Final Settlement

Now that the shooting has temporarily stopped and the victims of the showdown at Drenica have been buried, politicians and diplomats have taken the matter into their own hands.  Still, something has changed- Ibrahim Rugova is reviewing the makeup of the negotiations team, Ratko Markovic and other comrades are patiently awaiting fellow negotiators in No. 2 Vidovdanska Street, while international peace negotiators are being replaced daily in Belgrade and Pristina.  The time that remains will show the fruits of their labor or will usher in a new escalation of the conflict.  In any case, this cease-fire should be used for considering the causes and effects of what happened in the first two weeks of March, when in the showdown between the forces of MUP and armed Albanian groups at least eighty people died, most of who were civilians.

Even now it is fairly clear that the bloodshed is the result of a string of bad estimates by the Serbian and Albanian leadership which, each on its own, decided at one point that a little blood could bring in a certain political profit for them.  Let us begin with the Serbian side. Last year the media began more and more frequently to report on the first armed conflicts in Drenica, warning that events could easily get out of hand, and the regime ignored these warnings, brushing all such reports under the rug.  “There isn’t an inch of Serbian territory that is not under police control”, bragged MUP General Radivoje Markovic less than three months ago. Some of his colleagues publicly assessed the security situation in the region to be “satisfactory”.  With time, officials began admitting that something is happening in Kosovo, but all forces were trying to minimize the problem: saying either that it’s nothing serious, that terrorism is a global phenomenon, that it will one day be taken care of “the way it is done in the world”... Opposition parties, busy with haggling over seats in cabinets and in parliaments, mainly tried not to spoil the game with unpleasant questions.

As soon as the smoke above Prekaza cleared, it suddenly became apparent that MUP had had a pretty clear picture of what was happening all along.  Even on the first day of actions on the estate Jasiri family, government media announced information from Adem Jasiri’s file with details about his movements during the past several months.  These days in Politika we can read a sensationalized version of the MUP report in which the smallest incident between armed Albanian groups and the police is recounted — going back several years.  If all that had been known by officials responsible, the logical question is why nothing had been done earlier, before the Jasiri and their friends managed to arm themselves well, to organize, and to consolidate their positions.  “We had him fixed in a sniper’s sight several month ago, but at the last moment orders came not to shoot,” stated a MUP source to this journalist several days ago.

This question calls forth unpleasant memories of the “Spegelj case” from 1991, when the army was shooting a film about the arming of HDZ, and politicians obstructed any action on the basis of that information.  The answer in both cases is the same- now, as then, it was estimated that the enemy should be allowed to arm himself and to organize, while upcoming conflicts would be used for achieving political objectives.  Several months ago, sources close to the regime were saying that the appearance of terrorism in Kosovo is not such a negative thing for our cause “because the whole world will see that the Shiptars are terrorists”.  We saw ultimate developments in recent days.  Nor is there an upside lacking: Serbian public opinion has been homogenized in an unprecedented way, while Milo Djukanovic, whose government includes Albanian representatives, is seriously threatened leading into the Montenegrin elections.  It only remains to explain the reasons for this strategy to the families of killed policemen who, according to some sources, number more than the officially released figures.

However, we should not be enticed into believing that MUP was doing its job well, and that politicians merely stood in its way.  Police efforts to avoid civilian casualties in Likosani and Prekaza were essentially sloppy and symbolic.  It is true that in Prekaza the Police gave a one hour deadline to the Family Jasiri for evacuating their woman and children and for handing over their weapons, but it is also true that they cared little whether that call would be taken seriously.  Anyone who knows the Albanians of Drenica, if only superficially, knows that among them it is considered a great shame if a stranger gets only a glimpse of their women.  Therefore, it was logical to assume that those unable to defend themselves would not be allowed to leave the estate. That is why they should have been pursued as hostages- not as terrorists.  Additionally, even if they had not persisted in protecting the entrance to their home, what was the Jasiri Family supposed to expect after the incident in Likosani, when ten members of the Ahmeti Family were taken alive from their estate only to be found dead two days later in the morgue in Pristina?  When it is taken into account that in past several months policemen allowed themselves far too frequently to be ambushed, it turns out that the way in which MUP acted indicates lack of concern for human life and/or total lack of knowledge of the terrain, manners and mentality in the field of operation, which is certainly catastrophic.

Finally, we should not forget the scandalous behavior of court officials who broke the clear and unequivocal laws of the Republic of Serbia when they failed to order autopsies of those killed and did not conduct investigations into the murders.  The law states that autopsies must be carried out as soon as there is the smallest suspicion of violent death, after which an investigation to  ascertain criminal responsibility must be carried out.  In Likosani and Prekaza the dead were either left to lie as they were or  simply delivered to their families to do with the bodies as they pleased.  The fact that someone is officially designated as a terrorist does not give the state the right to behave toward his or her corpse as if it were a carcass.  A state which breaks its own laws so crudely and so publicly should not be surprised that no one believes public officials who say that the state behaves in “accordance with the highest world standards”.

As far as the Albanian side is concerned, it is unlikely that on their political scene a single actor can honestly say that he did everything in his power to prevent the escalation of violence.  Occupied by maneuvers inside his own party and by tours throughout Western capitals, Ibrahim Rugova is still trying to avoid admitting that the Liberation Army of Kosovo (UCK) exists, as well as not condemning its methods.  Until recently he claimed that UCK is only a mask behind which the State Security Department of Serbia is hiding. Now he has begun to admit that in Kosovo there are many “frustrated people”, but that according to him they are neither armed nor organized.  During that time, other Albanian politicians, inside and outside of the Democratic Federation of Kosovo, have been openly flirting with UCK, hoping that this could bring them a nomination for the position of leader of the political wing of this organization: Bujar Bukosi, Hidajet Hiseni, Adem Demaci, and Ljuljeta Becira represent the most adamant examples.  When the pictures of corpses from Likosani and Prekaz began to circulate around the world, everyone shouted in unison: “Ethnic cleansing!”  and quickly demanded for NATO intervention.  On Thursday, March 5, when a shortage of cigarettes and flour occurred in Pristina, and the shadow of war loomed over Kosovo, none of them attempted to address the public with calls for restraint nor did any of them call for swift negotiations.  On the contrary, that entire day the Kosovo Information Center (KIC), which is close to Rugova, kept feeding fake news about tanks, street battles in certain suburbs of Pristina, about burned villages and thousands of refugees from Drenica, and kept heating an otherwise sweltering atmosphere.  Similar behavior was observed during the entire week that followed with synchronized efforts to represent Drenica as “a new Srebrenica”, with persistent stories about rapes, mass graves, and similar attributes of the war in Bosnia.  Only when it become completely clear that there will be no foreign military intervention, Rugova and his associates began giving signals that they are considering negotiations.

Finally, there is the biggest unknown of the Kosovo equation — the infamous UCK which after everything can claim to be a step closer to its objective: a general armed rebellion of Albanians in Kosovo.  Using the Jarisi Clan in Drenica, UCK successfully applied the method which should be well known by the MUP of Serbia because it was used in the initial phases of war in Croatia and Bosnia during mobilizations of rural Serbs in the battle against Croatian and Bosnian MUP’s.  It looks something like this-- armed “confidence men” are sent to warn villagers that police actions are planed in their area.  Confidence men deal out some weapons and persuade villagers to set an ambush for the “aggressors”. As soon as the first routine police patrol passes by, the shooting begins.  The result is several dead policemen, confidence men continue on, and the village has nothing left but to prepare for decisive defense.

Simple but effective. This method proved equally successful everywhere in the Balkans, but what is strange is that the same people who applied it so successfully elsewhere several years ago are now falling pray to it.  These days news is arriving from reliable sources regarding UCK efforts that are now well under way for distributing their units along the Serbian-Albanian border, near Djakovica, Decana i Kline.  Should it come to that, conflicts in that area will be incomparably more complex than those in Drenica because of the proximity of the border and the possible involvement of the regular FRY and Albanian armies.

There only remains the hope that Serbian and Albanian political leaders will realize that the time for cynical calculations is up, and that the fire in Kosovo must now hurriedly be put out.  Serbian authorities would go far were they to suspend actions and to conduct a thorough investigation into events in Drenica.  The government’s call to negotiations would then get far greater weight. Albanians would then have to realize that NATO will not come to their aid, and, were they to opt for armed conflict, they would have to fight alone with many casualties and an uncertain outcome.  Knowing who we are dealing with, perhaps it is too much to expect such reasonableness and responsibility.

Correction

Even one’s own eyes can sometimes deceive.  Thus, in last weeks issue, a VREME reporter wrote in the article “Death Dance” that he “clearly saw that Adem Jasiri’s throat was cut”.  It was later ascertained that the wound on Jasiri’s throat came from a bullet, but it was too late by then to correct the apparent error.
We apologize to our readers for this error.