Addressing terrorism in the Western Balkans with a focus on Kosovo: The link between security and society
NATO, as a political and military organisation, focuses on security-related issues and helps build a secure environment within the Western Balkans. Within the Kosovo Force (KFOR) mission, for example, NATO built and trained a national security component, known as the Kosovo Security Force (KSF). While NATO and KFOR promote certain values, the main issues related to terrorism are rooted in the social environment. Despite states’ efforts to enforce the rule of law, violent extremism and organised crime continue to proliferate in the Western Balkans. This paper argues that while NATO, operating at the regional level, and KFOR, operating at the national level, are crucial elements of security in the Western Balkans, tackling the threats of extremism and terrorism requires a societal approach. The spread of violent extremism and transnational organised crime benefiting international terrorism are issues linked to the political, economic, and social environments for which NATO lacks the tools to handle. Those societal obstacles continue to have a negative impact on the creation of a positive social environment in Kosovo. Due to the societal components of the security challenge of terrorism, NATO and KFOR have to be part of stabilising the region but also rely on other supranational and national actors better suited for this task.
By Maxime Sierro
NATO in the Western Balkans
NATO’s presence in the Balkans is a complex history that originated amid a period of interethnic tensions that led to secession and bloodshed in what is known today as the former Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. In order to advance and improve stability at NATO’s door, NATO established goals with the aim of ensuring the stable conditions for the development of the Western Balkans and its integration in NATO. Integration in the Alliance is part of the objective of bringing stability to the region with the broader impact of bringing the whole of Europe (and beyond) within the transatlantic borders. One can say that this project is doing quite well. Step by step, NATO has been able to create partnerships and, in some cases, integrate new member states. With the recent accession of North Macedonia to the Alliance, NATO is one step closer to securing the success of the transatlantic project in the region. The 30th member of the Alliance, North Macedonia, joins other countries of the region such as Albania, Croatia, and Montenegro. Bosnia and Herzegovina and Serbia are part of the Partnership for Peace program. Since Kosovo is not recognised by some members, it is not allowed to join the Alliance. However, Kosovo hosts armies from different NATO member states as part of the Kosovo Force (KFOR) mission. For over twenty years, the KFOR mission has been active in Kosovo. The UN Security Council Resolution 1244 gave birth to the international security mission that, with time, became one of NATO’s most important missions outside of its borders. NATO has been in command of the mission since the beginning. Yet, NATO cannot claim “mission accomplished” as the region still suffers from instability and unresolved issues.
The goal here is not to rethink history, nor is it to draw lessons from the terrible period of ethic conflict in the region. Rather, it is to see how the current context in the Western Balkans influences geopolitics. This paper argues that while NATO, operating at the regional level, and KFOR, operating at the national level, are crucial elements of security in the Western Balkans, tackling the threats of violent extremism and terrorism require a societal approach. In other words, counting on NATO to ensure fundamental changes in the security environment in this respect would undermine the social components that build up this environment.
The KFOR mission and its mandate
Kosovo is a theatre of operation that is under the command of NATO military personnel. Despite the strong presence of NATO and its command of the mission (all KFOR commanders have been from NATO member states), it is important to remember that KFOR has a UN mandate. The UN resolution 1244[i] established the international security presence in Kosovo. Of those missions, two remain and are nowadays emblematic of KFOR: Safe and Secure Environment (SASE) and Freedom of Movement (FOM). The first refers to an environment “in which refugees and displaced persons can return home in safety, the international civil presence can operate, a transitional administration can be established, and humanitarian aid can be delivered.”[ii] There is not much freedom of interpretation in this definition. It sets KFOR’s role as a security agent that makes sure that the country can start rebuilding its society without fearing that conflicts will erupt again.
The second mission refers to being able to move freely for “itself [the international security presence], the international civil presence, and other international organizations.”[iii] This point again is quite clear and makes KFOR the guarantor of a civil order that makes sure that the UN Interim Administration Mission in Kosovo, UNMIK, and other international actors would be able to fully operate in Kosovo.
Those two missions are still at the core of the justification of the international presence in Kosovo. The mandate gives legitimacy to the military presence and sets boundaries for the international force as a coherent, uniform organisation. However, NATO goes beyond its mission and uses KFOR as an instrument for further long-term policy goals. One common example is the support that NATO gives to the development of the Kosovo Security Force (KSF).[iv] By supporting the training of the KSF, NATO plans for the future of Kosovo as an independent country. If decision-makers at NATO did not believe in the complete independence of Kosovo in the future, there would have been no need for them to support a national militarised body.
This security force cannot be considered as an army from a legal point of view. In the eyes of the United Nations, Kosovo is not a country and is still part of Serbian territory. As an unrecognised state, Kosovo is currently administered by UNMIK, whose mandate is to support the Security Council’s resolution 1244. The only legal military presence is the international force KFOR. By providing military equipment to form a standing army, Serbia could accuse NATO of political interference and non-compliance with international law. And yet, the KSF aspires to become a standing army. NATO provides training and light weaponry to the KSF, demonstrating longer-term political plans for the country as part of the Euro-Atlantic Alliance.
There is, therefore, a clear distinction to make between KFOR and NATO. KFOR is a UN-supported peacekeeping mission that has a clear mandate and a legal base. NATO is an international organisation that is in command of that mission and has strategic objectives for the region and for Kosovo. The distinction is important to make because KFOR has clear limits in what it is allowed to do. By failing to make such a distinction, it would appear that NATO has a carte blanche to operate in Kosovo. In theory, NATO is therefore very much constrained. As it will be made clearer in the following part, KFOR not only serves to justify NATO’s presence in Kosovo but also limits the actions of NATO.
Spread of violent extremism and organised crime
The fight against terrorism became a priority for NATO after the terrorist attacks on 11 September 2001. However, over a decade later during the early stages of the rise of the Islamic State, those concerns took a new turn. NATO’s counter-terrorism guidelines, adopted at the Chicago Summit in 2012, brought a new approach to the fight against terrorism.[v] These guidelines addressed the need for help beyond the borders of the Alliance to tackle this threat. With these guidelines, NATO understood the complexity of asymmetric threats and that conventional means were not sufficient to fight them. With those guidelines, NATO established three pillars. The first pillar is about enhancing awareness through information and intelligence sharing between Allies. Increased awareness benefits the second pillar, the improvement of the right capabilities to counter asymmetric threats. The third pillar, engagement, is important in NATO’s role in fighting terrorism at the international level. Training, education, and support are part of this pillar, which encourages NATO to assist partners. Sharing experiences with partner countries became an efficient way to fight the threat at its source, and the Alliance’s political influence over partners became more prominent. One example of this is the joint anti-terrorism exercise in 2017 that involved the armed forces of Bosnia and Herzegovina, the United Kingdom, and KFOR.[vi]
The spread of violent extremism and the return of foreign fighters are key issues in understanding the terrorist threat in Kosovo and, more broadly, in the Western Balkans. The channels through which violent extremism spread have long been identified.[vii] They include non-governmental organisations (NGOs), schools, and mosques that benefit from their civil and/or religious status. They have been and still are vectors facilitating the spread of violent extremism linked to Al-Qaeda and the Islamic State.[viii]
The spread of violent extremism associated with the rise of the Islamic State resulted in the widespread phenomenon of foreign fighters. Foreign fighters in Syria coming from the Balkans is a phenomenon that is as old as the conflict. In a study from 2015, Kosovo, with a population of less than two million, was ranked eighth in terms of the number of foreign fighters who joined the Islamic State.[ix] It was ranked first in terms of the number of foreign fighters per inhabitant, followed by Bosnia and Herzegovina, Belgium, and Albania.[x] These statistics have highlighted the importance of addressing violent extremism issues in the Western Balkans. As of 2018, one hundred and thirty-five foreign fighters returned to Kosovo, five of which were involved in the planning of attacks.[xi] And despite no terrorist attacks being carried on the territory of Kosovo, the threat of home-grown terrorism lives on, especially with the territorial losses and demise of the Islamic State.
The security threat in Kosovo is undeniable, and a functioning security system is essential for an efficient counter-terrorism strategy not only in the country but also in the region. NATO provides training and shares knowledge within the Alliance, for example with Albania, and as mentioned before with partners such as Bosnia and Herzegovina. However, the situation in Kosovo is quite different from Bosnia and Herzegovina as NATO’s member states compose the vast majority of the military presence on the ground in Kosovo. As the main military force on the ground, KFOR can implement the knowledge acquired by NATO to ensure success in the fight against terrorism; NATO can apply its counter-terrorism pillars via the operational means of KFOR on the ground. NATO does not need to rely on cooperation with the local armed forces. Via KFOR, NATO can access and train the different actors on the ground that are responsible in the fight against terrorism. In its role of training the Kosovo Security Force (KSF), KFOR can provide the knowledge and tools that such a security force would need in fighting terrorist threats. The application of the third pillar, engagement, can be implemented directly.
The threat of terrorism is a complex, multidimensional issue. Kosovo has not been the theatre of terrorist actions, despite many attempts.[xii] When one speaks of the threat of terrorism, and in this case specifically in the Western Balkans, there is a need to explore the paradigm of terrorism in the context of socio-economic conditions and to also analyse this at the international level. A special focus should be given to the socio-economic situation linked to issues that benefit international terrorism and threaten regional stability.
A strong challenge to stability in the region, including Kosovo, is transnational organised crime. The Balkans has long served as a hub for transnational organised crime, notably for smuggling light weapons and drug trafficking. This trafficking is often linked to international terrorism, especially in the context of the Western Balkans. The social context allows for organised crime to proliferate. Trafficking is especially interesting here because it is a transnational issue for which borders are weak points. Combating transnational organised crime is a diffused and complex issue[xiii] that cannot be limited to geographical borders.
For drug trafficking, the Balkan route is known to be one of the entry points of heroin coming from Afghanistan.[xiv] In this case especially, the heroin from Afghanistan transiting through the Balkans is a continuing source of instability in the region. The smuggling of weapons has been very much present in the region since the fall of Yugoslavia and the Balkan wars. One of NATO’s main efforts in the region is to regulate the proliferation of small arms and light weapons[xv]; however, the lack of national regulations in the Western Balkans is a central point in this equation. Limiting this traffic is imperative to ensure rule of law.
NATO and KFOR have a big advantage in the fight against transnational organised crime, especially in intelligence gathering for which non-military forces do not have the right tools. In cooperation with national and international police forces, NATO can assist the ongoing efforts delivered by those forces. European Union Rule of Law Mission in Kosovo (EULEX), for example, is the civilian police mission that helps in establishing the judicial system in Kosovo. Due to its direct cooperation with the Kosovo Police and its role as a law enforcement organisation, EULEX has the tools and is best suited to support police efforts in fighting organised crime. But cooperation between EULEX and KFOR can bring a lot of advantages to the police mission. Regularly, the heads of the two missions meet and exchange on how both organisations should address issues of common interests.[xvi]
The spread of violent extremism and organized crime are rooted in the social environment. Despite the state’s efforts to ensure that returnees are reintegrated into society, social obstacles continue to have a negative impact on the creation of a positive social environment. A social environment where job security is not ensured, corruption is rampant, and livelihood is not great favours the emergence of violent extremism. Unemployment is one of the major challenges to improving the socio-economic conditions. With 15.3% unemployment on average in the Western Balkans (up to 29% for Kosovo),[xvii] employment perspectives are slim. When polled, 50-60% of young people in Kosovo stated that they would leave the country if they could.[xviii] Corruption is another issue and is perceived in the Western Balkans as one of the most detrimental effects on the socio-economic situation after unemployment.[xix]
This social environment provides all the ingredients for widespread criminal activities that contribute to the instability of Kosovo and, in general, the Western Balkans. The whole paradigm of fighting terrorism-related issues—e.g., the spread of violent extremism, fighting transnational organised crime, and improving general socio-economic conditions—show an important point in this analysis. The threats of violent extremism and terrorism are security issues that NATO as an international security organisation can address. However, the societal components of this dynamic are also important to take into account. Those components are political, legal, and social elements that are, first of all, states’ prerogatives. They require the establishment of rule of law that other states and organisations can help promote.
Societal impact of NATO and KFOR
It would not be fair to say that NATO has no impact on societal components in Kosovo. Concretely, NATO is involved in shaping the region’s path toward Euro-Atlantic integration. But, how can NATO have an impact on the societies of the Western Balkans, and how can KFOR contribute to this effort in Kosovo? First, NATO and/or KFOR promote certain norms and values, but the question is how they shape society so that those norms and values become the rule. NATO, as a political and military organisation, focuses on security-related issues. It can shape military doctrine in line with those values. However, NATO has very little impact on shaping the everyday social environment. Other organisations, such as the UN and EU, and individual states have better tools to do that. The competences of NATO and KFOR in tackling the root causes of social instability are inadequate. Even the famous principle of “winning hearts and minds” has its limits. This principle refers to an operational tool adapted in a hostile environment in order to win the population’s trust during a campaign. The reputation of NATO in the Western Balkans is generally good. Barring the opinion of many Serbs in Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Kosovo that still view NATO as an aggressor, the image of NATO is an image of progress and safety. In order to garner more support for NATO, the Serbs of these regions, as well as any other ethnicities, need to be convinced that the results are worth the sacrifices, and their livelihood needs to drastically improve. Unemployment and corruption need to be reduced. In this case, other organisations, such as the OSCE, the EU, or individual states, have more power and better tools in addressing those issues than NATO.
Second, KFOR is a military peacekeeping mission with a clear mandate that does not address such issues. This point is important to understand. KFOR is not a policy-shaping organisation that monitors elections, proposes policies, or assists governments in facing challenges. It is an armed mission limited by the mandate given by the UN Security Council. Thus, addressing the root causes of social instability in Kosovo is not a task of the mission.
NATO itself has benefited from the KFOR mission. Officers from KFOR can gain experience from this theatre of operations. Kosovo represents a significantly less risky environment than Afghanistan, for example, while having all the military components of any military mission: an entire general staff, various bases, kinetic elements, training of local forces, etc.
In the case of Kosovo, the principle points in the fight against transnational organised crime as an element preventing stability require legal and societal solutions rather than military ones. Creating the right environment to prevent violent extremism and terrorism involves establishing rule of law in addition to ensuring freedom of movement and a secure environment—the latter being a condition sine qua non to the functioning of rule of law. KFOR’s main responsibility is to ensure that military security remains stable; however, the key challenges in Kosovo lie elsewhere.
Conclusion
There are a few conclusions that can be drawn from this puzzle. First, the fight against terrorism in the Balkans is a multi-faceted, international battle. This means that the issue is linked to other criminal fields present in the region, which requires a regional approach. In that regard, an organisation such as NATO has the advantage of being present beyond the borders of its member states and can therefore address security issues more coherently than individual states would. In the case of terrorism, the guidelines of 2012 follow the same logic. KFOR, by contrast, is limited to one country. And while it is essential to keep Kosovo a safe environment, KFOR’s mandate limits its capacities in addressing the transnational challenges of violent extremism and organised crime. With time, the mission became useful to the Alliance in other ways. It served as a platform in the region that can directly promote NATO policies to a prospective member on the ground.
Second, NATO has limited political influence. The integration of North Macedonia into the Alliance is seen as a political success for North Macedonia’s Prime Minister Zoran Zaev. NATO can only ensure military protection via collective defence but cannot have an impact on the level of corruption or on the job market: NATO cannot provide the tools to improve citizens’ livelihood. Promises of stability can also threaten NATO from the inside. Members of an organisation need to share similar objectives and values. Integrating new members needs to be done under those terms and not in the hope of changing the political situation. All member states, from Canada to Turkey, need to have shared interests in defence and values. The current quarrel regarding Turkey’s purchase of the Russian-made S-400 surface-to-air missile systems has shown that challenges from within the Alliance can have a dramatic impact on its credibility. Just like a chain, NATO is only as strong as its weakest link. This sort of event is not to be undermined.
Over time Kosovo has become a less dangerous theatre of operation than Afghanistan, which provides NATO the opportunity to train staff officers in this field of operation. In such a context, inexperienced staff can train for operational and administrative operations without the heavy repercussions that can occur when the situation is hotter.
With all those arguments in mind, it is possible to conclude that the KFOR mission offers advantages for NATO and Kosovo but that this mission alone cannot address the threat of violent extremism in Kosovo. The geographic limitations of the mission do not respond to the transnational issues of terrorism-related issues. Also, NATO’s presence in the region offers only limited tools in solving socio-economic issues. Due to the nature of the challenges that the region faces, a security-based organisation is not optimal to deal with them. Addressing those issues needs to go through societal and political processes of improving the rule of law and the livelihood of the population, with which other international organisations and individual states can help. NATO, in that regard, appears to be more of a supporting actor rather than a leading role.
About the Author
Maxime Sierro is a security and strategy analyst and reserve officer in the Swiss army. He studied international relations at the University of Geneva with a focus on Russian foreign policy. Before starting a master’s degree, he was deployed to Kosovo with Swisscoy, the Swiss mission to KFOR, for one tour as a deputy staff officer, where he gained extensive knowledge on the political and security issues of the Western Balkans. He then studied peace, security, and strategic studies at Vesalius College (now known as the Brussels School of Governance) and completed his master’s degree cum laude with an additional executive course on risk analysis and crisis management. He is currently interning at the Security and Defence Programme of the German Marshall Fund of the United States in Brussels.
Notes
[i] UN Security Council, “Resolution 1244 (1999),” peacemaker.un.org, 10 June 1999, accessed 5 May 2020, https://peacemaker.un.org/sites/peacemaker.un.org/files/990610_SCR1244%2....
[ii] Ibid., Article 9.c.
[iii] Ibid., Article 9.h.
[iv] GlobalSecurity.org, “Kosovo Security Force [KSF],” 15 December 2018, accessed 8 May 2020, https://www.globalsecurity.org/military/world/europe/ks-ksf.htm.
[v] North Atlantic Treaty Organization, “NATO’s policy guidelines on counter-terrorism,” nato.int, 21 May 2012, accessed 11 May 2020, https://www.nato.int/cps/en/natohq/official_texts_87905.htm.
[vi] Juliette Bird, “Working with partners to counter terrorism,” NATO Review, 16 May 2019, accessed 27 May 2020, https://www.nato.int/docu/review/articles/2019/05/16/working-with-partne....
[vii] Steven Woehrel, Islamic Terrorism and the Balkans, CRS Report for Congress (Washington, D.C.: Congressional Research Service, 2005).
[viii] Florian C. Feyerabend, et al., The influence of external actors in the Western Balkans - A Map of Geopolitical Players (Berlin: Konrad Adenauer Stiftung, 2018), 7.
[ix] Shpend Kursani, Report inquiring into the causes and consequences of Kosovo citizens’ involvement as foreign fighters in Syria and Iraq (Pristina: Kosovar Center for Security Studies, 2015), 7.
[x] Ibid., 25.
[xi] Skender Perteshi, Beyond the Triggers: New Threats of Violent Extremism in Kosovo (Pristina: Kosovar Centre for Security Studies, 2018).
[xii] Ibid., 8.
[xiii] Bojan Dobovšek, “Transnational Organised Crime in the Western Balkans,” Working Paper, Ljubljana: HUMSEC, 2006.
[xiv] Europol, “Drug Trafficking: Cocaine and Heroin,” Europol, 23 September 2009, accessed 8 May 2020, https://www.europol.europa.eu/crime-areas-and-trends/crime-areas/drug-tr....
[xv] Jens Stoltenberg, The Secretary General's Annual Report 2019 (Brussels: NATO, 2019), 34.
[xvi] Rok Zupancic and Nina Pejic, “Chapter 4 - EULEX Kosovo: Projecting the EU's Normative Power via the Rule-of-Law Mission,” in Limits to the European Union's Normative Power in a Post-Conflict Society - EULEX and Peacebuilding in Kosovo, edited by Rok Zupancic and Nina Pejic, 65-107 (Cham: Springer Open, 2018): 74–75.
[xvii] The World Bank, “Western Balkans Show Improved Labor Market Performance, but Challenges Remain for Women, Youth and Less Educated Workers,” worldbank.org, 19 March 2019, accessed 28 May 2020, https://www.worldbank.org/en/news/press-release/2019/03/19/western-balka....
[xviii] UNDP Kosovo, “Challenges and Perspectives of Youth in Kosovo,” Public Pulse Analysis (Pristina: United Nations Development Programme, 2018).
[xix] UNODC Statistics and Surveys Section, “Corruption in the Western Balkans: Bribery as Experienced by the Population” (Vienna: United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, 2011).