Editorial
COMMONWEAL War or peace in Kosovo? Peacemaking is not easy, especially when war continues. Negotiating a peace is even more difficult when there is no real desire for peace among the combatants....
...The Yugoslav army has conducted a kind of low-intensity warfare against a population that initially adopted various forms of passive resistance...
...Does this mean the effort to make peace is the work of fools...
...A year ago, a fighting force, the Kosovian Liberation Army (KLA), appeared on the scene...
...Under the political leadership of Ibrahim Rugova, the Albanians set to work, in the manner of other Eastern European liberation movements, creating political, educational, and cultural institutions parallel to those imposed by the Serbs in Belgrade...
...That appears to have been the situation between the Serbs and the Albanian Kosovars as they ended their talks in Rambouillet, France on February 23...
...Nevertheless, the Serbs, who have proved so barbarous and recalcitrant, now find themselves holding the high ground in the diplomatic game, while the KosoCommonweal 5 March 12,1999...
...Scenes of mutilated bodies and fleeing refugees increased pressure for a settlement...
...And they held out for it at the talks in France...
...Over the past decade, this pacifist strategy worked well enough in creating a civic culture, but it did not win political autonomy for the province...
...It rejected Rugova's political strategy, and went to war against the Yugoslavs...
...in any case, they are unlikely to agree to independence for Kosovo...
...Instead, the Albanians have gone home to "consult" on whether to accept a period of autonomy to be followed by a "referendum," which might lead to independence...
...They seemed to have decided that with the peace talks they could achieve something greater than the return of provincial autonomy, namely national independence...
...Finally, sustained pressure from Europe and the United States, including a threat of NATO bombing, brought the Serbs to meet with a delegation of Albanian Kosovars, including Rugova and other political leaders as well as members of the KLA leadership...
...The agreement requires that the KLA also lay down its weapons, while some 28,000 NATO troops would secure and guarantee the peace...
...Although Rugova and his political allies have always understood that independence for Kosovo is a goal for the distant future, the KLA smelled victory in the support given by the Americans and Europeans...
...Still, the agreement hammered out by the diplomats is so tentative that the Serbs have not yet signed onto it...
...Military action intensified and atrocities against civilians followed, the Yugoslav police and army against the Albanians and the KLA against the minority Kosovian Serbs...
...Madeleine Albright and her French and British counterparts worked hard with a team of European and American diplomats to bring the bloodshed in Kosovo to an end...
...If their strenuous efforts now appear hapless, it is not they who have acted foolishly...
...But without success...
...For several years, the Serbs, who claim Kosovo as their ancestral home, refused to return autonomy to the province whose dominant population is ethnic Albanian...
...Matters cooled down somewhat during the winter with the presence of unarmed monitors operating under the auspices of the Organization for Security and Cooperation, but then flared again in the new year...
...This past October, Richard Holbrooke, who helped end the Bosnian war, wrested a kind of cease-fire agreement from Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic...
Vol. 126 • March 1999 • No. 5
