Another Vidovdan

The scale of the Serbian police operation to recapture the Belacevac coal mine from the KLA on Monday, June 29th can be compared only with the May offensive in Decani. Meanwhile, the KLA attacks in the rest of Serbia's southern province are relentless.

The KLA forces captured the Belacevac mine, located on the eastern slope of Mt. Nisavica, on Monday, June 22nd. Seven KLA fighters stopped a bus taking workers to the mine that morning. Nine Serb workers were taken to an unknown destination while an ethnic Albanian security guard joined the assailants. After the incident, all 1,700 workers in the coal mine left their posts, including security guards who were unable to control such a large area.

A large number of ethnic Albanian security guards joined the mine's new "owners", while ethnic Albanian workers came onto the premises and - as ethnic Albanian media put it - introduced "temporary measures" under the instructions of Bujar Bukosi's government. KLA units patrolled the area around the coal mine but did not enter the pit until last Thursday. They did however, take the nearby villages. Machine-gun bunkers and trenches have been dug around the mine. "The Serbs surrendered the coal mine without putting up a fight, a KLA officer told a western European reporter. "Their moral is very low", he added.

Although the assailants threatened to take over the Dobro Selo mine too at one point, the Serbian authorities did absolutely nothing until last weekend to recapture the coal mines from the KLA. They did start futile talks on releasing the hostages and prepared military action at the same time. Police and army reinforcements were being deployed for days and the inhabitants of villages near Pristina were given guns to defend themselves from possible KLA attacks. The Yugoslav army deployed a number of armored vehicles to secure the Slatina airbase less than a kilometer from Belacevac. Strong police forces closed all roads to Belacevac on Sunday while the population of nearby villages left their homes in a hurry. The shelling of KLA positions started on Sunday evening.

A full-scale attack including tear gas began on Monday morning. The police launched simultaneous attacks on several KLA-controlled villages and the Belacevac mine. The KLA defense of the mine lasted very shortly because those in the front line abandoned their positions instantly. A part of the KLA forces withdrew to the building but the majority took refuge in the villages Ade and Belacevac. The police took control of the coal mine during the day, but fighting was still going on in the nearby villages. The most fierce resistance to Serb forces came from Ade, as both Belacevac and Dobre vode can be shelled from there. Serbian police recaptured Ade on Tuesday at noon.

The KLA took everything they could from the Belacevac mine: trucks, spare parts, field vehicles and other equipment. The pit installations and conveyor belts have been badly damaged. However, the Serbian power industry said production would continue in a few days and the police called all workers, including ethnic Albanians, to go back to work. A police spokesman said on Wednesday that the operation had been postponed in an effort to resolve the situation by "political means", but to no avail. It appears that the operation was carried out with minimum casualties. Three KLA members were buried in the village of Tice on July 1st, while Serbian police reported no casualties in the conflicts. Reporters who visited Ade on Wednesday said that most of the village sustained no damage. Furious and armed locals who threw stones at reporters on Tuesday posed the most serious threat to the "purity" of the operation, but the police arrived to prevent further conflicts.

Eyewitnesses say that traffic on the Kosovska Mitrovica - Pristina road was normal during the operation. It is debatable, however, what is normal in the present circumstances. Fighting around Vucitrn started on Tuesday, June 23rd, with a local clash between the Serb and the ethnic Albanian inhabitants of the Svinjare village. The village is predominantly Serb-populated. Civilian clashes spilled over to the nearby village Pantina the next day. Ethnic Albanians say that local police ordered them to leave the village, which they did. They also said that their Serb neighbors have torched their homes. In any case, KLA forces that arrived from Drenica joined the fighting on Friday morning, so the clashes continued over the weekend. Both sides deployed reinforcements several times.

Another dramatic point is the village of Kijevo near Klina, along the Pristina-Pec road. The village has been isolated from the rest of the world for the last two months. Some 200 Serbs, including a few refugees and about 100 policemen are completely surrounded by the KLA. Police choppers brought food to the village and took away three pregnant women and a four-year old child. Ethnic Albanian sources say the helicopters opened fire on nearby KLA-controlled villages as they approached Kijevo, while the Serbs say the helicopter carrying the three women and the child came under fire as it left Kijevo. Fighting between the KLA and the remaining Serbs in the Klina municipality haven't ceased ever since. The situation is especially worrying in the Drenovac village along the Klina-Pec road. The village is Klina's only connection to the outside world at this moment, and its Serb defenders have been repelling KLA attacks for days. A Serb was killed in Drsnik on June 30 when the village was attacked by the KLA. Capturing Kijevo, a village Richard Holbrooke called the most dangerous place in Europe, would enable the KLA to establish a firm link between Drenica, Metohija and the region bordering Albania. If the Serb forces lost Kijevo, they would also lose the Pristina-Pec road for good. Veljko Odalovic, the head of the Kosovo county, announced on Tuesday that Serb forces would launch an operation to recapture the Kijevo region as soon as possible.

Clashes along the Yugoslav-Albanian border are in full swing too. Some 20 Albanians were killed last week when they tried to smuggle arms, ammunition and other military equipment into Yugoslavia at the Djakovica border region. The Yugoslav army came under fire on June 26th while a contraband convoy tried to get past border patrols defending the Kosare outpost.  The attack was refuted and another 10 or so smugglers were killed on June 30th.

Convoys carrying food to Yugoslav army units defending the border were attacked several times during the weekend. Border guards at the Strezimir outpost along the Macedonian-Albanian border clashed with contraband gangs three times, while a policeman was killed near Prilep on Monday. Police checkpoints along the Decani-Djakovica road are under fire all the time. Seven artillery shells landed near a refugee camp in Decani on Tuesday night but no casualties have been reported. Ethnic Albanian sources say that Yugoslav army units are shelling villages in the Dulje region, but an army convoy carrying supplies was attacked there on Tuesday. Many passengers have been kidnapped near Crnoljevo over the past few weeks. Three Serbs and a Bulgarian were kidnapped on Monday while traveling from Djakovica to Belgrade.

These are not the only points threatened by the KLA offensive. The situation is also very tense in the vicinity of Istok as the population is leaving the area in a hurry. However, most concerning is the KLA's apparent intention to surround Pristina. If the KLA succeeds in blocking traffic to Mitrovica and Podujevo, it would be impossible to travel from Pristina to the north. KLA forces were noticed south of Pristina near the village of Lipljan on Saturday, while a Serb and an ethnic Albanian were kidnapped in the village over the weekend.

The Serbian regime has deployed all police and army units available in Kosovo, but that has proved insufficient. Local Serbs too are now involved in the fighting. Miroslav Colevic, a former leader of the Kosovo Serbs, said that 7,000 volunteers from central Serbia would come to the province as part of his Serb defense forces. However, war is spreading like a fire all over Kosovo and it is uncertain whether more troops will bring us closer to a final solution or a complete disaster.