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of the Belgrade Coup
Editor & Webmaster
Leon Chame - 2008
Yugoslav Associates:
- Zoran Radojicic
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- George Orwell
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- Original Sorces
- Transnational (TFF)
- Fair sources
- WSWS
avgust 20, 2008
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Tyranny to Kosovo Albanians Recreated by KLA
Leon Chame
With the last Serbian troops now gone from Kosovo, the Kosovo Liberation Army is emerging as the successful
liberator of the province, where the government of former Kosovo Albanian president
Ibrohim Rugova failed. Hundreds of Kosovar Albanians now walk the
streets of Pristina wearing newish KLA uniforms, the way Knicks jerseys show up on the
playgrounds of New York. With the prominence of black berets and baseball-style KLA hats,
one would think that the KLA had won the war, with mere assistance from NATO. The sign
hanging from the highway near the south-central Kosovo city of Ferizai says, "Welcome
NATO, and UCK [KLA]."
In its ongoing struggle for legitimacy, the KLA desperately wants to be considered a
partner of NATO in liberating Kosovo from Serbian forces and is eager for a role that
gives it a decisive part to play in post-war Kosovo. "The KLA has its political structure which will be transformed. We are working in
this direction," said KLA leader Hashim Thaci in an interview
with Salon in Pristina. "We will respect the rules of democracy and political
pluralism. We might integrate with others to create a political culture among Albanians to
respect each other." Thaci downplayed the potential friction between himself and
Rugova, although Thaci and his political allies
insist that Rugova signed off on an agreement back in Rambouillet, France in February
under which Thaci
would serve as the interim prime minister of a Kosovar Albanian government until new
elections are held. Rugova, who has championed passive resistance to
Serbian oppression, now is avoiding any commitment to abide by the agreement. "We
welcome Rugova's arrival. And he won't be any problem for us," Thaci said. "But
we ask from him to abandon his boycott [of a KLA-led government] and act
responsibly."
It is clear in speaking with Thaci, a handsome, quiet 30-year-old who exudes the
charisma and aura of power usually associated with the Kennedys in American political
mythology, that the head of the KLA is a quick study in the effort to transform himself
into a political figure whom the West will embrace. Now,
the KLA seems set to become an army of those who might bully Kosovo Albanians and Serbs
alike into doing what it wants, from voting for its favored political leaders to
abandoning the apartments, businesses, vehicles and power it wants for itself.
Young uniformed KLA soldiers in a white Yugo hatchback overtook and stopped a car of
foreign journalists in the lonely fields a dozen kilometers from the Kosovo capital,
Pristina, and demanded that they rip their license plates, featuring Yugoslavia's white,
red, and blue flag, off the car.
The KLA wear a green-and-yellow camouflage military uniform featuring a red-and-yellow
arm badge with the letters "UCK," the Albanian abbreviation for the Kosovo
Liberation Army. The sense of that encounter was
that anyone in such a uniform can do whatever they like, from demanding to see one's
passport and documents, to meting out punishments it determines are appropriate, to
creating the type of oppressive police checkpoint system. Now under
a peace agreement reached between KFOR and Yugoslavian President Slobodan Milosevic, the
Serbian police and army have withdrawn. Some 50,000 international peacekeeping troops are
being deployed and the 1,000,000 Kosovars displaced by the police are to be allowed to
return to their mine-riddled homes and fields.
The incident underscores the fact that the game of diplomacy underway in Kosovo is a
delicate one. NATO and the KLA announced a deal that would force Thaci's rebels to keep
their hard-won guns out of sight, and eventually to trade their uniforms for civilian
clothes. A U.N. civilian administrator in Kosovo, the Brazilian Sergio Viero de Mello,
says the American government is courting figures like Thaci while the United Nations is
trying to check the KLA's power. " In less than
a year, the KLA has been transformed in the eyes of the West from terrorists to blue-eyed
boys, real blue-eyed boys," de Mello said in an interview in a
Pristina house just across the street from where Thaci and his "provisional
government" have set up offices. "Madeleine
Albright is in love with Thaci. Jamie Rubin is his best friend. It's
not helpful. Thaci's arrived here with the impression that he has the full weight of the
American government behind him. He believes he has earned the right to rule. "In the KLA's eyes, they have proved their legitimacy as an active
armed force on the same side as NATO," de Mello added. "But that the KLA is a
political force with a real constituency is not yet proven. And
there probably won't be elections here before next year. How can we have elections before there is an agreement on what the final endgame
for Kosovo will be?" he asked, referring to the fact that the international community
has not yet explicitly said whether Kosovo will be
allowed to seek full independence from Serbia in a certain time frame.
As one tours the destruction of Kosovo -- the ruins of the beautiful old town of the
northwestern Kosovo city of Pec, the torched old Turkish-style wooden stalls of the
southwestern city of Djakova and the emptied and burned homes and villages of the central
Drenica valley -- what stands out are not the fierce, oversized green tanks of the
NATO-led KFOR peacekeeping force, but the red-and-black eagle flag of the Kosovo
Liberation Army hanging from many public buildings. At key posts in most every hamlet and
town in Kosovo, the KLA's uniformed soldiers stand guard. " The Kosovo Albanians are confused,"
admits Lirak Celaj, a KLA spokesman and former actor from Pristina who has been serving in
the northeastern Kosovo "Llap" region. "They don't know the difference between the KLA and Rugova.
They used to believe in Rugova very much. He has disappointed them very much, especially
in the last months when he met Milosevic in Belgrade. But there must be some "test"to see who the people
support.
But in the villages of Kosovo, signs that the KLA
will dominate Kosovo public life in the near future are everywhere:
in the red-and-black, double-eagle flags now hanging from the schools, police stations and
other buildings where formerly hung the Serbian white, red and blue flag; in the
checkpoints and other intrusions they are imposing on the people; and in the uniformed
masses of KLA soldiers who have not disappeared with the withdrawal of the threat of
Serbian forces.
The tyranny that Kosovo Albanians suffered under the Serbian regime could be recreated
under the KLA, which has stepped into the vacuum of destruction left in the wake of the
war faster than NATO forces could get here.
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