Ritual Murders of Serbian Policemen

ven if according to the New Law on Information I were to be publicly executed, I could still not assert that the Liberation Army of Kosovo is the “so-called” Liberation Army of Kosovo, for the families of policemen Dejan Djatlov and Ilija Vujosevic certainly do not think so.  The families gathered around the beds call to account and curse the culprits, not picking their words in the interest of politics, nor is it possible to discern in their sobs the quotation marks which should indicate in the Serbian political newspeak that the murderers are not any sort of army, but are mere terrorists.

The global picture, which ought to be based on the recognition of such nuances and details — should the contraction KLA appear between quotation marks or does the word so-called qualify it — is a convenient subject for small talk between those actors in the drama who, thank God, are alive and well, lounging about their homes.
The petty, therefore human picture looks like this: on the dusty intersection between Malisevo, the bodies of two people were discovered with 13 bullets and visible signs of tying up and torture.

A message has been sent: a political, ritual murder has been carried out.  The London Times writes that the two unlucky people were forced to kneel some twenty meters away from their besieged colleagues in the police station, and then they were simply executed and left as dogs in the middle of the road.  Now the world is busy considering how many setbacks the terrorists have incurred upon the hopes of the beginning of negotiations, but I believe that the message is of quite another sort and that it reads: there is no life for Serbs in Kosovo.

The interim between the withdrawal of Serbian security forces and the beginning of the full mandate of the verifiers has been marked by bloodshed.  For Serbs, who otherwise believe that they gave too much and made too many concessions, such a situation on the ground gives cause for beginning to reassess the decision made under the threat of bombing, and to find a rational excuse for the postponement of any sort of political negotiations given the evident crimes committed by the Albanian side.  Here also, the matter is crystal clear.  Police Colonel Bozidar Filic announced that the Serbian security forces will once again take control of the territory if the Albanian side refuses to become rational.
Albanians, on the other hand, believe that they got nothing, so that if Serbs are reading Hill’s draft papers as a blow to the myth of Kosovo and their national greatness, Albanians are interpreting the same contents of Hill’s briefcase as a setback to their national aspirations and as mere diplomatic backtracking, opting instead to search for the bloody path which would free them of the Serbs sooner than the standard procedure which, through some form of autonomy, would allow Albanians to feel “on their own turf.”

The bullets shot into Djaltov and Vujosevic can only be interpreted under duress as attempts by the KLA to fight their way to the negotiating table in which “the wealth of Kosovo” will be divvied — that is to say that with this crime the terrorists are proving that they are a real force on the ground and that their seal must be applied to any credentials of Albanian politicians who will participate in the upcoming negotiations.

Through a ritual killing they sent a different message which is being interpreted with a simple answer to a very simple question: what is the difference between a Serbian policeman, disarmed and tied up, from a peasant in Kosovo?  No difference at all.