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November 20, 1999
The Real Kosovo
by Gary Dempsey
Gary Dempsey, a foreign policy analyst at the Cato Institute, just
returned from the Balkans where he was filming a documentary on the
aftermath of NATO's air war against Yugoslavia.
Pristina, Yugoslavia: As President Clinton prepares to visit to Kosovo,
it is common to see and hear things here that don't fit with the tidy
fictions proffered by NATO and White House officials. For instance, when
NATO's former top commander in Kosovo, Gen. Michael Jackson, turned over
his post recently, he pronounced: "We have seen a return to normality"
in Kosovo.
As two of the principal achievements of his brief tenure, Gen. Jackson
cited "the successful demilitarization" of the Kosovo Liberation Army
(KLA) and "the establishment of law and order." Sadly, none of what the
general said is true. Today, Kosovo is in a state of near anarchy, and
that's exactly the way the KLA wants it.
"The whole thing is a very bad joke," explains a candid intelligence
officer with the UN Mission in Kosovo (UNMIK). Over our second beer at a
café lighted by a gasoline-powered generator, he adds that the KLA has
not demilitarized, let alone been abolished, as NATO officials and the
Clinton administration claim. The KLA has an underground network and
"more than enough weapons to start another war." For five months now,
the KLA has been deliberately trying to undermine, obstruct and defy the
work of NATO and the UNMIK police. Although NATO and UNMIK have been
careful to avoid any public insinuation that the KLA may be
prevaricating and holding back a significant stockpile of weapons, a
spokesman for NATO estimates that peacekeepers confiscate about 100
illegal weapons, explosives and magazines of ammunition each day. In
clear violation of their agreement with NATO, KLA personnel continue to
carry weapons and wear their uniforms in public, most recently at a
gathering in Gornje Obrinje. The KLA is also committing random acts of
violence and engaging in the insidiously clever practice of freely
distributing large firecrackers to idle Albanian youths in order to keep
the UNMIK police offbalance.
Indeed, with a sporadic mix of gunfire and firecrackers echoing
throughout the city day and night, UNMIK police never know when and
where to respond, or when they might become targets themselves. Scores
of stolen Mercedes without license plates speed up and down the streets
of the city, flouting both traffic laws and the UNMIK police. By
actively perpetuating this unpredictable and lawless atmosphere, the KLA
is able to carry out, relatively unhindered, its campaign of ethnic
cleansing, political retribution and common criminality.
Yet "anyone who thinks that the violence will end once the last Serb has
been driven out of Kosovo is living an illusion," recently warned Veton
Surroi, publisher of the main Albanian-language newspaper in Kosovo,
Koha Ditore. "The violence will simply be redirected against other
Albanians." Already, the senior officials of the KLA, who signed the
disarmament agreement with NATO, have carried out assassinations,
arrests and purges within their own ranks and of potential rivals. One
campaign, in which as many as six KLA commanders were murdered, was
reportedly directed by the KLA's top man, Hashim Thaci, and two of his
lieutenants, Azem Syla and Xhavit Haliti.
So the KLA has not disappeared into the pages of the history books. It
still lurks everywhere in Kosovo. Ethnic Albanians complain that KLA
henchmen regularly demand that shopkeepers pay "liberation taxes" to
finance the KLA's continued, and often illicit, activities. Even more
worrisome, according to a soon-to-be-released report by the
International Crisis Group, there are as many killings right now in
Kosovo as there were before NATO intervened, when Yugoslav authorities
were trying to smash the KLA. Present circumstances in Kosovo suggest
two possible outcomes for Washington: a policy failure or a policy
disaster. A policy failure will result because Washington's goal of
creating a multi-ethnic society in Kosovo is being undermined by the KLA
in a multitude of ways, especially with the ethnic cleansing of not only
Serbs but Gorans, Romas, Jews, Croats and even Albanians who are not
strenuous enough in their intolerance of non-Albanians.
A policy disaster, on the other hand, will result if Washington decides
to vigorously confront the KLA. "We are their tool," the UNMIK
intelligence officer told me, and "when we stop being useful to them,
they will turn against us." If NATO and UNMIK personnel were then to
start dying at the hands of the very people Washington says it's out to
help, the entire policy would collapse.
Washington will likely choose a policy failure over a policy disaster.
Unfortunately, the KLA understands this and will continue to carry out
its intolerant and criminal activities without fear of serious
resistance from the Clinton White House.
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© 1999 The Cato Institute


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