The world's TV cameras were trained on the vast camouflage tent at Kumanovo for hour after hour. Commentators filled the hours with speculation on progress for the military technical agreement between NATO's General Mike Jackson and Serbia's General Svetozar Marjanovic. The surprise settlement after a hurried reconvening during the evening of 9 June has left the world celebrating the end of the war. Yet the real problems are now only just beginning. The weeks of the air campaign were relatively easy to manage compared to the task that awaits the international community, including NATO, over the next 4 months. Winter is the unnegotiable deadline for providing adequate shelter for a million or more refugees.
Today, the focus is on verification of Serbian withdrawal from Kosovo and ensuring that the UN Security Council resolution is appropriately phrased. The tidy division of the province into five sectors still has to accommodate Russian sensitivities. The waiting KFOR forces are eager to secure their entry into Kosovo and worried that any delay will lead to further chaos. Departing Serbs and KLA Albanians both have reasons for causing havoc unless controlled. Once the international force has begun to take over control, there is an almost endless list of problems to be tackled. The military tasks will include identifying and marking minefields (it will take many months for extensive clearance to be completed). Bridges and tunnels may have been prepared for demolition, and buildings may be booby-trapped. The combination of ethnic cleansing, war with the KLA and NATO bombing has left little in the way of housing or utilities. Roads will need to be cleared, accommodation provided and water and power restored. At the same time the military will need to defend themselves, protect the Serb civilian minority, control the KLA, and establish the order necessary for the rebuilding of civil society. The refugees displaced internally in Kosovo will be in great distress and need medical assistance, but will also be pushing to return to their destroyed villages. The refugees in camps in all the surrounding countries will be difficult to bring back in an orderly fashion.
On the humanitarian side, the UNHCR and the the many aid NGOs will have to integrate with the military operation and move very quickly to provide appropriate winter accommodation for returning refugees and also establish food and water supplies. In parallel the re-estabishment of the civil society will be a priority for the United Nations civil authority. Enormous financial resources will be needed. Past experience suggests that nations are faster in providing for the cost of bombs than the cost of water pipes. There will be two security issues which will need urgent action. The world will expect a rapid investigation of the atrocities that have been reported, and this may prove difficult in the midst of all the other action that is urgently needed. At the same time, the demilitarisation of the KLA will probably be as difficult as the decommissioning of arms in Northern Ireland.
In the longer term, the international community still has to solve the problem of stability in the Balkans. If Montenegro is not to become the next Kosovo, some coherent approach to stabilising the region is needed. This is made more difficult by the indictment of President Milosevic as a war criminal. It will be difficult to address the future of the region as long as one of the key figures is a pariah. It may be that he will be displaced, but that is by no means certain. Without a comprehensive Balkan strategy for the long term, we can expect to have UK forces in the area for many years. Ultimately, we need to bring the region into Europe in the same way that we have engaged the states of Central and Eastern Europe.