The Ultimatum

The latest events in Kosovo's region of Drenica have changed Serbia's political picture and status completely. The interior ministry released a statement to the effect that the nucleus of the Kosovo Liberation Army (UCE) has been destroyed in clashes which took place between February 28th, and March 1st, and again on March 5th. The statement said the UCE leader, Adem Jasari, previously sentenced to 20 years of imprisonment for killing two police officers, was killed in the fighting, adding that his 30 comrades had been captured and that what is left of the his terrorist group fled in panic. It soon became apparent that the line separating terrorism, guerrilla warfare and a popular uprising, on one side, has disappeared, just like the one separating anti-terrorist action, anti-guerrilla operations and reprisals on the other. The Serbian state, rocked by a group of armed rebels who took control in the south of its territory, failed to convince the international community, namely the US administration, that it is represented by a credible government capable of protecting others from itself. Quoting national interest as the reason for the latest developments in Kosovo, Yugoslav president Slobodan Milosevic took a hard-line stand in talks with British foreign minister Robin Cook, who told him just what Serbia's position was. On March 4th, Great Britain, The United States, France, Germany and Italy called a Contact Group meeting on a ministerial level for March 9th in London. The group, originally formed to deal with the Bosnian conflict, was once referred to by the Tanjug news agency as the "so-called" contact group. The United States quickly re-imposed a set of sanctions lifted in February to help the recovery of Serbia's shattered economy. On March 7th, US secretary of state Madeleine Albright said the United States wouldn't tolerate bloodshed in Yugoslavia and that Slobodan Milosevic was responsible for the Kosovo crisis. The United States, Great Britain and France called on the rest of the international community to get involved. The Contact Group convened in London and demanded Milosevic to pull his police troops out of Kosovo within ten days and open a dialogue with the ethnic Albanians or face a new set of economic sanctions. Milosevic's good will to comply with the demand will be assessed on March 25.  Shortly before the demand, the spokesman of the ruling Socialist Party of Serbia (SPS), Ivica Dacic, said a new set of sanctions was nonsense, adding that the entire world would face sanctions if the same standards were applied everywhere.

The sanctions, however, did arrive. Serbia has been told to allow an international investigation and withdraw its police troops, or face economic isolation.

Russia temporarily opposed the idea of applying economic sanctions against Yugoslavia, and its president Boris Yeltsin said he wouldn't allow itself to be plunged into the Kosovo mess. Canada suspended export credits to Yugoslavia, other countries announced punishing measures too. Robert Gelbard came to Belgrade immediately, but Milosevic didn't look too impressed. Hence Gelbard went to Pristina, where ethnic Albanians said they weren't satisfied but thanked him for his assistance.

Naturally, the pro-regime media in Serbia started lobbying for public support for the protection of sovereignty, territorial integrity and the quest to vanquish Albanian terrorism, although that proved to be quite unnecessary.

Having received the demand, the Serbian authorities were apparently unwilling to reply with something like "why do you give your Afro-Americans a hard time". They said the police offensive in Kosovo was launched with the sole intention of curbing a wave of terrorist attacks claiming lives among ethnic Albanians, Serb civilians and policemen in the past 12 months. The government said it had nothing to hide, inviting the International Red Cross and other organizations to open an inquiry into the events in which the recent victims lost their lives. There was no mention of Felipe Gonzales, but some sources say Milosevic is not ready to accept his mediation for the time being. Montenegrin president Milo Djukanovic called on Serbian president Milan Milutinovic and the leaders of Kosovo's ethnic Albanians to face and resolve the problem within Serbia. According to some sources, Milutinovic is prepared to go along with that.

On the other hand, one of the ethnic Albanian leaders, Fehmi Agani, qualified the Serbian government invitation as unaddressed and a kind of a "popular contest". Adem Demaci called the proposal hypocritical, saying that one can't talk with a throat at his neck. However, Ibrahim Rugova's Democratic Alliance of Kosovo said they would accept nothing short of independence, while a statement released by the Kosovo Liberation Army (UCE) said the ethnic Albanians would keep fighting.
Negotiations are nevertheless on the cards. Although a target of world criticism for excessive bloodshed once again, the Serbian side still has a genuine chance of keeping Kosovo. After the disintegration of the former Yugoslavia, Serbia remained the only multi-ethnic state in the territory of the former country. Bosnia is multi-ethnic only formally, as its three ethnic groups live separated in two states - the Moslem-Croat Federation and the Serb Republic. Serbia is defined by its constitution as a democratic country of  "all its citizens", but the Serbian constitution has often proved to be a dead letter. Serbia's largest minority, the ethnic Albanians, have been boycotting all Serbian institutions for some time and formed within Serbia a parallel infrastructure including a separate constitution, parliament and education, financing all that with taxes and donations from foreign-based Albanians.

Serbia's ten-year radical policy in Kosovo, pursued and determined by Slobodan Milosevic, now faces its final test with no ethnic Albanian or foreign support. The Serbian side has conducted a violent and unselective discrimination against ethnic Albanians in its institutions, but the other side only added fuel to the fire by murdering compatriots who stayed loyal to the Serbian authorities and joined the Socialist Party. The trouble is that the entire Kosovo issue is personified by one man and one man only -  Slobodan Milosevic. Many observers tend to think that Milosevic is willing to compromise only when those talking to him come up with a realistic price for his unacceptable behavior. That, however, is not true. A "realistic price" for Milosevic's unacceptable behavior, in other words a new set of economic and political sanctions against Serbia, would only help Milosevic and his corrupt oligarchy to get away with wild privatization and more corruption, while the actual price for his behavior is being paid by Serbia's citizens.
Milosevic now faces an ultimatum and has ten days to withdraw his troops and open a dialogue. The Serbian authorities quite understandably qualified the demand as cynical and unacceptable, because they got public support and the support of relevant political factors to disarm the Kosovo extremists. Another reason for their vehement action probably lies in the fact that no self-respecting state would accept to be told where to keep its own police.

Meanwhile, an implosion happened in the turbulent Balkan region: Albania, the mother country of Kosovo's ethnic Albanians, collapsed. Yugoslavia did close its borders, but part of the weapons used in the Albanian unrest obviously reached Kosovo as contraband. A government reaction aimed at neutralizing the weapons and their effect was quite as expected. Only the Russian foreign minister, Evgeny Primakov, has taken the liberty to speak about arms supplies to Kosovo's ethnic Albanians. The Serbian police quietly point at photographs of Chinese weapons in Albanian warehouses, and add that there were Albanian nationals among the Drenica victims.  Whatever the truth is, the Contact group has deployed an observers mission to the Albanian town of Skadar to monitor the Serbian-Albanian border.

If Serbia were a normal, internationally recognized state, it would have little trouble in convincing the world that Kosovo's ethnic Albanian leaders are not nearly as tolerant and moderate as the world thinks they are. The ethnic Albanian leaders never told the Drenica peasants not to give shelter to terrorist and guerrilla groups, nor did they instruct them not to point their guns at Serbian police during a several-month long blockade of Drenica, during which the region was inaccessible to the authorities and regular traffic.  After ten years of silent restraint, the ethnic Albanians tried to achieve their political objective by showing solidarity with an organization responsible for over 50 terrorist attacks in the past year, plunging the inhabitants of about ten villages in Drenica into armed resistance. Their two leaders Fehmi Agani and Adem Demaci qualified armed actions by ethnic Albanians in Drenica as the right to self-defense. Even moderate leaders such as Veton Suroi took charge of the protest rally in Pristina during the Drenica rebellion, while funerals are being used to depict armed and masked guerrilla as romantic freedom fighters.

It seems that armed ethnic Albanian groups were not entirely unknown to the Serb side. As soon as the UCK issued a statement following one of the funerals in Drenica, some Serb politicians in Belgrade said Adem Jasari was one of the UCK leaders. If the Serbs were able to identify him as one of the leaders so quickly, it is more than likely that Ibrahim Rugova and other ethnic Albanians knew about him too. It is still uncertain whether the investigation will focus on connections between armed fighters and Albanian businessmen, the money, transport routes and which politicians are involved. Serb officials have so far confined their statements to the obvious coordination of armed assaults with peaceful demonstrations, propaganda and international activities. In a serious and well-organized state, where a police offensive is backed by an appropriate investigation, it would be logical to expect that some people in Pristina should be invited to negotiate and others sent to jail.

Rational restraint is still missing, as it has been for the past ten years. Robert Gelbard's official statement calling the UCK a terrorist organization was perhaps interpreted by the Belgrade authorities as a green light to deal with Kosovo's armed rebels. A former police chief, Radmilo Bogdanovic, who curbed ethnic Albanian unrest in Kosovo in 1989, said two weeks before the current crisis broke out that an anti-terrorist police intervention was likely. International reactions were quite restrained at first. The US ambassador in Belgrade expressed his regret over the first few victims, after which news from Kosovo brought back the picture of Serbs as the bad guys. Robert Gelbard called the police intervention brutal, excessive and unlawful during his visit to Pristina. The Federal Republic of Yugoslavia has been told to open an inquiry, while the Hague Tribunal for war crimes in the former Yugoslavia has already launched an investigation into the Drenica bloodshed.

A robust and unselective police intervention in Kosovo was ordered and masterminded by a regime with a very bad international reputation, which is why the ethnic Albanians' strategy to get an international intervention by causing riots almost worked. Adem Demaci, the leader of the Parliamentary Party of Kosovo, greeted the decision made by the Contact Group and said it was clear that "Kosovo is no longer Serbia's internal affair". He wasn't far from the truth, for US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright told the Contact Group ministers it should be made very clear that the Kosovo crisis is not an internal matter of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. "Violence is a breach of universal human rights standards which we have to protect", she said.

It's a bit like the scene in which a kid picks a fight with his big brother behind him. Bearing in mind that both sides in the Kosovo conflict have a number of shortcomings in their positions, Serbia still has a chance of keeping its southern province. Provided that those who represent Serbia show some new virtues, such as tactical and restrained determination.