December 16, 2000
The contrast could hardly be sharper. Bernard Kouchner, the Frenchman who has been running Kosovo for the past year in the name of the United Nations but by courtesy of guns belonging mainly to NATO, is a media-hogging star. He has been variously described as impulsive, provocative, contradictory, frenetic, self-obsessed--as well as brilliant, courageous, generous, idealistic, bursting with ideas. Hans Haekkerup, the Dane chosen to replace him within the next few weeks, is a quieter, cannier, steadier sort of fellow, a consummate politician who, as Denmark's defence minister for eight years and a military expert before that, has been navigating the corridors of NATO, the Pentagon and the UN for at least 15 years. Who is fitter for the job? What chance that Kosovo, under Mr Haekkerup, will improve?
The kind answer is that Dr Kouchner was the right man when he arrived in July 1999, but that Mr Haekkerup is needed now. The harsher answer is that it is time for Dr Kouchner to go, before the administration sinks into more of a muddle. And the gloomy truth, for anybody brave or rash enough to take the job, is that Kosovo will be devilish-hard to govern with anything like fairness as well as firmness for many years yet.
Dr Kouchner has certainly notched up some worthy achievements in Kosovo, to add to his great feat, back in 1971, of forming the redoubtable humanitarian doctors' group, Medecins sans Frontieres. When he arrived in Kosovo last year, it was still a smoking shell. Some 800,000 ethnic-Albanians, about half the population, had fled from their Serb oppressors before and during NATO's bombing campaign to expel the Yugoslav army from the rebel province. Dr Kouchner ensured that, first, nearly all the Albanians came back, then that they could survive the winter, though many of their homes had been destroyed. He has been much less successful in reassuring Serbs, who fled as NATO came in, that they could come back safely too.
Six weeks ago he chalked up another success by overseeing local elections which, though the few remaining Serbs abstained, were handsomely won by the less belligerent of the ethnic-Albanian parties, the Democratic League of Kosovo. Next year, it should be able to form some kind of provincial administration, though the UN, via Mr Haekkerup, will still have the final say.
But the good doctor's departure will not be mourned by everyone. The Kosovars, on the whole, liked him. But he has been widely charged with being indecisive and scatty. He has been inconsistent in his handling of local politicians. He has been reluctant to crack down on the tougher Kosovars who merrily mix politics with crime. The military people running Kfor, the mainly NATO force that keeps the peace, have found him difficult. Liaison between the UN, the soldiers and the aid agencies has been messy. Dr Kouchner was no administrative wizard.
Mr Haekkerup's most pressing priority, on the political front, is to ensure that the Americans, who are continuing to provide his political deputy as well as, for now, the largest contingent of peacekeepers, remain involved. "It is important for the stability of the region that they stay on for the long term," he says. A few months ago, before he knew about the Kosovo job, he was fretting that a Bush presidency might disengage America from Europe, including the Balkans. Kosovo now has about 45,000 peacekeepers. "It would be unwise to reduce them now," he says sternly.
He is the right man to encourage the Americans to stay. Despite Denmark's small size, Mr Haekkerup has been one of NATO's best-known and most respected defence ministers; indeed he nearly got the job of NATO's secretary-general. He and the Americans like each other. He has helped turn his country from being a lukewarm NATO member into an ardent one. A Russian-speaker from his own days in the army, he has been particularly keen to draw the Baltic countries into western organisations. He is proud, too, of his part in setting up a German-Polish-Danish corps. The Russians, and probably their Serb friends, do not like the cut of his jib. Expect him to visit Washington soon.
Mr Haekkerup's second big request is for time and patience. He says he has "no deadlines", but may hold his new job for two or three years. He points out that only now, five years after Bosnia's peace accord, are people there returning in numbers to areas where their ethnic group is in a minority. "First and foremost we must build confidence [in Kosovo]", he says. A "whole new administration" still has to be created. As for Kosovo's "final status", he makes it plain that the UN Security Council's Resolution 1244 leaves it open. It is not for him to lead the province into statehood--or, for that matter, to prevent it.
Mr Haekkerup's record suggests he has as fair a chance as anyone of splicing Kosovo's threads together again and getting its array of foreigners to get along better. Now 55, Mr Haekkerup, a Social Democrat, is steeped in the ways of wheeling and dealing. His father was foreign minister, his mother a member of parliament, as are a brother and a nephew today. Three of his sons have served as peacekeepers in the Balkans. And his dry sense of humour should help.
It is perhaps an irony that a Dane whose country is barred by its own "opt-out" from joining in any EU defence project is to take charge of one of Europe's most dangerous places just when European unifiers are arguing that the EU, with its new "defence identity", should take over many of NATO's tasks. Mr Haekkerup is acutely conscious of, and hotly opposed to, that opt-out, but admits that, since the Danes recently voted in a referendum against joining Europe's single currency, the defence opt-out cannot be reversed soon. Instead, as a patriot who is also both a keen European and a keen Atlanticist, he points up his country's pluckiness in world peacekeeping. Bar Norway's, Denmark's contribution to Kfor is proportionately the highest among NATO countries. Mr Haekkerup speaks enthusiastically of Denmark as a "bridge"--between Scandinavia and Germany, between NATO and the Balts, between the United States and Europe. In the Balkans, he will need all the bridge-building skills he can muster from anywhere.
