Floating in Mid Air

Common folks sat in Pristina's pubs and cafes last Sunday as NATO aircraft littered the sky over Macedonia and Albania. In the evening, the town's  Serbs came out with their national flags to celebrate Yugoslavia's 1-0 victory over Iran in the World Cup. One didn't get the impression there was any tension over the possibility of a NATO intervention or violence erupting in the capital of Kosovo.

Looks, however, can be very deceptive. Two Serb policemen were killed in  Obilic only two days earlier, while another two died when a police patrol  was attacked in Pristina's suburb Vranjevac. Many young Albanians are wearing UCK emblems on their clothes, affirming the organization's popularity among Kosovo's ethnic Albanian population.

The first UCK checkpoints are just after Komorani, 20 kilometers west of  Pristina. A Danish television crew had their vehicle set on fire a few days ago, while their 22-year old ethnic Albanian guide was force to join the UCK on the spot. Nevertheless, shops, restaurants, and cafes are full throughout the day, even though the streets are empty at night.
The situation is far more dramatic deep into Kosovo's territory for two reasons. Fighting between Serb forces and the UCK in the vicinity of Orahovac and Suva Reka has escalated, while a large number of displaced persons has moved from Decani and Pec to Djakovica and Drenica. Although Serb authorities are trying to diminish the effects of these problems, the  refugees are in a very difficult situation because food supplies are running out.

Djakovica's population of just under 50,000 has increased by at least 15,000. The situation in the nearby villages is probably a lot worse. Although famine reports by some ethnic Albanian sources are definitely exaggerated, hunger is definitely knocking on many doors. International humanitarian organizations such as the UNHCR still have no access to these areas in spite of a Serbian promise to allow them freedom of movement. Both problems, the escalation of clashes and the beginning of a humanitarian disaster, are a result of a mopping operation along the Djakovica-Decani-Pec road in the past month or so. The 60,000 people who lived in nearby villages went in three different directions: around 12,000 went to Albania, a bit less fled to Montenegro but most stayed in Kosovo looking for shelter wherever they could.

The UCK disintegrated in the same three directions--some went to Albania in order to get more guns, while others moved north to Drenica, Orahovac, and Malicevo. The Serbian police and army are finding it increasingly difficult to  deal with a growing number of UCK troops in these areas. There is reasonable fear that fighting might spill to the southeast, along the Djakovica-Prizren-Stimlje road. Vreme's crew noticed nothing peculiar along the road last Sunday, apart from strong police units and army patrols. However, a police checkpoint in the Crnoljevo village was attacked 15 minutes after we passed it and an army patrol nearby came under fire, too. Wounded soldiers were taken to Stimlje in a BBC vehicle that came by shortly after the incident. Although British reporters were reluctant to breach rules and admit armed forces into their vehicle, they had no choice because  the comrades of the wounded soldiers were getting very tense. The reporters now fear that they could have problems with the UCK in the future.
After mopping up Decani and the nearby villages, Serb police thought they  struck a major blow to the UCK. However, it seems that the organization  has grown even stronger, thanks to a large number of refugees who joined  it. Jakup Krasnici, a recently appointed UCK spokesman, says with some pride that the organization controls the entire Malicevo community and "much of Kosovo's territory". Swimming and other "patriot games" will reportedly be held in Drenica, the only Kosovo town apart from Pristina with an  Olympic-size swimming pool. The officials of local ethnic Albanian parties have virtually blended with the UCK. They no longer recognize their Pristina branches and report only to their field commanders.

Although Adem Demaci, the leader of the Kosovo Parliamentary Party, is the only one to have confirmed this in public, Ibrahim Rugova's Democratic  Alliance of Kosovo and the party's faction rallied by Hidayet Hisseni are  much in the same position.

The disintegration of Albanian political parties and their legitimacy is the main reason for skepticism regarding the Serb-Albanian talks. The talks broke down a month ago because the ethnic Albanian delegation conditioned their continued participation on an end to the Serb offensive and the withdrawal of their police troops. But even if the talks continue in a week or two, it will be a problem to persuade the UCK to accept any agreement ethnic Albanian representatives might sign. The legitimacy of the broader (G-15) and inner (G-14) ethnic Albanian negotiating teams has been put in jeopardy when Hisseni and Demaci walked out last month. Both of them  believe that they could be accepted by the UCK as a political wing for  their own different reasons. Demaci has extended an open invitation to the UCK to support his party and conditioned his own political support to the organization on three things: 1) the UCK should accept that "politics must control guns rather then the other way round", 2) that the UCK adopts  the program of his Parliamentary Party of Kosovo, and 3) that the UCK should accept his idea of a confederation between Serbia, Kosovo, and Montenegro.

The UCK hasn't extended an official reply to the offer, but Krasnici said  that "political pluralism is a bit more than ethnic Albanians can afford  at the moment" and that the UCK "is the only relevant military and political force in Kosovo". In other words, Demaci and everybody else should get the message loud and clear that those holding the guns haven't the slightest intention of letting politicians run them.

Ibrahim Rugova, who returned from his tour of Europe and the USA a few days ago, has lost much of his political influence. Rugova's reputation has  been dented not only by his absence when his compatriots were getting killed and driven out of their homes, but also by some his statements. Especially out of place was his statement that the UCK "does not have broad popular support" while exactly the opposite is quite apparent in every corner of Kosovo. Especially troubling is the fact that the UCK now mentions  unification along with liberation, clearly implicating unification with ethnic-Albanian populated territories in Macedonia as part of the plan for a Greater Albania.

Ethnic Albanian political leaders are not the only ones having difficulties controlling UCK. Western diplomats have realized that subduing UCK  is going to be very difficult because a greater Albania can result only from a large-scale regional war. That's exactly what the West wants to avoid. It is paradoxical, however, that the international community is exerting all pressure on Slobodan Milosevic, yet it's easier to force him to withdraw police troops from Kosovo than force the UCK to stop attacking the police. Talking to an organization the West doesn't call terrorist, although it obviously wants a violent solution to the problem, is in discord with the West's proclaimed desire to bring about some kind of  a Serb-Albanian compromise. The West just doesn't have an effective means of exerting pressure on UCK. As squeezing Milosevic is easy, the West is starting to look like a drunkard who lost his watch in the dark, but keeps looking for it under the lamp post because that's the only place he can see. One of the ways of overcoming the problem was outlined by a member of the ethnic Albanian negotiating team, who preferred to stay anonymous. He feels that the "republic of Kosovo" should form its own parliament and then include UCK representatives in it. The newly formed body would then adopt an official negotiating platform and authorize the G-15 to talk to the Serbs. The legitimacy problem would thus be eliminated and then UCK could no longer say that it is being left out. "If the politicians get militant rather than persuade the UCK to get political, we will all have to go the woods very soon. I don't want to go to the woods all that much, " the member said. His tactics are reminiscent of something Theodore Roosevelt once said. After including a heavy political adversary in his cabinet, he told the press, "I'd rather have him inside my tent pissing outside then outside the tent pissing in it." However, two things are still uncertain in the Kosovo situation: how will Serbia react, because Serbia could qualify that as support to terrorism; and is the UCK interested in getting into the  tent?

"Time for subtle political games is running out. The fighting is getting  imminently closer to Pristina, although this is not so apparent at first glance. The deceptive look of a normal life and absence of tension in the Kosovo capital actually reflects dangerous resignation, for it seems that people have accepted the inevitability of war. The fear of war is at its peak until it becomes certain, and then people learn to live with it as death becomes a daily routine. If the fighting in Kosovo escalates into a full-scale war, it will last for a very long time.