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 Wes-selam velleze dhe miresejugjej 

US raids against UCPMB help Serbs to fight Kosovar Muslims

By Khalil Osman in Prague
[Crescent International, April 16-30, 2000.]

Leaders of a recently-formed Albanian guerrilla group in southeastern Serbia
renounced military action last month, following political pressure and
military operations against them by US forces serving in neighbouring
Kosova.

Speaking to reporters on March 23, after a nine-hour meeting with senior
American and Kosovar officials, Januz Musliu, head of the Political Council
for Presevo, Medvedja and Bujanovac (PCPMB), said tersely: "We are against
armed confrontation." He proceeded to explain that: "Our stance and our
engagement will be in accord with our own national and international
interests, especially with those of the United States and the North Atlantic
Alliance."

The about-turn, after months of growing militancy, followed intense US
pressure culminating in US military operations against Albanian fighters,
effectively doing the Serbs work for them. US state department spokesman
James Rubin revealed that the PCPMB made the statement renouncing armed
confrontation at the request of former Kosova Liberation Army (UCK) leader
Hashim Thaci, after Rubin himself had urged Thaci to persuade them "that the
military course is a disaster for us all."

The PCPMB is the political wing of the Liberation Army of Presevo, Bujanovac
>and Medvedja (UCPMB), a militia in the Presevo valley in southeastern
Serbia. Their declared goal had been to end Serbias authority in Presevo
and two other border districts, parts of which overlap with the
5-kilometre-wide demilitarized zone between Kosova and Serbia, known as the
Ground Safety Zone (GSZ). According to the "Military-Technical Agreement"
signed by Belgrade and NATO last June, only a limited number of Serb
policemen, and no soldiers, are allowed into the GSZ.

The three districts are sandwiched between Macedonia to the south and Kosova
to the northwest. Presevos population is estimated to be 92 percent
Albanian, Bujanovacs 65 percent, and Medvedjas 35 percent. The area, known
to the Albanians as Kosova Lindore (Eastern Kosova), was incorporated into
Serbia at the end of the second world war. Local residents voted
overwhelmingly for autonomy and possible unification with Kosova in the
referendum held in the former Yugoslavia in 1992.

The UCPMB, which models itself on the UCK in name, uniform and tactics,
consists of a few hundred well-armed fighters who are active in the hills of
the no-mans-land around Presevo town, about 12 kilometres east of the
boundary between Serbia and Kosova. The UCPMB headquarters is believed to be
in Dobrosin, a village located inside the GSZ. The groups leader is
believed to be Sefket Hassani, a 60-year-old local poet, who had returned to
the area last November after spending some time working in Switzerland.

The ranks of the UCPMB have been growing rapidly, thanks largely to former
>members of the UCK. There are about 20,000 unemployed former UCK fighters,
>many of whom have formed small militia groups in Kosova. Each of these new
>militia groups consists of a dozen or so members, together comprising a
>force of a few hundred fighters. They are active mainly in the US-controlled
>sector of Kosova, which adjoins the GSZ. But despite their small size, these
>groups have weapons and moral and financial support from the UCKs
>fund-raising organization, which continues to collect substantial donations
>from migrant Albanian communities.
>
>In recent months, sporadic gunfights and bomb attacks have been reported in
>the Presevo area. The rising tension is similar to that of the early days of
>the Kosova conflict. Many residents say that they were forced to take up
>arms by police brutality and harassment, including arrests, beatings,
>confiscations, burning homes and killings. Most of the Serb police officers
>in the area are bitter veterans of Kosova. Residents in Dobrosin say that
>the police have repeatedly mistreated them at a checkpoint at Lucani, 5
>kilometres down the road. In mid-December a Serbian police patrol ordered a
>group of more than a dozen residents returning to Dobrosin from shopping in
>Bujanovac to lie down in the road. Police officers walked all over them.
>
>The escalation in police harassment and intimidation forced many residents
>to seek refuge in Kosova or Macedonia. Over the past ten months, an
>estimated 70 percent of Dobrosins 1,200 residents have moved to Kosova.
>According to the UN High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR), about 10 percent
>of the 70,000 Albanians in the Presevo valley area have fled into Kosova
>since last June. The true number of refugees could be much higher, as many
>who move in with relatives do not register with aid agencies.

The plight of Albanians in southern Serbia was highlighted even as the PCPMB
>renounced military action. Musliu called on the international community to
>exert pressure on "the Belgrade regime to withdraw its military, police and
>paramilitary forces and to cease all violence, murder, repression and
>expulsions and to allow families to return to their land."

As Serb forces intensified their brutal activities, residents formed village
councils and self-defenze units dedicated to rid the region of Serbian
political control. A village council was reportedly established in Dobrosin
>after Serb paramilitaries killed two inhabitants on October 15 last year.
>The first serious clash occurred in December when guerrillas clashed with
>police near the village of Bresic. Uniformed UCPMB fighters made their
>public debut on January 26, at the funeral of two Albanian brothers from
>Dobrosin, who were killed by police while returning from woodcutting. The
>fighters vowed to protect local residents from the Serbian forces.
>
>A UCPMB representative was quoted last month as saying that the insurgents
>also aimed to internationalize their plight in the hope of drawing NATO into
>another conflict with Yugoslavia. KFOR, the NATO-led peacekeeping force in
>Kosova, responded by cracking down on gun-running between Kosova and the
>UCPMB, and US secretary of state Madeleine Albright was quick to warn that
>ethnic Albanians counting on a new NATO-led intervention "shouldnt
>miscalculate."
>
>In February, the US and its allies actively began to exert pressure on the
>UCPMB to abandon military action. NATO supreme commander general Wesley
>Clark met former UCK chief Hashim Thachi and Macedonian Albanian leader
>Arben Xhaferri to urge them to pressurise the UCPMB. According to Xhaferri,
>Clark ridiculed the goal of breaking away from Serbia as "romantic
>adventurism." Both leaders then warned that "provocations" in southern
>Serbia will only play into the hands of Yugoslav president Slobodan
>Milosevic.
>
>In March, Albright dispatched her spokesman James Rubin to Kosova to add to
>the pressure. As Rubins attempt to stifle the UCPMBs rebellion failed to
>achieve any immediate breakthrough, US soldiers in KFOR launched operations
>which, in the words of one soldier, included "synchronized, simultaneous
>assaults" by airborne and ground forces on five Kosovar Albanian villages
>along a 28-kilometre front near the border with Serbia. KFOR said that the
>troops arrested nine people, seized seven rifles, 28 hand grenades, two
>mortar tubesand numerous mines, and confiscated over 200 uniforms and 22
>crates of ammunition.
>
>The dawn raid came only a day after a senior Pentagon official warned in
>comments to The Washington Post that US soldiers could face confrontations
>with their former Albanian allies this spring. After the raid, KFOR
>spokesman lieutenant-colonel Henning Philipp candidly declared that "it
>seems that this [insurgency] is under control now and we will closely
>monitor it to prevent any things like that in the future."
>
>It is clear that the US and Yugoslavia are working together to stifle the
>aspirations of independence that Albanians in southern Serbia have aspired
>to for decades. Recent events extend the influence of KFOR, whose mandate
>pertains to security issues only in Kosova, to ethnic Albanians operating
>beyond the provinces borders. The only possible consolation for Albanians
>is that the PCPMB statement denouncing "armed confrontation" fell short of a
>unilateral ceasefire and included no promises to lay down weapons or
>disband. That at least leaves open the possibility that the group will
remain able to respond to any future Serb aggression.


  
    
 
  
       
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 



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