Disaster Colonialism: The United Nations Mission in Kosovo (UNMIK)

The international involvement in Kosovo since 1999 serves as a unique, contemporary case of what I refer to as “disaster colonialism.” Disaster colonialism in Kosovo, I argue, was a project, one which needed the fabrication of a “disaster,” (based on the historical event of the 1999 War of Independence) in order for a series of international organizations to establish missions that would proliferate following the end of the war. The conflict between Kosovo and Serbia over the ownership of territory was seized by the international community as a “disaster,” catalyzing a selfjustifying mechanism that foreclosed the expression of popular democratic will in post-conflict Kosovo. Understood in this way, disaster colonialism is a programmatic, top-down method of building a state following a crisis that undemocratically implements techniques of governance imported by a colonizing power, bypassing the will or the consent of the populace. By manufacturing a “disaster”—which declares a populace no longer capable of deciding the future of their government or the shape of their own society––the international community was able to format a legal, economic, and political system in Kosovo that served the interests of a Western, liberal-democratic power structure. In this paper, I will trace the points in which the UN’s disaster colonialism, administered by technocratic governance experts, reveals the costs of occupation, the collateral damage that is part of the state-building mission, and the tensions between expert rule– –even from a human rights-centered organization like the UN––and democracy