[This article complements Chris Hedges' article in Foreign Affairs. He concentrated on the last two years and telescoped the 15 years preceding. This one concentrates on the 15 years preceding and telescopes the last two years. And where they overlap, they concur. A friend says this one was written by a Kosovo Albanian under a pen name, because even though he's obviously a booster, his criticisms are pointed and detailed enough to get him hurt.]
LE MONDE DIPLOMATIQUE - May 1999
Rise of the Kosovar freedom fighters
Unheard of until four years ago, the KLA now dominates the scene in Kosovo. Radicalised by repression, it has won support away from the pacifist, Ibrahim Rugova. It owes its success largely to support from clan leaders, the diaspora and a variety of traffickers and intelligence services. by CHRISTOPHE CHICLET*
All the major events in Kosovo's recent history have taken place in the spring. In 1981 the province rebelled. In 1989 its autonomous status was withdrawn. In 1998 fighting erupted. In 1999 large sections of its population were driven out. The Kosovo Liberation Army (Ushtri Çlirimtare e Kosoves or UCÇK) grew up out of this tragic situation.
Passive resistance to repression by Belgrade had achieved very little. For ten years Ibrahim Rugova (elected president although not recognised by Belgrade) had insisted that a guerrilla war in Kosovo was not a viable proposition. Supporters of a sustained "popular" war, on the other hand, believed that Serbian persecution was bound to strengthen the KLA's position amongst the Kosovars and internationally. They failed to realise that Slobodan Milosevic's government was only waiting for this type of provocation to push forward with its ethnic cleansing programme and split Kosovo. The KLA, clinging to old-style Marxist-Leninism and a mixture of Greater Albanian nationalism and clannishness, opted for the worst possible scenario, with the encouragement of various groups in Washington, Berlin and Zagreb.
When Tito died on 4 May 1980 thousands of students crowded into the streets of Pristina, demanding full republican status for Kosovo. The whole of the ethnic Albanian population soon joined them. The new government in Belgrade responded with a crackdown. This was the start of the prophetic saying, "the war began in Kosovo and will end in Kosovo".
The Pristina militants went underground to escape heavy-handed Yugoslav justice: between 1981 and 1983 a thousand underground fighters received heavy prison sentences. Those who escaped fled abroad, joining up with Marxist-Leninist cells that had links with the Kosovar "mafias" in Western Europe. According to Interpol figures, Kosovo Albanians account for 14% of arrests for trafficking and control most of the heroin traffic in Switzerland, Austria, Germany, Hungary, the Czech Republic, Norway, Poland and Belgium and (1).
In 1982 militant Maoist supporters of Enver Hoxha's dictatorship founded a movement to fight for an Albanian republic in Yugoslavia (the LRSHJ). A year later a breakaway Kosovo liberation movement, the LKÇK, was formed to carry the struggle into Serbia. Between October 1982 and March 1984 these early militants killed three Yugoslavs in Brussels, then shifted their operations to Kosovo itself. Between October 1982 and March 1984 they carried out nine attacks in Pristina. The response by the Yugoslav authorities was brutal: 12,000 Kosovars accused of belonging to these underground organisations were arrested between 1982 and 1989.
In 1985 the LRSHJ became the hardline anti-Yugoslav Movement for the People's Republic of Kosovo (LRPK). In 1993 it changed its name again - to the Kosovo People's Movement (LPK) - after Rugova and his Democratic League of Kosovo declared the province a republic, which was recognised by Albania. Although the movement was not all that active in Kosovo itself, it became influential among the diaspora in Switzerland, Germany and Belgium.
Since 1987 Milosevic has used the Kosovo problem to strengthen his position. On 1 March 1989 a state of emergency was declared in Kosovo and on 23 March the Serbian constitution was amended to restrict the region's autonomy. On 2 November the Yugoslav security services killed two LRPK cadres in Pristina. The LRPK then carried the struggle abroad. In 1990 a fragmentation bomb exploded at the Zurich home of Xhavit Haliti. This was the alias used by a senior officer in the Sigurimi (the Albanian secret service) who was responsible for the surveillance of pro-Hoxha Kosovars in Switzerland and Germany. Haliti was made a leader of the KLA on 13 August 1998 and was one of the Albanian delegates to the Rambouillet conference in 1999.
Chieftains, criminals and intelligence services
Towards the end of 1992 it was announced that a mysterious "Kosovo Liberation Army" had been set up - so mysterious that "President" Rugova doubted its existence until the end of 1997, even suspecting it could be part of the Serbian authorities' provocation tactics. For the next three years the organisation - structured around of LPK members and with a dual leadership based in Pristina and Switzerland - patiently consolidated its position.
The clandestine army was mainly known for its assassination attempts until 11 February 1996 when it planted bombs at five Serbian refugee camps in Krajina and felt strong enough to claim responsibility. Two months later, eight plain-clothes Serbian policemen were killed in Decani and Pec.
Like northern Albania, Kosovo operates on a system of local chieftains and in 1996 the KLA set about recruiting them to the cause. With their support the organisation established solid local bases to provide it with men and supplies. In 1997 the organisation was strengthened at all levels. Rapid action units of several hundred men were set up in the region. In one year the organisation carried out 14 attacks in Kosovo and one in Macedonia. Through its links with the clans it operated a very efficient intelligence system and systematically assassinated "traitors", especially those working for the Serbian intelligence service monitoring centres. It was at this stage that the KLA began to come out in the open. Three hooded, armed and uniformed KLA militants were at Skenderaj cemetery on 28 November 1997 to pay their respects to a comrade killed in action.
Initially the KLA freedom fighters were trained by ethnic Albanian officers in the Yugoslav army and police who had deserted in 1991-92 to join the new Croat and Slovenian armies. In 1996-97 the KLA set up training camps in the Mirdita mountains of northern Albania. It was discreetly supported by the new Albanian services (SHIK) and later Sali Berisha: after resigning in the spring of 1997 the former president openly offered his Tropoja stronghold to the Kosovar fighters. The underground army also established rear bases in western Macedonia, the home of most of the country's Albanian minority. Arms, food and medicines were hidden in caches in the villages around Gostivar, Debar and Velesta and at Pogradec on the Albanian-Macedonian border.
Germany, which has a large Kosovar community, responded as it did in 1989-90 when it backed the first Croatian militias. By 1996 the BND intelligence service was building up its offices in Tirana and Rome to select and train prospective KLA cadres. Special forces in Berlin provided the operational training and supplied arms and transmission equipment from ex-East German Stasi stocks as well as black uniforms.
The KLA became bolder after the riots in Albania in March-April 1997. The rioters looted over a million weapons from army and police armouries. Most of them were sold off cheap and found their way to Kosovo. They were badly made and did not last long when fighting broke out in the spring of 1998. The organisation needs money to buy more weapons.
The KLA makes use of its links with the Kosovar "mafia" in Switzerland and Germany. Most of its revenue comes from drug trafficking and fraud in Western Europe. In December 1997, for instance, the Paris police broke up an LPK cell with links in Germany and Italy which specialised in false invoices and accommodation bills. Two large trading companies run by Swiss-based Kosovars are under investigation by the French, Swiss, German and Russian authorities. In 1997 Vendlindja Therret (VT, The Homeland Calls) was given the job of collecting donations from all over the world in an account at the Alternativ Bank in Olten, Switzerland. Since the authorities froze the account on 26 July 1998 the money has been carried in suitcases in cash.
On 7 January 1998 the KLA announced it was spreading the struggle to "Zone 2", in other words Macedonia. It is fighting not just for the liberation of Kosovo but ultimately for a Greater Albania made up of Albania itself, Kosovo, the southern third of Montenegro and the western half of Macedonia.
In February 1998 a revolt started in Drenica. The KLA then launched its first major offensive. After five months it had succeeded in liberating at least 30% of the territory, but it banned all political parties in the liberated villages and physically attacked the Serb, gypsy and goran (Islamised Macedonian) minorities. Determined to take the lead politically, it denounced Rugova, his LDK and the Kosovar parliament, with the backing of Adem Demaçi and Rexhep Qosja, both supporters of a Greater Albania. On 13 June 1998 it appointed its spokesman, Jakup Krasniqi, on 13 August its "political committee" (2).
After the victories came the setbacks. All the villages were retaken one by one in the Serbian counter-offensive and in the late summer of 1998 a rival militia emerged. The United States wanted a more docile fighting force; and so, under "President" Rugova's leadership, the Armed Forces of the Republic of Kosovo (FARK) was created with Saudi money and Turkish logistic support. The KLA responded with violence. On 18 September 1998 it murdered Ahmet Krasniqi, who had been assigned to set up the new army, in the centre of Tirana.
Eight hundred people were killed and 150,000 displaced in the fighting. However on 13 October the US envoy, Richard Holbrooke, talked Milosevic into accepting a ceasefire. As the Yugoslav forces slowly withdrew from Kosovo the KLA escalated its operations, seizing LDK officers and reoccupying the positions abandoned by the Serbs. In December 1998 the fighting resumed. The KLA was not short of weapons. Whole containers passed through the Adriatic and arrived at the Albanian port of Durrës, controlled by local mafias and the KLA. Arms also came in from Macedonia under the guise of humanitarian aid.
Mobilisation
At that point US diplomats began talking to the KLA leaders (3), but the attacks and reprisals continued. The Kosovo Albanian delegation was already divided when it arrived at the Rambouillet conference on 6 February this year and the KLA, in particular its intelligence chief Hashim Thaçi, soon gained the upper hand. At the end of the talks Thaçi announced that a Kosovo government was being established up to replace the one set up by Rugova in 1992 and appointed himself prime minister.
In the meantime the KLA leadership was expanding. The "political committee" had grown from six to eight members. On 24 February this year Suleyman Silemi, nephew of a prominent clan chief, was named chief of the "general staff", which had two heads of operational planning, Rexhep Silemi and Bislim Zyrapi, five zone leaders and six heads of specialist divisions.
Just before negotiations resumed in Rambouillet on 15 March, fighting broke out in the south and north of Kosovo. On 22 March the Serb forces launched their major offensive. The KLA thought its hour had come and the West would back it. However it was soon disabused of that idea, especially when the Yugoslav army drove the civilian population out of Kosovo. The KLA was now deprived of its popular support, especially in the areas that Belgrade aimed to hold on to if the region was divided.
A month later the situation is grave. The KLA units in the south and north-east have been crushed. On the Macedonian border several hundred combatants in civilian clothes, most of them unarmed, were amongst with the first 20,000 refugees. That is why the Macedonian police are trying to control the Kosovars entering the country. On the night of 6-7 April Nato helicopters landed at the camp in Blace and picked up 90 men, taking them to Petrovec, the airport for Skopje. There they were transferred to other helicopters and left for an unknown destination.
Having been driven out of much of Kosovo the KLA has now retreated to the north-west of the province, near the borders with Montenegro and Albania. It is trying to hold on to its positions whatever happens, pending the arrival of massive supplies of arms or indeed Nato soldiers. With that object in mind, it began at the end of March to look for recruits (voluntary or otherwise) amongst the refugees.
The KLA's statements in 1995 and 1996 were clear. All Kosovar men between the ages of 18 and 50 in exile and living abroad can be mobilised. Heads of families and anyone earning a living are allowed to stay behind to finance the struggle, but the others have to join the resistance. In a month and a half 20,000 volunteers have arrived from the West. In addition, each of the 220,000 Albanians in Switzerland has to contribute 2,000 deutschmarks a month. Around 200 volunteers have been sent from the diaspora in France and those with jobs are paying 50% of their meagre wages.
In the early days the KLA was under the thumb of its pro-Hoxha backers. Now it is very different. The terrible ordeals suffered by Kosovo's ethnic Albanian population (deportations, massacres, ethnic cleansing) have won it support. Fighting experience (defeats as well as victories) has helped to militarise it. In deciding to back it, or indeed make use of it, the US is dealing with a much more structured political leadership. A new KLA is probably about to emerge.
* Member of the editorial board of the journal Confluences Méditerranée and co-author (with Bernard Lory) of La République de Macédonie, l'Harmattan, Paris, 1998.
Translated by Lorna Dale
(1) Octavi Marti, "El origen del dinero que financia al ELK", El País, Madrid, 19 April 1999.
(2) Bardyhl Mahmuti, an Albanian Macedonian and member of the LPK in Switzerland, Xhavit Haliti, an Albanian ex-Sigurimi officer living in Switzerland, and four Kosovars, Hashim Thaçi, Faton Mehmetaj, Sokol Bashota and Jakup Krasniqi.
(3) The meetings took place on 6 November 1998 in Kosovo; on 8 November in Switzerland; on 17 November in Kosovo; at the beginning of December in the United States; and on 22 December and again on 27 January in Kosovo.
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