Sunday, October 17, 1999Kosovo Police Graduates Pledge to Keep, Observe Law
By DAVID HOLLEY, Times Staff Writer
PRISTINA, Yugoslavia--The star pupil of the Kosovo Police Service school's first graduating class drew thunderous applause Saturday when his commencement speech set forth standards to which the force will adhere.
The promises delivered by Student Course Cmdr. Nuredin Ibishi, a.k.a. Kosovo Liberation Army Cmdr. Leka, were probably unique in the history of the world's police academies. The 42-year-old valedictorian's words seemed less an ordinary assurance of good police conduct in the future than an attack on what has happened here in the past.
"There will not be any more brutal behavior from people in uniform," Ibishi declared. "There will not be any more policemen who enter institutions such as schools, hospitals, universities with the aim of beating innocent people and depriving doctors, professors, teachers, workers, students and mothers of their freedom. There will not be any more expulsions of people, robbery, rape and terrible massacres done by people in uniform."
The 173 graduates honored Saturday in a university sports hall here in Kosovo's provincial capital will form the core of what is to be a 3,500-strong police force made up of Kosovo residents of all ethnic backgrounds. It will work with the United Nations police and international peacekeepers currently providing security in the province.
Of the first graduating class, 48% are former guerrilla fighters of the recently disbanded KLA, 5% are Serbs and 22% are women, according to the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, which is in charge of the training. Bernard Kouchner, head of the U.N. mission here, handed out the diplomas.
The new police force is one of the key outlets for the transformation of the former KLA, which is also providing 5,000 recruits for a lightly armed Kosovo Protection Corps. That new force is seen by international officials as a kind of job program for former guerrillas, with the mission of providing disaster and humanitarian relief. Many former KLA leaders, however, see it as the nucleus of the army of an independent Kosovo.
The high percentage of former KLA fighters in the new police force means that it too will formalize a strong presence by the former guerrillas in the institutions of the autonomous Kosovo now being nurtured under U.N. supervision. Technically, Kosovo remains a province of Serbia, the dominant republic in Yugoslavia, but nearly all its ethnic Albanians, who make up the vast majority of the population, are determined that it become independent.
The former KLA's presence could be felt strongly at Saturday's graduation ceremonies. Hashim Thaci, the guerrilla political leader who now heads an unofficial provisional government of Kosovo, entered the gymnasium just as the ceremony began, and the audience responded with a standing ovation.
The eight Serbian graduates, meanwhile, were mostly subdued, with several declining to speak to a reporter at the end of the event.
"We are not in the mood," one of them said.
The treatment of Serbian recruits by the ethnic Albanians at the school has been largely "correct," said another new Serbian policeman, Stanisha Ashanin, 36.
"In the beginning, we had some minor provocations, but as we were studying, the contact went better and better," he said.
But Ashanin warned that the new police force will face a lot of difficulties. Especially for Serbian police in ethnic Albanian areas, work "will be very dangerous," he said.
"At this time, there is a kind of an action from groups, or mafia, or whatever else--I don't know, but Albanians--who, when they even hear a Serbian voice, start kidnapping, killing," he said. "They want revenge against every Serb and everything which is related to Serbia. But they know very well that the ones who are to blame for all this have left Kosovo a long time ago."
Fahrije Azemi, 22, an ethnic Albanian female recruit from the divided city of Kosovska Mitrovica, predicted that Serbs and Albanians will often patrol in mixed groups.
"In the other [Serb-dominated] side of Mitrovica, I would like to be careful because it can be dangerous," she said.
By contrast, Ibishi, the former KLA commander, said he believes that any Serbian member of the force will be able to function even in ethnic Albanian areas.
"He will be a policeman the same as I am a policeman," he said.Copyright 1999 Los Angeles Times
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