[ALBSA-Info] Fwd: Kosovo: One Year Later

[Mimoza Meholli]

>Kosovo: One Year Later
>http://www.stratfor.com/CIS/specialreports/special26.htm
>0303 GMT, 000317
>Summary
>
>Nearly one year after NATO first intervened in Kosovo, it appears the
>alliance has failed to fulfill its chief objectives, both in waging the war
>and keeping the peace. Increasingly, Kosovo seems beyond the alliance's
>control as crime, weapons and drug trafficking resurface. Alliance forces
>are now on the defensive against former allies within the ethnic Albanian
>community; the guerrillas of the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) now appear to
>hold positions of considerable power. Nine months after the war, the West
>faces a choice. It can increase its grip on Kosovo, committing more troops
>and confronting the KLA, or the alliance can resign itself to losing 
>control
>of Kosovo.
>
>Analysis
>
>NATO's war against Yugoslavia set a precedent at considerable cost. It was
>the first instance of unilateral NATO intervention in a sovereign nation
>during the alliance's 50-year history. NATO sent more than 1,000 aircraft 
>to
>fly more than 38,000 sorties, at an eventual estimated cost of tens of
>billions of dollars. The alliance deployed 38,000 peacekeepers, drawn from
>28 countries, with no foreseeable end to their mission. Reconstruction has
>barely begun and is expected to cost another $32 billion.
>
>But one year later, the alliance's peacekeeping mission, known as KFOR, is
>failing. Not only does ethnic violence persist, but the alliance appears to
>be further losing control. The murder rate in the rural breakaway province
>now equals that of the world's largest cities. Sources on the ground report
>that weapons are increasingly in the hands of former guerrillas. NATO 
>troops
>have come under attack by the ethnic Albanian majority as well as the Serb
>minority. The alliance is steadily headed toward a daunting choice. It must
>increase its grip on Kosovo or resign itself to providing a garrison force
>that safeguards a tumultuous province, which is effectively in the hands of
>the KLA.
>
>Kosovo's State of Violence
>KFOR entered the province to fulfill three missions: to ensure safety,
>enforce compliance with the June 1999 cease-fire agreements and temporarily
>assist the United Nations with civilian functions, such as policing and
>reconstruction. But Kosovo has steadily become an upside-down world of
>reversed roles. The guerrillas were supposed to disarm and disband but have
>in fact maintained a strong hold on power. Increasingly, KFOR troops are
>defending themselves not just against remaining pockets of Serbs, but
>apparently against their wartime allies in the KLA.
>
>It appears that elements of the guerrillas are orchestrating violence that
>threatens international forces. Even Western military officials have come
>grudgingly, though privately, to the conclusion that extremist elements of
>the KLA are making a bid for outright independence. NATO troops were stoned
>last October in the western city of Pec. The recent violence in the 
>northern
>city of Mitrovica included a grenade attack that wounded 17 KFOR troops. In
>February, KFOR Cmdr. Gen. Klaus Reinhardt said, "When NATO came into Kosovo
>we were only supposed to fight the Yugoslav army if they came back
>uninvited. Now we're finding we have to fight the Albanians."
>
>Violent crime is falling but the largely rural province is far from safe. 
>In
>the southeast corner of Kosovo, the American sector, there were 615
>incidents of hostile fire, 15 mortar attacks, 20 altercations with unruly
>crowds, 129 grenade attacks and 58 landmine explosions - in the first six
>months of peacekeeping, according to NATO figures. The murder rate for the
>entire province has dropped from 127 murders per 100,000 people at the end
>of the war to 23 murders per 100,000. Still, the murder rate of rural 
>Kosovo
>now equals the murder rate of Los Angeles, California - one of the world's
>largest and most densely populated cities.
>
>Under the June cease-fire agreement, the KLA was supposed to disband and
>disarm, but there is evidence that former guerrillas now enjoy easy - even
>sanctioned - access to weapons. Some 5,000 former KLA guerrillas have 
>joined
>the Kosovo Protection Corps (KPC), a sort of national guard for emergency
>and disaster response. They are allowed to carry sidearms with the proper
>permit cards. But the permit cards are being copied and distributed to 
>other
>former guerrillas, according to an international police source.
>
>The Power of the KLA and Drug Trafficking
>
>In many ways, the state of affairs in Kosovo is the result of a lack of
>government. The United Nations has never had a complete plan to set up a
>government; nine months after peacekeeping began there is none. In this
>vacuum, the KLA has flourished.
>
>While the KLA was to have disbanded, two important wartime figures remain 
>at
>the core of the still existent KLA power structure. Hashim Thaci, who led
>the KLA's political wing and became the chief contact for the West, is now
>Kosovo's most important ethnic Albanian politician. The commander of the
>KLA's military wing, Agim Cequ, commands 5,000 former guerrillas who are 
>now
>in the Kosovo Protection Corps.
>
>The KLA is indebted to Balkan drug organizations that helped funnel both
>cash and arms to the guerrillas before and after the conflict. Kosovo is 
>the
>heart of a heroin trafficking route that runs from Afghanistan through
>Turkey and the Balkans and into Western Europe. It now appears that the KLA
>must pay back the organized crime elements. This would in turn create a
>surge in heroin trafficking in the coming months, just as it did following
>the NATO occupation of Bosnia in the mid-1990s.
>
>Two to six tons of heroin, worth 12 times its weight in gold, moves through
>Turkey toward Eastern Europe each month. The route connecting the
>Taliban-run opium fields of Afghanistan to Western Europe's heroin market 
>is
>worth an estimated $400 billion a year - and is dominated by the Kosovar
>Albanians. This "Balkan Route" supplies 80 percent of Europe's heroin.
>
>For the KLA, the Balkan Route is not only a way to ship heroin to Europe 
>for
>a massive profit, but it also acted as a conduit for weapons filtering into
>the war-torn Balkans. The smugglers either trade drugs directly for weapons
>or buy weapons with drug earnings in Albania, Bosnia, Croatia, Cyprus,
>Italy, Montenegro, Switzerland or Turkey. The arsenal of weapons smuggled
>into Kosovo has included: anti-aircraft missiles, assault rifles, sniper
>rifles, mortars, shotguns, grenade launchers, anti-personnel mines and
>infrared night vision gear, according to a NATO report cited in the
>Washington Times in June 1999.
>
>There is already anecdotal evidence that the drug trade is flourishing in
>Kosovo, in full view of international authorities. The bombed out, unpaved
>streets of Kosovo are the new home to sleek European sports cars with no
>license plates. There are 20 percent to 25 percent more cars in Kosovo than
>there were before the war, according to an international police official
>recently returned from several months in Kosovo. The refugees claim Serbs
>took the plates, but the black Mercedes are signs of a prospering drug
>trade.
>
>Beyond Kosovo
>Drug smuggling will make an impact beyond the Balkans and deep into the 
>rest
>of Europe. Ethnic Albanians are the predominant smugglers in the Western
>European heroin market, according to Interpol data.
>
>Some 500,000 Kosovar Albanians live in Western Europe. Those living off the
>heroin trade rely on clan loyalties to tightly control their business
>partners. They gain access to Western European cities by exploiting their
>reputation as refugees. This gives them a distinct advantage over the Turks
>or Italians.
>
>Although Albanian speakers comprise about 1 percent of Europe's 510 million
>residents, they made up 14 percent of all Europeans arrested for heroin
>smuggling in 1997, according to Interpol. The average quantity of heroin
>confiscated from arrested smugglers was two grams; ethnic Albanians 
>arrested
>for the same crime carried an average of 120 grams, the agency said.
>
>The U.S. government has been - and likely continues to be - well aware of
>the heroin trade coming through Kosovo, as well as the KLA connection. Just
>two years before the war, the Clinton administration wanted national
>security waivers for 14 countries - including Yugoslavia - in order to send
>arms and stem drug trafficking. The U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency reported 
>in
>1998 that ethnic Albanian organizations in Kosovo are "second only to
>Turkish gangs as the predominant heroin smugglers along the Balkan route."
>
>Today, Kosovo poses for NATO an ironically similar problem to the one it
>posed in 1999. Kosovo's problems - smuggling, crime and violence - threaten
>to spill out into the Balkan region. Tensions between the Serbs and ethnic
>Albanians challenge stability in Montenegro and Serbia, the remaining
>Yugoslav republics. The alliance must not only contain Kosovo's problems,
>but prevent renewed war between the KLA and Yugoslav forces in Serbia.
>
>Montenegro threatens to become the next hot spot as a result of the Kosovo
>war. The province's leadership has taken its cues from the international
>community's defense of Kosovo. Montenegrin President Milo Djukanovic has
>announced that the West is ready to offer help in the event of a Serb
>attack. Officials from the U.N. and human rights groups have made
>increasingly loud requests for Western attention to Montenegro.
>
>NATO's Next Move
>
>NATO now faces a dilemma. It must take control of the situation in Kosovo 
>by
>increasing its troop presence and confronting its former allies in the KLA.
>Or the alliance can accept a role as vassal to the guerrillas, essentially
>safeguarding Kosovo from a Serbian invasion. The guerrillas, in turn, would
>run Kosovo as they see fit.
>
>Withdrawing altogether from Kosovo is out of the question; Yugoslav forces
>would quickly pour into the province. The prospect of vastly increasing
>forces is unpleasant. As it stands now NATO members are reluctant to deploy
>even enough troops to meet the current mandate of 50,000 peacekeepers.
>
>To maintain control, though, the alliance must do more than increase its
>presence; it must reconsider its allies in Kosovo. There are signs that the
>West may play a longtime moderate, Ibrahim Rugova, against Thaci. During 
>his
>recent trip to Kosovo, State Department spokesman James Rubin met with
>Rugova, the first high-level public contact between U.S. officials and
>Rugova since he was abandoned last year. The prospect is stark. NATO would
>have to crush the KLA, risking more violence and a public relations
>nightmare.
>
>NATO's other option is probably even more unappealing: handing the KLA the
>keys to Kosovo. In such a scenario, the alliance would give ethnic Albanian
>political and civil leaders - with a few Serbs thrown in to demonstrate
>multi-ethnic governance - political control. But in fact the KLA would
>retain the upper hand. Alliance troops would remain to safeguard whatever
>state the former guerrillas choose to build.  CIS Intelligence Center
>
>Trans-Caucasus Hotspot
>
>Kosovo Hotspot
>
>CIS Economy Center
>
>CIS Global Intelligence Update Archives
>
>Country Information
>

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