Engels leaves, Kosovo to lose biggest supporter in Congress

Engel, a Democrat who has represented the Bronx, a neighbourhood in New York City, this area where there are many Albanians deployed since 1989.

Eliot Engel is known as Kosovo's greatest supporter, and his departure from Congress is enough for our country.

Though no longer a conventioner, he is expected to take another position in the incoming president's administration, Joe Biden.

He has been the main collector of Congress support for recognising Kosovo's independence from Serbia in 2008.

Firm support for Kosovo, over the decades, has made it famous in this country, known by about 115 other countries.

Kosovo has named a road and highway to honour Engel and has even issued a post office stamp with his picture.

This has made it a controversial figure in Serbia, the country that continues to reject Kosovo's loss and lobbies against its recognition by the international community.

However, Engel's departure from the House of Representatives where he has recently headed the Foreign Affairs Committee, using his position to punish Belgrade and protect Kosovo may not be an opportunity for Serbia to rejoice.

Engel, 73, has said he is not planning to retire after his sudden defeat in the early elections in the summer.

He has said he has been asked whether he wants to be an ambassador or a deputy secretary in Joe Biden's administration and that he is considering options. That raises the question whether he will continue to influence US policy in the Balkans.

“ [There are] many different things I can do... I'm not making any decisions right now, but you know I'm thinking”, Engel said about Washington Examiner in early December.

I may do something with the administration... Some people suggested that maybe I could be Ambassador”, he said.

Balkan passion

Although Engel has not provided much details about his future plans, he has shown where his political interests stand at a hearing of the Foreign Affairs Committee, held on December 8th.

I did not know the passion I would develop for a small corner of Europe, called the Balkans”, Engel said at this hearing session, which he called for to give recommendations on the region's future Biden administration.

I've traveled to every country in the Western Balkans several times, met with so many leaders from so many parties and loved the rich diversity of cultures, ethnicities and religions”, Engel said.

But no country has touched my heart more than Kosovo”, he added.

Engel's decision to hold hearings for a part of Europe, which rarely makes news headlines in the United States, was important, observers say.

“Seconca was intended to cement Engel's heritage in the Balkans, especially with regard to Kosovo”, says Dan Vajdic, who has covered Europe and Eurasia for the Senate Commission for Foreign Relations and now advises Serbia's Chamber of Commerce for attracting American investments to Serbia and the Western Balkans.

Engel entered Congress until Yugoslavia was violently divided into ethnic lines. He is involved in many regional disputes through his position in the Foreign Affairs Committee, finally gaining his reputation as Balkan expert.

He has been among the first US lawmakers to call on Bill Clinton's administration to intervene in 1998 to halt the actions of Yugoslav and Serbian forces in Kosovo. No doubt it was even the most vocal in Congress for recognising Kosovo's independence from the US, a decade later.

Engel continues to fight for justice for the Bytyqi brothers, three Albanian-Americans who fought on the Albanian side and were executed by Serbian police in 1999. Their killers have not yet been prosecuted.

“Sic you all know, Eliot has been Kosovo's biggest supporter at the United States Congress”, said representative Kevin McCarty (Yugoslav Republic of California), a member of the Foreign Affairs Committee, at the House of Representatives hearing on December 8th.

Ambassador's Position

Ambassador positions in the Balkans are expected to open early 2022, when American ambassadors to Kosovo and Bosnia and Herzegovina reach the standard limit of a three-year term in one country.

The Beden administration could also appoint special envoys to the region, including Kosovo-Serbia talks.

Washington is still focused on resolving disputes between Kosovo and Serbia, which would open the door to both countries to move closer to EU membership and potentially to NATO.

Washington is also putting pressure on constitutional reform in Bosnia, aiming to maintain its territorial integrity from Republika Srpska's secession threats.

Engel's staff has not answered REL questions if he is interested in the post of ambassador or special envoy to the Balkans.

Ronald Neumann, president of the American Academy of Diplomacy and a former US ambassador, told Radio Free Europe that someone like Engel would be more likely to run a large embassy in a capital of Western Europe, such as London or Berlin.

Jelena Milliq, director of the Centre for Euro-Atlantic Studies in Belgrade, says Serbia would see it as an obstacle if Engel is involved in Serbia-Kosovo peace talks, due to his close ties with Pristina.

For the same reason, she doubts he would have a positive impact on regional issues if ambassador to Kosovo or Bosnia and Herzegovina were appointed.

“Engel would not be good news for negotiations between Pristina and Belgrade. It has become very unilateral and is completely out of the way for what is happening on the ground in Serbia. He still sees Serbia through the [prism of] 1990s”, Milliq says.

The December 8th hearing was an example, she says.

Engel, at that session, has talked about several shortcomings of Serbia, including its failure to track down war criminals, blocking democracy under President Aleksandar Vuciq and Serbia's close military ties with Russia. Engel has also criticised the current US policy on Kosovo, calling it more favourable for Serbia.

“We absorb our bilateral relations to the extent that we, the United States, limit Kosovo's elections to avoid the wrath of Belgrade”, Engel has said.

Many Balkan analysts in the United States have said Engel has been right to point out those issues.

But, Milliq says Engel has rejected some positive “changes that have occurred over the years in Serbia, including respect for Bosnia's territorial integrity and “co-operation” with the International Criminal Tribunal in the former Yugoslavia despite Belgrade's failure to extradite alleged criminals to The Hague.

Milliq says Engel has also downplayed the deaths of 2,000 Serbs during the Kosovo war in 1999.

U.S. House of Representatives Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Elliot Engel and US Secretary of State Mike Pompeii

Vajdic says Engel's comments make “politically difficult for politicians in Belgrade to support stronger ties with the United States and are used by Russia for propagandistic purposes and to create divisions between Serbia and the West.

“The Russian message is that America will never accept you and all it cares about is Kosova”, Vajdic says.

Janusz Bugajski, Balkan expert at the Jameston Foundation in Washington, says Engel can still do work for the Balkans in the Benden administration, which does not relate to peace talks between Kosovo and Serbia, such as working with Europeans to combat Russian and Chinese influence in the region. Engel, according to him, has extensive experience with transatlantic relations.

“Most likely” for Engel in the Benden administration, some of which would be “more sensitive to Belgrade”, he says.

No losses for Kosovo?

Tanja Domi, Balkan expert at Columbia University, says she does not expect Engel's departure to weaken US support for Kosovo.

Engel, according to her, may have become vocal for Kosovo and other Balkan issues, in part for the fact that White House attention to the region has dropped over the years.

This has changed at the end of Donald Trump's administration, with the appointment of Richard Green in 2019, as a special envoy to Kosovo-Serbia talks and the signing of an agreement in September on normalising economic relations.

This trend will likely continue under Beden, who knows the region from his day on the Senate of Foreign Relations Commission.

Dom predicts that Biden will deal with the region's issue even more aggressively than the previous presidents.

“Eliot was Kosovo's unusual defender. But this does not mean that there will be no others going out [in Congress]”, Domi says.

Engel will be replaced as head of the Foreign Affairs Committee by Gregory Meeks (democrat from New York), who will take office on January 6th when Congress, which has been elected on November 3rd, meets for the first time.