German Historian Konrad Kleving: The Hague Verdict on Thaçi Does Not Affect the Legitimacy of Kosovo’s Independence

German historian Konrad Kleving, a specialist on Southeast Europe at the Leibniz Institute for East and Southeast European Studies in Regensburg, has assessed for Deutsche Welle the verdict of the Specialist Chambers in The Hague against Hashim Thaçi, Kadri Veseli, Rexhep Selimi and Jakup Krasniqi. According to him, the court managed — better than the prosecution — to distinguish individual responsibility: the prosecution had sought 45 years in prison for each, while the court handed down differentiated sentences.

However, as a historian, he sees problems: the court continues to use the concept of “joint criminal enterprise,” where individual and group responsibility risk merging, and does not sufficiently take into account the specific nature of guerrilla warfare. For him it is historically significant that Thaçi was given 15 years for unlawful detention — “how can a guerrilla formation act militarily if it cannot capture anyone?”, he asks. He also sees as problematic that Selimi was held responsible for participating in the division of operational zones.

According to Kleving, the verdict establishes the individual responsibility of specific persons, and from this no automatic historical assessment of the entire war can be drawn; the court itself has said it did not decide on the legitimacy of the war. “Nor does this verdict affect the legitimacy of Kosovo’s independence. After years of repression, the Albanian majority in Kosovo had very strong reasons not to want to be part of Serbia anymore,” he says.

On Serbian Deputy Prime Minister Ivica Dačić’s claim that the verdict is proof the KLA was a “criminal and terrorist organization,” the historian recalls the chronology: the overwhelming majority of the acts for which they were convicted occurred in the spring of 1999, and the assessment of the West’s cooperation with the KLA must take into account the full dynamics of the conflict — in war, he says, it is practically impossible to keep “completely clean hands.”

Source: Danas / Deutsche Welle