[ALBSA-Info] Balkan Ghosts Never Die – NEWSWEEK

[Gazhebo at aol.com]

Balkan Ghosts Never Die       

Milosevic’s arrest appears to be imminent, but it’s almost beside the point. 
The enemy of NATO today is Albanian extremism. And the region is again 
becoming a tinderbox          

By Rod Nordland

NEWSWEEK:  As word got out last week that Slobodan Milosevic might soon be 
arrested, his supporters declared they would build a “living wall” around his 
house. They said they would stop police from getting him. For a moment, 
Belgrade held its breath—and then let loose with a collective belly laugh.    
    
AT BEST 50 “people’s guards” showed up, most of them pensioners, the women 
with big hair, the men with old Lenin caps and shabby suits. Indicted war 
criminal Vlajko Stojiljkovic dropped by to praise “the greatest Serb of all 
times,” and the demonstrators loudly cursed the press. Behind the high walls 
at 11 Uzicka Street, the only sign of life was the military guards assigned 
to the defeated president by his elected successor, Vojislav Kostunica. The 
protesters were too few even to encircle the walled compound, and when a cold 
rain set in at night they all went home. “The chance of Milosevic regaining 
power is nil,” said a Western diplomat in Belgrade. “The only thing he can do 
now is negotiate a better deal on his prison cell.”


No one doubts that Milosevic will be arrested—it’s only a question of when, 
and on which charges. Behind the scenes, a furious debate raged within the 
Yugoslav government over just when to make a move. But the truth is that, 
only four months after the “Butcher of Belgrade” was ousted from power, his 
fate hardly seems to matter anymore. Milosevic’s final passing from the 
scene, when it happens, will make dramatic headlines. But it may be the least 
of Yugoslavia’s problems right now. That’s an especially bitter irony for 
NATO, which has blamed Milosevic, with reason, for the last decade of wars in 
the Balkans. Yet even with a friendlier Yugoslavia, those wars may not be 
finished.

Why? Because in an almost Orwellian flip-flop, NATO’s allies in Kosovo during 
the 1999 war—the ethnic Albanian guerrillas—are swiftly becoming the 
alliance’s chief adversary. The Yugoslavs, the enemy under Milosevic, are 
just as quickly turning into NATO’s new allies. The reason is that Albanian 
insurgents, sensing NATO’s tilt toward Kostunica, have renewed their efforts 
to make Kosovo an independent Albanian state and ethnically cleanse it of the 
few remaining Serbs. That has led to increasing conflict between the 
Albanians and NATO peacekeepers. Washington and its European allies aren’t 
ready to openly support independence in Kosovo, especially when the Serbian 
province is dominated by extremists who make no secret of wanting to spread 
their separatism. “We’ve seen in Croatia and Bosnia what happens when we 
start changing boundaries in the Balkans,” says Predrag Simic, Kostunica’s 
foreign-policy adviser.

REGIONAL REPERCUSSIONS 

The regional repercussions have already started. In the Presevo Valley of 
southern Serbia, the guerrillas’ numbers have grown in five months to between 
2,000 and 3,000. Last week NATO reacted by promising to phase out the 
three-mile-wide buffer zone around Kosovo that was once intended to protect 
Kosovars from Serbs—but that has proved a safe haven for Kosovar insurgents. 
That would permit the Yugoslav Army to crack down. And for the first time, 
Albanian guerrillas began fighting inside Macedonia, Serbia’s southern 
neighbor, which has a large Albanian minority, too. Macedonian Army 
counterattacks sent 500 Albanian women and children fleeing across the border 
into Kosovo. 

Against these problems, the soft-spoken, lawyerly Kostunica has been buoyed 
by NATO support. International opinion has soured on the Kosovar Albanians, 
especially after the remote-control bombing of a KFOR-escorted bus that 
killed 10 Serbs, including a 2-year-old boy, last month. Hardly any Albanians 
condemned the attack, with the notable exception of the Pristina newspaper, 
Koha Ditore. “Our silence,” the paper wrote last week, would be taken “as 
evidence of support of the existence of the secret idea of Greater Albania.” 
There was plenty of other evidence of that, as guerrillas in Kosovo crossed 
into Macedonia and Serbia on a campaign to stir up insurgencies there as 
well. Commander Remi, a former Kosovo Liberation Army commander from 
Pristina, last week showed a NEWSWEEK reporter patches that had just been 
designed for the uniforms of the Albanians’ National Liberation Army in 
Macedonia. “They are getting help from inside Kosovo,” Remi acknowledged. The 
movement of Albanian guerrillas across the U.S.-patrolled Kosovo border into 
Serbia’s Presevo Valley is an open secret. “The Americans look at the stars 
when we go by,” one guerrilla boasted. “The Americans in KFOR are only 
concerned with force protection, and they’re not willing to leave their bases 
to really patrol that border,” says International Crisis Group analyst James 
Lyon in Belgrade.

Political solutions may be even more elusive. On top of all of Yugoslavia’s 
other problems, Serbia’s sister republic, Montenegro, is headed for almost 
certain se-cession, perhaps as early as this spring. Yugoslav authorities say 
they will not interfere with an independence referendum there. That would 
leave Serbia as the only remaining Yugoslav republic, and Kostu-nica as 
president of a nonexistent fede-ration. It would also make the Kosovars even 
more keen to get their own state.
       
ASSASSINATION ATTEMPTS

It is also possible, though unlikely, that Milosevic and his smattering of 
supporters could make yet more trouble. Three of Kostunica’s top officials 
escaped several assassination attempts; the plots were widely blamed on 
gangsters close to the Milosevic regime. Many Serbs want to see Milosevic 
tried for a series of political murders as well as corruption. Last week 
officials around Kostunica signaled that the pro-nationalist president was 
ready to distance himself from the arrest issue. Kostunica, who badly needs 
Western aid, is no longer insisting on his earlier campaign pledges never to 
turn Milosevic over to The Hague. After a public-opinion poll on Thursday 
showed that 56 percent of Serbs think Milosevic should be tried by the 
war-crimes tribunal, Kostunica for the first time conceded he would not stop 
Milosevic’s extradition. He told the liberal newspaper Danas on March 3: “We 
have to adjust ourselves to the realities of today’s world.”

Milosevic’s halfway house on the way to The Hague is likely to be Belgrade’s 
Central Prison. 

Meanwhile he and his wife, Mirjana Markovic, rarely venture out of their 
gilded cage—a circular white villa built for the dictator Josip Broz Tito in 
the last days of his regime. The former First Couple are said to spend their 
time watching romantic movies in the villa’s cinema and listening to 
Mirjana’s favorite music: Russian folk ballads. When Milosevic goes to the 
regular meetings of his dwindling Serbian Socialist Party, it’s in the back 
seat of a Mercedes, hunched between two burly security guards—courtesy of 
Kostunica.

Last week the Belgrade prosecutor’s office finally announced it is formally 
investigating Milosevic on corruption charges. They involve fraudulently 
obtaining a retirement home and illegally exporting state-owned gold to 
Switzerland in his last weeks in power. An arrest could follow at any time. 
The mild charges won’t please human-rights activists. But they will let 
Kostunica focus fully on the many problems bequeathed him by a decade of 
Milosevic’s misrule.