CIAO DATE: 04/04

Conflict in Kosovo: Failure of Prevention? An Analytical Documentation, 1992-1998.

Stefan Troebst

May 1998

European Centre for Minority Issues

Introduction

Not too much of inside knowledge of the Balkans was needed to realise that the winter of 1997/98 turned the formerly autonomous Yugoslav province of Kosovo inhabited predominantly by Albanians into one of the most violent-prone crisis zones in Europe. In September 1997, a massive protest movement of Albanian students gained momentum; from November 1997 on, an underground "Liberation Army of Kosovo" (UÇK) with an estimated strength of several hundred fighters increased the number of attacks on and assassinations of Serbian officials and police officers; and the regime retaliated first by police violence, show trials, long-term sentences, and nationalist tirades, then by bringing more and more security forces into the central part of Kosovo. In January 1998, The Economist depicted Kosovo as "Europe's roughest neighbourhood":

"You cross no border to get from Belgrade to Pristina, yet as you approach the city a flakjacketed policeman will inspect your passport. If you arrive on a windy day, the uncollected rubbish will swirl about you. There are no rubbish collectors in evidence, only police, who spend their days flagging down cars at random, extracting 'fines' for offences they invent on the spot. In the villages around Pristina it is worse: policemen routinely harass and occasionally torture inhabitants, who answer with smouldering hatred. This, surely, is the grimmest spot in Europe, the crucible, some fear, of its next war."

The activities of the UÇK guerrillas4 who claimed to have "liberated" parts of Kosovo and in an IRA style made public appearances at funerals5 and were openly applauded by Kosovo Albanian youngsters and other radicals unsatisfied with the non-violent methods of protest of students and political parties in Kosovo — "the movement that has made no move." "Prishtina's cafes are now full of excitable young men eager to take up arms to set Kosovo free," so again The Economist on a province where at least half of the Albanian population is under the age of 25. And the lost generation without a proper education and without any career chances was growing at a fast pace — with 4.32 per cent, birth rates in Kosovo in 1985 were are at European record height, and with 2.31 per cent today they still are.

On the other side of the barricade, the Chief of the General Staff of the FRY's "Army of Yugoslavia," Colonel-General Momilo Periãi, detected "on the horizon an overture of a general rebellion of Albanians against the organs of the Serbian state." He and his two colleagues in the Supreme Defense Council decided in December 1997 "to set an absolute priority on Kosovo" and, accordingly to further strengthen the three army corpuses in the South of Serbia at Prishtina, Leskovac, and Niã. In January 1998, increased activities of Serbian security forces and army were noted in and around Prishtina as well as in the stronghold of the UÇK, the Drenica region of Central Kosovo. This area of some 1,200 square kilometres situated 45 kilometres to the West of Prishtina with the two municipalities of Skenderaj (Srbica) and Gllogovci (Glogovac) as its centre, has a population of 110,000--almost exclusively Albanians (98.4 and 99.9 percent in 1991). Drenica is strategically important, since the main road connecting Prishtina with Eastern Kosovo and Montenegro runs right through it. Also in January 1998, the paramilitary Serbian Volunteer Guard--better known as the "Tigers" (Tigrovi) — lead by Þeljko Raþnatovi-"Arkan" were said to have returned to Kosovo.

Compared to the rapid escalation and militarisation of the Kosovo conflict, positive signs and signals were few and not very significant. On 1 January 1998, the Serb Christian-Orthodox Patriarch Pavle sent a letter to the Student Union of the Albanian underground university condemning a crackdown of Serbian security forces on student demonstrators on 30 December 1997. Later in January, a "Pan-Serbian Church and People Assembly" at Prishtina called on the political representatives of Kosovo Albanians and Serbs to enter immediately into negotiations. "Only by dialogue can a solution be found, since a war would be a catastrophe for Serbs and Albanians alike," the final document of the meeting demanded. And in mid-February 1998 so-called 3+3 Group of representatives of Serbian and Kosovo Albanian educational authorities met under the auspices of the Catholic NGO Comunità di Sant'Egidio to discuss curricula, textbooks and other highly controversial topics related to the implementation of the education agreement.

On the weekend of 27 February to 1 March a battle-like clash between UÇK fighters on the one side and heavily armed SAJ units on the other, equipped with 20 helicopter gunships and 30 armoured personnel carriers, took place near the Drenica village of Likoshan (Likoãan). At least four Serbian police officers and an unknown number of Albanians guerrillas were killed. According to Albanian sources, the security forces staged a revenge attack on the civilian Albanian population of the Drenica village of Qirez (irez), killing more than two dozens of women, children and elderly persons. Then, on 2 March, Serbian riot police equipped with armoured vehicles, water canons, tear gas and batons cracked down on a large crowd of Albanian demonstrators in Prishtina and injured at least 289 persons--among them Veton Surroi, editor of the Prishtina daily KOHA Ditore and a key figure for several informal fora for Kosovo Albanian-Serbian dialogue. And from 4 to 7 March, the Serbian side directed a second blow against the Drenica villages of Prekaz i Ulët (Donji Prekaz) and Llausha (Lauãa) where whole families and clans were killed.

Full text (PDF format, 106 pages, 404 KB)