'KFOR troops exceeded their mandate in Kosovo'
Published: 28 September, 2011, 23:32
The impartiality of KFOR troops in Kosovo is highly questionable, but the current clashes there won't escalate into a full-scale conflict as Belgrade fails to follow Serbian national interests, believes foreign affairs author Srdja Trifkovic.
The recent developments near Kosovo border, with extra NATO peacekeepers moving in to help bring calm, but provoking armed clashes instead bring Trifkovic – a foreign affairs editor in US 'Chronicles' magazine – to question their neutrality.
"It is rather ironic that we use the term 'peacekeepers', because is implies someone who is impartial, who is there to lower the tension, perhaps to prevent violence. Let us imagine – for argument's sake – that Bashar Assad has sent his security forces against a group of Syrian demonstrators, and those troops were met with stones; they fired live ammunition back, and then claimed they did it in self-defense. I think that already we can hear the laughter of Western politicians and media. And yet they would have us believe that they were acting in self-defence, when firing rubber bullets and live ammunition at rock-throwing Serbs," Trifkovic told RT.
"But what were they doing there in the first place? The notion that they were helping [Kosovo Prime-minister Hasim] Thaçi to impose his control on the border between Kosovo and Serbia, which should be properly called administrative dividing line, means they have exceeded their mandate and were no longer acting according to the resolution 1244, which is just about the only legal basis of their presence."
He went on to recall the events of 2004, when Albanians rampaged through some regions of Kosovo destroying whole Serb districts and Christian monuments.
"The same KFOR contingent remained remarkably restrained, not even thinking of firing at the Albanian mob, which went on a rampage torching thousands of Serbian homes and destroying dozens of Serbian churches including the 14th century cathedral in Prizren, which the Germans were supposed to be guarding. Instead they were diligently videotaping the proceedings, but didn't move a finger to stop them".
Trifkovic didn't rule out NATO's digging deeper in the region: "It will be argued from the NATO side that they have to preserve their credibility of actually finishing their job that remains unfinished," he predicted.
But the most unfortunate in Trifkovic 's eyes is that the Kosovo Serbs' barricades have turned themselves in; he believes that without supplies from central Serbia they cannot withstand the pressure for much longer.
Thus, he doesn't expect this local conflict to expand farther:
"The Belgrade government will cave in, as they have done time and over again. Because the Tadic regime is running with the hares and hunting with the hounds at the same time. On one hand they claim they want to preserve Serbia's claim to Kosovo, on the other whenever pressured by the West they cave in and capitulate. They are effectively unable and unwilling to protect Serbian national interests".
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