Power Strategies Emerge Amidst Kosovo Turbulence

Power Strategies Emerge Amidst Kosovo Turbulence
2/29/2008 (Balkanalysis.com)
New information from regional intelligence sources, as well as open-source channels, indicates that cross-border militant activities on at least four fronts are among the new developments to watch in the aftermath of Kosovo’s independence declaration on February 17.
While world attention has focused mainly on the political and legalistic dimensions of the Kosovo Albanian government’s declared independence on February 17, other concurrent developments indicate that the main actors are taking steps to change the facts on the ground in the short term, or produce a long-term deterrent by hastily securing a presence across a widening geographical terrain.
In south Serbia’s Presevo Valley, home of a substantial Albanian population, the Serbian government has been boosting the presence of its security forces. According to Skopje daily Vecer, the Serbian army is completing Tsepotine Base, also known as the ‘Serbian Bondsteel’ (a reference to the US Camp Bondsteel not far across the border in Kosovo). Its strategic high position allows commanding views of Kosovo to the east and Macedonia, 5km to the south. Although planned for five years, various issues and disagreements between the ministries of defense and internal affairs slowed it down, reports Vecer. However, with the independence of Kosovo, completing the 35-hectare base has become a priority. The construction of such a large base in this strategic triangle indicates Serbia’s concern to keep the presently quiet Presevo Valley from blowing up as it did in 2000. Also, for Russia, reportedly interested in some sort of a military presence with the help of the Serbs, the location is again ideal. Vecer reports that Serbia currently has 16 smaller bases along the 92km-long administrative border with Kosovo.
New information from Kosovo itself also suggests present Russian cooperation, with the presence of small numbers of alleged Russian military trainers, in civilian garb, in the northern Kosovo towns of Leposavic and Mitrovica. Balkanalysis.com reported in late 2006 about the arrival here of Serbian special forces in civilian clothes, as a precaution in case of Albanian attacks. In 2006, it should be remembered, KFOR repopulated a disused base in the north of Kosovo, primarily to prevent Serbian troops from coming to the aid of their ethnic kin in case of any large-scale violence.
Two days after the Albanian’s independence declaration, Serb reservists and other agitators stormed and destroyed the nearby border post, gaining brief but important access into Kosovo before it was recovered by NATO troops. On February 27, Reuters reported that the Serb National Council in North Mitrovica had called for Russia “to return its KFOR contingent [in order to] to stabilize the situation in areas where Serbs are in the majority,” in the words of Council leader Milan Ivanovic. Although Russia had a small troop detachment in Kosovo from 1999-2003, it was deliberately not given its own sector equal to those of the other Great Powers, nor positioning in northern Kosovo. Now, it appears, Moscow will have in one way or another positioning in both northern Kosovo and the Presevo Valley.
Along with the attack on the UN border post in northern Kosovo on February 19, Serbian reservists have also made their presence felt on an eastern Kosovo border checkpoint. On February 25, rioting ensued at the Mutivode checkpoint, where 250 ex-serviceman from Medveda, Kuršumlija and Lebane clashed with Albanian KPS officers at the administrative boundary with Kosovo. The two sides hurled stones at one another, until the KPS used tear gas to dispel the Serbs. Strong winds, however, soon cleared the air for more conflict. ”Tires were also set on fire, and the wind spread the blaze to both sides of the line,” reported B-92. “During the entire showdown between the demonstrators and the KPS, cordons of KFOR, on one, and Serbian MUP on the other side of the line, looked on without intervening.”
Serbs have begun other forms of symbolic protest within Kosovo. Serbian police employed within the KPS are threatening to trade in their uniforms for those of Serbia as soon as possible; on February 28, in line with Belgrade’s wide-ranging policies designed to reduce the ability of the self-declared state to function, Serbian KPS officers announced a general strike. The strike will create an interim period in which the officers can make a coordinated action. Even if the struggling UN mission, essentially ineffective north of the River Ibar, dismisses their rejection or tries to take stronger action, the departure of the token Serb presence would signal the end of any hopes for multi-ethnic law enforcement in Kosovo.
On February 27, KFOR sources indicated that British and Austro-German reserve battalions were being put on a heightened state of readiness and that the military mission was increasing its presence in the north. Some Albanians apparently intended to make preparations of their own. On February 21, the leader of the Albanian minority population of North Mitrovica, Adem Mripa, was arrested by KPS police. According to B-92, three Tromblon RPGs and several pieces of ammunition for sniper guns weapons were discovered in his house, in the ethnically mixed quarter of Bosniak Mahala. At the same time, “a bomb was found near a house owned by [Serbian resident] Jovan Ilic, which KFOR subsequently destroyed.” Serbs in the isolated enclaves of central and southern Kosovo are far more vulnerable. An eight-year-old girl was stoned in Ljiplan on February 23, Tanjug reported, while playing in her yard. Such attacks were a regular occurrence, the girl’s father told reporters.
The announced independence of Kosovo has taken on wider dimensions, however. Approximately 12 days ago, Balkanalysis.com has learned, Macedonia’s intelligence services became aware of the re-opening of training camps/rear bases in the Kukes area of northern Albania. These bases, located near the clan stronghold of Albanian Prime Minister Sali Berisha, were where American and British military instructors trained Kosovo Liberation Army soldiers in safety for the 1998-99 campaign across the border in Kosovo. Reporters from Germany’s Spiegel in Kosovo, citing an Albanian paramilitary volunteer in the shadowy Albanian National Army, claim that the organization “takes orders from its head office in Tirana, Albania.” The ANA has recently stated its priority of monitoring the north of Kosovo and, if necessary, using force to prevent it from rejoining Serbia.
An expected complement to any Albanian irregular activity within Kosovo itself was likely to have been the paramilitary group destroyed in Macedonia’s ‘Operation Storm’ in November 2007. In the remote village of Brodec in the Sar Planina mountains above Tetovo, special police arrested or killed escaped criminals from Kosovo’s Dubrava Prison, and captured a sophisticated arsenal, sufficient for 650 men- for the moment at least neutralizing a major security threat before the anticipated secession decree in Kosovo to the north.
However, despite that coup, the Macedonian intelligence source stated that “very recently, we have received information that some small Albanian armed bands, 10-20 individuals or so in each, have re-entered Macedonian territory from Kosovo, in the Tetovo and Lipkovo regions- we are working on locating these groups before they can [become a threat]… however, the border is very easy to be crossed in those places, and they can easily escape from one side to the other when necessary.”
http://www.balkanalysis.com/2008/02/29/power-strategies-emerge-amidst-kosovo-turbulence/

U.S. takes wrong tack with Kosovo

http://www.mercurynews.com/opinion/ci_8427117

SAN JOSE MERCURY-NEWS (USA)

OPINION

U.S. takes wrong tack with Kosovo
By Mark Kramer

Article Launched: 03/02/2008 01:38:59 AM PST

Kosovo's decision to declare independence was a bad idea. The U.S. decision
to recognize it was worse - and not because it prompted a crowd of angry
Serbs to torch the U.S. Embassy in Belgrade.

Even if the pint-size chunk of the Balkans does not degenerate into failed
statehood like Sudan or Somalia, it almost certainly will remain in its
current perilous condition and become a European bastion of criminality and
human trafficking. Recognizing Kosovo also sends a bizarre message to
separatist movements around the world: If you resort to violence, the West
might support you; if you're peaceful, you haven't got a prayer.

That was certainly the message to Ibrahim Rugova and his Democratic League
of Kosovo.

Rugova, a former professor of literature who used to hand out stones from
his rock collection to visiting dignitaries (the more he liked you, the
better the rock), formed his movement in late 1989 to offer peaceful
resistance to Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic. Milosevic had rescinded
Kosovo's autonomy and clamped down on its majority Albanian population as
part of his murderous plan to carve a "Greater Serbia" from the ashes of the
former Yugoslavia. But for nearly a decade, Rugova received no support from
Western countries, which largely ignored the region. The Dayton Agreement of
1995, ending the bloody war in Bosnia-Herzegovina, made no mention of
Kosovo.

Not until the Albanian-run Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) came on the
scene in 1997 with a guerrilla campaign and terrorist attacks against
Serbian troops and civilians did the Clinton administration begin to pay
attention to Kosovo, inadvertently rewarding the KLA and its terrorist
violence. The KLA deliberately sought to provoke Serbian reprisals, and
Milosevic, with his usual obtuse brutality, readily obliged.
As the fighting escalated, the United States and other NATO countries agreed
to take military action to halt Milosevic's campaign of ethnic cleansing.
But instead of dispatching ground troops, President Clinton decided to rely
solely on air power. The KLA in effect became NATO's boots on the ground. So
when Milosevic agreed in June 1999 to withdraw Serbian forces from Kosovo,
the KLA, empowered by NATO's pixie dust, filled the vacuum. For the next 15
months, the KLA-led government alienated most of the 2.5 million people in
Kosovo - Albanians and Serbs alike - by engaging in violence, extortion and
other abuses, including widespread drug- and gun-running.

In October 2000, the situation finally seemed to improve when protesters
across Serbia overthrew Milosevic, and Rugova's party won overwhelmingly in
Kosovo's parliamentary elections, far eclipsing the KLA and paving the way
for Rugova's emergence as president. Rugova sought close ties with the
United States, and for a while U.S. officials provided him with valuable
economic and diplomatic support.

But the KLA refused to disappear and sought to weaken Rugova's position by
provoking violence against the region's Serb minority, roughly 10 percent of
the population. The United States, preoccupied with Iraq and Afghanistan,
mostly stood by and allowed the KLA to re-emerge through intimidation and
force.

Then in January 2006, Rugova died of lung cancer. And in elections last
November, the KLA regained power, seeming just as intolerant as ever. The
new prime minister, Hashim Thaci, who hid out in the woods with Albanian
guerrillas in the late 1990s, not only was involved in terrorist acts as a
KLA leader but is also known for his ruthlessness.

So why, out of all the groups in the world that are seeking independence
(the Tibetans, the Kurds, the Tamils and others), do the Albanian Kosovars
deserve to be singled out and accorded this prize?

Apparently, in the wake of last year's elections, many Western leaders
feared that violence might erupt in Kosovo unless independence was granted
soon. As such, Washington's recognition of the newly named Kosova once again
gives the impression that the Kosovars are being rewarded solely because
they might otherwise turn violent. Other independence-minded minorities will
realize that if they rely on peaceful tactics, they will risk being ignored.

The poisonous impact of this whole episode on Serbian politics was
underscored by the embassy attack in Belgrade. Although moderate Serb
politicians, including President Boris Tadic, swiftly condemned the
violence, even they now feel compelled to emphasize nationalist themes.
Those who spearheaded the peaceful overthrow of Milosevic's murderous regime
are now in danger of being accused of facilitating the country's
dismemberment. And resentment over the forced relinquishment of Kosovo is
bound to simmer for many years and stoke regional tension.

Another risk is that Kosova, the poorest region in Europe, will become a
failed state and possibly a terrorist haven. Its economy would have stopped
functioning long ago without life support from the United Nations, the
European Union and the United States. Even if Kosovar officials were
economic wizards, they would have a hard time meeting popular expectations,
which have soared with independence. Moreover, the ethnic divide will likely
intensify. The prospect of further violent clashes between Serbs and
Albanians seems all too real, and Thaci's government may respond with ethnic
cleansing.

Having recognized Kosova's independence with almost no public debate,
Washington and its friends in Western Europe should be on their guard. Be
careful what you wish for.

MARK KRAMER is director of Harvard University's Cold War Studies Program and
a senior fellow of Harvard's Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies.
He wrote this article for the Washington Post.

Independent Kosovo a minefield, not a triumph

http://canberra.yourguide.com.au/news/opinion/opinion/independent-kosovo-a-minefield-not-a-triumph/1194429.html

CANBERRA TIMES (AUSTRALIA)

Monday, 3 March 2008

Independent Kosovo a minefield, not a triumph
Seumas Milne

It might have been expected that the catastrophe of Iraq and the bloody
failure of Afghanistan would have at least damped the enthusiasm among
Western politicians for invading other people's countries in the name of
democracy and human rights.

But the signs are instead of a determined drive to rehabilitate the idea of
liberal interventionism so comprehensively discredited in the killing fields
of Fallujah and Samarra. First there was the appointment of the committed
interventionist, Bernard Kouchner, as French Foreign Minister. Then, late
last year, that supposedly reluctant warrior, British Prime Minister Gordon
Brown, reasserted the West's right to intervene across state borders.

This month, his Foreign Secretary, David Miliband, argued "mistakes" in Iraq
and Afghanistan should not weaken the moral impulse to intervene in support
of democracy, "economic freedoms" and humanitarianism, whether peacefully or
by force. In the United States, both contenders for the Democratic party
nomination have signed up long-standing liberal interventionists as foreign
policy advisers academic Samantha Power in the case of Barack Obama and
1990s veterans Richard Holbrooke and Madeleine Albright in Hillary
Clinton's.

The interventionists, it seems, are back in business. And now Kosovo's
declaration of independence has given them a banner to rally the
disillusioned to a cause that gripped the imagination of many Western
liberals in the '90s. The British Foreign Office spin doctor who drafted the
infamous Iraq war dossier in 2002, John Williams, wrote last week that the
Kosovo war had convinced him to follow Tony Blair on Iraq and it would be a
"tragedy" if Iraq made future Kosovos impossible. The Independent went
further, calling Kosovo's new status a "triumph of liberal interventionism".

But it's hard to see much triumph in the grim saga of Kosovo. NATO's 1999
bombing campaign, unleashed without United Nations support and widely
regarded as a violation of international law, was supposed to halt
repression and ethnic cleansing, but triggered a massive increase in both;
secured a Serbian withdrawal only through Russian pressure; and led to mass
reverse ethnic cleansing of Serbs and Roma, including almost the entire Serb
population of Pristina. After nine years of NATO occupation under a nominal
UN administration, crime-ridden Kosovo is more ethnically divided than ever,
boasts 50 per cent unemployment and hosts a US military base described by
the EU's human rights envoy as a "smaller version of Guantanamo".

Its independence declared in defiance of the United Nations Security Council
and damned by Russia, China and European Union states such as Spain as
illegal is a fraud and will remain so as an EU protectorate controlled by
NATO troops. By encouraging a unilateral breakaway from Serbia, without
negotiation and outside the UN framework, the US, Britain and France have
given the green light to secessionist movements from Abkhazia to Kurdistan.

The claim that Kosovo sets no precedent because it suffered under Serbian
rule is absurd. Haven't the Kurds or Chechens suffered? The difference boils
down to power and who is supporting whom, not justice. Of course the
Kosovans have the right to self-determination, but they certainly won't get
it as a NATO colony, nor at the expense of other nationalities in the
Balkans, where the impact of Kosovo's declaration on Bosnia and Macedonia
could be conflagrationary.

The significance of the breakaway has not been lost on the Muslim world,
which has long been urged to see US support for Muslim Kosovo and Bosnia as
proof of US good intentions, but has been notably slow to recognise the
breakaway province. As Yasser az-Za'atra wrote in the Jordanian daily
al-Dustour, "Besieging Russia is the main reason that led [George W.] Bush
to support Kosovo's independence. The rise of Russia and China provides a
balance to the US and is undoubtedly in the Muslims' interest. It is not in
the Muslims' interest to secede not in Kosovo, nor in Chechnya, nor even in
China."

Far from helping to rehabilitate liberal interventionism, Kosovo highlights
the fatal flaws at its heart. By supporting one side in a civil war,
bypassing the UN and acting as judge and jury in their own case, the Western
powers exacerbated the humanitarian crisis, bequeathed a legacy of
impoverished occupation and failed to resolve the underlying conflict. They
also laid the ground for the lawless devastation of Iraq the bitter fruit of
the Kosovo war. At the height of the 1999 NATO bombing campaign, Blair set
out five tests for intervention as part of his "doctrine of international
community", a catechism for liberal interventionists admired by US
neo-conservatives who followed them. Arguably, only one of the five was met
in Iraq.

What's more, both the US and Britain not only committed military aggression
on the basis of falsehoods, they have been responsible for hundreds of
thousands of deaths and millions of refugees in Iraq and Afghanistan a
humanitarian crisis that dwarfs anything that happened in the former
Yugoslavia in the 1990s. Between them, they have also been responsible for
torture, kidnapping and mass detentions without trial. The latest
allegations of beatings, killings and mutilations of Iraqi prisoners by
British soldiers at Camp Abu Naji near Amara in 2004 are the most extreme of
a series that include the unpunished beating to death of Baha Mousa in
custody in Basra.

But there is, of course, not the slightest prospect of any humanitarian
intervention against the occupiers of Iraq for the obvious reason that they
are the most powerful states, who act in the certain knowledge that they
will never be subject to any such violent sanction for their own violations
of humanitarian and international law. But it is exactly that widely
understood reality that undermines the chances of a genuine multilateral
basis for humanitarian intervention.

As the ability of the US to dictate to the UN weakens, it's not surprising
that pressure to revive unilateral liberal interventionism has grown. But
any rules-based system of international relations has to apply to the
powerful as well as the weak, allies as well as enemies, or it isn't a
system of rules at all it's a system of imperial power enforcement which
will never be accepted. Guardian

High price for recognizing Kosovo's independence

http://www.orlandosentinel.com/news/opinion/letters/orl-myword03a08mar03,0,5383490.story

ORLANDO SENTINEL (USA)

COMMENT

High price for recognizing Kosovo's independence
Christopher A. Roach

March 3, 2008

America's hasty recognition of an independent Kosovo has upset powerful
interests, most notably Russia. Serbia, though far from Moscow, has long
been Russia's "Israel": an embattled sister nation on the frontier of the
Islamic world.

The Iraq war eclipsed Kosovo in the public's consciousness. The United
States fought a 78-day air war over Serbia in 1999 and maintains 7,000
troops today as part of a U.N. occupation force. Though American casualties
have been mercifully low, the rationale for the campaign has proven even
less durable over time than the alleged weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.
Specifically, claims of Serbian genocide in Kosovo have been proven false,
and Kosovo's declaration of independence directly violates the peace
agreement that ended hostilities.

The Kosovo war began unusually. The United Nations did not authorize
American intervention in support of the Kosovo Liberation Army, a group that
until 1998 the United States considered a terrorist organization. Yet the
Kosovo Liberation Army's public-relations campaign proved decisive. For
months, CNN displayed heart-breaking pictures of Albanian refugees. Rumors
abounded of "genocide" and "mass graves." Shamed by its cautious response to
earlier events in the former Yugoslavia, the West would "get it right" this
time. After failing to secure U.N. support, President Bill Clinton went
shopping for diplomatic cover and found it among America's NATO allies.

As in Iraq, faulty intelligence played a key role, complete with satellite
photos of "mass graves." When the war ended, the FBI went home empty-handed
after an extensive search for evidence of genocide. In fact, the death toll
from NATO bombings -- estimated at more than 6,000 -- exceeded 2,108
confirmed killed in the fighting, a total that includes Serbian combatants.
This was a far cry from the 100,000 dead Albanians Clinton warned of in the
run-up to war.

NATO and the Kosovo Liberation Army ended the war against Serbia through a
negotiated peace. The parties agreed to U.N. Security Council Resolution
1244, which mandated that the remains of the Yugoslavian nation -- by then
reduced to Serbia and Montenegro -- be preserved intact.

Though the genocide did not exist, and the Kosovo Liberation Army leadership
has since flouted its treaty obligations, American leaders are applauding.
After embracing the broader principles of democracy and self-determination
that led to the Kosovo war, how could the U.S. now condemn the Kosovar
declaration of independence?

No one believes that the Kosovar Albanians will act as tolerant stewards of
a multicultural society. Since 1999, Kosovar extremists have destroyed
Christian churches and monasteries and expelled thousands of Serbs in a
campaign that one NATO commander described as "ethnic cleansing."

History has not been kind to the Serbs. After World War II, the communist
regime murdered Serbians en masse who fought against the Nazi invaders. In
the 1990s, though all sides committed atrocities in the Balkans, Americans
and Europeans singled out the Bosnian Serbs for condemnation. The hypocrisy
reached its peak in 1995 when the West remained silent as well-armed
Croatian forces expelled 200,000 Serbs from Bosnia's Krajina region. Today
in Kosovo, the holy land of the Serbs, the West has explicitly approved the
nationalist aims of the Albanians by recognizing an independent Kosovo.

This is a bigger issue than Serbia. Once again, the United States has
needlessly provoked Russia. In recent years, we've meddled in its Ukrainian
neighbor's elections and pushed NATO'S boundaries farther eastward. In 1999,
a weak Russia could do little to support its Serbian ally. But today
Vladimir Putin's Russia is strong, and its patience with the West has worn
thin.

We may soon find that we have insulted Russia one time too many.

Christopher A. Roach is an attorney in private practice in Orlando.