Who is Responsible for Chaos?
AIM Pristina, 25 November, 1999
Protection of the Serbs, Romanies and other minority groups is raised as the acute question by the international diplomacy. Attempts have been made lately to make it even a precondition for fulfilling the promises on reconstruction and rebuilding Kosovo. The most frequent general political argument is that NATO intervened against ethnic cleansing of the Albanians and it will equally not permit ethnic cleansing of non-Albanian ethnic communities. Responsibility for it is lain solely on the Albanians, and this pointing of a finger at them reaches the proportions of allegations that the persecuted have become the persecutors. This apparently mild political and diplomatic rhetoric is interpreted in some media as the formulation: the victims have become criminals. Belgrade and the local Serbs are doing their best to promote this trend of public opinion. They hope that this will be useful in ensuring a tangible presence of Serbia in Kosovo and in strengthening negotiating positions especially on final status of Kosovo.
On the Albanian political scene, estimates of the situation that can be described by the slogan that the victims have become criminals are generally rejected. Intolerance towards others are mitigated by manifestations of increased sensibility towards the problem of minorities. Nevertheless, deeply split among themselves and led solely by the instinct of the struggle for power, they would much rather exhaust themselves in mutual accusations of these problems than actually engage themselves and invest efforts to show and prove that interethnic problems in Kosovo are by far more complex than semantic views of the foreigners or the already known patterns of propaganda war which continues at the unchanged rate and with unchanged arguments. Numerous nuances which could show that nothing is either black or white, or just black and white evade or are intentionally omitted by these patterns.
However, concerning the minority problem, the Albanian party is generally acting only from the standpoint of the benefit it might bring to it. It is still disregarded that in view of its ultimate goals it may become a very acute question. However, one could not claim that the Albanian block is monolithic concerning the minority issue. When speaking of politicians, intellectuals and other public figures, the spectre of stands ranges from sincere condemnation of persecution of the minorities and concern accompanied by numerous pertinent dilemmas to false opportunist rhetoric, lack of courage to define the problem with all its dimensions and the choice to pass it over in silence. The impression one gets is that politicians and persons with serious political ambitions are the most numerous among those who are silent or hardly choose to utter a word or two. Ever since the entrance of KFOR, their priorities are the elections and winning the affinity of the voters, especially because some of them have for quite some time imagined themselves in comfortable arm-chairs of the authorities. Approximately this is what the attitude of the Albanian population should also be like. But, despite the prevailing negative attitude mostly towards the Serbs partly towards the Romanies and not that intensive but similar attitude towards the others, the Albanian population would not actively participate in their persecution. There have been no indications or at least it has not been publicly said so far that persecution of the Serbs was backed by forces linked to or directed by Albanian political powers which are accepted as partners in resolving the Kosovo issue. If that is true, with all due caution, one should conclude that perpetrators of this type of severe crimes are Albanian groups and individuals or even certain other groups. It is difficult to speak about them for as long as true motives of these criminal acts are not revealed. It is assumed that these motives are political and vengeful, but also self-seeking and plundering. In a situation of remarkably negative attitude towards the Serbs, they feel quite safe among the Albanians, and this is why the Albanians as members of the enormous majority have big moral responsibility for protection of the minorities.
However, in view of what was happening and of the situation in which Kosovo and the entire southern Balkan is, not omitting the traditional lack of the capability to tell the difference between rational and emotional view of things, it should not be surprising that a large number of the Albanians still cannot make a distinction between crime and patriotsm. When speaking of these and other problems, it should not be disregarded that essential causes of the war in Kosovo have not been eliminated yet. The status of Kosovo still awaits discussing. For the time being nobody knows when these talks might even begin, least of all what the possible procedure will be like of negotiations which will not at all be insignificant for their course and completion. Some of direct results of the war which prevent normal relieving of tensions have not been eliminated yet either. Collective graves are still being revelaed, victims of the war are still buried, there are several thousand Albanians on the lists of the disappeared, and there are about two thousand of them in prisons in Serbia. They have all disappeared, were kidnapped or arrested during the war, mostly during NATO air campaign. In some elements the war still goes on, and in different conditions and with different means equally the Albanians and the Serbs participate in it. Identical forms of crime are perpetrated by the Serbs against the Albanians in enclaves they control. Regardless of what they speak in public, they consider these enclaves territories where continuity of Serb power and rule pursuant Serbian laws is ensured. The region of Mitrovica is the most obvious example. Besides, the known propaganda war is still going on in Kosovo. The most frequent manipulations are those concerning the number of victims. Recently both the local and the world public could read or hear the assumption that in the course of NATO air campaign, only several hundred Albanians were killed. At the same time, data were launched that just since the entrance of KFOR in the middle of June, up to one thousand Serbs have been killed. KFOR recently made it public that in the nearly five months of its rule, by approximately 10 November, 279 persons were killed, 145 of whom were of Albanian and 135 of Serb ethnic origin. Ethnic origin of the remaining number of them has not been determined. KFOR also stated that during this period 137 persons were kidnapped, 77 of whom were of Albanian and 43 of Serb ethnic origin. Representatives of the Serb National Council denied these data claiming that during this period 350 Serbs were killed and 450 kidnapped.
Caution is also necessary in estimates of all aspects of the situation in Kosovo. An indicator to what extent the political motive could be present in the total crime rate in Kosovo may be the recently published fact that in the first week of November, 62 per cent of all forms of crime in Kosovo occurred in the region of Pristina. According to certain assessments in the second half of this year, the population of the main urban centre of Kosovo doubled. This mammoth urban environment in the proportions of Kosovo is constantly living with cuts of electric power and water supply, with very limited possibilities of telephone communication with the world and with no telephone links with the other cities in Kosovo.
UNMIK and KFOR have full power in Kosovo. Therefore shifting responsibility solely to the Albanians looks slightly like an attempt to shirk or reduce responsibility of UNMIK for elements of anarchy, crime and people killed for political and other motives. Since their arrival UNMIK and KFOR have taken all possible measures in order to suppress and eliminate everything they had found in the form of local Albanian administration. That is how vacuum was created which UNMIK has not and probably never will be able to fill up with its own forces and cadre. Besides, Kosovo is ruled by lawlessness. This should be taken literally, because there are no written and regularly passed laws. There are no courts either or they do not carry out their duties. When local and foreign politicians have not been able to do it, it is quite unrealistic to expect that so many complex problems of everyday life of the people could be resolved by foreign soldiers and policemen.
AIM Pristina
Fehim Rexhepi
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