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Thursday, Nov 26, 2009
As the Kosovo Liberation Army works to earn NATO's acceptance, Kosovar Albanians herald the KLA as the liberator of the province.
Jun 24, 1999 | 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 Tuesday. "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 charisma, 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.
The ragtag Kosovo Albanian separatist rebel army he leads emerged in early 1998 to provoke Serbia's forces into acts of massive retaliation that ultimately led to international intervention. 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 Wednesday 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. This, they said, was to make sure they did not provoke the outrage of the Kosovar Albanian villagers whose lives had been destroyed by the Serbian forces who fly the same flag.
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 that until a few weeks ago the Serb police imposed on Kosovo's Albanian majority. 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 Monday 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.
