When the Men with Guns Rule: Explaining Human Rights Failures in Kosovo since 1999 Author(s): Mark A. Wolfgram Source: Political Science Quarterly, Vol. 123, No. 3 (Fall, 2008), pp. 461-484 Published by: The Academy of Political Science Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20203050 Accessed: 07-11-2017 18:09 UTC REFERENCES Linked references are available on JSTOR for this article: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20203050?seq=1&cid=pdf-reference#references_tab_contents You may need to log in to JSTOR to access the linked references. JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at http://about.jstor.org/terms The Academy of Political Science is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Political Science Quarterly This content downloaded from 141.107.150.83 on Tue, 07 Nov 2017 18:09:23 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms When the Men with Guns Rule: Explaining Human Rights Failures in Kosovo since 1999 MARK A. WOLFGRAM The core argument of this paper is that the early failure to estab lish security for all sides in Kosovo after June 1999, when the United Nations (UN) protectorate and North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) peace en forcement mission took responsibility for the territory under UN Security Council Resolution (UNSCR) 1244, has created the current deplorable human rights conditions in Kosovo. The failure to establish security first has created a serious credibility burden for the international mission in Kosovo. While this article focuses on the specific case of Kosovo, the lessons from this case can be applied to other humanitarian crises. One core lesson is to understand that the new international norms around humanitarian intervention have created a perverse incentive or moral hazard, which may lead rebel groups to create greater chaos to try and draw in more powerful outside players.1 This dynamic has played a role in the conflicts in Croatia and Bosnia from 1991-1995 as well as the current conflict in Darfur, Sudan. In Croatia, Bosnia, and Kosovo, the unwillingness of the Western powers to commit their own troops to significant combat roles led to a reliance on local combatants, who then committed further violations of humanitarian norms, as with Croatian forces in Operation Storm in 1995. A further lesson, one central to the Kosovo case, is to understand the additional risk that these men with guns then pose for postwar democracy building and reconciliation. One core conclusion from the Kosovo case is that Western democracies, if they are serious about improving humanitarian conditions, should withhold 1 See special issue of Ethnopolitics 4 (June 2005). MARK A. WOLFGRAM is an assistant professor of political science at Oklahoma State University Stillwater. His research draws upon the culturalist traditions in comparative politics, bringing together the study of culture and politics. His current research on social and collective memory focuses on the legacy of violent conflicts. Political Science Quarterly Volume 123 Number 3 2008 461 This content downloaded from 141.107.150.83 on Tue, 07 Nov 2017 18:09:23 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms 462 I POLITICAL SCIENCE QUARTERLY intervention or the promise of intervention unless they are willing to make serious sacrifices in terms of the lives of their own troops and substantial financial resources. NATO's emphasis on force protection in Kosovo led to that organization's failure to protect Kosovo's non-Albanian minorities after June 1999, and to a failure to confront the men with guns. The end result is a failed humanitarian intervention in Kosovo, from which the UN and NATO are anxious to distance themselves. In contrast, the occupations of Japan and Germany after World War II were successful because in both cases the occu piers provided real and meaningful security and forced the marginalization of the worst war criminals. The primary reason for the current crisis in Kosovo was NATO's reliance on the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) (Albanian acronym U?K) in fighting the ground war against Belgrade's forces in the March-June 1999 war. This linkage between the war environment and the postwar environment is not ab sent but weak in the postconflict literature, even in the literature that looks critically at the postwar Kosovo environment.2 While there are many periph eral reasons for Kosovo's failed peace, all other reasons spring from the inabil ity and lack of will of NATO's Kosovo Force (KFOR) to confront the KLA in the postwar setting. The goal of this paper is to demonstrate the long-term consequences of this wartime alliance between NATO and the KLA, and to caution against such strategies in the future. One common article of faith in the postconflict peace-building (PCPB) lit erature is that security needs to be established, either by local actors, external actors, or the combined efforts of both.3 Part of securing a territory often in volves a process of disarmament, demobilization, reinsertion, and r?int?gra tion of former irregular fighting units involved in the civil war.4 The KLA committed to demilitarization in June 1999 and eventually surrendered 10,000 weapons. The International Crisis Group (ICG) reported in 2000, "The second major military accomplishment of KFOR's mission in Kosovo has been negotiating the KLA's public commitment to disband itself and the agreement to hand over its weapons to the international mission, although 2 International Policy Institute, "Kosovo Report," 28 February 2003, accessed on the website of King's College London at http://ipi.sspp.kcl.ac.uk/rep005/index.html, 27 May 2006; Iain King and Whit Mason, Peace at Any Price: How the World Failed Kosovo (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2006). For examples from other cases see, Elizabeth M. Cousens and Charles K. Cater, Toward Peace in Bosnia: Implementing the Dayton Accords (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 2001); Stephen John Stedman, Donald Rothchild, and Elizabeth M. Cousens, eds., Ending Civil Wars: The Implementation of Peace Agreements (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 2002); Roland Paris, At War's End: Building Peace After Civil Conflict (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004). 3 For several articles on this topic see the "Special Section: Post-Conflict Peacebuilding: Security, Welfare and Representation," in Security Dialogue 36 (2005). 4 Mark Knight and Alpaslan ?zerdem, "Guns, Camps and Cash: Disarmament, Demobilization and Reinsertion of Former Combatants in Transitions from War to Peace," Journal of Peace Research 41 (2005): 499-516. This content downloaded from 141.107.150.83 on Tue, 07 Nov 2017 18:09:23 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms WHEN THE MEN WITH GUNS RULE | 463 compliance in this regard has clearly been less than perfect."5 The imperfection of the disarmament soon became clear. One report estimates that 330,000 to 460,000 weapons flooded Kosovo during the nationalist Albanian struggle against Belgrade, which left at least 320,000 weapons in the hands of the KLA as of 2003.6 Recognizing this earlier failure, the UN tried to encourage the voluntary surrender of weapons, which had been successful in Albania. The UN collected an additional 155 weapons in Kosovo.7 The KLA was supposedly demobilized and turned into the Kosovo Protec tion Corps (KPC), although this has by and large been window dressing for outside observers. The KLA has been able to maintain its structure within the KPC and has also sought to have influence in the Kosovo Police Service (KPS).8 Members of the KPC were regularly involved in some of the worst violence during the first three years of the international protectorate in Kosovo, although the UN Interim Administration Mission in Kosovo (UNMIK) and NATO officials regularly denied that this was the case.9 These "demobilized" KLA fighters later turned up as fighters in Macedonia in 2001.10 Nonetheless, misperceptions about the effectiveness of this demobilization and disarmament continue to appear in the literature on Kosovo.11 A RAND report from 2003 concluded, "Kosovo has been the best managed of the U.S. post-Cold War ven tures in nation-building. U.S. and European forces demilitarized the KLA; local and national elections took place two years after the conflict ended; and eco nomic growth has been strong."12 After June 1999, KFOR and UNMIK were either indifferent or slow to react to the wide-ranging pattern of well-organized Albanian revenge killing and violence that spread throughout Kosovo. As Benjamin Ward reported in the Helsinki Monitor, Western political and military officials did condemn 5 ICG, "Kosovo Report Card," ICG Europe Report 100, 28 August 2000, 10, accessed on the website of the ICG at http://www.crisisgroup.org/home/index.cfm?id=1587&l=l, 13 March 2007. 6 Anna Khakee and Nicolas Florquin, Kosovo and the Gun: A Baseline Assessment of Small Arms and Light Weapons in Kosovo (Geneva: Small Arms Survey, 2003). 7 Keith Krause and Oliver J?tersonke, "Peace, Security and Development in Post-Conflict Envi ronments," Security Dialogue 36 (December 2005): 447-462. 8 William O'Neill, Kosovo: An Unfinished Peace (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 2002), chap. 8. 9 King and Mason, "Peace at Any Price," 59. 10 Victor Roudometof, Collective Memory, National Identity, and Ethnic Conflict: Greece, Bulgaria and the Macedonian Question (Westport, CT: Praeger, 2002), chap.