THE SOLUTION IN KOSOVO

As recently as two months ago, Washington might have forestalled the crisis, whose victims now litter the villages and cornfields of Kosovo, the Serbian province where the 92 percent Albanian majority is rebelling against Belgrade. But events on the ground have outpaced diplomacy, and a spicy animus between Holbrooke and U.S. special envoy Robert Gelbard has made coherent policy impossible.

Washington’s fecklessness has been especially marked since early June, when the United States demanded that Belgrade withdraw its security forces from Kosovo — without a parallel commitment by the KLA to cease its military operations. Washington went so far as to threaten NATO air strikes and harsher sanctions if Belgrade declined. Belgrade did decline what it saw as a preemptive surrender of Kosovo — the “cradle of Serb culture.” Washington, all bark and no bite, did nothing.

Having one’s bluff called in the diplomatic world is never a perfect moment. What’s worse, however, is conducting a policy based on a contradiction. Serb compliance would have benefited the KLA, which Ambassador Gelbard has labeled a terrorist group, and undercut Rugova, whom Ambassador Holbrooke calls “central and indispensable to any solution.”

Washington’s confused and tardy response to the spiraling confrontation directly affects political developments in Belgrade and Kosovo, where events are inextricably linked. But before Washington can develop a viable policy, it must achieve an accurate assessment of the KLA, the Milosevic coalition, and American interests.

Belgrade describes the KLA as roving bandits terrorizing villagers and coercing men to join its ranks; but clearly there is more to it than that. The commander of Yugoslav forces in Kosovo, Gen. Nabusja Pavcovic, told me the insurgents control 40 percent of the province by day and all but the major cities by night. Conversation on the streets and in the cafes of Pristina reveals overwhelming popular support for the KLA, which hardens with each new Serb assault. Moreover, three U.S. journalists saw evidence of the KLA’s organizational sophistication and communications capability when we were detained at a checkpoint on a dirt road just 13 miles from Pristina on June 19.

Two men in their fifties wearing baggy woolen pants, work shoes, white peasant smocks, and Albanian skull caps and carrying World War I vintage Lee-Enfield rifles stopped us. They asked who we were, what our purpose was, and what we had seen, then called their superiors by radio-telephone. As we waited in our car at the side of the road, we realized that we were not alone. A nearby grove was cover for a tripod-mounted heavy machine-gun, and the scenic outcropping just ahead turned out to conceal a well-manned bunker.

Within minutes, four men arrived by car. They were in their thirties, carried AK-47s, and wore older army-type jackets and combat boots. After grilling the Albanian interpreter and accusing him of accepting money from us and endangering them, these men seized our cameras and tape recorders. They were concerned about the security of the site, especially their gun emplacements, and the possibility that we had recorded their questions to us. (At one point the interpreter screamed, “Tell the truth: Did you record anything? If you lie you will never see the States again.”) After checking our press credentials by radio-telephone and examining our passports, our captors told us the “military police” were en route.

Soon they arrived and a third round of questioning began. Our interlocutor was a Bosnia veteran wearing new camouflage and boots, armed with a new Kalashnikov and a Glock pistol. As all this was going on out in the open near the road, cars driven by villagers friendly to the fighters continuously passed. The KLA made no attempt to hide, nor was there any sign of the Serb police or military. The episode ended with the confiscation of our film and tape, and we were escorted out of the area with firm instructions not to return.

Our experience belies the State Department’s claim that the KLA is unstructured and without leadership. Control of the ground, three levels of authority connected by phone, a credentials check with some central authority, and a policy for dealing with foreign press were all in evidence. Clearly, Washington needs better information about the insurgency. More to the point, a solution that does not accept many of the KLA’s goals may be impossible. Which brings us back to Richard Holbrooke, who is looking for Mr. Goodbar in all the wrong places. A solution to this crisis must begin in Kosovo, not Belgrade.

Central to Washington’s inability to untie this Balkan knot is the relationship between Holbrooke and Milosevic. Holbrooke is transfixed, some say mesmerized, by the Serbian president. At one point in his recent book To End a War, Holbrooke writes that he “bonded with the godfather.”

Milosevic, to be sure, is a charismatic leader, a brilliant tactician, a Balkan Houdini who has presided over the dismemberment of Yugoslavia and survived. But Holbrooke’s myopia has caused Washington to overlook critical policy options. Agile though he may be, Milosevic perches atop a fragile coalition, whose tensions the West has not properly exploited. Kosovo poses a pivotal danger for Milosevic. Anger is growing among members of the Serbian police and Yugoslav military, some intellectuals, and rural Serbian nationalists, who see that their president, having failed to achieve a “greater Serbia” in Bosnia and Croatia, now is about to lose Kosovo. Sonja Biserko, director of the Helsinki Committee for Human Rights in Serbia, told me, “Milosevic is blamed for the political chaos, economic disaster, and moral decline. He will be the scapegoat” if the Kosovo crisis ends badly.

Milosevic’s chauvinism carries costs. It has alienated important parts of Serbian society. The unions, protesting plant closures, are suspicious of the state. Workers fear that the social safety net has disappeared and that with few job openings in the private sector, their families may suffer. The middle class, stripped of creature comforts and even necessities, waits for reforms that are trumpeted but never come. One senior Serbian official confided the crushing effect of the government-imposed bank closures in which he lost his personal savings, cashiering his dream of a new home with his new wife, travel, and a nest egg for old age. Many see the private sector as a carnival of corruption, where monopoly reigns and politicians profit by sitting on the boards of companies they helped to privatize. Landlords and tenants both complain that there is no rule of law. Court judgments take an average one to three years and have little chance of enforcement.

Not surprisingly, in this miasma of frustration, many long for a return to normalcy. And in Belgrade, opinion is increasingly war-averse. It is not just in the fashionable Terazilje cafes that dwindling numbers consider Kosovo worth the loss of Serb life. In late June, hundreds of conscripts’ mothers demonstrated at the barracks in Pristina seeking to have their children reassigned.

All the same, the Serb nationalists have no shortage of sympathizers. Powerful intellectual elites — the Union of Writers, the Orthodox Church — see a more vigorous nationalism as a cure for the public’s anomie. This is not lost on Milosevic’s coalition partner and deputy, Vojislav Seselj, a radical nationalist and former paramilitary chief with a reputation for brutality in Bosnia. While disapproving of Seselj, democratic opposition leader Vesna Pesic says he is “a different kind of Serb, very decisive, knows the national interest. He is anti-liberal but supports the private sector, and nationalists go to him when they are fed up with Milosevic.”

Some Western diplomats believe that if Milosevic fails in Kosovo, Seselj will resign and run for president on a wave of nationalist sentiment that could oust the government. Other likely candidates for president in the election due in or before 2000 are President Milo Djukanovic of Montenegro and former Belgrade mayor Zoran Djinjic. Both are market-oriented democrats who, despite their limitations, have support in Western capitals. Up to this point, however, rapidly shifting events and Seselj’s mercurial appeal have prevented either from making a strong impression on the voters or projecting a persuasive platform.

All of this has brought Yugoslavia to the brink of chaos — and the facile Milosevic may be unable to halt its further slide, as his grip on Serbia’s security apparatus weakens, partly because of his continuing failure in Kosovo.

On June 19, I accompanied Gen. Pavcovic to southeastern Kosovo. The army’s responsibility, he said, is Kosovo’s border with Albania and Macedonia, not the interior. In village after village near Decani and Djakovica, houses had been destroyed by shelling and fire. The army “had nothing to do with this,” Pavcovic told me. “This is [Serbian Special] Police work.” But when I asked why the police didn’t pursue KLA snipers in a nearby village, he shrugged and held up his hands. His frustration was palpable.

Gen. Pavcovic told me that the movement of arms and material into Kosovo began in earnest six or seven months ago “with the help of certain countries.” Most of the arms are Chinese, seized from armories in Albania when the government fell last year; some are from Croatia and Bosnia. Uniforms made in Germany, Britain, and Norway have been found. Financing comes from the “Albanian government in exile,” which collects money for a fund called “The Homeland Is Calling” and licenses people to buy arms and transport them to Albania. There, fighters are trained and infiltrated into Kosovo by countless routes known as Europe’s Ho Chi-Minh Trail.

Gen. Pavcovic said 704 all-Albanian villages in Kosovo (about half of the province’s villages) are defended by KLA fighters. He claimed that many of these fighters are “mercenaries who look like Mujahideen.” KLA operations in Kosovo are planned and controlled from a headquarters in Malisevo, part way between Pristina and Pec, in the “liberated area.” Strategic headquarters is across the border in Albania.

The general underscored his fear that the West sees the Yugoslav army in Kosovo as part of the problem — when actually it must be part of the solution. He said, “Considering the confusion, the army must be available to provide stability so that politics can solve the issue.” Left unstated was what role, if any, Milosevic would play in a solution.

As for the police, back in June some 200 Serbian policemen publicly refused to serve in Kosovo, shocking Belgrade. What has so far escaped the attention of the foreign media, however, is the growing frustration among the police already in Kosovo. Speaking on background, a member of the Serbian Special Police stationed there expressed anger over disorganization, poor equipment, and lack of support. When his unit was deployed this spring, he said,

the commander stressed that Kosovo was in a state of war and that the flak jackets given us should be used when entering Kosovo as protection for the windows on our buses. Only when arriving in Djakovica did we notice that the flak jackets were made in 1991 and 1992 and the expiration date was five years. Furthermore, an instruction written on them said they served as protection against small firearms. However, everybody knows now the [KLA] prefers using rifles and shoulder-held rocket launchers. It is needless to say we were revolted. . . . In the village where we had been sent there was not a single Serb left. Only the local Roma [Gypsies] were ready to cooperate, because the [KLA had requisitioned] their horses to transport ammunition from Albania. [Although] this information reached the responsible offices in Djakovica, nothing was ever done about it. [KLA] threats against the Roma eventually came true as two Roma were killed. . . . Almost all of the actions we took were thwarted. . . . We began to suspect that local policemen were passing information to the Albanians. A few days before my return to Belgrade, we moved to the army barracks. . . . Our impression was that there was no cooperation between the police and the army. We were alone.

Given such clear evidence of Serb vulnerability and KLA strength, the disconnect between the situation on the ground and the policies advanced by Holbrooke, Gelbard, and others in Western capitals is striking. Washington’s failure to modify its policy to reflect the weakened position of Ibrahim Rugova, for example, and its flirtation with Demaci consumed precious time. Meanwhile, in Kosovo, the equation was changing fundamentally.

As recently as early June, a combination of NATO strikes and sanctions might have forced Milosevic to make concessions. But the administration dithered. For fear of criticism, it did not follow up. Today, the insurgents effectively control Kosovo. Moreover, theirs is a broad-based movement with a cohesive ideology, widely accepted objectives, and even its own contemporary heroes. So that any thought Belgrade or NATO might have of resolving the crisis with an offer to restore Kosovo’s autonomy is no longer viable. With material support from Albania, Macedonia, and elsewhere and a demonstrated military capability, the KLA may be able to sustain itself indefinitely. An independent Kosovo is thus possible, perhaps likely.

At this point, there are no good options. The KLA’s military success has raised its aspirations beyond autonomy or even independence. On July 11, KLA spokesman Jakup Krasniqi said in Pristina that his group is fighting for “the liberation of all occupied Albanian territories and for their unification with Albania.”

If the KLA achieves its objective, Balkan stability will be directly threatened. Accordingly, if NATO has a role, it is to preserve the present borders between Albania, Macedonia, and Kosovo. Bear in mind that the Kosovars themselves are far from united in the desire to join with their impoverished cousins in northern Albania and Macedonia; they view the prospect rather as South Koreans see unification with the North.

But no NATO or U.S. policy will work if it is based on an infatuation with Milosevic. Until now, the assumption that Milosevic is key to preserving Balkan stability has hamstrung the administration. In fact, the Belgrade regime is increasingly fragile. While an independent Kosovo would carry risks, an effective NATO deployment could minimize them. And if Kosovo’s independence hastened Milosevic’s departure, Serbia as well as Kosovo might achieve a newfound freedom in which to rebuild.

Stefan Halper, a former White House and State Department official, writes a column from Washington.