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Kosovo Lindore / Preshevo 1999

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Kosovo Lindore / Preshevo 1999 Conflict Studies Research Centre G104 Kosovo Lindore/Preshevo 1999-2002 & The FYROM Conflict Bob Churcher This paper examines the recent history and underlying political forces at work in the Preshevo/Kosovo Lindore conflict and argues that the peace agreement reached in 2001 is likely to need revision and greater commitment by the international community if a lasting settlement is to be reached. Contents Abbreviations Summary & Salient Points 1 The Background to the Conflict & the Connection with the Northern Macedonian (FYROM) Villages 2 Southern Serbia or Eastern Kosovo? 4 Map of Kumanovo-Vranje Corridor 5 The Events of 2001 10 Box - Albanian Political Parties in the Preshevo Area 13 The Preshevo Link with FYROM 16 Overall View in The Balkan Context 18 Implications for Serbia 18 Implications for FYROM 19 Implications for Balkan Stability 21 The Future, Peace Plans, NATO, the EU - & the Likelihood of Success in Peacemaking 21 G104 Abbreviations DMZ Demilitarised Zone DOS Democratic Opposition of Serbia DPA Party of Democratic Albanians EAAG Ethnic Albanian Armed Groups EUMM EU Monitoring Mission FRY Federal Republic of Yugoslavia FYROM Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia GSZ Ground Security Zone, safe area IC International Community JNA Communist Period Yugoslav Army JSO Special Operations Anti-Terrorist Unit KDOM Kosovo Demilitarisation Observation Mission KFOR Multinational Force in Kosovo KLA Kosova Liberation Army KVM Kosovo Verification Mission LDK Kosova Democratic League LKCK National Movememt for the Liberation of Kosovo LPK Kosovo People's Movement MNB Multinational Brigade MUP Serbian Interior Ministry Police OCHA United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs PADU Party of Albanian Democratic Union PBDSH Patria per Bashkimin Demokratik te Shqiptareve PCPMB Political wing of the UCPMB PDA Party of Democratic Action PDD Partia Demokratskih Delovanja PDK Democratic Party of Kosovo PDP Party of Democratic Prosperity PDUA Partia Demokratskog Ujedinjenja Albanaca PMB Preshevo, Medveje and Bujanovac PVD Partia e Veprimit Demokratik SAJ Paramilitary Special Police Units SDSM Social Democratic Party of Macedonia SPS Socialist Party of Serbia UCK Ushtria Climitare Kosoves UCPMB Liberation Army of Preshevo-Medvedje-Bujanovac UNDP United Nations Development Programme UNMIK United Nations Mission in Kosovo VJ Yugoslav Army VMRO Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organisation G104 Summary & Salient Points The recent (1999-2001) conflict by Albanians against the Serb Government in the Preshevo1 area was ended, in the view of the International Community (IC) by a successful NATO sponsored negotiation. This paper examines this statement, the background to the conflict, whether it really has ended, and the question of what if any was the connection to the later Albanian insurgency in Macedonia. There are perhaps three really salient points: • The cause - which should be seen as the present borders and not a question of human rights - goes back to the Serbian seizure of Albanian inhabited territory to the south of what was then Serbia, from the Ottoman Empire in 1879 and 1912. There were already basic Slav/Albanian ethnic differences, and there grew up an Albanian dislike of being ruled by Slavs in what they see as their homeland. • This in turn connects to Serbian expansionist ambitions of the nineteenth century, matching those of Bulgaria and Greece, versus Albanians' ideas of remaining within a reformed Ottoman Empire for reasons of religion, protection and so on. • The “peace agreement” in Preshevo has been widely portrayed as the result of a NATO “negotiation process”, and not merely as a result of the NATO withdrawal of the safe area (DMZ) so necessary to any guerrilla war in such a small area (PMB is only around 1,200 sq km). There is also the question of the withdrawal of US support after Milosevic’s fall, and the outbreak of the Macedonian conflict, when NATO fears precipitately ended the DMZ, where the rebellion had concentrated. The “negotiation process” was simply this: accept the Covic plan and return to the status quo and Serbian rule or face total destruction Kosovo style. Despite facilitating four meetings inexperienced NATO negotiators allowed three meetings to degenerate into stating Serb demands for the return of Serb prisoners. The fourth briefly touched on the Covic plan for police reforms, and was then followed by NATO announcing the end of the DMZ, and that any ex-fighters could cross the administrative border into Kosovo, if they surrendered their weapons. In reality the only negotiation was by NATO, in arranging that OSCE would have some role in the re-constituted “multi-ethnic” police force. The Albanian rebels in Preshevo were, and are, not a unified movement - both the Kosova and Macedonian rebellions by Albanians against Slav rule (or misrule as they saw it) were reasonably unified, both had only one large and one small organisation involved in commanding parts of the armed rebellion. In Preshevo it was hard to distinguish how many organisations were involved in armed revolt, but there were at least 6 or 7 local village defence forces, each working back to a supporting organisation elsewhere. Admittedly this did have precedents in the early Kosovo conflict, but in Preshevo it was greatly exacerbated by the lack of any educated (intellectual) leadership in the villages. What passed for an educated 1 Kosovo Lindore/Preshevo 1999-2002 & The FYROM Conflict Conflict Studies Research Centre ISBN 1-903584-67-1 March 2002 G104 Bob Churcher “middle-class” opposition in Preshevo supported Riza Halimi and the PDA, akin to the early LDK in Kosovo. There are a number of other reasons why the Preshevo conflict is of interest. Being on the edge of the Albanian and Slav/Serb inhabited areas of the southern Balkans, the Preshevo conflict epitomises Serb/Slav v Albanian conflict in the Balkans - possibly the end of the Slavic expansion into the Balkans dating from Byzantine times. The conflict has been widely alleged to have been started by the US, or at least encouraged and supported as part of the plan to destabilise Milosevic. The conflict can also be seen as part of wider pan-Albanian aims, or at least part of the aims of a small element of radical nationalists who saw success in Kosovo as only the start of regaining control of all Albanian inhabited lands which had fallen under Serb control successively in 1876/9 and 1911/12. The conflict also has an unusual geo-strategic significance: the hills around Preshevo were seen, at least in the late 19th century, as potentially controlling Serbia’s route to the south, although in reality modern artillery has probably obviated this consideration. This possible threat to the main route south from Serbia to Salonica still has great significance in Serb and Greek minds. Lastly, the real interest in the Preshevo problem is that it is continuing, albeit at a markedly lower level. There are small scale attacks on the police, including the multi-ethnic police. VJ military expenditure on bases and road building remains very high, and the Serbian press continues to carry articles on how Serbs are being forced out of the area. In Belgrade the ongoing problems remain one of the main causes of dispute between the old unreformed VJ and reformers (albeit very limited reformers) such as Covic. And the future: Shefket Musliu (ex commander of the UCPMB) stated to Zeri in Pristina2 that there could be no lasting peace until the agreement (presumably the Covic plan) was fully implemented. The Background to the Conflict & the Connection with the Northern Macedonian (FYROM) Villages The conflict examined in this document has broken out around the borders of Serbia, Kosovo and FYROM, but this is no geographic accident. These particular (formerly internal Yugoslav administrative) borders have never been gazetted3 in any way that western Europeans would understand, and were created for the first time in 1946-47.4 At that time serious violence between the victorious communists and local resistance groups, predominantly Albanian and Moslem, was in progress. Prior to that the international and regional administrative borders in the Kosova Lindore/Preshevo region had changed radically several times in various ways over the previous 70 years, revised village by village at various times subsequently, and were recently changed again by FRY and FYROM5 without reference to the UN mandated administration of Kosovo. These changes all have one thing in common. They cut across contiguous districts inhabited by people of Albanian ethnicity and language, who have not been consulted in the process. To take the village of Tanushec (on the Kosovo/FYROM 2 G104 Kosovo Lindore/Preshevo 1999-2002 & The FYROM Conflict border) where the FYROM conflict started in February 2001 as one example - this village was previously the summer grazing village of Vitinje, in Kosovo, and the two were part of the same administrative division (the Vardar Banovina) until 1947. The separation of Yugoslavia has torn these villages apart, but for strong economic and social reasons they wish to remain together. Despite the wishes of the International Community to pretend otherwise, Serbs and Albanians seem to have had a cordial dislike for each other since time immemorial6, or at least since 1876, when the Serbian army first drove7 large numbers of Albanians out of what is now south Serbia, giving rise to a cycle of violence and expulsion that haunts the southern Balkans until this day. The very borders of even the countries concerned were undefined, except very loosely, until recently, and the inhabitants of the peripheries, here Albanian, as distinct from Slav- Macedonian or Serbian, are loath to accept what has been imposed on them by force in successive invasions and massacres over the last century or more. Most international observers of the Balkans’ problems over the last 10 years have resolutely set themselves against any mention of history, citing as their justification its alleged irrelevance to the problems of today.
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