THE SOLUTION IN KOSOVO
HALPER, STEFAN
THE SOLUTION IN KOSOVO: MILOSEVIC MUST GO By Stefan Halper Pristina, Kosovo IN WASHINGTON, RICHARD HOLBROOKE is known as an “in and out guy,” a Wall Street dealmaker short on history, long on...
...The middle class, stripped of creature comforts and even necessities, waits for reforms that are trumpeted but never come...
...One senior Serbian official confided the crushing effect of the government-imposed bank closures in which he lost his personal savings, cashiering his dream of a new home with his new wife, travel, and a nest egg for old age...
...Moreover, theirs is a broad-based movement with a cohesive ideology, widely accepted objectives, and even its own contemporary heroes...
...The army’s responsibility, he said, is Kosovo’s border with Albania and Macedonia, not the interior...
...Belgrade describes the KLA as roving bandits terrorizing villagers and coercing men to join its ranks...
...TWO MEN IN BAGGY WOOLEN PANTS AND WHITE PEASANT SMOCKS AND CARRYING WORLD WAR I VINTAGE LEE-ENFIELD RIFLES STOPPED US...
...policy will work if it is based on an infatuation with Milosevic...
...The unions, protesting plant closures, are suspicious of the state...
...The KLA’s military success has raised its aspirations beyond autonomy or even independence...
...Sonja Biserko, director of the Helsinki Committee for Human Rights in Serbia, told me, “Milosevic is blamed for the political chaos, economic disaster, and moral decline...
...But Holbrooke’s myopia has caused Washington to overlook critical policy options...
...A solution to this crisis must begin in Kosovo, not Belgrade...
...Washington, all bark and no bite, did nothing...
...THE SOLUTION IN KOSOVO: MILOSEVIC MUST GO By Stefan Halper Pristina, Kosovo IN WASHINGTON, RICHARD HOLBROOKE is known as an “in and out guy,” a Wall Street dealmaker short on history, long on tactics...
...But when I asked why the police didn’t pursue KLA snipers in a nearby village, he shrugged and held up his hands...
...some are from Croatia and Bosnia...
...Only the local Roma [Gypsies] were ready to cooperate, because the [KLA had requisitioned] their horses to transport ammunition from Albania...
...The commander of Yugoslav forces in Kosovo, Gen...
...So that any thought Belgrade or NATO might have of resolving the crisis with an offer to restore Kosovo’s autonomy is no longer viable...
...Our impression was that there was no cooperation between the police and the army...
...For fear of criticism, it did not follow up...
...What’s worse, however, is conducting a policy based on a contradiction...
...And in Belgrade, opinion is increasingly war-averse...
...At one point in his recent book To End a War, Holbrooke writes that he “bonded with the godfather...
...If you lie you will never see the States again...
...Conversation on the streets and in the caf?s of Pristina reveals overwhelming popular support for the KLA, which hardens with each new Serb assault...
...Although] this information reached the responsible offices in Djakovica, nothing was ever done about it...
...An independent Kosovo is thus possible, perhaps likely...
...As all this was going on out in the open near the road, cars driven by villagers friendly to the fighters continuously passed...
...They were in their thirties, carried AK-47s, and wore older army-type jackets and combat boots...
...And if Kosovo’s independence hastened Milosevic’s departure, Serbia as well as Kosovo might achieve a newfound freedom in which to rebuild...
...Adem Demaci, a charismatic, Mandelalike Kosovar leader willing to use force...
...All the same, the Serb nationalists have no shortage of sympathizers...
...they view the prospect rather as South Koreans see unification with the North...
...The episode ended with the confiscation of our film and tape, and we were escorted out of the area with firm instructions not to return...
...Goodbar in all the wrong places...
...Up to this point, however, rapidly shifting events and Seselj’s mercurial appeal have prevented either from making a strong impression on the voters or projecting a persuasive platform...
...went so far as to threaten NATO air strikes and harsher sanctions if Belgrade declined...
...Which brings us back to Richard Holbrooke, who is looking for Mr...
...Nabusja Pavcovic, told me the insurgents control 40 percent of the province by day and all but the major cities by night...
...and the KLA, which has some 4,000 fighters in the field against the Serbs...
...Pavcovic to southeastern Kosovo...
...Having one’s bluff called in the diplomatic world is never a perfect moment...
...KLA] threats against the Roma eventually came true as two Roma were killed...
...Landlords and tenants both complain that there is no rule of law...
...Moreover, three U.S...
...Meanwhile, in Kosovo, the equation was changing fundamentally...
...Kosovo poses a pivotal danger for Milosevic...
...Bear in mind that the Kosovars themselves are far from united in the desire to join with their impoverished cousins in northern Albania and Macedonia...
...Until now, the assumption that Milosevic is key to preserving Balkan stability has hamstrung the administration...
...Today, the insurgents effectively control Kosovo...
...Anger is growing among members of the Serbian police and Yugoslav military, some intellectuals, and rural Serbian nationalists, who see that their president, having failed to achieve a “greater Serbia” in Bosnia and Croatia, now is about to lose Kosovo...
...Not surprisingly, in this miasma of frustration, many long for a return to normalcy...
...Milosevic’s chauvinism carries costs...
...Strategic headquarters is across the border in Albania...
...A few days before my return to Belgrade, we moved to the army barracks...
...Holbrooke is transfixed, some say mesmerized, by the Serbian president...
...His frustration was palpable...
...Uniforms made in Germany, Britain, and Norway have been found...
...Only when arriving in Djakovica did we notice that the flak jackets were made in 1991 and 1992 and the expiration date was five years...
...A nearby grove was cover for a tripodmounted heavy machine-gun, and the scenic outcropping just ahead turned out to conceal a well-manned bunker...
...Washington’s fecklessness has been especially marked since early June, when the United States demanded that Belgrade withdraw its security forces from Kosovo—without a parallel commitment by the KLA to cease its military operations...
...There, fighters are trained and infiltrated into Kosovo by countless routes known as Europe’s Ho Chi-Minh Trail...
...He spent late June and early July shuttling among the four main parties to the conflict: Yugoslav president Slobodan Milosevic...
...We were alone...
...Central to Washington’s inability to untie this Balkan knot is the relationship between Holbrooke and Milosevic...
...Other likely candidates for president in the election due in or before 2000 are President Milo Djukanovic of Montenegro and former Belgrade mayor Zoran Djinjic...
...In the village where we had been sent there was not a single Serb left...
...Our interlocutor was a Bosnia veteran wearing new camouflage and boots, armed with a new Kalashnikov and a Glock pistol...
...Milosevic, to be sure, is a charismatic leader, a brilliant tactician, a Balkan Houdini who has presided over the dismemberment of Yugoslavia and survived...
...He is anti-liberal but supports the private sector, and nationalists go to him when they are fed up with Milosevic...
...It is not just in the fashionable Terazilje caf?s that dwindling numbers consider Kosovo worth the loss of Serb life...
...Financing comes from the “Albanian government in exile,” which collects money for a fund called “The Homeland Is Calling” and licenses people to buy arms and transport them to Albania...
...KLA operations in Kosovo are planned and controlled from a headquarters in Malisevo, part way between Pristina and Pec, in the “liberated area...
...This is not lost on Milosevic’s coalition partner and deputy, Vojislav Seselj, a radical nationalist and former paramilitary chief with a reputation for brutality in Bosnia...
...While disapproving of Seselj, democratic opposition leader Vesna Pesic says he is “a different kind of Serb, very decisive, knows the national interest...
...While an independent Kosovo would carry risks, an effective NATO deployment could minimize them...
...Serb compliance would have benefited the KLA, which Ambassador Gelbard has labeled a terrorist group, and undercut Rugova, whom Ambassador Holbrooke calls “central and indispensable to any solution...
...The KLA made no attempt to hide, nor was there any sign of the Serb police or military...
...journalists saw evidence of the KLA’s organizational sophistication and communications capability when we were detained at a checkpoint on a dirt road just 13 miles from Pristina on June 19...
...Both are market-oriented democrats who, despite their limitations, have support in Western capitals...
...Almost all of the actions we took were thwarted...
...special envoy Robert Gelbard has made coherent policy impossible...
...Pavcovic said 704 all-Albanian villages in Kosovo (about half of the province’s villages) are defended by KLA fighters...
...Control of the ground, three levels of authority connected by phone, a credentials check with some central authority, and a policy for dealing with foreign press were all in evidence...
...At this point, there are no good options...
...When his unit was deployed this spring, he said, the commander stressed that Kosovo was in a state of war and that the flak jackets given us should be used when entering Kosovo as protection for the windows on our buses...
...In late June, hundreds of conscripts’ mothers demonstrated at the barracks in Pristina seeking to have their children reassigned...
...It is needless to say we were revolted...
...longtime Kosovar leader Ibrahim Rugova, committed to nonviolence...
...However, everybody knows now the [KLA] prefers using rifles and shoulder-held rocket launchers...
...All of this has brought Yugoslavia to the brink of chaos—and the facile Milosevic may be unable to halt its further slide, as his grip on Serbia’s security apparatus weakens, partly because of his continuing failure in Kosovo...
...Pavcovic told me that the movement of arms and materiel into Kosovo began in earnest six or seven months ago “with the help of certain countries...
...But the administration dithered...
...In village after village near Decani and Djakovica, houses had been destroyed by shelling and fire...
...Here in Kosovo, where Washington believes the wildfire insurgency led by the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) could trigger another Balkan war, Holbrooke, architect of the Dayton Accords, is again the point man...
...Gen...
...Our experience belies the State Department’s claim that the KLA is unstructured and without leadership...
...Washington’S Confused And Tardy Response To The Spiraling Confrontation Directly Affects Political Developments In Belgrade And Kosovo, Where Events Are Inextricably Linked...
...As recently as two months ago, Washington might have forestalled the crisis, whose victims now litter the villages and cornfields of Kosovo, the Serbian province where the 92 percent Albanian majority is rebelling against Belgrade...
...After checking our press credentials by radio-telephone and examining our passports, our captors told us the “military police” were en route...
...In fact, the Belgrade regime is increasingly fragile...
...But no NATO or U.S...
...At one point the interpreter screamed, “Tell the truth: Did you record anything...
...On June 19, I accompanied Gen...
...Speaking on background, a member of the Serbian Special Police stationed there expressed anger over disorganization, poor equipment, and lack of support...
...Clearly, Washington needs better information about the insurgency...
...Some Western diplomats believe that if Milosevic fails in Kosovo, Seselj will resign and run for president on a wave of nationalist sentiment that could oust the government...
...If the KLA achieves its objective, Balkan stability will be directly threatened...
...Powerful intellectual elites—the Union of Writers, the Orthodox Church—see a more vigorous nationalism as a cure for the public’s anomie...
...As we waited in our car at the side of the road, we realized that we were not alone...
...but clearly there is more to it than that...
...The army “had nothing to do with this,” Pavcovic told me...
...Within minutes, four men arrived by car...
...They asked who we were, what our purpose was, and what we had seen, then called their superiors by radio-telephone...
...Washington Stefan Halper, a former White House and State Department official, writes a column from Washington...
...As for the police, back in June some 200 Serbian policemen publicly refused to serve in Kosovo, shocking Belgrade...
...It has alienated important parts of Serbian society...
...Accordingly, if NATO has a role, it is to preserve the present borders between Albania, Macedonia, and Kosovo...
...But events on the ground have outpaced diplomacy, and a spicy animus between Holbrooke and U.S...
...More to the point, a solution that does not accept many of the KLA’s goals may be impossible...
...Gen...
...Workers fear that the social safety net has disappeared and that with few job openings in the private sector, their families may suffer...
...With material support from Albania, Macedonia, and elsewhere and a demonstrated military capability, the KLA may be able to sustain itself indefinitely...
...Many see the private sector as a carnival of corruption, where monopoly reigns and politicians profit by sitting on the boards of companies they helped to privatize...
...As recently as early June, a combination of NATO strikes and sanctions might have forced Milosevic to make concessions...
...Given such clear evidence of Serb vulnerability and KLA strength, the disconnect between the situation on the ground and the policies advanced by Holbrooke, Gelbard, and others in Western capitals is striking...
...Not surprisingly, Holbrooke reports no progress...
...Two men in their fifties wearing baggy woolen pants, work shoes, white peasant smocks, and Albanian skull caps and carrying World War I vintage Lee- Enfield rifles stopped us...
...Furthermore, an instruction written on them said they served as protection against small firearms...
...Belgrade did decline what it saw as a preemptive surrender of Kosovo—the “cradle of Serb culture...
...He claimed that many of these fighters are “mercenaries who look like Mujahideen...
...This is [Serbian Special] Police work...
...Agile though he may be, Milosevic perches atop a fragile coalition, whose tensions the West has not properly exploited...
...But Before Washington Can Develop A Viable Policy, It Must Achieve An Accurate Assessment Of The Kla, The Milosevic Coalition, And American Interests...
...The general underscored his fear that the West sees the Yugoslav army in Kosovo as part of the problem— when actually it must be part of the solution...
...On July 11, KLA spokesman Jakup Krasniqi said in Pristina that his group is fighting for “the liberation of all occupied Albanian territories and for their unification with Albania...
...He said, “Considering the confusion, the army must be available to provide stability so that politics can solve the issue...
...Court judgments take an average one to three years and have little chance of enforcement...
...Soon they arrived and a third round of questioning began...
...What has so far escaped the attention of the foreign media, however, is the growing frustration among the police already in Kosovo...
...After grilling the Albanian interpreter and accusing him of accepting money from us and endangering them, these men seized our cameras and tape recorders...
...He will be the scapegoat” if the Kosovo crisis ends badly...
...Washington’s failure to modify its policy to reflect the weakened position of Ibrahim Rugova, for example, and its flirtation with Demaci consumed precious time...
...Left unstated was what role, if any, Milosevic would play in a solution...
...They were concerned about the security of the site, especially their gun emplacements, and the possibility that we had recorded their questions to us...
...Most of the arms are Chinese, seized from armories in Albania when the government fell last year...
...We began to suspect that local policemen were passing information to the Albanians...
Vol. 3 • July 1998 • No. 44
