Future of Kosovo Still Uncertain
By Robert H. Reid, Associated Press, Oct. 10, 1999

 
Future of Kosovo Still Uncertain

By Robert H. Reid
Associated Press Writer
Sunday, Oct. 10, 1999; 3:43 p.m. EDT

PRISTINA, Yugoslavia –– In Kosovo's southern mountains, German engineers are rebuilding gutted houses so villagers can move in before winter.
     Farther north, in the town of Kosovska Mitrovica, French experts are removing land mines from a neighborhood so residents can roam freely.
     Canadian peacekeepers, meanwhile, have organized Kosovo's only Scout troop. There's no camping because there are too many land mines still undiscovered in the fields. But the 11 girls and 10 boys, all ethnic Albanians in Donja Keretica, are learning rope skills, English, crafts and "land mine awareness."
     After 18 months of ethnic warfare and four months of a NATO-led peacekeeping mission, there is some good news in Kosovo: For the ethnic Albanian majority, life is returning to normal in a form that is freer and safer than many have known for decades.
     Nevertheless, the province's future remains uncertain. Whether it will remain part of Yugoslavia, and whether its various ethnic groups could ever live together in peace, are questions that remain up in the air.
     One of the goals of the NATO-led peace mission is to promote reconciliation among ethnic Albanians, Serbs, Gypsies, ethnic Turks and other minorities. Each group can lay a historical claim in this Connecticut-sized province.
     Reconciliation, however, does not seem in the cards. In conversations with ethnic Albanians of all social classes, educational backgrounds and political philosophies, one message is clear: they want all Serbs out of Kosovo.
     The profound hatred ethnic Albanians feel for Serbs has expanded to include related Slavic peoples, including Bosnian Muslims who themselves fought the Serbs for more than three years this decade.
     Last week, a spate of attacks against Bosnian Muslims in the western city of Pec prompted the chief of the U.N. mission, Bernard Kouchner, to travel there and assure the minority community it will be protected.
     Kouchner told a crowd of 500 people "we are here to move together with you toward free, democratic-controlled elections that will gain a wide autonomy for Kosovo."
     But the leader of the former ethnic Albanian rebel force, Hashim Thaci, delivered a different message. Thaci said the international community will ultimately recognize "the right of the people of Kosovo" to vote for independence in a future referendum.
     Therein lies a central problem of the Kosovo mission: the people NATO came to protect see the purpose of the operation differently than NATO does. While NATO's goal is a Kosovo with substantial autonomy inside Yugoslavia's borders, the ethnic Albanians want the United Nations and NATO to prepare the way for an Albanian state completely independent from Serbia, Yugoslavia's main republic.
     For the moment, relations between peacekeepers and the ethnic Albanians, who form more than 90 percent of the population of 1.4 million, are generally good.
     But former officers of the Kosovo Liberation Army – the former ethnic Albanian rebel army – have quietly asserted leadership roles in villages and towns throughout the province, promoting their message that an independent Kosovo is only a matter of time, regardless of U.N. and NATO policy.
     When French police were unable to quell a riot near Kosovska Mitrovica last week, they eventually had to call for help from the former KLA leaders, who dispersed the crowd.
     Despite NATO's intentions, "I think most observers of the Yugoslav scene would say ... that we are far more likely to see a Kosovo that becomes, in effect, a single ethnic group dominated-independent state," Eliot Cohen of Johns Hopkins University told the U.S. Senate foreign relations committee in Washington last week.

© Copyright 1999 The Associated Press

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