MEDIA-YUGOSLAVIA: Kosovo Combatants Fight New War – In Cyberspace

By Vesna Peric Zimonjic Reprint | | Print |

Vesna Peric-Zimonjic

BELGRADE, Aug 7 1998 (IPS) - Serbs and ethnic Albanians fighting it out in the shattered villages of Kosovo are taking their war onto a different plane, via modem, into cyberspace.

For in a region where the language of hate, propaganda and the media starts and sustains warfare, the Internet is a perfect free- fire zone.

The conflict in the breakaway southern Serbian province between Serb security forces and the clandestine Kosovo Liberation Army (UCK) has become the first online war. Both sides are using web sites and e-mail lists to make their case, to set goals, retell histories and make stands.

The real conflict, which has claimed more than 500 lives, mainly civilian, seen scores of Serbs kidnapped by UCK troops, and turned more than 150,000 Kosovo Albanians into refugees. In contrast the online ‘war’ seems irrelevant. But the Kosovo war’s Inter net front has a strategic importance of its own.

Kosovo is potentially an international conflict: the NATO military alliance has ‘contingency plans’ for a air-launched armed intervention, there is much talk of cross border ‘escalation’ and foreign states ‘taking sides’.

That talk is often ill-informed. The mountainous terrain silences mobile phones, and the old-fashioned land lines rarely work. Diplomats and reporters are shepherded through ‘liberated zones’ by whichever side has prevailed that day, unable to tell for sure if what it is they are seeing is true.

But if armed with an analytical eye, a magazine belt loaded with scepticsm and a knowledge of both sides’ mentality, the war of words on the web can tell you a lot about the war of bullets being fought back in the real world.

The ethnic Albanians were first to make serious use of the internet. Several web sites are a obligatory stop for those looking for information on Kosovo. The top site is www.kosova.com, run by the Kosovo Information Centre (KIC), close to the Democratic League of Kosovo (DSK) party of ethnic Albanian leader Ibrahim Rugova.

It has several daily bulletins of news, updated every two hours. The news are first released in Albanian, later translated in English and German. Its most striking habit — it will not cite UCK by name, but refers instead to fighters as ‘armed defenders of civilians’ — says a lot about the DSK’s arms-length relationship with the guerrillas.

“KIC is simply following the party line of Rugova who claims that UCK does not exist and that it is the invention of Serb police, as a pretext to attack innocent civilians” says Radosa Milutinovic, a Belgrade journalist.

News about the UCK, and named as such, can be found on www.juniku.com. ‘Dedicated to the armed forces of ethnic Albanians in Kosovo it takes its name from the UCK stronghold town of Junik.

Backgrounded by the garish red and black of the Albanian flag, this well designed site is partially dedicated to memory of Adem Jasari, an UCK leader killed in a Serb offensive a few months ago.

This week’s pages feature a passionate appeal for intervention illustrated with graphic pictures of Kosovo Albanian dead. On other pages, you can find animated beating hearts, bullets and more pictures of UCK troops, pop-up banners calling on you to say ‘I Love The UCK’. Those four words are the only English on the site, all else is in Albanian.

Go to www.kosova-state.org for the home page of the self- proclaimed ‘Republic of Kosova’. Written in Albanian, English, French and German, it reports on the ‘Republic’ which, it states, was founded in 1990 and remains under ‘virtual occupation’ by Serbia. It looks, more or less, like the official web site of any other state.

The journalists’ favourite is the Pristina daily Koha Ditore’s site at www.kohaditore.com. Besides daily news in Albanian and English, it has a photo page, cartoons, and a refreshingly lively style in contrast to the solemn offcialese and cod history on offer elsewhere.

When it comes to covering the news in what the Albanians call Kosova and the Serbs call ‘Kosmet’ (Kosovo & Metohija), none of the ethnic Albanian sites run news in Serbian. None of the Serbian sites run news in Albanian.

On the Serb side of the web war, the forces are divided, pretty much on the lines of the Serbs themselves. There are sites created by government and its institutions and sites created by NGOs, Serbian Orthodox Church or unions of Serbs living abroad.

Speaking for the state is www.serbia-info.com, the well designed but dull home page of the Serbian Information Ministry. Here Serbia’s official line on everything and its claims for its troops in Kosovo are presented in Serbian and English.

General news is added to the mix, but only from the state news agency Tanjug, a key propaganda tool of Yugoslav president Slobodan Milosevic.

Its roots show in its Communist era-style reports: the top news item Friday gave details of Serbian President Milan Milutinovic’s specch on the occasion of Serbian Miners’ Day and the opening of a new transportation system at a copper mine in the town of Bor…

War coverage is briskly rendered: all government attacks are ‘successful actions’ in which ‘large terrorist bases’, ‘separatist nests’ and suchlike are conclusively smashed. Foreign media such as CNN, from the United States, and the BBC, from Britain, are pilloried.

“It is the usual unskilled propaganda of this government,” comments Zoran Stanojevic of the independent weekly Vreme. “It wants you to believe what the regime says.”

The Serbian government site had 239,000 visits in 20 days during June, 20 times more than in March, says Serbian Information Minister Aleksandar Vucic. But most journalists working in the independent media think the site is counter-productive.

A broader picture is presented by Serbs living in North America, who run the Canada-based Serbian Unity Congress and its site www.suc.org. The site delves deeply into the crisis and offers a relatively complete picture of the different Serb factions and political parties’ stand on the problem in Kosovo.

The site that has become most associated with the crisis among foreign web surfers is the site run by the Serb Orthodox Church and the Serbian Democratic Movement in Kosovo at www.kosovo.com. In contrast to the other state run sites it eschews propaganda and nationalist hatred and critcises both sides.

“Today,” says the site’s introduction, “we, the Serbs from Kosovo and Metohija are found between two opposite extremes — the undemocratic regime in Belgrade and the secessionist Albanian movement, which both keep to their unreconcilable positions and threaten this area with a new war.”

One of the creators of this site, Father Jovan from Decani monastery, has become a global figure, his site drawing tens of thousands of ‘hits’ from browsers keen to hear his call for Serbs and ethnic Albanians to live together in peace.

Stanojevic argues that the Serb authorities at first tried to ignore the web war, hoping that not too many people would take interest in the fighting. “When this strategy was proved woefully wrong, Serbs threw themselves at the Internet.” Even the paramilitary troops of the Interior Ministry (MUP) have a web site, in Serbian, on www.mup.sr.gov.yu.

The online battles rage on between the web sites and will go on doing so for a while yet. For as Stanojevic grimly notes, “no web page has yet come up with a solution to the conflict”.