-Caveat Lector-
------- Forwarded Message Follows -------
<<Begin excerpt>>
Foreign Affairs May/Junel 1999 (volume 78, number 3)
Kosovo's Next Masters
By Chris Hedges
INSIDE THE KOSOVO LIBERATION ARMY
The rumbles of yet another nationalist earthquake are shaking the
former Yugoslavia. Rising from the fetid hovels of Pristina and the
concrete-block family farms of rural Kosovo is the newest political
and military force to beset the Balkans -- the Kosovo Liberation Army
(KLA), known to Albanians as the Ushtria Clirimtare e Kosoves.
The emergence of this militant armed group, now numbering several
thousand fighters, has dimmed hopes that even a compromise agreement
with Belgrade could be successfully implemented. Emboldened by NATO's
March bombing of the Serbian military, the KLA will wage a
protracted guerrilla war in the Serbian province that could ignite a
wider war in neighboring Macedonia and Albania, potentially even
dragging in Greece and Bulgaria. The KLA is uncompromising in its
quest for an independent Kosovo now and a Greater Albania later. And
it has, to the consternation of Washington's would-be peacemakers,
supplanted the ineffectual leadership of the moderate voice of
Kosovo's ethnic Albanian majority, Ibrahim Rugova.
The KLA is important out of all proportion to its size -- not merely
because it will probably eventually get Kosovo to secede from Serbia,
but because it now represents the aspirations of most Kosovar
Albanians. To unders tand the current conflict in Kosovo and
America's stakes in its resolution, one must understand the KLA, how
it came into being, who leads it, what drives it, and why it now
speaks for a majority of Kosovars. Even a truly vicious, Bosnia-like
wave of atrocities by the Serbs in reprisal for NATO's attacks will
only pour fuel on the separatist fire. The grim reality is that we
had better get to know the KLA -- because it is not going to go
away.
---- break ----
In Kosovo, the stationing of international troops may prevent all-out
fighting and provide the breathing space to negotiate a workable
solution. But given the deep rifts between the sides, the latter is
hardly likely. The international community would then face the stark
choice between remaining in Kosovo for a long time or pulling out
after the proposed three-year period, with the likelihood that those
on both sides of the divide would again pick up their guns. In the
end, it will come to this: Led by the KLA, Kosovo will separate from
Serbia, whether by negotiations or by violence.
Chris Hedges, currently a Nieman Fellow at Harvard University, was
The New York Times' Balkan Bureau Chief from 1995 to 1998.
>>End excerpt>>
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Copyright 1999 by the Council on Foreign Relations, Inc.
All rights reserved.
>From Janes Defence Wkly
defence.janes.com/
BALKAN ENDGAME?
<<Begin excerpt>>
<Picture>Following devastating airstrikes in Yugoslavia, what are the
options for an acceptable settlement on the ground? Richard Bassett
examines the prospects for the future and the lessons of the past
In the wake of NATO's attack on Yugoslavia the Balkans ends the
century much as it began; an expression of great power rivalry and a
source of potentially destabilising conflict.
As at least one military historian of note, John Keegan, has written,
the problems of Bosnia, Macedonia and indeed Kosovo would be wearily
familiar to any official of the Austro-Hungarian empire posted to
Sarajevo in 1908. The inevitable competing spheres of influence led
the great 19th-century German Chancellor, Bismarck, to observe: "The
Balkans are not worth the bones of a Pomeranian Grenadier."
If history is one of the inescapable millstones of the Balkans,
geography is another. Albania today still lies across two of the most
important routes that link Europe with the East.
Its appearance on the global stage, in 1912 at the Ambassador's
conference, when it was described as the "child of Austria, with
Italy acting as midwife" was an attempt to balance the pretensions of
Russia's main proteg� in the region, Serbia, and limit its access to
the Mediterranean.
--- break ---
The precarious internal situation in Russia also militates against
the confidence-building measures the West feels are essential to any
joint solution of the Balkans crisis. The obvious policy disputes
between Russian President Boris Yeltsin and Primakov may be just
questions of degree but they continue to overshadow the ability to
come to agreements at the highest level which can be seen as having a
chance of sticking.
Yet without such an agreement there is every indication that the
Balkans will continue to smoulder and that the flames of ethnic
cleansing will continue to blaze for several years to come.
<<End excerpt>>
Richard Bassett, JDW's Business Editor, is a former Central Europe
correspondent for the Times of London
Jane's Defence Weekly
Jane's Defence Weekly can be bought online from this site in
hardcopy, CD-ROM, or online from our catalogue
----------------------------------------------------------------------
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The only real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking
new landscapes but in having new eyes. -Marcel Proust
+ + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + +
A merely fallen enemy may rise again, but the reconciled
one is truly vanquished. -Johann Christoph Schiller,
German Writer (1759-1805)
+ + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + +
It is preoccupation with possessions, more than anything else, that
prevents us from living freely and nobly. -Bertrand Russell
+ + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + +
Forwarded as information only; no endorsement to be presumed
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In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. section 107, this material
is distributed without charge or profit to those who have
expressed a prior interest in receiving this type of information
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