POLITICS: Yugoslav Army Takes Position Along Kosovo Border

By Vesna Peric Zimonjic Reprint | | Print |

Vesna Peric Zimonjic

PRESEVO, SOUTHERN SERBIA, Mar 16 2001 (IPS) - There is not much to be seen from the barren top of Crni Vrh mountain, at the height of 1,300 metres, when it’s raining heavily and the fog wraps around trees, and sharp stones.

“On our right it’s Kosovo, on our left it’s Macedonia”, says Yugoslav Army chief of staff General Nebojsa Pavkovic, pointing in two directions, while standing with several dozens of soldiers and journalists on Crni Vrh.

“This is the point of our mission. To come here and stay”, the General adds.

Down the mountain, muddy roads lead into Kosovo and Macedonia. On the neighbouring hills, dozens of Yugoslav soldiers and policemen take their positions. At another muddy crossing road, which leads onto the mountain, a group of patrol soldiers and police units have begun digging in.

High in the sky, the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) helicopters observe the deployment of Yugoslav soldiers and Serb police units into a five-by-five-kilometre slice of buffer zone, that borders the UN administered southern Serbian province of Kosovo and Serbia.

Under the agreement of former adversaries, NATO and Yugoslav army signed last Monday, several hundred Yugoslav soldiers and Serb police were allowed back into the zone, where the borders of Kosovo, Serbia and Macedonia meet.

The deployment of Yugoslav soldiers and Serb police should prevent what NATO in Kosovo could, or would not do: spreading of armed ethnic Albanian insurgency into the region, and blocking the flow of arms into the buffer zone, as well as into Macedonia.

Backed by extremists in Kosovo, the armed rebellion by ethnic Albanians has already spilled over into the buffer zone and into neighbouring Macedonia. NATO was supposed to disarm the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) in September 1999, but apparently failed. Offsprings of KLA operate both in southern Serbia and in Macedonia now.

“Since it failed to disarm Albanian terrorists, the international community is impotent to efficiently curb actions by Albanian terrorists”, vice prime minister of Serbia Momcilo Perisic told IPS.

The original five kms wide and 90 kms long buffer zone was established in June 1999, when NATO air raids against Serbia ended. It is part of the Military Technical Agreement (MTA), spelled out by NATO and signed by the government of former president, Slobodan Milosevic. NATO took responsibility to monitor the border of Kosovo with southern Serbia.

But porous borders made free flow of arms and ammunition easy. Lightly armed Serb policemen were the only security force allowed into the zone. It was dubbed “Serbian Gaza strip”.

Serb policemen patrolling the area became clay pigeons for “UCPMB” or “Liberation Army of Presevo, Medvedja and Bujanovac”, named after the three local municipalities. UCPMB’s aim is to unite the region with Kosovo.

Sporadic clashes led to deaths of several dozen people in the past 12 months.

The new government in Belgrade has refrained from any violent actions against rebels. It chose negotiations and cooperation with NATO as means of solving the problem.

“Our approach is totally different”, Nebojsa Covic, head of government’s Coordination Committee for southern Serbia, told IPS. “With Milosevic out from power there is no chance that we would like to be engaged in another war. We’ll do whatever it takes to avoid such a situation”.

Milosevic fell from power last October. In the past 10 years, he led Serbia into four wars. His defiant politics led to eleven weeks of NATO air raids against Serbia in 1999 and humiliating ceding of Kosovo to NATO and UN.

“The good thing is that NATO has finally realised that the Albanians from Kosovo are its main problem”, Perisic adds.

The buffer zone is on the Serbian territory, along the border with Kosovo. Out of some 100,000 people living in the area, 70,000 are ethnic Albanians and 30,000 Serbs.

At the village of Trnava, in the slice of the buffer zone, a group of Yugoslav soldiers and British officers monitored the return of Serb security forces into the area on Wednesday. Their vehicles were painted in different colours, their insignia also differed, but their behaviour was much the same, efficient.

The former enemies now belong to the so-called “Joint Implementation Committee”, looking at the same maps and observing the deployment of Yugoslav soldiers and police in the hills.

“There’s no problem with cooperation”, a British captain who gave his name only as “Parks” told IPS. “Everything is going smoothly, indeed”.

“There’s no point into looking at what happened in the past”, Radoje Paunovic, Yugoslav Lt-colonel told IPS. “This is the beginning of cooperation which will lead to the return of the whole buffer zone into our security forces’ hands. It’s our country and that is how it should be.”

The next step will be the start of negotiations between Belgrade and UCPMB.

“The first meeting should take place at the beginning of next week and KFOR (NATO) has offered its resources as a neutral place where these negotiations and meetings should start,” said General Carlo Cabigiosu, commander of NATO forces in Kosovo, dubbed “KFOR”.

But, on the ground, things seem to get out of control.

Armed ethnic Albanian insurgency in neighbouring Macedonia has already started. Out of two million inhabitants of this former Yugoslav republic, now an independent state, at least 500,000 are ethnic Albanians.

Self-proclaimed National Liberation Army (NLA) and Macedonian security forces have been fighting for days around the western town of Tetovo.

“The fact that the conflict spilled over into Macedonia shows that NATO has to pay the price for the lack of a clear strategy and plan after 1999 air raids”, Miroslav Hadzic of Belgrade Centre for Civil-Military Relations told IPS.

“In brief, NATO ended in a fiasco in Kosovo, while its attitude enabled the KLA to spill over into the south of Serbia and Macedonia. This is more complicated than simple rebellion. It’s an effort for greater Kosovo to be created,” he added.