Chapter 5

In Kosovo, more than 31% of all those over 10 years of age were illiterate (in 1979) and its per capita income was less than 30% of the national average. Infant mortality was 6 times that in Slovenia. Kosovo was an African enclave in an otherwise Europe-aspiring country. Caught in the pernicious spiral of declining commodity prices, Kosovo relied on transfers from Yugoslavia and from abroad for more than 90% of its income. Inevitably, unemployment tripled from 19% in 1971 to 57% in 1989. As a result, the Federal government had to quell 3-months long, paralysing riots in 1981. Riots were nothing new to Kosovo - the demonstrations of 1968 were arguably worse (and led to constitutional changes granting autonomy to Kosovo in 1974). But this time, the authorities, reacted with tanks in scenes reminiscent of China's Tiananmen Square 8 years later. The hotbed of hotheads was, as usual, the University in Pristina. Students there were more concerned with pedestrian issues such the quality of their food and the lack of facilities than with any eternal revolutionary or national truths. These mundane protests were hijacked by comrades with higher class consciousness and loftier motives of self- determination. Such hijacking, though, would have petered out had the cesspool of rage and indignation not been festering so ebulliently. Serb insensitivity backed by indiscriminate brutality led to escalation. As the years passed, calls for the restoration of the 1974 constitution (under which Kosovo was granted political, financial, legal and cultural autonomy and institutions) - merged into a sonorous agenda of "Great Albania" and a "Kosovo Republic". The Kosovar crowd was never above beatings, looting and burning. The hate was strong. Yugoslavia's ruling party - the League of Communists - was in the throes of its own transformation. With Tito's demise and the implosion of the Soviet Bloc, the Communists lacked both compass and leader. His natural successors were purged by Tito in the 1960s and 1970s. The party wasn't sure whether to turn to Gorbachev's East or to America's West. The Communists panicked and embarked on a rampage of imprisonment, unjust dismissals of Albanians (mainly of teachers, journalists, policemen and judges) and the occasional torture or murder. Serb intellectuals regarded this as no more than the rectification of Tito's anti-Serb policies. Serbia was the only Republic within the Federation, who was dismembered into autonomous regions (Kosovo and Vojvodina). "Getting back at Tito" was a strong motive, commensurate with Serb "the world is against us" paranoia and siege mentality. Milosevic, visibly ill at ease, surfed this tide of religion-tinged nationalism straight into Kosovo, the historical heartland of Serb-ism. Oppression breeds resistance and Serb oppression served only to streamline the stochastic nationalist movement into a compartmentalized, though factious, underground organization with roots wherever Albanians resided: Germany, Switzerland, the USA, Canada and Australia. The ideology was an improbable mix of Stalinism (Enver Hoxha-inspired), Maoism and Albanian chauvinism. This was before Albania opened up to reveal its decrepitude and desolation to its Kosovar visitors. All delusions of an Albania- backed armed rebellion evaporated in the languor of Albania proper. Thus, the activities of the Nationalists were more innocuous than their concocted doctrines.

They defaced government buildings, shattered gravestones in Serb cemeteries and overturned heroic monuments. The distribution of subversive (and fairly bromide) "literature" was rarely accompanied by acts of terror, either in Kosovo or in Europe. Nationalism is refuge from uncertainty. As the old Yugoslavia was crumbling, each of its constituents developed its own brand of escapism, replete with revenant nationalist leaders, mostly fictional "history", a newly discovered language and a pledge to fate to reconstitute a lost empire at its apex. Thus, Kosovar nationalism was qualitatively the kin and kith of the Serb or Croat sub-species. Paradoxically, though rather predictably, they fed on each other. Milosevic was as much a creation of Kosovar nationalism as Thaci was the outcome of Milosevic's policies. The KLA's Stalinist-Maoist inspiration was in emulation of the paranoid and omphaloskeptic regime in Albania - but it owed its existence to Belgrade's intransigence. The love-hate relationship between the Kosovars and the Albanians is explored elsewhere ("The Myths of Great Albania -Part I"). The Serbs, in other words, were as terrified of Kosovar irredentism as the Kosovars were of Serb dominion. Their ever more pressing and menacing appeals to Belgrade gave the regime the pretext it needed to intervene and Milosevic the context he sought in which to flourish.

In February 1989, armed with a new constitution which abolished Kosovo's autonomy (and, a year later, its stunned government), Milosevic quelled a miners' hunger strike and proceeded to institute measures of discrimination against the Albanians in the province. Discrimination was nothing new to Kosovo. The Albanians themselves initiated such anti-Serb measures following their new gained constitutional autonomy in 1974. Now the tide has turned and thousands of Albanians who refused to sign new-fangled "loyalty vows" were summarily sacked and lost their pension rights (the most sacred possession of "Homo Socialismus"). Albanian media were shuttered and schools vacated when teacher after teacher refused to abide by the Serb curriculum. After a while, The Serbs re-opened primary schools and re-hired Albanian teachers, allowing them to teach in Albanian. But secondary schools and universities remained closed. These acts of persecution did not meet with universal disapproval. Greece, for instance, regarded the Albanians as natural allies of the Turks and, bonded by common enmity, of the Macedonians and Bulgarians. Itself comprised of lands claimed by Albania, Greece favoured a harsh and final resolution of the Albanian question. There can be little doubt that Macedonia - feeling besieged by its Albanian minority - regarded Milosevic as the perfect antidote. Macedonia actively assisted Yugoslavia to break the embargo imposed on it by the Western powers. Milosevic was not, therefore, a pariah, as retroactive history would have it. Rather, he was the only obstacle to a "Great Albania". Within less than a year, in 1990, the Democratic League of Kosovo (LDK) was able to claim a membership of 700,000 members. Hashim Thaci ("Snake"), Sulejman Selimi ("Sultan") and other leaders of the KLA were then 20 years of age. Years of Swiss education notwithstanding, they witnessed first hand Kosovo's tumultuous transformation into the engine of disintegration of the Yugoslav Federation. It was a valuable lesson in the dialectic of history, later to be applied brilliantly. The leader of the LDK, the forever silk scarfed and mellifluous Dr. Ibrahim Rugova, compared himself openly and blushlessly to Vaclav Havel and the Kosovar struggle to the Velvet Revolution. This turgid and risible analogy deteriorated further as the Kosovar Velvet was stained by the blood of innocents. Dr. Rugova was an unfazed dreamer in a land of harsh nightmares. The Sorbonne was never a good preparatory school to the academy of Balkan reality. Rugova's ideals were good and noble - Gandhi-like passive resistance, market economics, constructive (though uncompromising and limited to the authorities) dialogue with the enemy. They might still prevail. And during the early 1990s he was all the rage and the darling of the West. But he failed to translate his convictions into tangible achievements. His biggest failure might have been his inability to ally himself with a "Big Power" - as did the Croats, the Slovenes and the Bosnians. This became painfully evident with the signature of the Dayton Accord in 1995 which almost completely ignored Kosovo and the Kosovars.

True, the West conditioned the total removal of sanctions against Yugoslavia on its humane treatment of its Albanian citizens and encouraged the Albanians, though circumspectly, to stand for their rights. But there was no explicit support even for the re- instatement of Kosovo's 1974 status, let alone for the Albanians' dreams of statehood. In the absence of such support - financial and diplomatic - Kosovo remained an internal problem of Yugoslavia, a renegade province, a colony of terror and drug trafficking. The Kosovars felt betrayed as they have after the Congress of Berlin and the Balkan Wars. Perhaps securing such a sponsor was a lost cause to start with (though the KLA succeeded where Rugova failed) - but then Rugova misled his people into sanguinous devastation by declaring the "Kosovo Republic" prematurely. His choice of pacifism may have been dictated by the sobering sights from the killing fields of Bosnia - and proved his pragmatism. But his decision to declare a "Republic" was pre-mature, self-aggrandizing and in vacuo. The emergence of a political alternative - tough, realistic, methodical and structured - was not only a question of time but a welcome development. There is no desolation like the one inflicted by sincere idealists.

In 1991, Rugova set about organizing a Republic from a shabby office building and the opposite "Cafe Mimoza". His government constructed makeshift schools and hospitals, parallel networks of services staffed by the Serb-dispossessed, capitalizing on a sweeping wave of volunteerism. Albania recognized this nascent state immediately and international negotiators (such as Lord Owen and Cyrus Vance) conferred with its self-important figurehead (for instance, in September 1992). Successive American administrations funnelled money into the province and warnings against "ethnic cleansing" were flung at Yugoslavia as early as 1993. Internally, Serb extremists in both Belgrade and Pristina prevented Serb moderates (like then Yugoslav Prime Minister Milan Panic) from re-opening the schools of Kosovo and reducing the massive, Northern-Ireland-like Serb military presence in it. An agreement signed in 1997 by both Rugova and Milosevic to abolish the parallel Albanian education system and re- open all the educational facilities in Kosovo was thus frustrated. Kosovo fractured along ethnic lines with complete segregation of the Serbs and the Albanians. To avoid contact with the Serbs was an unwritten rule, breached only by prominent intellectuals. The "Kosovo Republic" was far from advocating ethnic cleansing or even outright independence (there were powerful voices in favour of a federal solution within Yugoslavia) - but not far from re-inventing an inverted version of apartheid.

It faced the ubiquitous problem of all the other republics of former Yugoslavia - not one of them was ethnically "pure". To achieve a tolerable level of homogeneity, they had to resort to force. Rugova advocated the measured application of the insidious powers of discrimination and segregation. But, once the theme was set, variations were bound to arise. Though dominant for some years, Rugova and the LDK did not monopolize the Kosovar political landscape. Following a poll in 1998, boycotted by all other political parties, which resulted in the re-election of Rugova as president - the disenchanted and disillusioned had plenty of choice. Some joined the KLA, many more joined Rexhep Qosaj's (Qosje) United Democratic Movement (LBD). The political scene in Kosovo in the 1980s and early 1990s was vibrant and kaleidoscopic. Adem Demaci - the Marxist ideologue of the KLA, a long time political prisoner and the founder of the "revolutionary Movement for the Merger of Albanians" in 1964 - established the Parliamentary Party of Kosovo (PPK) before he handed it over to Bajram Kosumi, a dissident and another venerable political prisoner. The PPK was co-founded by Veton Surroi, the English-speaking, US- educated, son of a Yugoslav diplomat and editor of Koha Ditore, the Albanian language daily. The Albanians are not a devout lot, but even Islam had its political manifestations in Kosovo.

The 1981 demonstrations gave rise to the Popular Movement for Kosovo (LPK). Apparently, it gave rise to the KLA, probably in 1993, possibly in Pristina. Whatever the circumstances, the KLA congregated in Decani, the region surrounding Pristina. Two years after the Golgovac attack - it tackled a Serb border patrol (April) and a Serb Police Station (August) in 1995. Light weapons and a crude bomb were used. The Serbs were not impressed - but they were provoked into an escalating series of ever more hideous massacres of Albanian villagers (the turning point might have been the slaughter by the Serbs of the Jashari clan in Prekaz). Machiavellian analysts ascribe to the KLA a devilish plot to provoke the Serbs into the ethnic cleansing that finally introduced the West to tortured Kosovo. The author of this article, aware of the Balkan's lack of propensity for long term planning and predilection for self- defeating vengeance - believes that, to the KLA, it was all a serendipitous turn of events. Whatever the case may be, the KLA became sufficiently self-assured and popular to advertise itself on the BBC as responsible for some of the clashes - a rite of passage common to all self-respecting freedom fighters.

The selection of targets by the KLA is very telling. At first it concentrated its fiery intentions only upon military and law and order personnel. Its reluctance to effect civilians was meritorious. A subtle shift occurred when the Serbs began to re-populate Kosovo with Serbs displaced from the Krajina region. Alarmed by the intent - if not by the execution (only 10,000 Serbs or so were settled in Kosovo) - the KLA reacted with a major drive to arm itself and by attacking Serb settlements in Klina, Decani and Djakovica and a refugee camp in Baboloc. The KLA attacks were militarily sophisticated and co-ordinated. Serb policemen were ambushed on the road between Glogovac and Srbica. The Serb counter-offensive resulted in dozens of Albanian victims - civilians, men, women and children (the "Drenica Massacre"). The KLA tried to defend villages aligned along a Pec-Djakovica line and thus disrupt the communications and logistics of Serb Military Police and Special (Ministry of Interior) Police units. The main arena of fighting was a recurrent one - in the 1920s, Albanian guerillas, based in the hills, attacked the Serbs in Drenica.

What finally transformed the KLA from a wannabe IRA into the fighting force that it has become was the disintegration of Albania. History is the annals of irony. The break-up of the KLA'a role model - led to the resurgence of its intellectual progeny. The KLA absorbed thousands of weapons from the looted armouries of the Albanian military and police. Angry mobs attacked these ordnances following the collapse of pyramid investment schemes that robbed one third of the population of all their savings. The arms ended up in the trigger-happy hands of drug lords, mafiosi, pimps, smugglers and freedom fighters from Tetovo in Macedonia to Durres in Albania and from Pristina in Kosovo to the Sandzak in Serbia. The KLA was so ill-equipped to cope with this fortuitous cornucopia - that it began to trade weapons, a gainful avocation it found hard to dislodge ever since. The convulsive dissolution of Albania led to changes in high places. Sali Berisha was deposed and replaced by Rexhep Mejdani, an even more sympathetic ear to separatist demands. Berisha himself later allowed the KLA to use his property (around Tropoja) as staging grounds and supported the cause (though not the "Marxist- Leninist" KLA or its self-appointed government) unequivocally.

At a certain stage, he even accused Fatos Nano, his rival and the Prime Minister of Albania of being the enemy of the Albanian people for not displaying the same unmitigated loyalty to the idea of an independent Kosovo, under Rugova and Bujar Bukoshi, Rugova's money man (and Prime Minister in exile). The KLA was able to expand its presence in Albania, mainly in its training and operations centres near Kukes, Ljabinot (near Tirana) and Bajram Curi. Albania had a growing say in the affairs of the KLA as it recomposed itself - it was instrumental in summoning the KLA to Rambouillet, for instance. This armed revelry coupled with the rising fortunes of separatism, led Robert Gelbard, the senior US envoy to the Balkan to label the KLA - "a terrorist organization". The Serbs took this to mean a licence to kill, which they exercised dutifully in Drenica. Promptly, the USA changed course and the indomitable Madeleine Albright switched parties, saying: "We are not going to stand by and watch the Serbian authorities do in Kosovo what they can no longer get away with in Bosnia".

This stern consistency was followed by a tightening of the embargo against Yugoslavia and by a threat of unilateral action. For the first time in history, the Kosovars finally had a sponsor - and what a sponsor! The mightiest of all. As for Milosevic, he felt nauseatingly betrayed. Not only was he not rewarded for his role as the Dayton peacemaker - he was faced with new sanctions, an ultimatum and a direct threat on the very perpetuation of his regime. The KLA mushroomed not because it attacked Serbs (very sporadically and to a minuscule effect). It ballooned because it delivered where Rugova didn't even promise. It delivered an alliance with the USA against the hated Serbs. It delivered weapons. It delivered hope and a plan. It delivered vengeance, the self-expression of the downtrodden. It was joined by near and far and, by its own reckoning, its ranks swelled to 50,000 warriors. More objective experts put the figure of active fighters at one fourth this number. Still, it is an impressive number in a population of 1.7 million Albanians. During the war, it was joined by 400 overweight suburbanites from North America, Albanian volunteers within an "Atlantic Brigade". It also absorbed Albanians with rich military experience from Serbia and Croatia as well as foreign mercenaries and possibly "Afghanis" (the devout Moslem veterans of the wars in Afghanistan, Lebanon and Bosnia).

The influx of volunteers put pressure on the leadership - both organizational and pecuniary. The KLA - an entrepreneurial start up of insurgency - had matured into a national brand of guerilla. It revamped itself, creating directorates, offices and officers, codes and procedures, a radio station and a news agency, an electronic communications interception unit, a word of mouth messenger service and a general military staff, headed since February 1999 by "Sultan" and divided to seven operational zones. In short, it reacted to changing fortunes by creating a bureaucracy. Concurrently, it armed itself to its teeth with more sophisticated weapons than ever before (though it was still short of medical supplies, ammunition and communications equipment). The KLA now had shoulder-fired anti-tank rocket launchers (like the German "Armburst"), mortars, recoilless rifles, anti-aircraft machine-guns and automatic assault rifles. Some of the weapons were even bought from Serb army officers or imported through Hungary. All this required a financial phase transition. That the KLA has benefited, directly and knowingly, from money tainted by drug trafficking and smuggling of both goods and people across borders - can be in little doubt. But I find the proposition that the KLA itself has traded in drugs unlikely. The long-established Albanian clans which control the "Balkan Route" - the same clans that faced down the fearsome Turkish gangs on their own turf - would have never let an upstart such as the KLA take over any of their territory and its incumbent profits.

The KLA might have traded weapons. It might have dabbled in smuggling. It might have received donations from drug lords. In this, it is no different from all major modern guerilla movements. But it did not peddle drugs - not because of moral scruples but because of the lethal competition it would have encountered. That the KLA had to resort to such condemnable methods of financing is not surprising. Rugova refused to share with it the funds abroad managed by Bujar Bukoshi on behalf of the "Kosovar People". It had no other means of income and, as opposed to Rugova, it could act only clandestinely and surreptitiously. The West was no great help either - contrary to the myth spun by the Serbs. Another source of income was the 3% "War Tax" levied on 500,000 Kosovar Albanians and their businesses in the diaspora (though most of it ended up under Bukoshi's and Rugova's control). Officially collected by the People's Movement of Kosovo, the ultimate use of the proceeds was the sustenance of the shadow republic. The KLA made use of the voluntary and not so voluntary donations to the Swiss- based fund "Homeland Calls" (or "Motherland is Calling").

The USA - the pragmatic superpower that it is - began to divert its attention from the bumbling and hapless Rugova to the emerging KLA. The likes of Gelbard and, his senior, Richard Holbrooke, held talks with its youthful political director, Hashim Thaci - suave, togged up and earnest, he was just what the doctor ordered. To discern that a showdown in Kosovo was near required no prophetic powers. The KLA might come handy to espy the land and to divert the Serb forces should the need arise. "The Clinton administration has diligently put everything in place for intervention. In fact, by mid-July US-NATO planners had completed contingency plans for intervention, including air strikes and the deployment of ground troops. All that was missing was a sufficiently brutal or tragic event to trigger the process. As a senior Defence Department official told reporters on July 15, 'If some levels of atrocities were reached that would be intolerable, that would probably be a trigger.'" - wrote Gary Dempsey from the Cato Institute in October 1998. The author of this article published another one in the "Middle East Times" in August 1998 in which the Kosovo conflict was delineated in reasonably accurate detail ("The Plight of the Kosovar"). The article was written in April 1998 - by which time the outline of things to come was plain.

All along, the KLA prepared itself to be a provisional government in-waiting. It occupied regions of Kosovo, established roadblocks, administration, welfare offices. Its members operated nocturnally. The Serb reaction got ever harsher until finally it threatened not only to wipe the KLA out of existence but also to depopulate the parts of the province controlled by it. In September 1998, NATO threatened air strikes against Serbia, following reports of a massacre of women and children in the village of Gornje Obrinje. This led to the October 20th agreement with Belgrade, which postulated a reduction in the levels of Yugoslav troops in the province. The KLA was all but ignored in these events. Rugova was not. He was often consulted by the American negotiators and treated like a head of state. The message was deafeningly clear: the KLA was a pawn on the chessboard of war. It had no place where the civilized and the responsible tread. It had no raison d'etre in peacetime. It reacted by hitting a number of "Serb collaborators" (mostly of Gorani extract - Muslim Slavs who speak a dialect of Albanian). One of the disposed was Enver Maloku, Rugova's close associate.