Things began to change in 1996 when some journalists began to write about the activities of a shadowy terrorist group known as the Kosovo Liberation Army. It was reputed to be stock-piling arms and launching hit-and-run attacks on local Serbian police and collaborators. During 1997 more reports began to circulate about the activities of this group although some commentators continued to doubt its existence. One theory was that the KLA was a Serbian ruse aimed at provoking the Albanian population into confrontation and justifying any subsequent repression. The violent events that engulfed neighbouring Albania in 1997 flooded the region with large quantities of weapons some of which reached Kosovo and the rebel army. By late summer 1997 its existence seemed to be in no doubt.

The problem of what to do about the KLA became more acute as the year wore on. During 1997 it became abundantly clear that the West’s reliance on Milosevic as a guarantor of the Dayton Peace Accords was in retreat. New faces had appeared: Milo Djukanovic the new president of Montenegro, and Bijilana Plavsic and Milorad Dodik in Bosnia were the West’s new ‘golden boys (and girls)’. Milosevic seemed to have become a marginal figure in the new Balkan policy of Washington, London and Brussels. This was probably reflected in the cat-and-mouse game that ensued over Kosovo.

For, whatever may be said about the ill-treatment of Albanians it was Serbs (in particular, Serb policemen) who were being killed by the KLA in Kosovo as well as Albanians perceived as being loyal to the Belgrade government. As the year drew to a close, the pressure from local Serbs to flush out KLA strongholds grew. At the same time Belgrade probably sensed that there was a ploy to provoke its armed forces into an operation in Kosovo that would be condemned by the international community thus giving it more leeway to isolate the Milosevic regime. This has finally taken place in the week beginning 3^rd March 1998. The responses of the USA and the European Union under its British presidency have matched this scenario.

Meanwhile the situation poses dangers for the Albanian leadership in Kosovo. The international community has spoken to Rugova with forked tongues: refusing to endorse the desires of ordinary Kosovars for independence but also failing to properly apportion blame for the latest violence to the provocative guerrilla tactics of the KLA. Should the KLA’s "armed struggle" make it a serious player in the region’s politics the democratically legitimate line of Ibrahim Rugova and his party could be sidelined.

In Albania itself , the leader of the Democratic Party Sali Berisha, has put aside domestic political rivalries to form a common front with the Socialist government in blaming the Serbs for the violence in Kosovo. This, too, could back-fire on him both with his own supporters and in the world of international politics if the situation in Kosovo got out–of- hand. .

The KLA has also carried out attacks on Macedonian state institutions, though these have been less widely reported outside former Yugoslavia.

In Macedonia events in Kosovo have been the occasion for demonstrations by ethnic Albanians against the minority policies of the government in Skopje . The very existence of the Macedonian state could be threatened by these developments.

It is time to take stock: