[ALBSA-Info] The Economist makes Wild Claims

[Kreshnik Bejko]

(the following article claims it was the Albanian guerrilas who blew up the 
civilian Serb convoy, and that
unrest in Mitrovica is orchestrated in "wild north Albania")



Kosovo's legacy
Feb 27th 2001
>From The Economist Global Agenda

The unfinished business of NATO's war over Kosovo is threatening the 
stability of the Balkans once more



The road to ethnic harmony

THROUGHOUT the Kosovo war in 1999, NATO’s political masters insisted they 
were bombing Yugoslavia to force the country’s Serb majority to respect its 
ethnic-Albanian minority. But no one, it seems, has taught Kosovo’s ethnic 
Albanians to reciprocate. In the 18 months since the United Nations and NATO 
took over the administration of Kosovo from Yugoslavia (of which it remains 
nominally a part), ethnic-Albanian guerrillas have terrorised the province’s 
few remaining Serbs. Now the violence seems to be spreading: in the space of 
two weeks, Kosovar Albanian guerrillas have killed 11 Serb civilians in a 
bomb attack, overrun a village in northern Macedonia, and stepped up their 
insurgency in the Presevo valley, a partially Albanian-inhabited swathe of 
Yugoslavia along the border with Kosovo. NATO foreign ministers, meeting in 
Brussels on February 27th, were so alarmed by this turn of events that they 
promised Yugoslavia help in fending off the incursions and dispatched a 
delegation to investigate the situation in Macedonia.

NATO’s fear is that the resurgence of ethnic violence will increase tension 
between ethnic Albanians and Slavs in Macedonia, stoke Serbian nationalism 
in Yugoslavia, and keep its own forces bogged down in Kosovo for years to 
come. The ultimate nightmare would be more fighting, refugees, and the 
dismemberment of yet another Balkan state. Given their history of indecision 
and incompetence in the face of the regional cataclysm of the past decade, 
America, the European Union, NATO and the UN are all anxious to head off 
fresh Balkan conflicts.







The Presevo valley presents the most immediate challenge. Under the 
agreement of June 1999 that ended NATO’s air war, Yugoslavia agreed to 
respect a “ground security zone”—a five-kilometre (three-mile) strip on the 
Yugoslav side of Kosovo’s boundary. The agreement prevents Yugoslavia from 
deploying anything more than lightly armed police in the area, in effect 
laying it open to infiltration by Kosovar guerrillas. NATO troops inside 
Kosovo try to nab the insurgents as they cross the frontier, and NATO 
commanders have lauded Yugoslavia’s restraint in dealing with those who slip 
through. But the guerrillas, known as the Army for the Liberation of 
Presevo, Medvedja and Bujanovac (UCPMB) after the main towns in the strip, 
have taken advantage of this forgiving policy to reinforce their positions 
both inside the security zone and even deeper into Serbia, close to the main 
road from Austria to Greece. Both sides agree that firmer action must be 
taken: hence the decision of NATO foreign ministers to begin discussions on 
phasing the zone out.

That will cause fresh difficulties. If Yugoslav forces crack down too hard, 
Kosovar Albanians will see it as a renewal of the campaign of ethnic 
cleansing that prompted the Kosovo war in the first place. On the other 
hand, many Yugoslavs already consider their country unfairly put-upon. 
America and the EU are leaning on the government to hand suspected war 
criminals over to the international tribunal at The Hague. A campaign for 
independence continues in Montenegro, the only republic left alongside 
Serbia in the Yugoslav federation. Calls for Yugoslav forces to go soft on 
ethnic-Albanian guerrillas might drive Serbs back towards the very 
nationalism that NATO has long struggled to defuse.

Macedonia will need to strike a similarly delicate balance. Perhaps as many 
as a third of its population are ethnic Albanians, while the remainder are 
Slavs. Tension between the two groups has been high since the Kosovo war, 
and Kosovar Albanian guerrillas’ seizure of the village of Tanusevci will 
heighten them further. NATO has reinforced its troops guarding Kosovo’s 
border with Macedonia, but the mountainous terrain and lack of frontier 
defences still leaves plenty routes for determined inflitrators.



Looking for a way out

The threat posed by the Kosovar guerrillas depends in part on how strongly 
they co-ordinate their attacks. Paul Beaver, a defence analyst, recently 
caused a stir among Balkan-watchers by asserting that the violence in 
Macedonia and Yugoslavia, in addition to anti-Serb riots in the town of 
Mitrovica in Kosovo, formed part of an international Albanian-nationalist 
campaign run from the lawless wilds of northern Albania. Others accuse the 
guerrillas of using nationalism as cover for smuggling. Kosovo and the 
surrounding region are certainly major transit points for illicit traffic in 
drugs, guns, prostitutes and immigrants. But whatever the guerrillas’ 
motives, their actions have kept NATO commanders guessing and their troops 
thinly stretched.

NATO wants to reduce its commitment to the area, not increase it. Although 
Colin Powell, America’s secretary of state, while visiting NATO headquarters 
this week, said that American troops would stay in Kosovo, many of his 
colleagues in the new administration made noises about an American 
withdrawal during America’s presidential campaign. Ultimately, their chances 
of doing so rest on the local population, which seems as fed up with the 
fighting as the officials in Washington. Before the guerrillas intervened, 
Macedonia’s government, which includes an ethnic-Albanian party, was taking 
sensible measures to integrate ethnic Albanians. During local elections last 
October, a clear majority of Kosovar Albanians voted for moderates opposed 
to further violence. In Yugoslavia, too, nationalism has waned since the 
fall of Slobodan Milosevic. NATO’s ever more pressing task is to make sure 
that the peaceful majority wins the troublemakers over—and not the other way 
around.

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