[ALBSA-Info] Fwd: BOUNCE albsa at Web-Depot.COM: Non-member submission from ["Nikoll A Mirakaj" <albania at erols.com>]

[Asti Pilika]

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> Subject: [alb-information] German General's Kosovo
> Peackeepers Are Fighting Crime
> MIME-Version: 1.0
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> 
> THE NEW YORK TIMES
> December 21, 1999
> 
> German General's Kosovo Peackeepers Are Fighting
> Crime
> 
> By CARLOTTA GALL
> 
> PRISTINA, Yugoslavia -- In the absence of a strong
> international police force in Kosovo and facing a
> rise in
> crime, the commander of peacekeeping troops in the
> province
> has ordered his soldiers back out onto the streets
> in force. 
> 
> He is not happy about it, but six months into the
> peacekeeping mission in Kosovo, he says the
> 1,800-member
> U.N. police force was not able to cope. 
> 
> "We realized there was no success and that we had to
> back
> up the police," the commander, Gen. Klaus Reinhardt,
> said
> Monday in an interview at his headquarters, perched
> on a hill
> above Pristina, the Kosovo capital. 
> 
> Over the weekend a marked increase of troops was
> evident
> here, as they set up road blocks to spot-check cars
> for weapons
> and to look at the identification papers of drivers
> and
> passengers. The troops were reacting to the increase
> in
> violence of recent weeks and a fear of kidnapping. 
> 
> Reinhardt joined in the call for nations to
> contribute more
> people to the police force, but in the meantime he
> is stepping in
> to fill the gap, sending some of his forces out from
> their bases
> by the hundreds. "You cannot fight the high-level
> criminal with
> a tankist or a soldier -- they are not trained to do
> it," he said.
> "But there is a gap which we try to bridge by being
> there." 
> 
> Reinhardt took over command
> of the 50,000 members of the peacekeeping force for
> Kosovo
> in October, after his predecessor, Gen. Mike
> Jackson, said the
> job was no longer one for the military, but for the
> U.N. police
> and civil administration. 
> 
> Now two months later, Reinhardt and the overwhelming
> presence of his soldiers represent the only
> realistic chance to
> prevent violence in the province. Alongside ethnic
> killings and
> intimidation -- mostly by Albanians against Serbs
> and other
> minorities -- there has also been an increase of
> crime among
> the Albanians and a spread of organized crime, all
> of which
> falls to the general's lot. 
> 
> The general, who began his military career in the
> German
> Mountain Infantry and went through the U.S. Army's
> Command and General Staff College at Fort
> Leavenworth,
> Kan. in the 1970s, is a gray-haired, unassuming man.
> In his
> loose-fitted German camouflage jacket, he lacks the
> charisma
> of the tall, battered figure of Jackson. 
> 
> Yet in his quiet way, he is tackling the nasty
> climate of ethnic
> retaliation with a firm resolution and some
> unorthodox ideas
> that he says are bearing results. 
> 
> Each of his five military brigades in Kosovo has 120
> patrols
> out on the streets, in the villages and countryside
> every day,
> he said, and 1,000 of his forces are day and night
> guarding
> Serbian families in their homes and protecting
> buildings and
> installations. 
> 
> He is moving troops from areas that are relatively
> calm,
> dominated by one ethnic group, to mixed areas, or
> "fault
> lines," where there is violence. He has boosted the
> troop level
> in the Serbian area of Kosovo Polje, just outside
> Pristina, to
> 2,000 from 600, and improved security considerably. 
> 
> He has also sent an extra battalion to the town of
> Gniljane, in
> the American sector, and moved in three companies to
> protect
> the various ethnic minorities -- Serbs, Muslim Slavs
> or Goranis
> and Turks -- in and around the town of Prizren in
> southern
> Kosovo. 
> 
> German forces in the Prizren area have been
> criticized for not
> doing enough to stop the intimidation of minorities
> there, but
> the general sticks by his policy. "With 50,000 men,
> you
> cannot safeguard everyone, but by being there we can
> prevent things happening," he said. 
> 
> He has been resolute, too, in ordering sweeps
> through
> districts where there has been an outbreak of
> violence, often
> traveling to watch the operations himself. He was
> there when
> French troops sealed off and searched an area in the
> Serbian
> part of the divided town of Mitrovica last week
> after a grenade
> attack. "We put on a big show of force," he said,
> "to show we
> take counter actions immediately." 
> 
> Road blocks or barricades are not tolerated, and
> even the
> residents of Orohovac have been persuaded to remove
> their
> weeks-old blockade against Russian troops who were
> to
> deploy there. 
> 
> "I took them away by persuading people that this is
> the better
> way," he said. He does not seem to have solved the
> issue of
> the Russian deployment there, which local Albanians
> vigorously oppose, but the tension has subsided. 
> 
> The general also supports an unorthodox tactic used
> in
> Pristina, where the British commander of the city is
> using
> former policemen of the Kosovo Liberation Army as a
> source
> of information and a conduit for solving problems. 
> 
> There are clearly parts of the mission that chafe
> the general.
> "It is tougher than I expected as far as the
> workload, and
> more difficult as far as human relationships," he
> said in a
> reference to the ethnic tensions. 
> 
> He is impatient to see the judicial system up and
> running so
> he can rid his soldiers of the job of being prison
> guards. 
> 
> Yet he has clear ideas about the running of the
> province that
> go beyond his role as a soldier. Just back from a
> lunch with
> four Serbian bishops in the monastery at Gracanica,
> outside
> Pristina, he was clearly determined to defend the
> Serbian
> minority. His men will protect Serbian convoys and
> buses to
> allow Serbs to travel to market and to other Serbian
> enclaves.
> "By doing that we take the pressure out of the pot,"
> he said.
> "If people feel under siege they become aggressive."
> 
> 
> He called for financing for education and
> employment, saying
> a majority of young Albanians were jobless and
> frustrated,
> and were taking out their frustration on the
> minorities. 
> 
> He also said he disagreed with the U.N. High
> Commissioner
> for Refugees, which is advising displaced Serbs not
> to try to
> return to Kosovo for the moment, and he spoke with
> satisfaction that a few hundred Serbs had managed to
> return
> to villages in northern Kosovo under protection of
> his troops.
> 
> 
>
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