RIGHTS-KOSOVO: KLA Campaign Against Serbs Rages

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Brian Kenety

GNJILANE/VITINA, Kosovo, Jul 4 1999 (IPS) - Retired textiles factory worker Blagoje Petkovic, 57, a Serb, is now a “long-term detainee” in Camp Bondsteel – one of two US military-run base camps in Kosovo – a murder suspect awaiting a legal system.

Shortly after the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) bombing ceased, Petkovic’s family began receiving hreatening phone calls so when his doorbell rang on June 16, he went to fetch his son’s Kalashnikov rifle. It was standard practice for the Yugoslav Army to issue weapons to Serb reservists living in Kosovo, to store in their homes.

A moment later the door was broken down by an ethnic Albanian dressed all in black with a burgundy beret – the uniform of the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA special forces.

Claiming self-defence, Petkovic says he will return to his home in nearby Gnjilane (Gjilan in Albanian) as soon as he can. “Why not? (Serbs and Albanians) can again live in peace. This chaos is only a phase – it is not the fault of the people, but of the government.”

About 100 ethnic Albanians were killed by Serbs in this village during the NATO bombing campaign and now the KLA is conducting “an organised campaign of terror,” says Lt. Col. Neil O’Connor, a liaison officer with the US Marine Corps.

As in many other parts of Kosovo, over two-thirds of the Serb population of Gnjilane have fled their homes and now KLA men are trying to drive out the few who remained. But some KLA men are just kidnapping Serb men and demanding a ransom of weapons in return, O’Connor says.

He says the KLA may be working off a list of gun owners registered with the municipality, alphabetically, by first name.

Early evening on June 21, Dragan Rystic was snatched out of a bread line. The next day he was released and a second man by the same name was taken and hasn’t been seen since. A third man, Dragan Savic, was abducted on June 25 and severely beaten, returned to his doorstep with several broken ribs.

O’Connor meets daily with Nazim Bekteshi, a local KLA representative, and Zoran Akric, president of the town’s executive council, to track down missing persons and secure their release.

The whereabouts of the second Dragan Rystic – an electrical engineer with the IBG battery factory – and another young man, Miroslav Metodiovic, are unknown.

Lt. Col. Rick Swengros, in charge of the military police in the US sector of Kosovo, says that nearly every day Albanians acting in the name of the KLA bring his soldiers the names of suspected Serb war criminals. Most are questioned and if taken into custody, their names are taken but the individuals are released within 24 hours, as there is scant evidence to support the claims.

Akric says that literally every Serb here walks “in a state of constant fear.” All but 10 of the 150 employees of the Gnijlane town hall have left; all telephone lines to the outlying villages have been cut, but Serb workers are afraid to go out to repair them, and the bulk of the repair work must be done in Pristina.

At the local post and telecommunications office, heavily guarded by US marines, five Serbs report for work each day, but only to drink coffee and play cards.

Milorad Martinkovic, whose family home doubled as the town’s post office for 31 years is the longest-serving employee in the telegram office, now that his mother has retired. With a soft voice he says his is one of only two Serb homes in this quarter of the city, but he will not leave, unless forced.

Ismail Kurtshi, who became a schoolteacher after he was forced from his job at TV Pristina in 1990 and now acts as interim civil affairs director for Gnijlane, promises that no workers will be sacked from public sector jobs, regardless of their ethnic background, until the civic “vacuum” is filled.

But in the textiles factory, along with a battery producer the main industry in town, the new management has said that only Serbs who were employed there before 1990 can stay, as the others took over jobs of Albanians forced out by president Slobodan Milosevic’s government policy of “apartheid”.

With both the shadow-state government of Bujar Bukoshi (backed by Ibrahim Rugova’s Democratic League of Kosova) and KLA leader Hashim Thachi holding their own cabinet meetings, locals admit they can offer few guarantees for the Serbs.

When the government of Sali Berisha in neighbouring Albania was toppled in 1997, in the wake of fraudulent pyramid financial schemes, civilians raided and looted military and police installations. Over one million weapons and 1.5 million rounds of ammunition disappeared, many of which ended up in KLA hands.

What is clear is that whilst Kosovo waits for the United Nations Interim Mission in Kosovo (UNMIK) to become the de facto government here, violations of the first step in building the civil society – the creation of a safe environment as spelt out in the Undertaking of Demilitarisation and Transformation by the KLA – are a daily occurrence.

The KLA has met the KFOR deadline for establishing weapons collection sites and each day fewer uniformed men walk the streets, as per agreement.

However, US Army personnel from the 82nd Airborne Division, which patrols eastern Kosovo, say that while the KLA is no longer displaying weapons, paramilitaries, sympathisers and common criminals are manning roadside checkpoints, confiscating identity papers and other documents from the few Serbs who remain.

On patrol from a mountain village base near Vitina, they spot an average of 12 to 14 arson fires per night, and have been fired on by looters caught in the act. In Gnjilane and Vitina, a curfew from 18:30 to 03:30 has been in place since June 28, following a move by the German sector the day before.

Assistant Commander Kadri Kastrati, right-hand man to KLA Commander in Chief Hashim Thachi with responsibility for the capital, Pristina, says the group is in full compliance with the Understanding. Those responsible for violations – lootings, kidnappings, checkpoints – “may say they are KLA, but they are not” he assures.

As for young men still parading about in uniform, Nexim Krosmqi, commander of the KLA’s military police in Prizren ,Kosovo’s second-largest city, says he hasn’t the heart to strip a KLA patch from someone who “fought on the front lines for 15 to 16 months”.

Tensions reached a climax on June 25 when some 100 Serbs marched in from a nearby village, demanding information about a missing Serb believed to be held by Albanians.

Hours later, Albanians were fired on whilst defacing a downtown statue of the Serb hero, Prince Lazar, who died 610 years ago at the hands of Turks on the Kosovo Pole battlefield. A US Marine sniper team killed one Serb in the ensuing melee.