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encouraged in this belief b y an indigenous leader-ship all too happy to pass blame for the province s myriadp roblems to the international community.It was only a question of time before thi s rising dis-content spilled into the streets which is precisely whathappened in M arch 2004, with an explosion of anti-Serb and anti-UN rioting that rocked the pr ovince. Inwhat the UN subsequently deemed an organized, wide-spread, and targeted campaign, Albanian crowds droveat least 4,500 Serbs and other ethnic minorities fromtheir homes, ransacking UN offices and property aswell. 7 More than thirty Serbian churches, monasteries,and other religious or cultural s ites were pillaged,including sites dating to the fourteenth century. Amonastery i s seen as the embassy of Belgrade inKosovo, offers one UN administrator by way of expla-nation, shaking his head. 8 Even worse than the violence itself, however, wasthe weak-kneed, feckless respon se of NATO andUNMIK security forces, which spluttered in the faceof the uprising s. At the Holy Archangels monastery,tucked into a rocky gorge outside the town o f Prizren,for example, German peacekeepers claimed they wereunder orders to prot ect people, not property. As awave of Albanian rioters advanced, they bundledSer bian Orthodox monks into their armored personnelcarriers and fled, leaving the p atrimonial site to bedestroyed.It was out of the ashes of the March 2004 conflag ra-tion that the effort to settle Kosovo s fate emerged. AsUNMIK s own internal post mortem on the riotsacknowledged, The dominant factor that produced theupheaval of violence on 17 18 March was mountingfrustration and apprehension caused by Kosovo s uncer-tain future status. This existential issue had remainedstalemated for nea rly five years, since the beginning of the mission. 9 It must be acknowledged, then, that the impendingfuture status talks are not the product of any meaning-ful, on-the-ground movement by Serbs and Albanianstoward reconciliation, but rather, are an outgrowth of the international community s own sense of frustrationand exhaustion over an unsustainable status quo.They also, unfortunately, establish the precedentthat violence gets results. After all, wha t the KosovarAlbanian leadership failed to accomplish over five yearsthrough the internationally sanctioned levers of powerwas instead achieved through the riot ing of a facelessmob. To this day, international authorities in Kosovoinsist the y are uncertain who precisely was behind theevents of March 2004; regardless, th e lesson about theutility of violence has been lost on no one. Sticking Our Head in the Sand The Contact Group and UNMIK find themselves todayin an unenviable position, prep aring to broker a dealover Kosovo at a time when there appears to be scantpoliti cal will among indigenous actors to accept painfulcompromises and even less enth usiasm on the part of the international community to implement or enforcethem. T he result, as noted in a recent and typicallyincisive report by the International Cr isis Group, isthat the international community is stuck between thelow energy and realist cynicism of its approach on theground and the principles of human right s, multi-ethnicity, and reversal of ethnic cleansing to which ittheoretically as cribes. 10 Nowhere is this tension more keenly felt than in therefusal of the Contact Grou p to do publicly what italready acknowledges privately that is, endorse limited,co nditional independence for Kosovo as its preferredoutcome for the status talks. Behind closed doors, virtu-ally every diplomat in Kosovo agrees that this is the onlyworkable endpoint for the talks. Kosovar Albanians willnever accept any ret urn to Serbian rule (real or sym-bolic), and the international actors engaged in theBalkans do not have the energy or the interest in forcingthem to do so; at t

he same time, Pristina is unpreparedfor full statehood, which could also imperil the politicalprogress made by Serbia since the ouster of Milosevic in2001. Some form of limited or conditional independencewould also allow Western powers to c ontinue to exertinfluence on key nodal points in the emerging Kosovarstate in part icular, the security sector.By making explicit the rough contours of a compro-mi se settlement from the outset, the internationalcommunity would no doubt dissati sfy many in Serbiaand Kosovo alike, but it would also force leaders onboth sides to start focusing on the pragmatic details of a deal, bypassing the zero-sum, e xistential argumentabout Kosovo for which they are otherwise preparingthemselves .This is not, however, the approach the ContactGroup has taken to date. Instead, it has maintained thepretense, as Under Secretary Burns argued this summerin Pr istina, that, We don t think it s possible to impose - 3a peace or impose our ideas. . . . We ve very specificallysaid that we support a p rocess that will lead to peace andsecurity. But we re not going to give public adv ice; we renot going to take sides; we re not going to say we re forthis or that. 11 Tellingly, the State Department alsobegan referring this summer to the coming ne gotiationsas future status talks, rather than final status talks.Albanians and Serbs , unsurprisingly,have been quick to seize this professeduncertainty over Kosovo s future, inter-preting it in ways that will make reachingan agreement significant ly harder. Ratherthan preparing their respective popula-tions for compromise, pu blic expectationson both sides are being carefully primedin opposite directions, toward more maxi-mal positions.For the Albanians, this is manifest ina deepenin g conviction that nothing lessthan full independence is now accept-able. Why shou ld Kosovo limit its sover-eignty? demanded Prime MinisterBajram Kosumi during a p rivate audiencein July. If Kosovo does not become acompletely independent state, there willbe consequences. 12 Alex Anderson, director of theKosovo office of the International Crisis Group, a lsonotes a hardening of opinion. It used to be conditionalindependence, he says. Now you often hear, Oh,that s not good enough any more. 13 Among the Serbs, on the other hand, uncertaintyabout final status is helping to keep alive the hope thatKosovo s full independence might still be averted. Tobolst er its case, Belgrade points to the lack of progressin persuading Serb refugees to return to Kosovo, as wellas the miserable state of those who have remained.Mo st live in an archipelago of impoverished, embitteredenclaves, bounded by barbwi re, burnt houses, and NATO peacekeepers.Serbian president Boris Tadic, to his cr edit, has pro-posed that Kosovo might receive more than autonomy,less than indepe ndence. 14 But beyond this highly con-troversial, vaguely-defined attempt at a compromise g es-ture, Serbian liberals warn that any further concessiontoward Kosovo on their part would only risk provokinga nationalist backlash and the elevation of radic als topower in Belgrade. That dire calculus may be at leastpartly correct. But i f so, it is all the more reason whythe bounds of a final settlement should be im posed bythe international community at the outset of talks,rather than left open in the hope that it will spring uporganically from the ground.The Contact Group s refusal to take a stronger handin clarifying the parameters for status is espec ially hardto fathom, since it has already imposed some conditionson the coming t alks. In testimony to the House Inter-national Relations Committee in May,for ex ample, Under Secretary Burnsidentified basic principles that shouldguide a settle ment of Kosovo s status, including a ban on changing the bound-aries of the current t erritory of Kosovo,either through partition or through anew union of Kosovo with any countryor part of any country. 15 A diktat against the partition orunion of Kosovo may be entirely sen-sible, but

it simply cannot be squaredwith the Contact Group s pretensions of neutrality. Wor se yet, it may prove unen-forceable. In ruling out partition in par-ticular, the international community haslaid down a red line that it has demon-strated scant willingness or ability todefend thus raising doubts about its credibility inshapi ng the talks.Kosovo, after all, has already been partitioned, asanyone who has v isited the gritty, industrial city of Mitrovica can see. Serbia effectively cont rols the fourmunicipalities in the northwestern corner of Kosovo,north of the Ib ar River, which bisects Mitrovica. In thenorthern half of the city, parallel Ser b police and gov-ernment structures operate openly, and the currency of choice i s the Serb dinar, not the euro, as in the rest of Kosovo. Traveling on a public bus from Mitrovica toBelgrade, one encounters no border or passport controls.Roo ting out or normalizing the Serb structures innorthwestern Kosovo not to mention r easserting theborder with Serbia would require international andKosovar Albanian l eaders to expend significant energyand resources, which thus far they have shown littleproclivity to do. In theory, the Serb north could begranted substantial a utonomy within an independentKosovo under the same de-centralization scheme thatis being currently tested with Serb enclaves in thesouth at minimum, providing a leg al patina for whatthese municipalities already enjoy. In practice, how-ever, the Contact Group and UNMIK have taken a - 4Albanians and Serbs,unsurprisingly, havebeen quick to seizethis professeduncerta inty overKosovo s future,interpreting it in waysthat will makereaching an agreemen tsignificantly harder. largely hands-off approach to the Serb-controllednorthwest, allowing facts on th e ground to develop attheir own pace.For its part, Serbia is clearly laying the groundworkfor the formal annexation of this swath of territory,building separate telephone, water, and road infrastruc-ture that will allow it to bypass Albania n Kosovo entirely.In addition to offering Belgrade a useful chip in the com-ing status talks, certain senior Serbian officials have alsohinted that they might a ccede to Kosovo s independenceas part of a broader package agreement with Pristina thatlegitimizes their hold on northwestern Kosovo. They llbe content to hold at th e Ibar River, predicts one expe-rienced Balkans analyst. The prize for them are th e fournorthern municipalities. The U.S. is dead set against par-tition, but part ition has already happened. . . . The inter-national community has been keeping its head in thesand on Mitrovica for some time. 16 This might, in fact, not be such a bad deal at the endof the day, although it wo uld raise several objections.First, a partition of Kosovo would create an uneasy precedent for redrawing borders on the basis of ethnicityelsewhere in the Balkan s, such as Serb-majority parts of Bosnia, which could in turn reignite the debat es of the1990s. However, this problem might be neutralized if anagreement on the northwestern municipalities wasreached as part of a broader Kosovo settlement w ith theleadership in Belgrade, which in any case no longerentertains the territo rial ambitions it once did.Second, and perhaps more trenchantly, partitionwould mean abandoning hope of a multiethnicKosovo the preservation of which was, after a ll, thejustification for the original intervention. Althoughapproximately two-th irds of Serbs in Kosovo live in theenclaves to the south, the return of the nort hernmunicipalities to Belgrade would likely prompt many of these holdouts to lea ve their homes and return to Ser-bia. Then again, many Serbs already claim that theywill leave Kosovo if independence is declared, regardlessof the fine print o n the deal.Indeed, it may be time to face the sad reality thatmultiethnicity is simply not a realistic objective in thenear term for Kosovo. The task at hand, r ather, is thepeaceful disengagement of two populations, both of which have been systematically conditioned not toaccept life under the rule of the other. As one UNregional administrator says bluntly of the Albanians, Even the most tolerant pe ople don t want to be seenwith Serbs. 17 Welcome to Trashcanistan

Although contemplatin