Kosovo:  The bankruptcy of the imperialism of good 

 

After several nights without sleeping, Javier Solana does not moderate his words: "Not only the show of force succeeded perfectly, but UNMIK (the UN administration) is null.  They do not have any idea about what is happening in Kosovo. The whole policy of the UNMIK is dead." Everyone knows it perfectly: the crisis could have ended up in a blood bath.  And if this has been avoided, it is not because the 5,000 policemen of UNMIK and the 18,000 soldiers of KFOR won control of the rioters but because those who had released them whistled the end of the game. "They know perfectly until where they can or cannot go," says a French military officer. For the moment. "The rioters want at the same time to drive out the Serbs and to drive out the UN," continues the diplomat. "And to prevent them, if they start again, from reaching their goal, it would need more than 100,000 soldiers in Kosovo. Nobody considers it".

 

 

A torturer is often a victim who won – and a victim, sometimes, a defeated torturer: this is the lesson that the recent blaze of violence in Kosovo could inspire to all those who, five years ago, thought that "the Serbs" had ethnic cleansing in their blood.  In spite of the persistence of certain commentators in speaking about "interethnic clashes", everybody finally had to admit what was obvious: from March 17 to 20, in the province placed since the 1999 summer under NATO-UN control, from Pristina to Prizren, from Kosovo Polje to Pec, from Obilic to Lipljan, rioting mobs made up of Albanians attacked Serbs because they were Serb, houses because they were Serb, churches and monasteries because they were Serb and, to complete the picture, some goods belonging to international institutions suspected of protecting some Serbs. Centuries of history and faith disappeared into smoke. And with them, the illusions maintained by the international administrators who had ended up believing themselves in them. On May 23, 1999, defending in the New York Times his "just and necessary" war, Bill Clinton wrote that if it had not bombarded Yugoslavia, "the Atlantic Alliance would have been discredited for its incapacity to defend the essential values which give it its meaning". Five years later, it is not a failure, but a total bankruptcy:  military, policy and moral.

 

In front of the ruins of a Serb house devastated by fire, a building in which are busily working some Albanian workmen just raised from the ground: this is the new Kosovo. This is in Kosovo Polje, a few kilometers from Pristina, but it could be in any village of the province. A little further, in front of the debris of the Serb hospital, one wonders what the white jeep parked on the sidewalk monitors. On the hood, nobody took the trouble to erase the inscription "fuck" added by hand by a funny one before the initials UN – for United Nations.  Overhanging the disaster, the poster of flushing colors representing a mountainous landscape behind which a sun rises to the spangled colors of the European Union resembles a dirty trick. "Standartët per Kosoven" (Standards for Kosovo):  even the noble souls have some difficulty to evoke the radiant future promised to the Albanians of the province so that they conform to the famous UN "standards" about democracy and respect of minorities. Although. Many think that the mantra recited by the UN – "standards  before status" – must  now be reversed and that it is necessary to accelerate the walk towards independence. Albin Kurti, a pleasant young man who spent two years in a Belgrade prison, now runs a "citizen network": "UNMIK is completely discredited, no citizen here displays any loyalty to it. As for our politicians, they can permanently deny any responsibility, since they do not have the reality of power. Instead of representing the people before the International Community, they represent the International Community in front of the people. Moreover, they are inefficient and corrupted, what arranges perfectly the UN which believes to control them more easily.  But whereas 250,000 people live with less than 1 euro per day and the future is completely dubious, the situation can only be explosive."

 

 

 

If the width and the perfect organization of this operation on the military level took apparently everyone by surprise, the eruption of hatred does not have anything very surprising for those who followed these last years the evolution of this territory deserted by the cameras. This is in those Balkans where the presence of the ones must always be paid by the exile of the others. In spite of the great multiethnic proclamations of the international authorities and of the Albanian politicians, only 80,000 Serb remained of the 250,000 who were living in Kosovo before the war:  those who did not have anywhere to go.  And even before this major crisis, the unsolved murders of several dozens of them was maintaining a latent fear, favorable to the projects of those who dream of an ethnically pure Kosovo.  Of course, as a European diplomat in post in Pristina underscores, something has changed:  "For the first time, everyone realizes that the Albanians can also be the bad guys in the movie. And my government, as the other ones, became aware of the gravity of the situation". Some NATO authorities pronounce the words of "ethnic cleansing".

 

Even Javier Solana, who in 1999, when he was NATO secretary-general, had carried out without any conscience dilemma the war of the forces of Good against those of Evil, has been obliged to revise his certitudes. Now on in charge of the foreign politics of the European Union, he was in Pristina last Wednesday. "It is unacceptable," he declared, "that the Albanian leaders do not assume their responsibility in the destructions and expulsions. Five years after the international military intervention carried out to save them, the Kosovars seriously damaged their relationship with the International Community." Undoubtedly.  It is not certain that this threat is likely to disturb the organizers of these riots: while NATO has been unable to control the situation on the military ground, the UN still appears today as unable to regain control politically.  After several nights without sleeping, the European diplomat does not moderate his words: "Not only the show of force succeeded perfectly, but UNMIK (the UN administration) is null.  They do not have any idea about what is happening in Kosovo. The whole policy of the UNMIK is dead." Everyone knows it perfectly: the crisis could have ended up in a blood bath.  And if this has been avoided, it is not because the 5,000 policemen of UNMIK and the 18,000 soldiers of KFOR won control of the rioters but because those who had released them whistled the end of the game. "They know perfectly until where they can or cannot go," says a French military officer. For the moment. "The rioters want at the same time to drive out the Serbs and to drive out the UN," continues the diplomat. "And to prevent them, if they start again, from reaching their goal, it would need more than 100,000 soldiers in Kosovo. Nobody considers it".

 

 

It is a well-orchestrated manipulation which made it possible to these mysterious extremists to mobilize, in addition to their armed bands composed, according to witnesses, of these rural unemployed young people, a fraction of the Albanian population:  according to UNMIK, approximately 50,000 people as a total would have taken part in the demonstrations. On Tuesday March 16, at the end of the afternoon, the bodies of two young Albanian boys were fished out of the Ibar River near Mitrovica, the divided city which is the stake of a permanent tension. Very quickly, the Albanian media broadcast a false testimony affirming that the kids had been pushed by Serbs. Some Halid Berani, veteran of the UCK (Kosovo Liberation Army, a separatist guerrilla which fought the Serb forces since 1997) running a badly-named "Council for Human Rights and Freedoms" in Mitrovica, apparently plays a major role in the propagation of the calls to hatred:  "An expert in disorder," says a member of UNMIK. A few days later, he will be detained and then released. "It is always the same thing," vociferates this young Albanian idealist, for whom it is prudent to preserve anonymity. "With UNMIK, only violence pays."

 

 

During the following day, the same scenario happens all over Kosovo.  Hundreds or thousands of demonstrators march onto the Serb enclaves. Brought on location by buses, young people armed with bludgeons but also, for some of them, with machine-guns and heavy weapons, march on the Serb enclaves. "The Molotov cocktails were ready, well lined up in the trucks. There were even sandwiches," tells Filip Pavlovic.  This smiling, strapping fellow who seems to come from a Kusturica movie created an association intended to promote intercommunity co-operation. As for the policemen and soldiers, they are not very far from disbanding. In Pristina, 800 rioters mass in front of the head office of UNMIK where the high officers are in a meeting. "If they had wanted to sack it, half an hour would have been enough for them to do so," says one of them. At this time, several thousands of demonstrators are massed at the entry of Caglavica, a village located south from Pristina which controls the access to Gracanica, one of the principal enclaves where approximately 20,000 people are gathered. "There it was serious; one could not allow Gracanica to fall," confides police colonel Jean Leroux, the head of the police force for the region of Pristina. In the confusion, he ends up receiving the de facto command of the operation.

 

But the Swedish, Norwegian, Irish and Ukrainian soldiers of KFOR who are present with him on the spot must refer to their own chiefs, which complicates everything.  Behind the lines, thousands of Serbs, a lot of them also armed, are ready to fight a battle which will not take place. In the afternoon, when a truck rushes towards the soldiers, the first shots are shot, killing the driver of the truck. "During all the following day, we had to fire warning shots, but on several occasions, I believed that they were going to break through," says Leroux. "For the first time, I noticed that the demonstrators were shouting 'Allah Akbar'." The combat lasts for nearly 24 hours, but Gracanica resists. Just like Mitrovica, where the French soldiers who will count several casualties, prevent the rioters from sacking the northern districts. In the rest of the province, each contingent determines its priorities. On Thursday morning, when soldiers and policemen have been fighting for 17 or 18 hours, the airport is closed for civil flights in order to allow the arrival of reinforcements coming, in particular, from Bosnia. The rules of engagement on use of firearms are officially softened.

 

 

 

Several enclaves are left to themselves since KFOR can hardly do anything more than hastily evacuate the populations. In Decani, the Italians, helped by elite troops arrived from Genoa, are determined to protect the splendid monastery from 14th century from where Fr. Sava, behind his computer, tries to alert the world conscience, while in Devic, to the north, the Danes give up the monastery to the arsonists after rescuing the nuns. It is immediately the prey of flames. Some people notice (but no one will believe them) that in the German zone, in particular in Prizren, KFOR did not try anything to prevent that the burned churches are delivered to the plunderers and profaners.

 

When things calm down, as if by magic, in the day of Friday, soldiers and policemen are exhausted. Hatred and fear are breaking hearts, blurring the vision. Once more, the primary and secondary schools of the "safe" enclaves are receiving the displaced persons who bear with them some small pieces of life in hastily tied up bundles, begging to be escorted to their home, hoping that it remains of it more than a few stones. On her hospital bed, in Gracanica, Tanya Joksimovic, a plump 60 year-old lady, seems about to lose her mind. She lives again and again this horror without respite. Her left eye is covered with a bandage and her body is covered with many wounds. On March 17, while demonstrators where sowing terror in Kosovo Polje, a few kilometers away from Pristina, she remained the last one in her building inhabited by several Serb families. A score of young people, boys and girls, entered her apartment and, during more than one hour, have been beating her all while insulting her. "The Americans told us to kill the Serbs. This is not your country. There is no God for the Serbs. We will make the Greater Albania until Nis (town of central Serbia)". Her supplications did nothing. "I could be your mother," she told them. They laughed: "You, our mother?" An Albanian neighbor managed to call the police who then evacuated her at the last minute. Tanya lost everything, including her identity documents. She does not know the telephone number of her brother in Belgrade. A figure of abandonment, as one sees by the hundreds in Kosovo.

 

Difficult to believe that neither the Western intelligent services nor the Albanian politicians did not see anything coming, taking into account the preparations necessary for such an operation. "The Albanians are masters in the art of deception," comments Filip Pavlovic, quite bitter about the soft kind of condemnations made by the "civil society". The representatives of NGO meeting last Saturday in the Grand Hotel to draw up a first assessment of the crisis spent more time, he explains, wondering whether the destroyed buildings were Serb or Illyrian*. As for the party leaders, beginning with Hashim Thaci, the European diplomat is convinced that they do not have anything to do with the events. "They are not all very sophisticated but they know that a Kosovo abandoned on its own would quickly sink into chaos. Instead of devoting itself to all-directional arrests which put them in difficulty, UNMIK should rather rely on them and on the Prime Minister Bajram Rexhepi who really played appeasement. But if we continue to provide him with no information about the security situation, he will more and more appear as our puppet." According to another analyst who goes in the same direction, the organizers of these riots would be the misfits of the former UCK, those who the UN order enriched neither financially nor symbolically. And the announced disarmament never took place. Formerly victorious against the Serb forces with the assistance of NATO, these lost soldiers and their hordes of young idlers could turn over against their former allies.

 

The headache seems insoluble:  the more independence, so ardently claimed by the crushing Albanian majority, seems inevitable, the more the chances to implement it under conditions which are not completely scandalous, seem weak. It is useless to avoid facing the truth. Unless a miracle or a radical change of the United Nations policy occurs, an independent Kosovo will be an ethnically pure Kosovo. And another dark stain in the history of Europe. /tob

 

 

* In the battle for memory which is being waged in Kosovo, the Albanians are pretending that the Orthodox presence was not originally Serb but Illyrian, a heritage they claim for themselves; this allows them to confirm the thesis that the Serbs arrived as colonists.