Bloody Deal

The body count was: two dead and four wounded, one helicopter nearly downed and property damage in several residential buildings. During all that time, Serb and Albanian political leaders increased their efforts to confuse their otherwise crazed peoples and the ever more worried international community.

The new wave of violence began on Thursday, January 22, at five o'clock in the afternoon, in the Village of Donji Prekaz, near Srbica, on the occasion of an unsuccessful police attempt to enter that area for the first time since 1992. The village is located on the very outskirts of Srbica, near an abandoned hunter's ammunition factory, where the first house in the village belongs to the Jasara Family, whose two members have recently been sentenced to twenty years of incarceration because of their membership in the Liberation Army of Kosovo (UCK). According to on site reports, the police had established a base in the factory several days earlier; before daybreak they cut through the factory fence and attempted to penetrate Prekaz through that route. The rouse was not successful - fierce gunfire awaited them from the Jasara Family dwelling and the surrounding woods. After a half hour of gun fighting, during which even hand grenades were used, the police were forced to pull back into the factory. There is no information whether any of the policemen or members of UCK were wounded in this initial conflict, but two women from the Jasara family were hurt, while on the road near the police base, the body of worker Hisen Madjolija, who was on his way to work when a fatal bullet struck him, was found. One day later, MUP of Serbia attempted to wash its hands of the failed operation with unconvincing reports in which it claimed that there was no police intervention, and that Albanian gangs were fighting amongst themselves.

TWO RESIDENTS: On Thursday afternoon, on the Klin-Srbica Highway, the forty-seven-year-old Desimir Vasic, Council Member for Zvecan, was surprised and murdered, most likely out of revenge. Because no one from the village wanted to alert the police for them to come and conduct an investigation, the late Vasic lay the entire day and night riddled with bullets on the roadside near the Village of Josanica; this was done only on Friday, under the protection of helicopters and armed vehicles. Already by Sunday, UCK attacked the station in Malisevo (also in the Drenica Region) and wounded two policemen, forcing the others to temporarily withdraw from the village. On Tuesday, fifty kilometers from Pristina, police had seriously wounded an Albanian youth under circumstances which still remain unclear.

In short, this would be the sum total for the last week of the holy month of Ramadan in Kosovo. The web of violence is spreading ever faster and faster, following its own logic which has ever less and less to do with what the politicians are saying, while what politicians are doing and saying has ever less and less to do with what is really happening in the region. And while Serb authorities are trying to sweep the whole problem under the rug labeled terrorism, the leader of the largest Albanian party in Kosovo adamantly claims that the Liberation Army of Kosovo does not exist and that the Serb police is provoking peace-loving Albanians. In the meantime, Rugova's opposition is flirting, within the context of the Albanian cause, with the "liberators", while the Serbian opposition is demanding that Milosevic resort to energetic police operations. There is an impression that no one has enough sense to admit that in Drenica there is an insurgence in progress in which virtually the entire local population is participating, and that this insurgence is the result of many years of refusal by Rugova and Milosevic to desist from their maximal demands and begin negotiating. For years an empty space has been in the making between two utopian visions of Kosovo as "the Serb holy land" and as "the Albanian independent and neutral Republic of Kosovo". Today that space is populated, and the only two residents are MUP of Serbia and UCK. Both Milosevic and Rugova seem to think that the wisest thing for them is not to exit their bunkers until things settle down on their own.

In such a situation, there is little surprise in the lack of success in attempts by international diplomacy to initiate a process of negotiations. A case in point is the Parliamentary Session of the European Council in Strasbourg to which a delegation of FRY had always been invited as an equal participant. On Tuesday, January 27, only one day before the session, the front page headlines of government media carried Tanjug's foreign policy commentary which was reminiscent, in its tone and message, of the letter with which the former FRY answered Resolution IB some fifty years ago. In the commentary there is first made mention of the fact that the European Council has "a warped and one-sided view of the situation in Kosovo and Metohija", and that the only problem in Kosovo is the "separatist platform of certain Albanian parties". After listing supposed FRY accomplishments in establishing peace and stability in the region, there is again made mention of the fact that Kosovo is "an internal problem for Serbia and Yugoslavia". On the basis of this commentary, it seemed certain that FRY would not heed the invitation. Already by the afternoon of the same day, it was announced that our country would be represented in Strasbourg by Ljubisa Ristic (JUL), Ivica Dacic (SPS) and Milan Komnenic (SPO). The mentioned threesome did actually participate in the Council session, but their attempts to convince European parliamentarians to go along with Tanjug fell through. In the final resolution, European parliamentarians denounced the armed UKC actions in Kosovo, as well as the Serb led repression of many years there. Our delegation (whose members were cut off because they exceeded their time limit) immediately protected itself from such a conclusion, falling back on the formulation about the "warped view" which Europe harbors concerning Kosovo.

HAGGLING: In actual fact, it is unrealistic to expect any diplomatic or negotiating success until Rugova and Milosevic do not feel that their personal positions are seriously threatened. For now, Milosevic is convinced that his support for Milorad Dodik and Biljana Plavsic leaves enough room for resisting western pressures where Kosovo is concerned. Rugova, for his part, is calculating that the eventual escalation of the conflict will open up possibilities for putting Kosovo under some kind of international protection, for which his party has been lobbying for some years now. The possibility that such a development could in some way be agreeable for Milosevic, should also not be dismissed: he is calculating that maybe he should wait for chaos to happen, only to open wide our doors to OEBS, UN or whoever, and allow them to put out the fire, and then charge them the supposed peacemaking shift and cooperation. Neither Rugova, nor Milosevic would be to phased by a spreading, step by step, of the conflict into Macedonia, and perhaps beyond: the bigger the headache for the West, the more room there will be for haggling on the "constructive factor".

At the same time, it is quite clear that both are perfectly ready to pay the price for such policies in the blood of the people whom them claim to represent. The most complex problem is that these peoples are supporting in numbers such strategies, which is evidenced by a recently conducted survey. Those results testify that Rugova would convincingly win presidential elections in the "Republic of Kosovo" were they to be held tomorrow, and that nearly half of the Serbs believe that the Kosovo problem could be solved by massive expulsion of Albanians across Prokletija, while the other half is for the status quo. Hence it could easily turn out that the one dinar coin for "payoff in blood", left by UCK beside the body of Desimir Vasic, is money badly spent.