A Bloody Farce

That day, a Serbian police statement said, a police patrol was attacked at 10:45 a.m. in the village of Dubrava near Decani with automatic weapons and grenade launchers. Wounded policeman Miodrag Otovic died on the way to the hospital. The attackers fled to the nearby villages of Grmocelj and Glodjani when police reinforcements arrived, barricaded themselves into houses there and started firing at the police. The firefight lasted into the night with another two policemen wounded. The Kosovo information center claimed later that strong police forces attacked the villages. The center said the alleged attack started at the same time as the police statement said, but did not confirm or deny the ambush. In Pristina, there was talk of four dead among the ethnic Albanians. The MUP confirmed it had losses but did not say how many. The clash spread to other places during the day. The MUP said the terrorists surrounded in Glodjani got reinforcements from Grmocelj, Ratis and Rznic. The police drove those reinforcements back towards the village of Jablanica, which is the local equivalent of Donji Prekaz since the police haven’t dared go there for years. Ethnic Albanian sources claimed there was shooting in Babloc as well. The MUP did not say that, but the provincial information secretariat said the Serb refugees in that village were evacuated to Djakovica. In Djakovica, movements of police units were seen moving out of the town, and a Serb house was attacked at around nine that evening with automatic weapons and hand grenades.

The MUP statement said one terrorist was arrested in its operation. It named the terrorist as Rasim Selimani, head of the local LDK board in Glodjani. Selimani told the police that the police were ambushed by a group brought in from Albania. He also revealed the locations of several bases and fortresses where large quantities of weapons and equipment were found. The state media reported that one terrorist, known as Sultan, was killed.

Those events started just a few hours after several hundred, mainly foreign, journalists left Kosovo. The first to leave once they saw that the shooting had stopped were the TV crews. Several foreign crews, who got news of the new clashes while still in Pristina, headed out to the area of the clashes. They said they got to the village of Glodjani at about 4:30 that afternoon. They drove up to a police armored transporter where one policeman with an automatic weapon gestured that they should go back and turned to fire to one side. While they were turning their cars around someone opened fire on them and an AFP car had a hand grenade lobbed at it. No one was injured.

Interestingly, Tanjug reported that all this did not happen in Glodjani but in Rznic which was on the edge of the area of the clashes. That was the only incident that day in that immediate area. The journalists’ convoy faced another unusual situation. Two hours earlier while they were passing through a police check point near the village of Kijevo on the Pristina-Pec road, that check point came under attack. The attackers emptied their automatic weapons at the police and fled. One policeman was seriously injured. No other incidents were reported there either.

While all this was happening in Kosovo, a MUP spokesman in Belgrade was saying that police special anti-terrorist units had withdrawn from the Drenica area and were in their bases. In truth, the journalists who have been swarming over the Drenica area for days saw no trace of them for days. Drenica was under the guard of police special purpose units which can be manned by any policeman in Serbia.

The latest clashes happened a day before the Contact Group was due to meet to decide what to do to Milosevic.

The Pristina 98 protest by Serbian students started on Monday. Protest council head Zivojin Rakocevic read out the students’ demands that morning in the Pristina Student center building. The first was to regulate the education system under existing laws and in accord with international conventions on the rights of national minorities. The proclamation ended saying that any secret agreement on education with the ethnic Albanians would be treason and the start of the sale of Kosovo and Metohija. A protocol on the implementation of the education agreement was signed two hours earlier just 200 meters away in the university library building. That document, which gave a precise schedule for the return of ethnic Albanian students to university facilities became the focal point of the Serbian and Montenegrin protest an hour later. Pristina university Rector Radivoje Papovic said at the protest that “the people who signed the agreement and the people who intend to implement it should not come to the university in Pristina where anyone can come to study but in Serbian”.

The document that drew so much anger from the Kosovo Serbs (and the Serbs whose families have always lived in Kosovo who remember the years 1981 to 1989 when they were severely persecuted by the ethnic Albanians) was signed by Serbian minister Ratomir Vico and Rugova’s advisor Fehmi Agani for the ethnic Albanians. Both are members of the 3+3 group which couldn’t reach agreement on key points in implementing the agreement for 20 months. The document signed on Monday was the first the public knows about which includes dates and numbers. It says the first place the ethnic Albanians students will return to is the Albanology institute. Later they will gradually go back to other university facilities and classes will go back to normal by the start of the next school year. Classes will be held in separate shifts in Serbian and Albanian.

Serb students and the Pristina university council don’t want to accept this plan. They debated whether to shut themselves into the university buildings to prevent the implementation of the agreement but decided that if it goes ahead, they will leave.

The return of Zekerijah Cana, Rexhep Qosja and Ibrahim Rugova to their former offices at the Albanology institute would have great symbolic value to the ethnic Albanians. The signing of the protocol has raised their spirits. Interestingly, some of the ethnic Albanians who openly opposed Rugova’s pacifist policies earlier said it would be stupid to launch attacks.

Rugova’s series of triumphs started at the ethnically pure elections for a parliament and president of the self-proclaimed republic of Kosovo. Those elections, boycotted by his opponents who were headed by Adem Demaqi, saw a turnout of almost 90% of the registered ethnic Albanian voters. Rugova as the only presidential candidate won 99.23% of the vote. Most ethnic Albanians who turned out did not vote for Rugova as much as they voted against Milosevic and his regime. Most foreign observers viewed the vote in the same way. No one cared that the electoral rolls were drawn up by Rugova’s LDK or that not being on the rolls was no reason not to vote. It didn’t matter that some voters had ID cards while other had no identification at all. “We know our voters,” one election commission member said. The voters in turn know their family members and in a lot of cases, the head of the family voted for everyone in his household. Although Rugova’s opponents said the elections were undemocratic none of them dared do anything against them and risk being branded a traitor.

The Serbian police also contributed to Rugova’s election campaign. They confiscated 100,000 ballots with Rugova’s name marked on each days before the elections. The ethnic Albanians are convinced those ballots were frauds.

Rugova used his victory to take the initiative. On Tuesday he named an advisory team to prepare a platform for negotiations with a Serbian team. Rugova included all his opponents in the team. Although some of the members of the 15 man team weren’t consulted, the body met for the first time on Wednesday. Most probably they’ll formulate a platform which will allow talks on a transitional solution such as a third republic within the FRY. Rugova’s only platform so far was an independent Kosovo. He has to start negotiating because of international pressure and the danger of an ethnic war which could turn out tougher opponents than he’s got now. He needs a flexible platform but does not want to be the first to say he’s temporarily abandoning national goals. This way his opponents have to be the ones to say that.

That solution won’t be bad for Milosevic, because it includes constitutional changes which he likes so much and new elections at the federal and Kosovo level. He needs two things to succeed. Strong international pressure to justify concessions at home and financial aid quickly to stabilize Kosovo.

In the meantime, Kosovo is calm again. There were no reports of new clashes and the student demonstrations ended peacefully on Wednesday.