The Internationals and the Mobs: Kosovo's Moment of Truth

The Clampdown Confirmed: A Spokesman Sacked

Aside from the general media whitewashing campaign, there have been two main incidents that indicate the damage-control concerns of top UNMIK officials. The first involves Derek Chappell, the longtime UNMIK spokesman who was "internally transferred" soon after stating that there was no evidence to support the Albanian claim that Serbs had drowned 3 Albanian children in the River Ibar – an "event" which nevertheless sparked a 3-day pogrom involving 51,000 rioters starting on March 17.

Despite the furious push the Albanian media gave to the drowning story, other international officials backed Chappell up. A senior OSCE official in Pristina told me last week that:

"…the surviving Albanian boy had been influenced prior to speaking to the police, and then heavily pressured to say that the Serbs did it. If you have a boy whose brother and perhaps best friends have just died and put him in front of the cameras, under such duress, how could be expected to act?"

Added UNMIK Regional Media Officer in Mitrovica, Tracy Becker, "From the very first phone call from RTK (Radio Television Kosovo), I have been saying there is no evidence for this claim. You have a traumatized child in a very emotional situation who gets thrown in front of the TV cameras. That shouldn't happen."

During the riots, international officials expressed their "shock" that the story – all questions of veracity notwithstanding – was being used as justification for massive, province-wide attacks on Serbs. Nevertheless, during the riots, KFOR and UNMIK spokesmen in the field weren't allowed to make comments on the rapidly changing developments; everything had to be filtered back to Pristina and Chappell. In this unenviable high-pressure situation, Chappell seems to have done the right thing by telling the truth – but has now paid the price for it.

This precedent has had far-reaching implications. One spokesman in Pristina who did not want to be named feared speaking out, lest "they shut me up like they shut up Derek."

The Serbian government is also making hay of the sacking. Minister for Kosovo Nebosja Covic concluded that Chappell's removal and the failure to solve earlier massacres of Serbs "…sends a clear signal to ethnic Albanian extremists and terrorists to continue with crimes."

Yet the whole affair could get murkier still: the body of the alleged third Albanian drowning victim has yet to be found, leading some to question whether he ever existed in the first place.

The Clampdown Suspected: A Suppressed Casualty Count

The second indication that UN chiefs are in damage-control mode is the possibility of an incomplete "official" death toll during the riots. Both Serbian and Albanian media alike last week questioned why UNMIK's death count has gone down from 32 to 29 and now, to 19. According to the Kosovo "street," six KFOR soldiers died during the riots (though officially none were killed), including "…one Greek in Urosevac, one Italian in Pec, and one French and one Dane in Mitrovica." Of course, none of this would be reassuring for the authorities in NATO home countries who are now quite interested to know why reality is not matching up to all those cheerful summaries of the situation they've gotten used to receiving from their subordinates.

KFOR soldiers in Mitrovica prepare to check bridge-crossers for weapons.

KFOR troops man Mitrovica's heavily barricaded second bridge.

Belgian soldiers monitor traffic to and from the bridge.

Whispers and Roars

Given this climate of containment, few internationals are willing to say what they really feel for the record. And Serbs, being afraid for their lives, are also shrinking from public testimony. Honest, law-abiding Albanians, too, are reluctant to speak out against the murky and all-powerful groups responsible for the recent carnage. One Albanian woman working for the OSCE and educated in America told me, "Me and my friends were all saying, 'what the hell are they [the mob] doing?' That was not what most Albanians want."

Nevertheless, the Balkans abounds with examples of vicious minority mobs triumphing through violence, extorting or intimidating their way through all opposition. In today's neo-fascist Kosovo, it is in no one's interest to buck the trend and oppose the rule of vigilantes backed up by the local warlords-in-suits.

However, there are a few dissenters willing to speak out. With the additional inclusion of off-the-record testimony from a variety of sources, we can see clearly that the international relationship with the Albanians they "liberated" five long years ago has undergone a radical shift. The peacekeepers, now in imminent danger of further attacks from the emboldened Albanian mobs, are expressing disgust with their tactics and goals. One American special policeman from the Close Protection Unit blasted the rioters' indiscriminate targeting, saying, "I'm sorry but that's just ridiculous, attacking the elderly and little kids." He and a colleague also expressed their concern with the wholesale destruction of Serbian churches last month: "…that was just uncalled for. That kind of stuff has got to stop."

In a break with precedent, NATO commander Admiral Gregory Johnson called the Albanian riots examples of ethnic cleansing. An unnamed UN official likened them to a "pogrom" – the Serbian "Kristallnacht."

The internationals are now promising to maintain order, no matter what it takes. Swedish Brig. Gen. Anders Braennstroem promised in late March "…to protect the minorities that were nearly killed and ethnically cleansed last week… and I will use every means I have. I have 3,000 soldiers with weapons in their hands."

Nevertheless, the local power-brokers aligned against the UN mission are far too strong for the peacekeepers to control. "Purging" Kosovo's political scene of criminals, as Javier Solana vowed to do, would be suicidal. It would require a courage that foreign occupiers inevitably do not possess.

While a deceptive calm currently prevails, everyone knows that even the slightest spark can set off a major conflagration which can only be subdued, if at all, by the deployment of many more foreign troops – no longer an option, considering that Iraq is itself on the brink of civil war. The American police and soldiers in Kosovo are doing their level best to protect the Serbian minority, but they're not likely to get much back-up if and when they need it.

Shock, Embarrassment, Cynicism

"A lot of people here were very shaken by what occurred," the senior OSCE official in Pristina told me. "Many sincerely believed things were getting better, that the two communities could co-exist peacefully. We're still dedicated to the same ideals… but the approach of forcing people to live together who don't want to live together is now being questioned."

However, what do the internationals make of the Kosovo government's pledge to rebuild all the houses and churches destroyed during the riots? The official echoed the cynicism of many when he stated, "…in my opinion this is very much just an alibi. The international community was shocked by the riots, and the Albanian leaders needed to react somehow. But I didn't tell you that!"

"A lot of internationals are very disgusted by the Albanians," he said. "We came to help them, and now they pay us back by behaving like the Serbs did to them beforehand! We have tried for five years with monetary donations, with training, with education and other support, but still everything is very superficial. They have learned merely how to mimic the international language of 'human rights,' but offer nothing more substantial."

Wet 'n' Wild in Caglavica

"Well, I just hope you're going to tell the truth," said the American cop with a chuckle. "You're not from CNN, I hope!" I had introduced myself as a journalist interested in documenting his experience of the riots. A thick-chested Texan, "Gary" was happy to oblige, having been in Kosovo for two-and-a-half years and having seen little of the Kosovo reality reflected in the international press.

At 10:00 AM on Wednesday, March 17, he said, "we got the alert." Having been told that a "surge" of Albanians was bearing down on the village of Caglavica, a few miles west of Pristina, the UN police geared up and prepared to stop the rioting. "We had 6 armored vehicles and 40 personnel," Gary said. "We attempted to catch up with the mob but all the roads had been purposely blocked by parked trucks and buses, so we had to take the back route through Kosovo Polje, getting to Caglavica around 12:00. At that time, part of Caglavica was already burning."

Once the detachment arrived on the scene, they tried to coordinate with the Indian, Jordanian, Irish, and Swedish police teams present. Gary estimated the mob at 5,000-6,000, all ready to raise hell: "…guys were lined up with rows of Molotov cocktails prepared beforehand. They had AK-47's, heavy machine guns, hand grenades, pistols, hunting rifles, farm tools, knives, rocks, you name it. We were ordered not to fire."

This order vexed the policeman and to this day he believes that unnecessary destruction was caused through this and other "command errors" that occurred that day:

"The Indian policemen, who were facing the worst of it at the front, were asking for permission to use rubber bullets. That permission was not granted at the time. The ground commander thought that we could deter the mob with our presence alone. But with the use of firepower we could have driven them back, thus saving a lot of houses."

Seeing that the UN police were pushovers, the rioters upped the ante. Gary recounts the order of events that resulted in the afternoon's first death:

"At this time we had no riot shields up front, and they were stoning us pretty heavily. We retreated behind some officers who had shields – it sounded like rain on a tin roof. We thought, 'come on, they can't continue.' But they did, and still no order was given to use force.

"Finally, as the mob was pushing dangerously close, we were given a KFOR water cannon truck. With the water cannon we were able to push the crowd back, and this pissed them off pretty good.

"So we look, and barreling down the road at us here comes this brave Albanian in a dump truck, all his countrymen rooting him on. And he drives up right in front of the 2 soldiers holding the water cannon and lurches to a stop. The crowd cheers. He lurches forward again and stops. More cheers. A soldier from the back was then forced to take this idiot out because he was about to crush our guys between his vehicle and the water cannon truck. And the crowd went silent when they saw that he was dead. Now we're probably going to have a new monument go up somewhere in Pristina, for this latest hero of the national cause."

Shortly thereafter, Gary says, his team was called back to Pristina to deal with an unfolding refugee emergency. They were replaced that evening by American soldiers who did have orders to use lethal force and for this reason commanded a lot more respect from the mob.

Their contribution, and that of the extraction force that saved Serbian refugees in Pristina, was acknowledged by the Serbian Ambassador in Skopje, Biserka Matic-Spasojevic, who told me last week that "If it weren't for the Americans taking action in Caglavica, over a thousand Serbs would have been lynched. We're really grateful to the US for helping."

Gary contends that "As Americans, our philosophy is that deadly force can be used. The UN takes a somewhat different approach. So it is sometimes frustrating and restricting, working for the UN. To save life and property we were not allowed to use deadly force."

Still, if not perfect, he says, the peacekeepers' reaction was vital: "If KFOR hadn't come in at the time, they [the rioters] could have taken the whole province."

A Suspicious Silence

"Right now, there is a rather suspicious silence," brooded Stelios, a pessimistic Greek policeman in Gracanica. "I don't like it." Taking a drag on his cigarette, he compared the current situation to the calm before the storm, adding that all signs of goodwill have been eroded by the riots:

"Nobody trusts nobody anymore. They [the Albanians] understood that we have now seen them attack us. And so the KPS [Kosovo Police Service] are now walking with their heads down, not making eye contact. It's a way of saying sorry, but we are now enemies.

"Before these riots, you would see UNMIK and KPS officers sitting together from 12-1 on their lunch break. Not anymore."

The new polarization is visible in the streets of Pristina and throughout Kosovo. "This place has become much busier in the two last weeks," said one local observer inside the Cookery Bar, a sports pub popular with foreigners and situated opposite the UN complex. "The foreigners are starting to avoid the Albanian bars they used to frequent, instead sticking to places like this." In front of the UN building, fences and a partial concrete barrier have cut into what used to be a wide avenue.

A German commander from the Close Protection Unit escorting the Serbian bishop agreed. "The local people have been acting very differently towards us since the riots. It's not an encouraging sign."

German and American peacekeepers at the Serbian Monastery of Gracanica.

The Empowerment Problem

And there are still many nagging questions. Along with the aforementioned doubts over the Albanian drowning story and the official casualty toll, there is most importantly the issue of how the "spontaneous" riots started, and who had ultimate control over them. "Why did [Hasim] Thaci and [Agim] Ceku not say 'stop' until three days into the riots?" asked Stelios. "And why, once they did say 'stop,' did everything suddenly stop?"

A former commander in the Croatian and then 1999 Kosovo conflicts, Ceku is the most contentious figure in the Kosovo Albanian leadership. Some believe there is a sealed indictment for him at The Hague. He was arrested in Hungary and Slovenia on a Serbian Interpol warrant last year, but both times he was released, due to the frantic intervention of UNMIK officials. Since the occupiers moved in, he has been in charge of the pseudo-military TMK – "Thug Men in Kosovo," as Gary and his peers jokingly refer to them. Mr. Ceku, who actually offered the US Kosovo's "troops" for Iraq, has lobbied continually for developing a real Kosovar army and air force. He, Thaci and a handful of other men more or less control the entire province, commanding the allegiance of formidable private armies and ow!ning many major businesses, hotels, bars, and restaurants.

And so not only do these men dominate the official government and command the formidable UN-approved security apparatus, they also have eyes, ears, and guns everywhere. And so by giving weapons, uniforms, and legitimacy to the former KLA leaders back in 1999, the UN administration set a trap that it would fall into later. At the very beginning of the whole occupation, there may have been a chance to perform the kind of "purge of criminals" Javier Solana dreams of today. But that opportunity has been missed. The criminal and terrorist elements have been allowed to consolidate their power, manipulating both the legal and extra-legal bodies that guarantee it.

Ambassador Matic-Spasojevic maintains that the basic mistake was in simply turning KLA members into KPS and TMK officers in 1999:

"…the main aim of that was to make them more easily controlled. The question remains as to why they haven't been controlled. For example, none of the main leaders have been confronted with the possibility of going to The Hague. Our Ministry of Justice has around 40,000 pages of information on the KLA leaders' crimes against humanity. The report weighs 27 kilograms. But Carla Del Ponte has been very quiet on this issue."

Quite understandably, the international administration is terrified of reining in the thugs who control the province. "They are aware that if they try to extradite these leaders," says the ambassador, "there will be all-out frontal war on the UNMIK and KFOR forces."

Reporting this week from Pristina, the Spectator's Tom Walker makes a similar point:

"…since 1999, the KLA have not proved to be the great defenders of human rights they were once cracked up to be: some 350,000 Serbs and other minorities have fled, and of the 100,000 left, many will surely go. Empowered, the Albanians have fulfilled virtually none of the conditions the UN has laid down as prerequisites for independence, but nonetheless it is now universally agreed that that is the only answer. The thugs have won the argument, and the last thing Nato or the prototypical EU defence force wants is to have to take on the inheritors of the KLA in their own backyard."

Schizophrenic Balkanians Endanger the Peacekeepers

That the Balkans represents some sort of parallel reality, some black hole of reason goes without saying. But even for this hallucinatory region, the speed with which riot-denial is setting in is remarkable. Gary told me the following vignette:

"I got in an argument with this old Albanian guy today in a shop. I recognized him from the riots. He saw the flag on my uniform and said, 'Oh! Mr. American! We love you!' I said, 'Well, if you love me so much, then why were you shooting and throwing Molotov cocktails at me the other week?' He waved his arm and said, 'No, no, no, that didn't happen. I saw on the TV news, nothing happened.' Most of them really believe it was just a peaceful demonstration."

This experience was seconded by a tough-talking, silver-haired American cop in North Mitrovica. He had fractured a foot and sustained leg injuries from rocks hurled at him during the riots. "Oh, sure," he said, "You have the guy who tries to hurt you one day, and the next morning you see him smiling at you, sitting in the café and wearing a turban to cover where you had to clock him the day before." Pausing to light up a stogie, the cop added:

"I don't want to hit anyone with steel. The last thing we want to do is to hurt anybody, but we also have a right to protect ourselves. Nobody can predict the future in the Balkans. The mentality here is angry, different from anywhere in the world… I tell the new guys, you can become a goodwill ambassador for your country in this job. But you can never lose focus. Things can change so fast."

The Final Countdown

Indeed, as the Kosovo whirlpool gathers force, things are indeed getting mighty volatile. However, there is little chance that definitive changes such as plotting Kosovo's "final status" will be achieved.

While Serbian and some world media decried the ethnic cleansing aspect of the March riots, the Albanians and their lobbyists in the press and US government blame the violence on UNMIK's failure to make Kosovo an independent state. This eruption couldn't be avoided, because we were just so frustrated and fed up, they seemed to be saying. Sorry. This apologetic overture to impatience is cynical in the extreme.

Now, everything is a mess and a mess it will remain. Serbia wants the province to somehow stay a part of the country; Kosovo Albanians reject this on principle and, as the senior OSCE official stressed, "…looking around, you will see it's just not the case. This has become an Albanian province."

And although Serbian police have not been allowed to protect minority areas, as Resolution 1244 envisaged, Belgrade is still servicing the Kosovar debt. Property rights remain undetermined, important economic reforms undone, impetuses for boosting employment non-existent. Even in the best of cases, an independent Kosovo would not be economically viable. Yet were it first to be partitioned, as the Serbian government suggested, then Serbia would retain the best mineral deposits near the Trepca mines north of Mitrovica, leaving the rump Kosovo with even less of a reason to exist.

While progress is slow, last month's riots showed the underlying volatility of the situation – something which lends an air of urgency to the proceedings. A brutally frank assessment of what needs to happen was disclosed to me by Oliver Ivanovic, Serbian member of the Kosovo presidency.

Oliver Ivanovic: "things will only work if you have a balance of fear."

"If you can't have a balance of interest," he said, "things will only work if you have a balance of fear. Right now you have euphoric, well-protected and rather brazen Albanians, and frustrated, fearful Serbs. Letting Serbia send police to guard their enclaves would go a long way towards achieving this balance. With moderate protection, we will start negotiating. But it is not fair, they way the situation is now, to hold talks."

This assertion brings us to a very interesting logical juncture. Faced with the prospect of not having enough troops to defend an increasingly vulnerable Serbian minority, UNMIK will have to consider allowing Serbian forces to return to Kosovo. However, since this would spark an Albanian rebellion against UNMIK and Serbia alike, they would probably decide against it. What to do, then, if UNMIK cannot prevent future riots and terrorist attacks against the Serbian minority? States Ivanovic:

"…if the Albanians try to drive out every Serb from Kosovo, as it looks like they're doing, this will cause a real war between Serbia and the Albanians, and no one will be able to stop it.

"I said this to Richard Holbrooke in October, when he came here to make a show of his big success with [former UNMIK head] Bernard Kouchner in front of reporters from the New York Times and Washington Post. I told him straight to his face that allowing this Albanian ethnic cleansing to continue was exactly the way for a new Milosevic to appear. Except it will be a new one, much cleverer than the old, and appearing in much different circumstances, now that the US and EU are both fed up with the behavior of the Albanians. Holbrooke just scoffed and kept saying, 'You're wrong.' But we will see."

A new war, for a Kosovo long thought lost? Anywhere else in the world, even the idea would be considered absurd. Yet this is the Balkans, where nothing is ever finished, and where reality tends to be fluid and elastic indeed. No one can control Kosovo or dictate its fate – especially not the well-meaning but hapless foreigners who are supposed to be doing so.

Peacekeepers, put on your helmets! It looks like it's going to be a wild ride.