Kosovo: an enchanted place

(Photo: EPA )

There have been no bombs in Yugoslavia for a year now, and NATO staff officers are still on the front line. General Jim Corley, who controlled the accuracy of the bombing in the spring of 1999, fights off journalists from Newsweek, who got their hands on a secret report on the real effects of the bombing. Yes, the general admits, in Kosovo we found the remains of only 26 Serbian tanks out of 93 “officially” destroyed by NATO, 14 armored personnel carriers (according to reports - 153) and 8 artillery systems (according to reports - 389), but you understand that the Serbs took everything , that they could - they are under blockade, they have neither metal nor spare parts. The new secretary general of the alliance, Lord Robertson, is also not to be envied: Amnesty International recently published a report in which it qualifies the “deliberate bombing of civilian targets” as a “violation of international humanitarian norms” and demanded that those who planned such attacks be brought to legal responsibility. Considering the number of civilian casualties catastrophic (according to Serbian data, from 400 to 600 people), Amnesty demands that the alliance develop rules for conducting military interventions for humanitarian purposes.

But the most unenviable position is that of the former NATO Secretary General, now the European Union Commissioner for Security, Javier Solana. When ordering airstrikes on Yugoslavia, he motivated it by protecting the rights of the Albanian minority. Now he has to explain things to the Kosovo Serbs - at the end of May, their delegates, led by Bishop Artemie, came to Brussels with a request for protection from Albanian extremists. These are walkers from those Serbs who are ready to cooperate with the UN interim administration, but ask for protection: after the arrival of KFOR, 240 thousand representatives of the non-Albanian population left the region.


Today Albanians feel like masters of the region. The few Serbs still remaining here are increasingly having to bury their loved ones (Photo: Yuri Kozyrev )

“If the return of refugees is not ensured, the local elections scheduled for this fall will not be democratic,” the bishop concluded at a joint press conference. The former secretary general only sighed in response and called the problem “very serious.” It became even more serious last week after a grenade was thrown from a passing car into a crowd of Serbs in the town of Gracanica. The bishop's moderate followers resigned from the temporary administration of the region in protest (the UN creates them in order to revive dialogue between the Serbian and Albanian communities). This sharply strengthened the position of the irreconcilable Serbs in Mitrovica, who do not want to hear about joint governance, elections, or a bishop. They are led by Oliver Ivanovic, a former karate teacher.

Of course, the militants of the Kosovo Liberation Army (officially disbanded, but it is clear to everyone in Kosovo that the structures remain) are no longer as rampant as they were immediately after the “liberation” of the region: according to the UN, then they killed 30 - 40 Serbs a week. Nevertheless, the Albanian press is still calling for the ax (recently, for example, the UN mission was forced to close the newspaper “Dita” for 8 days, which accused one of the Serbian mission employees of collaborating with the old regime, after which he was killed). In the same style, the victors deal with dissident Albanians - when the famous journalist Veton Surroi called for an end to the “hunt for Serbs,” they wrote about him that people like him “reek of Slavs.”


Serbian families are leaving their homes. Neither Russian paratroopers nor American GIs can guarantee their safety (Photo: AP )

It is difficult to say what ordinary Albanians think about all this, but there is no doubt that the political triumph of people from the KLA (almost all field commanders became politicians overnight) is even more dubious than the military successes of this organization. A Gallup poll commissioned by the OSCE a month ago promises victory in the autumn elections not for demobilized militants obsessed with the idea of ​​a “Greater Albania”, but for the Democratic League of Kosovo led by Ibrahim Rugova - those who for 10 years “peacefully resisted” Milosevic and built “ parallel society."