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ALBANIANS INSIDE SERBIA SET TO FIGHT FOR AUTONOMY
By Chris Hedges
PREKAZ I EPERM, Serbia-
The shadowy ethnic Albanian guerrilla force
that overran 11 Serbian police stations last
month in its first large coordinated attack appears
not only flush with newly asquired
weapons but ready to wage a secessionist war
that could plunge this country into a crisis
rivaling the conflict in Bosnia.
Villagers in the southern Serbian province
of Kosovo, whose population is more than 90
percent ethnic Albanian, say that when darkness
falls, wide tracts of this area now belong
to rebels of the Kosovo Liberation Army.
"As soon as it is night," said one farmer
who asked to remain unidentified, "this becomes
liberated territory.'
The rebels, who advocate independence
from Serbia and an eventual vote in joining
Albania, have been seen coming down from the
scrub coverd mountains in the evenings
with mules laboring under the weight of new automatic
weapons, many smuggled in from
Albania. They now control some dirt roads no
longer used by the Serbian police, who only
approach these hills by daylight packed inside
armored personnel carriers. And, for the
first time since the attacks begun nearly 18
months ago, the rebels have pushed back the
Serbian authorities far enough to carve out aremote
mountain sancuaries, which they use
as bases for their attacks.
In the three days of traveling these hills,
dotted with farming villages of whitewashed clay
houses with tiled roofs, dirt yards filled with
chickens and legions of barefoot children, it
was impossible to make contact with the guerrillas.
But their presence was often palpable
in the nervous answers, sidelong glances and
throaty whispers that met inquiries as to
where they could be found. And , in one village
after another, residents said that the rebel
presence was felt at night.
The guerrillas' rise appears to mark a
dangerous crumbling of support in Kosovo for the
nonviolent civil disobidience campaign led by
Ibrahim Rugova since 1989, when the
Serbian Government revoked the province's autonomous
status.
Since then Kosovo's 2.2 million ethnic
Albanians have dodged thedraft,refused to pay
taxes and boycotted state institutions, including
schools and hospitals. A shadow
government whose goal is the restoration of autonomy
for Kosovo, has set up its own
parallel institutions, although some of them
have had to shut down for lack of funds.
The rebel attacks, as well as the recent
police killings of four Serbian police officers and
five civilian officials, have come as Western
diplomats have reported that hundreds,
perhaps thousands, of the 650,000 weapons looted
in Albania during unrest this year have
been smuggled into Kosovo. The attacks on the
11 police stations also netted the
guerrilas a few hundred assault rifles, Western
diplomats say.
More than 30 people, Albanian and Serbs,
have been killed in rebel attacks. The
increasing violence with a challange by
university students in Prishtina, the capitol of
Kosovo, to Mr Rugova's ban on street demonstrations,
athe first public defiance of his
authority.
On Oct. 1, some 3,000 students of the
underground Albanian university formed in 1989
who were demanding that Prishtina University
be returned to ethnic Albanian control tried
to march through the city. They were scattered
by baton-wielding Serbian police. Fifty
people were injured.
The students are planning more marcheslater
this month. Prishtina University is now run
by Serbs who refuse to hold classes in Albanian.
All of its 18,000 students are Serbs.
" If students are killed in these protests,"
a Western diplomat said, " it could be enough to
ignite a population that has fallen into terrible
poverty, is fed up with what has become
Serb colonial occupation and has lost faith in
its moderate leadership. This is a very
delicate moment.'
But it is in remote villages like Prekaz
i Eperm, rather than the streets of Prishtina, that
the next round with Serbian authorities will
probably be fought.
In these areas there is a striking shortage
of young men. Some are working abroad, in
Germany or Switzerland, and sending back meager
remittances. But others have clearly
gone into hiding.
Shaban Jashar, 70, the patriarch of a
clan that dominates the mountain town of Acareva,
about 10 miles drive from Prekaz i Eperm
, has three sons whom Serbian authorities
describe as active in the guerilla
movement . In 1992, when the police came to arrest
them, the three opened fire. They kept the authorities
at bay for 12 hours, then escaped.
Mr Jashar was arrested after the shootout,
he said, describing severe beatings at the
hands of the Serbs.
But in the past year, he said, " there
has not been a police patrol in my village. My oldest
boy is in Germany and my other two sons are in
Kosovo, but I don't see them. I do not
know what they are doing."
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