'Living an Illusion': Political Transition in Kosovo

by Professor Lenard J. Cohen ‘LIVING AN ILLUSION’: POLITICAL TRANSITION IN KOSOVO Nobody runs Kosovo in the real sense. - Hashim Thaci, December 9, 1999 Nobody can take Kosovo from us. Canadian Forces Photo by: Sgt. France Dupuis - Slobodan Milosevic, December 31, 1999 PROTECTORATE-INDUCED late quickly, Milosevic only agreed to international STABILIZATION: THE FIRST STAGE terms for an end to the bombing after eleven weeks of hostilities. But unlike the Rambouillet plan, the agree- n March 1999, following a conference held in ment ending the war gave the UN a major civilian role Rambouillet, France, Albanian leaders from Kosovo in Kosovo’s governance, and also limited the zone of signed an agreement on the future of their province operation of the NATO-led peacekeeping force entirely which had been formulated by the international to Kosovo (with no right of transit elsewhere in community. Under the agreement, Kosovo would Yugoslavia). By the time the bombing ended, thousands Iremain part of Yugoslavia, but a NATO-led internation- of Albanians had been killed and over a million had al peace-keeping force would provide security for the become refugees or were displaced within the province. elaboration of new political institutions designed to give Several thousand Serbs had also been killed or injured the province broad self-governing authority. President as NATO carried out widespread destruction of both Slobodan Milosevic of Yugoslavia rejected the peace military and civilian infrastructure in Yugoslavia. plan, charging that it was essentially a one-sided “Clinton administration diktat” that included provisions In mid-June 1999, as NATO’s air campaign wound inimical to his country’s sovereignty, and was also a down, and Yugoslav military and police forces complet- blueprint for eventual Kosovar (Albanian) secessionism. ed their departure from Kosovo, the international com- Yugoslav military, police, and paramilitary forces then munity scrambled to establish security and civil admin- intensified attacks against the insurgent Kosovo istration in the war-torn province. UN Security Council Liberation Army (Ushtria Clirimtare e Kosoves, or Resolution No. 1244 stipulated that there would be no UCK), which they had already been battling for over a change of Kosovo’s constitutional status. But for the year. The Belgrade regime’s campaign targeted both immediate future Kosovo (Kosova, in Albanian) would UCK military personnel, and also Albanian civilians in exist as a UN-administered entity, with a NATO-led areas deemed supportive of the UCK. Faced with multinational force — KFOR — providing an “interna- Milosevic’s intransigence, and also the growing and tional security presence.” During the second week in potentially catastrophic humanitarian tragedy in the June, 14,000 KFOR troops, under the command of province, NATO launched a bombing campaign against Yugoslavia. Defying expectations that he would capitu- Lenard J. Cohen is Professor of Political Science at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver. Spring 2000 G Canadian Military Journal 41 British Lieutenant General Mike Jackson, entered Indeed, by the end of the 1999 war in Kosovo, most Kosovo. Within a month, KFOR had grown to 33,500 Albanians considered that it would be preferable if the troops, headquartered under a unified command and remaining Serbian minority quit the province altogether. control structure in Pristina with five subordinate multinational brigade headquarters under the control of mili- The Kosovo Liberation Army — an insurgent seces- tary contingents from the major NATO states (a pre- sionist movement that had been fighting against the dominantly American sector in the east, British in the Serbian-controlled regime in Kosovo for several years center, French in the north, Germans in the south, and — was the dominant organizational force advancing Italians in the west). By the end of 1999, KFOR troop Kosovar political aspirations. By the end of the war, the strength had reached 50,000.1 UCK had become a de facto “ally” of NATO. As the UCK’s top military commander, Agim Ceku boasted, his Civilian officials from the UN Interim Administration organization could not claim all the credit for forcing Mission in Kosovo (UNMIK) and other international the Serbian withdrawal from Kosovo, but shared in the agencies initially only numbered in the dozens. Though “victory” because “after all the UCK brought NATO to the international community had almost four years of Kosovo.”3 Although the UCK’s dominance was politi- experience governing cally contested by other Bosnia and Herzegovina as Albanian political groups, a de facto protectorate, this the UCK’s political direc- first stage of establishing torate, under the leader- international civilian con- ship of the 30-year-old for- trol in Kosovo proved to be mer political science stu- highly chaotic. For one dent, Hashim Thaci — who thing, the UN — which was had been selected as prime largely side-lined both dur- minister of a Kosova tran- ing the pre-war diplomatic sitional government by negotiations and also the most members of the ensuing war — had not Kosovar delegation at the adequately prepared to take pre-war Rambouillet peace over civilian management conference — overshad- of Kosovo. Moreover, owed other political forces unlike in Bosnia, where the in the province. For exam- return of refugees and dis- ple, Ibrahim Rugova and placed persons was much his political party, the more protracted than hoped League of Kosovo for by the international Democrats (DSK), who community, the opposite had been at the forefront of problem pertained in Kosovo Albanian political Kosovo, namely, the rapid activity from 1989 to the return of thousands of mid-1990s, continued to Albanians to their homes challenge the political from neighboring countries ascendancy of Thaci and and other parts of the province. The catastrophic human- the UCK. Thaci and the UCK also had to contend with a itarian/refugee crisis, and the infrastructure damage claim to political authority from Bujar Bukoshi, who had throughout the province, was compounded by the bitter technically headed a Kosovo Albanian government in revanchist attitudes of the Albanian population towards exile since 1992, and had returned to the province fol- Kosovo’s remaining Serb minority. Thus, most lowing the war. The UCK though had emerged from the Albanians believed their Serbian neighbors shared war as the strongest Albanian military force, and enjoyed responsibility for the atrocities committed against wide-spread legitimacy and support among Kosovo Albanians by various members of Serb paramilitary Albanians. It soon became apparent that beyond the organizations and security personnel.2 Such sentiments, ongoing intra-Albanian political struggle, which was far shaped by recent events, were reinforced by the accumu- from settled, Kosovo was also experiencing the first lated grievances that the Kosovars nursed against heavy- stage of a political tug-of-war between the UCK and the handed Serb political/police control during the previous international community over who would control decade (especially from 1946 to 1966, and after 1987), Kosovo. During the 1990s, the Albanians had established and also the “culture of vengeance” that was an integral a parallel state to challenge the Serbian regime’s control historical feature of Albanian socio-political life. from Belgrade. In the post-war (1999-2000) period, the 42 Canadian Military Journal G Spring 2000 political dualism in the province was between by the last part of August. By this time, the number of KFOR/UNMIK on the one side, and the UCK on the KFOR troops had increased to over 40,000, but military other. personnel were not trained to maintain public order, and could not ensure adequate protection for the harassed and The initial difficulty faced by the international com- anxious minority communities. The cold-blooded mas- munity in Kosovo was the security vacuum left by the war. KFOR troops provided a strong deterrent to the return of Yugoslav military forces, and also overshad- owed the strength of UCK forces. But as the number of refugees returning to the province mounted, and the dis- covery of atrocities committed against Albanians during the war unfolded, the defenseless Serb minority became the target of ethnic violence, including intimidation, kidnapping, looting, arson, and assassination of Serbs by hard-line Albanians, some directly or closely associ- ated with the UCK. KFOR and UNMIK officials quickly found that their limited resources and personnel were incapable of providing the security necessary to pre- serve the “multi-ethnic Kosovo” that had been a prime goal of international intervention. Prizren, Orahovac, and Pristina, and their surrounding areas, were among some of the worst areas of anti-Serb hostilities, all regions of earlier anti-Albanian crimes by Serb forces. Canadian Forces Photo by: Sgt. David Snashall Approximately 150,000 Serbs and Montenegrins fled sacre of 14 Serb farmers on 28 July 1999 in the village of the province during June and July 1999 (roughly a third Staro Gacko, while they were gathering their harvest, of whom left even before NATO troops arrived); a peri- hastened the exodus of Serbs from multi-ethnic rural od when approximately 685,000 embittered Albanian areas, and general Serb out-migration from Kosovo. refugees returned from neighboring countries. Kosovo leaders, Ceku and Thaci generally condemned Thousands of Gypsies (Romanies), who had also incidents of violence against Serbs.

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