[PEN-L:4601] The KLA's 'Greater Albanian' Ambitions

[Yoshie Furuhashi <furuhashi.1@xxxxxxx>]

The supporters of the KLA, take note. They say the KLA killed not only Serb
policemen but also executed Albanian "collaborators." Yoshie

"Within a year, the Kosovo Liberation Army has became impossible to ignore"

by Marc Semo -- Liberation

Thursday January 21, 1999

With its combatants dressed in flamboyant new uniforms, decorated with an
eagle, the Kosovo Liberation Army (UÇK, for Ushtrija Çlirimtaree Kosoves)
is from now on a reality impossible to ignore. However, just a year ago, it
consisted only of a small group claiming a few assaults on police
headquarters, murders of Serb policemen and executions of " collaborators
".

The first public appearance of the Kosovar guerrillas dates back to
November 1997: armed and hidden behind ski-masks, they escorted the coffin
of a teacher killed by the Serbs in the village of Drenica, the plateau in
the centre of Kosovo and ancient bastion of the struggle for independence
of this province of southern Serbia with its 90% Albanian population.
There, a few months later, in February 1998, the Belgrade special forces
launched a vast operation in order to eliminate Adem Jashari and his
comrades, considered to be the hard core of the UÇK. The entire family
clan, including the children, were killed (85 died). The war in Kosovo had
begun.

Tiredness.

The writer Ibrahim Rugova, leader of the moderate Kosovars, denounce the
UÇK at the time as "a creation of the Serb security services". Then it have
recognised that they himself be of "a group of citizen defend their hearth
". Tired of the scant results of the strategy of peaceful mass resistance
that the " president " of Kosovo embodied and of indifference of the
international community, more and more of Kosovars, especially the young,
opted for the armed struggle "because it is the only language the Serbs
understand ".

Today, in spite of the military setbacks it suffered last summer, the UÇK,
which claims to command some 30,000 combatants, once again controls most of
the countryside outside the main roads. Last spring, the writer Adem
Demaçi, the "Mandela of Kosovo" who lingered for twenty-eight years in a
Serb gaol, became its political representative in Pristina.

Totalitarian

Nonetheless the organisation remains in many ways an enigma. Opaque in its
structures, easily totalitarian in its methods, prohibiting in its
strongholds all the Albanian parties which it denounces as "a useless
luxury", its commanders with their unreconstructed wooden language at the
start used to greet one another with raised fists. The UÇK remained largely
true to the Maoist origins of its founders, even if all Albanian
ultranationalists now feel represented by it.

The original core was made up of militants who were fascinated by the
unadulterated Marxism of Enver Hoxha in nearby Albania. They took part in
the students' protest of Pristina of 1981 in favour of the creation of a
republic of Kosovo, and were imprisoned by the local communist authorities
consisting of Albanians of origin. The statute of autonomy was undone by
Slobodan Milosevic in 1989, after which they departed into exile in
Switzerland, Germany or Sweden.

There, as Yugoslavia fell apart, they created the military organisation
that grew thanks to the financial assistance of the diaspora. Weapons as
well as volunteers arrived and continue to arrive through northern Albania,
where the UÇK has its rear bases in the mountains around Tropoja,
stronghold of the former Albanian president, nationalist Sali Berisha.

Distrust

"We want more than independence: the reunification of all the Albanians on
the Balkans," affirmed Jakup Krasniqi, spokesman of the organisation, last
July. Since the, they are clearly mincing their words, but their radicalism
frightens the West. And it balks at the idea of military strikes, which
would only help the UÇK on the ground. The movement on the other hand knows
that even now that it is better armed and organised that last summer, it
cannot hold its ground against the Serb military machine. Consequently, its
aim is to shock public opinion as this is the only force deemed capable of
sweeping aside the reticence in Western capitals. For several months, the
Kosovar guerrilla has been pushing the Serbs across the fault line by
multiplying its attacks against individual police officers. Thus, it tries
to provoke a massive reaction by the forces of Milosevic. This strategy is
classical: it doesn't necessarily mean that the UÇK is capable of any
sinister set-up.