Why Does India Refuse to Recognise Kosovo?

What does India gain from denying a visa to a Kosovo boxer to participate in the AIBA Women’s Boxing Championships?

India doesn’t recognise Kosovo as an independent nation.

(Photo: Kamran Akhter/The Quint)

Why is India willing to jeopardise its ambitions of hosting world sporting events, like the Olympics or Asian Games, over a tiny, faraway country like Kosovo?

After India denied a visa to Kosovo boxer Donjeta Sadiku to participate in the AIBA Women’s World Boxing Championships, the Olympic Committee of Asia (OCA) came down like a tonne of bricks, as did the AIBA itself.

OCA President Sheikh Ahmad Al-Fahad Al-Sabah wrote to the Sports Minister and the Indian Olympic Association President, saying the visa denial “cast doubt” on India’s eligibility for hosting future international sporting events, and that it was the duty of every organising committee to ensure the entry of “every eligible athlete participating in a major championship without discrimination.” For its part, AIBA threatened that it would reconsider India as the host for 2021 AIBA Men’s Boxing Championships.

So clearly, for India, this is about more than just Kosovo, a tiny European nation. In fact, this is about a long- and tightly-held principle that India holds dear – that of sovereignty and respecting territorial integrity.

Why Is ‘Upholding Sovereignty’ So Important to India?

India does not recognise Kosovo as an independent nation, despite it having declared itself independent from Serbia in 2008 – there is one important reason for that.

As one of the founders of the Non-Aligned Movement in the aftermath of World War II, India’s foreign policy follows these principles: Non-interference in other nation’s internal affairs and an expectation of non-interference in its own; mutual respect for territorial integrity and sovereignty; mutual non-aggression; and peaceful coexistence.

With a conflict-ridden Kashmir to the north, where cries of ‘azaadi’ are routinely heard, and a recurring Khalistani struggle, India is reluctant to lend weight to the notion that territories within a sovereign nation can secede at will.

Such an action would, India fears, open it up to legitimate charges of hypocrisy – ‘If you will accept the right of self-determination of xyz country, why not of your own Kashmiris/Khalistanis?’ MEA spokesperson in 2008, Ajay Swarup, said as much in an interview to a Serbian newspaper soon after Kosovo declared its independence. He said Kosovo “can set a very dangerous precedent for similar cases around the world,” according to B92, a Serbian publication.

Why Antagonise the Russians?

Another reason for not recognising Kosovo is India’s friendship with Russia. India and Russia have long maintained a close relationship, through the Cold War to the present day. For Russia, Serbia is the touchstone of its ambitions of a revived empire. For reasons similar to India’s, and because Serbia is essential to Russian interests in its region, Russia too has refused to recognise Kosovo’s independence. For India, it doesn’t make sense to rub a trusted ally the wrong way in order to recognise the secession of a much smaller and less important player.

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A (Very) Brief History of Kosovo

At one time, Kosovo had been the heart of the Serbian Empire, only to be lost to the Ottomans in 1398, according to BBC's timeline. Centuries later, in 1912, Serbia regained control of Kosovo, and by 1946, Kosovo was absorbed into the Yugoslav federation. Around the 1960s, Kosovo began to assert its autonomy, being a majority-Muslim province after centuries of Ottoman rule, in a majority-Christian federation. The Yugoslav federation accepted this autonomy in the 1980s, giving Kosovo a 'de facto self-government'.

But from 1998-99, Kosovo was the site of a bitter and deadly war that killed thousands, largely fought between ethnic Serbs and ethnic Albanians. It was the Federation of Yugoslavia (which included Montenegro and Serbia at the time) against Albanian rebels. In a conflict that spiralled into killings and revenge killings, NATO finally intervened against Yugoslavia, and the Kumanovo Agreement was reached in 1999 to end the war.

In 2008, Kosovo declared its independence from Serbia, in a move that was summarily rejected by the Serbian government.

For a long time, Serbia did not formally recognise Kosovo and refused diplomatic relations. But in 2011, a process of normalisation began, midwifed by the EU, who made resolution of the conflict a condition of Serbia joining the bloc.

By 2013, the Brussels Agreement was hammered out, which officially began the process to normalise relations. There is currently a hotly contested proposal to partition Kosovo in a land-swap agreement that would allow ethnic Serbs and ethnic Albanians to live in territories where each form the majority. There are fears a partition like this could reignite the war.

So while the Kosovo issue continues to bubble, and while the OCA and AIBA might protest, India does not (yet) have a good enough reason to sideline its long-standing foreign policy principles on which it bases its interactions with other countries.