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http://www.tol.cz/look/TOL/article.tpl?IdLanguage=1&IdPublication=4&NrIssue=112&NrSection=1&NrArticle=13979

TRANSITIONS ONLINE (CZECH REPUBLIC)

Kosovo: Shots in the Dark

by TOL
23 April 2005

Leading Kosovars try to decipher the meaning behind a spate of high-profile
attacks.

Just months before the international community is to decide on the next
steps for Kosovo, three incidents have highlighted how tense the situation
still is in the UN-administered province.

An apparent assassination attempt in March on President Ibrahim Rugova
failed to cause major injury but sent the rumor mill spinning.

On 15 April, Enver Haradinaj, brother of former prime minister Ramush
Haradinaj, was killed in an ambush in western Kosovo. Ramush Haradinaj, a
former commander of the main anti-Serbian armed group, the Kosovo Liberation
Army (KLA), resigned in early March to stand trial at the International
Criminal Tribunal for former Yugoslavia (ICTY) in The Hague. He was allowed
to travel from the Netherlands to Kosovo for his brother's funeral.

The latest attack came on the night of 17 April, when a powerful explosion
rocked the Pristina offices of a small but influential opposition party,
Citizens' List Ora, led by prominent journalist and publisher Veton Surroi.
Three children who lived in the building were slightly injured by flying
glass.

Touring the devastated office, Larry Rossin, a senior UN official in the
province, said the blast was an "assault on the democratic process."

He told the media, "This kind of thing destroys the future of Kosovo."

Surroi and other public figures in Kosovo had received threats the week
prior to the bombing from a previously unknown group called Homeland
Security. According to Deutsche Welle, the threats appeared on the Internet
and targeted Surroi, Urosevac mayor Faik Grainca, and prominent opposition
politicians Bujar Bukoshi and Jakup Krasniqi.

The time of the attack - 10 p.m. on a Sunday night - suggests that it was
meant to send a warning rather than to actually harm people.

Surroi, who runs the daily Koha Ditore and an affiliated television station,
said he thought the attack was politically motivated. In preceding weeks, he
had accused Rugova's Democratic League for Kosovo (LDK) and its junior
partner in the ruling coalition, the Alliance for the Future of Kosovo (AKK)
of former prime minister Haradinaj, of consolidating their power in Kosovo
through cooperation with organized crime.

RUMOR AND INNUENDO

Kosovo's rumor mill produced three main explanations for the violence.

One of them sees the attack on Surroi as simple revenge for Enver
Haradinaj's killing - while nobody's suggesting that Surroi might be behind it, Surroi
had nevertheless been an implacable foe of the alliance between Ramush
Haradinaj's AKK and Rugova's LDK. It's not clear how this theory, for which
there is little evidence, would explain the initial attack on Rugova and,
indeed, Haradinaj.

Other speculations focus on a deputy prime minister, the LDK's Adem Salihaj.
The message from Homeland Security included the statement, "we have enough
bullets to defend Adem Salihaj." Salihaj denied any involvement with the
attack on Surroi or indeed with Homeland Security and suggested the shadowy
group might in fact be linked to Ora.

Rugova was equally adamant in rejecting any links to Homeland Security.

Just days after the attack on Ora's offices, President Rugova's own security
was stepped up. Some reports suggested that Rugova's bodyguards were
disarmed by police who stormed his residence after receiving information
that guards might be involved in a plot. UN and local police were deployed
at intersections near the residence and checked drivers and passers-by.

Perhaps the most credible explanation of this wave of violence came from the
Swiss non-governmental group Medienhilfe, which assists media in
Southeastern Europe. Based on Surroi's own suggestions that the bombing of
Ora had a political background, Medienhilfe thinks the attacks are related
to the upcoming multi-party talks to determine the final status of Kosovo.

Surroi backs direct talks between Kosovo's government and the authorities in
Belgrade, something Rugova rejects.

According to Medienhilfe, Surroi was called a "traitor" and "agent of the
Yugoslav secret service" in an article in the daily Bota Sot of 18 April.

But whatever explanation turns out to be closest to the truth, one thing
seems clear: Kosovo is having a hard time presenting itself as just a normal
province well on its way to sovereign statehood while such destabilizing
violence is continuing. In that sense, the attacks may well hurt all
Kosovars, whatever their political views.