An Agonized ‘Peace’

Establishing civilian rule for the Kosovars is proving no less difficult than waging a war against their Serbian oppressors. Kosovo Liberation Army irregulars are filling the power vacuum that NATO troops and United Nations police failed to fill, carrying out “ethnic cleansing” of their own. They are killing Kosovo Serbs and Gypsies, burning their homes and looting, though at a level far short of the murderous campaign that the Serb army imposed, as detailed in a Times report on Sunday. Only a fraction of the 3,500-strong international police force has been deployed in Kosovo. The establishment of civilian authority is mired in controversy and the court system is barely functioning. This poses a danger that, unless the U.N. acts expeditiously, the KLA will expel all minorities and set up its own rule based on terror and violence. This is not what NATO fought for.

Adding even more heat to the Balkans, the republic of Montenegro has delivered an ultimatum to Yugoslav and Serbian strongman Slobodan Milosevic that it will break away from the Yugoslav federation unless it is given broad autonomy. This is potentially the opening to a new round violence in the region.

The United States had grossly underestimated Milosevic’s brutal hold on power over Kosovo, letting him drag out negotiations over the prospect of some level of autonomy for the province, even as he continued to carry out “ethnic cleansing” of Kosovo Albanians. The Clinton administration should avoid making that kind of mistake again. Milosevic has proven in Croatia, Bosnia and Kosovo that he will stop at nothing to keep his power. As long as he commands Serbia, he poses a major threat to the neighboring Balkan countries.

While NATO is celebrating victory in Kosovo, the province is in chaos. The United Nations, which is in charge of setting up provisional civilian rule until the Kosovars elect their own legitimate government, presides as a new wave of terror is inflicted by Kosovo Albanians on Serbian and Gypsy minorities.

Law and order is in the hands of NATO soldiers but they are ill equipped to maintain it. An international civilian police force trained for the task is being deployed too slowly to stop KLA militants from setting up their own power structure. With fewer than 500 of the 3,500 assigned policemen on the ground, the U.N. can do little more than condemn the Kosovars’ acts of revenge.

The U.N. mission in Kosovo, headed by Frenchman Bernard Kouchner, the secretary-general’s special representative and head of UNMIK, the U.N. Interim Administrative Mission in Kosovo, is also moving too slowly, and in the wrong direction, in its attempt to establish a new government in Kosovo. Instead of swiftly organizing local government, as it did in the Bosnian war, the U.N. is creating a government of international civil servants, thousands of them. No matter how well intentioned or adept these officials might be at running public administration, hospitals, schools and criminal and civil justice, they do not have intimate knowledge of Kosovar ways. Kosovars, ethnic Albanians who made up 80% of the provincial population prior to the war, are being called in as mere outside consultants, and they justifiably resent it.

The most prominent Kosovar leaders, Ibrahim Rugova and the KLA’s Hashim Thaci, have promised to cooperate with the U.N. administration, but they do not have full control over the population, especially the still armed KLA troops. The attempt to disarm those troops, European military sources say, so far has yielded only a pile of old and broken weapons.

Milosevic still controls the levers of power in Belgrade and with the Serb army poses a threat to the region, especially to the Montenegrins, who by their defiance of Belgrade have made themselves a target. Barring the ouster of Milosevic and his lackeys in Belgrade, and the restoration of civilian rule in Kosovo, the NATO war stands as a largely hollow victory.