and
emotions should decide the final status of Kosovo,"
concluded the author. The following is the text of the
analysis by Ivan Ahel, expert in systems and management
theories, entitled "Why Serbia should give up its southern
province" published by the Serbian newspaper Danas on 26
March:
Talks on the development of Serbia's strategy regarding the
final status of Kosovo are under way. Most politicians hold
that "Kosovo is a Serbian province" and can achieve only a
high degree of autonomy within it. The international
community, for its part, says: Kosovo is an autonomous part
of the new state community and is being built into it as a
republic (that state of affairs has already been achieved); the
form of composite community can be a confederation, union
or federation. The question that presents itself is what Serbia
would gain and what it would lose with that kind of complex
association.
A brief review of the basic indicators of a possible new state
community that Serbia-Montenegro would form with Kosovo
gives the following picture: the Albanians would make up 20
per cent of the population in a new community; they would
have just as many deputies in a federal parliament; they
would be the second largest people in the state and Albanian
would be the second important language in public use. Since
their population is predominantly made up of young people,
Albanians would account for 30 per cent of the army
personnel, including the army's commanding personnel.
Albanians would fill many ministerial positions. The name of
the state would be a point of dispute owing to those
circumstances: the Albanians would demand that their name
be included in the name of the state and that the latter
become SCGK (Serbia-Montenegro-Kosovo). In that case,
Serbia, as a state, would disappear from Europe's political
stage. That is no doubt a high price for the pleasure that life
side by side with the Albanian community would bring. An
Albanian would be head of state, foreign minister, and so on
once in three or six years.
On the condition that that situation is acceptable to the
Serbs (and that is a question), it is important to see what the
Serbs would gain as a result of cohabitation, seeing as they
would be paying such a high price. Kosovo does not have
economically important resources; coal extraction hardly
pays out commercially and the exploitation of lead- and zinc-
yielding ores is profitable only in the Ajvalija and Belo Brdo
(Serb enclaves) mines and will be a relatively short-lived one
(exhaustible resources). Agriculture is primitive and hardly
meets the food needs of the densely populated areas of
Kosovo. The demographic explosion of Albanians threatens
to fill the unpopulated areas of central Serbia, which would
happen quickly, in one to two decades. The picture of central
Serbia would look significantly different after those changes.
Figures relating to the cohabitation of Serb and Albanian
communities in the former SFRY (Socialist Federal Republic
of Yugoslavia) can help resolve the dilemma. The per capita
gross national product (GNP) is the internationally accepted
standard criterion for the comparison of economies.
According to available publications ("Selo Srbije i njegove
perspektive (Serbian Village and Its Prospects)", author
Petar Bijelica, publisher Institute of Economics, Belgrade
2000), Yugoslavia was a medium-developed country, whose
per capita gross national product ranged from 761 dollars to
3,030 dollars in 1988. According to the publication "Sistem
nacionalnih racuna (System of National Accounts)", the FRY
(Federal Republic of Yugoslavia) GNP stood at 1,358 dollars
in 1994. It went up to 1,742 dollars in 1998. Serbia's GNP
was somewhere around 2,000 dollars in late 2004. For
comparison's sake, Slovenia recorded a GNP of about
18,000 dollars and Croatia one of approximately 6,000
dollars. It is obvious how extremely Serbia lags behind.
The GNP was approximately 3,000 dollars in the former
SFRY and in Serbia, 2,560 dollars. That same year,
Vojvodina's GNP was 3,666 dollars and Kosovo's 732
dollars. If Serbia's industrial production for 1990 is
represented with an index of 100 per cent, it went down to 40
per cent in 1993. It was only in 1997 that it rose to the level
of 50 per cent. It again dropped to about 37 per cent as a
result of the war in Kosovo. If Serbia's GNP in 1990 is said
to be 100 (per cent), it went down to 43 per cent in 1993.
GNP grew at a very slow rate. It rose to 54.9 per cent in
1998 but again dropped to the level of 47.4 per cent in 2000
because of the war in Kosovo. A slow growth of GNP was
recorded after the (Milosevic regime) overthrow in October
2000. It reached the level of 52.5 per cent in 2003
compared with the 1990 level. Those are disturbing trends,
because development accelerates very slowly. Serbia lagged
behind extremely in the war and post-war years. At the same
time, a destructive pollution brought about by the conflict
with the Albanian community was rampant in society. The
hatred between the Serb and Albanian communities has been
immense, the parameters of their systems have been hugely
devastated, instability will regularly characterize the life of
the new community. The consequence will be Serbia's
reduced efficaciousness and a possible plunge into
catastrophe.
A comparative analysis of the levels of development of
individual parts of Serbia gauged by the per capita GNP in
the 1980-90 period shows that central Serbia's gross
national product was 112.1 per cent of the average for the
whole republic, Vojvodina's 144.1 per cent, and Kosovo-
Metohija's 28.3 per cent. Serbia had an advantage of four or
five to one. The war put Kosovo in an even more unfavourable
position. In a (new) common state, central Serbia and
Vojvodina would have to support 2m poor and production-
wise non-productive Albanians and that kind of money flow
would create big problems for Serbia. The four to five times
poorer Kosovo would be an impediment to Serbia's
development.
In this case, the parameters of the systems of central Serbia
and Kosovo that are constant and slowly change (as
published) are involved. Serbia's and Kosovo's agriculture,
energy industry, mining and metallurgy were severely
damaged in the war years. S. Petrovic claims that in the first
three years of the sanctions alone, the capital outflow stood
at about 4bn dollars for agriculture and was significantly
higher for the energy and mining sectors. That led to the
bankruptcy of those branches of the economy, which can
hardly recover. Bor and Trepca (mines) have been totally
devastated and the chances are slight that they will start
operating again. The energy sector is being renewed at an
enormously high price, especially in Kosovo, a price that is
slowing down overall development. The question of who will
finance the recovery of those systems in Kosovo is currently
without an answer. The branches of the economy such as
commerce, the machine building, electrical engineering and
construction industries have declined to such an extent that
they are becoming commercially unprofitable enterprises
with enormously high debts that exceed the value of their
property. Tourism potentials have been frozen and can hardly
be restarted again soon. Total losses are estimated to stand
somewhere around 150bn dollars. Kosovo is in a far worse
situation than Serbia in all those respects. Deagrarianization
and uncontrolled industrialization have become totally
unsynchronized, which has resulted in high unemployment.
Several million people are jobless and without any prospects
of getting a job.
Demographic figures give rise to even greater concern.
Statistics point to burgeoning demographic trends in Kosovo.
In the Albanian-populated municipalities in Kosovo, the rural
population increased by 85 per cent between 1948 and
1991. The urban population is more than 10 times larger and
is looking for space for sheer existence. Contrary to that
trend, the depopulation of the Serb villages in Kosovo is
taking place at an enormously fast pace. Central Serbia is
characterized by outright depopulation, which is also
unfolding at an enormous speed. Since Kosovo lies directly
next to central Serbia, in a common state in which Kosovo
would be Serbia's province, that is, in a composite state like
a union or federation, the southern part of central Serbia
would be inundated by the Albanian population. The worst
solution would be for Kosovo to fuse with Serbia; in which
case a massive, quick and unobstructed takeover of central
Serbia by Albanians would be made possible under law. Just
like in the case of connected vessels, Kosovo would be
emptied and central Serbia filled. Had the demographic
trends in central Serbia and Vojvodina been as explosive as
in Kosovo-Metohija in the 1948-91 period, central Serbia
and Vojvodina together would have had 20,885,000
inhabitants in 1991. The number would have gone up to 26m
by now. If the same demographic trends were to continue in a
(new) common state, about 8m Albanians would be living in
central Serbia, Vojvodina and Kosovo-Metohija in 40 years'
time. That would be a Serbian-Albanian (or Albanian-
Serbian), in all respects unproductive, and civilizationally
extremely backward state; which is obviously not in the
interest of the Serbian people and the Serbian state.
Central Serbia is characterized by intensive depopulation;
people over 60 years old are staying in the villages to work.
The number of young people (there) is daily declining. The
active agricultural population in central Serbia dropped from
2,563,000 in 1948 to 1,040,699 in 1991. No precise
figures are available for 2004 but the estimates are
depressing. The rural population in central Serbia is
continually growing older and less educated, which is why it
is less ambitious and practically incapable of performing
stepped-up and highly productive agricultural activities.
Serbia's authorities are doing nothing to prevent a
demographic catastrophe. The unpopulated areas of central
Serbia are waiting to be taken over in a stampede by the
Albanian population. Serbia's authorities should primarily
bear that in mind when dealing with the final status of Kosovo.
Contrary to those tendencies, a real boom of the Albanian
population continues in Kosovo. There were 99 villages with
over 1,000 inhabitants in 1949 and 443 in 1991; only
seven villages had over 2,000 inhabitants in 1948 and 115
in 1991; only two villages had more than 3,000 inhabitants
in 1948 and 39 in 1991. On the other hand, the villages with
fewer than 100 inhabitants are in the area of Kosovska
Mitrovica and are populated by non-Albanians, mostly Serbs.
The urban population is also growing at a dizzying rate but
without elementary infrastructure conditions. It is estimated
that Pristina alone now has over 500,000 inhabitants and
many towns have doubled their populations. Chaos reigns in
those chaotic urban agglomerations. Rural areas are also
overpopulated, which is a threat to existence (Kosovo is
Europe's most densely populated region without (the
necessary) living conditions). The most favourable solution
for the Albanians would be to link up with Serbia and abruptly
fill in the demographically vacated territory of central Serbia.
Out of their nationalist blindness, they are missing the for
them vitally most important chance to remain a part of
Serbia. Viewed from the aspect of Serbia's interests, Serbia
would be dangerously threatened if events were to take that
course; neither the Serbian politicians nor the Serbian
people are taking that into account when discussing
Kosovo's final status. Struggling for territories in the face of
the incoming Albanian population, Serbia would be unable to
pursue development objectives and transitional
restructuring. It would consequently draw further and further
away from its neighbourhood, which would be making steady
progress, and that would mean that Serbia would also draw
away from the EU.
The above are just some brief sketches from the
study "Systemic Approach to the Kosovo Problem", which is
being prepared by the Forum for Ethnic Relations, in which
attention is drawn to the other, ugly side of keeping Kosovo.
Reason and not myths and emotions should decide the final
status of Kosovo.
Source: Danas, Belgrade, in Serbian 26 Mar 05 p IV
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