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TRANSITIONS
ONLINE:
Kosovo:
Virtual Rebels
by
Alma
Lama
5 December 2005
TOL
A
new armed group threatens violence if Kosovo does not become independent but
are they for real?
PRISTINA, Kosovo | N.K. is a 32-year-old from Decani
in western Kosovo who describes himself as being close to the masked gunmen of
the self-styled Kosovo Independence Army, or UPK. He doesnt want to see his
full name in print.
Pristina media have widely reported that black-clad and
masked UPK fighters appeared on some roads in the Peja region, which includes
Decani, erecting roadblocks to search cars and check passengers.
As the
international community gears to start direct talks between Pristina and
Belgrade on the
status of the province, the security situation for Kosovos minorities remains
volatile. Just this past weekend, a bus on its way from southern Kosovo to
Belgrade was
attacked by someone with a grenade launcher. Luckily, the grenades pierced the
bus but did not explode. The incident prompted Kosovos UN administration
(UNMIK) to raise security measures once again.
OUR FRIENDS FROM THE
UPK
N.K., himself a former member of the Kosovo Liberation Army (UCK), smiles
and says the UPK are our friends. He says they are former UCK members who now
feel abandoned by the politicians, including former UCK leaders, amid a very
difficult economic situation.
But is the UPK for real? It emerges rather like
a ghost from the tales of people with contacts to the rebels and
investigations by the local police and the NATO-led peacekeepers (KFOR).
Even N.K. thinks the Pristina media are exaggerating a bit when covering his
buddies of the UPK. Decani is a small town, less than five thousand
inhabitants, and we know each other very well, he says, implying that the
locals would have a pretty good idea of whos a member and whos not.
N.K is
unable to say how many people might belong to the UPK, but there seem to be a
sufficient number of them to have disturbed the peacekeeping forces in Kosovo.
After international forces started overflights with helicopters and unmanned
aircraft in the region around Decani and Peja, where some of the fiercest
fighting against Serbian forces took place in 1998-1999, the gunmen disappeared
from the streets and have since switched to communications through the Internet.
But just because theyve gone virtual hasnt made them any less
threatening.
On 9 November, the UPK threatened the international community
with events a hundred times more dramatic than those of last March [2004],
when thousands of Serbian houses and historical and religious monuments were
destroyed by mobs.
In one of their media statements, the UPK called on the
Kosovo assembly to declare independence, or else deputies would have a hard
time in future days.
On 16 November, they threatened to launch a military
operation on Pristina if independence was not declared immediately. They then
seemed to have accepted a resolution passed by the Kosovo parliament the next
day which, although it did not declare independence, made clear that
independence was the only acceptable outcome of status talks.
The UPK has
used similar, though rather less subtle, language with people they stopped on
the road.
Well kill all the traitors of the nation and the members of the
Kosovo negotiation team if they wont behave in the right way, two people
wearing military-style uniforms with UPK insignia and black facemasks told D.S.,
a man from the village of Rogova in Rahovec municipality. The "team"
is the Kosovo delegation to the talks on the provinces final status that are
about to get under way.
Former Finnish President Martti Ahtisaari, who is the
UN's envoy to the status talks, said last week he hoped direct negotiations can
begin early in the New Year.
D.S. said the gunmen stopped him and his nephew
in Rogova and forced them to show identity papers. He too doesnt want his name
used because hes afraid for his safety. I dont want any problem with them,
he said.
ONLINE ONLY?
Another source interviewed by TOL had asked a UPK
gunman for an interview but was told that the group werent interested in giving
statements other than those they disseminated on the Internet.
There are
good reasons to suspect that the UPK is more of a virtual group than a military
formation.
Two years ago, another force called the Albanian National Army
also sent threatening communications to politicians via the Internet. But after
a short burst of activity the organization seems to have died out.
According
to another former UCK rebel from Decani, what is happening in this area is a
form of blackmail. Its a hidden political issue, nothing else, he said.
Everything depends on the status of Kosovo; if independence will not be given,
the problem [of armed bands] will spread and become very serious, he said,
pointing to what he described as an increasing number of extremists in Kosovo.
KFOR confirmed that armed individuals had been spotted in the Peja region
but excluded the possibility they might be part of an organized military group.
The Belgrade daily Vecernje Novosti on
27 October accused Ramush Haradinaj, the former UCK commander of the region and
a former Kosovo prime minister currently facing charges at the International
Criminal Tribunal for former Yugoslavia (ICTY) in The Hague, of being behind the mysterious
paramilitary UPK, calling him "the sponsor and main ideologue of this terrorist
army."
Haradinaj stands accused of crimes against Serbian civilians during
the ethnic Albanian rebellion against Belgrades rule in 1998-1999. He was released
by the ICTY last June, pending trial.
But according to a TOL source in
Decani, the armed men in the area are very angry at Haradinaj because he failed
to help them after the war.
The UPK appeared on the scene just a few days
after an article in the Kosovo daily Koha ditore, in which Mikan
Velinovic, a former wrestler and writer of aphorisms, claimed to be the
commander of the Serbian Antiterrorist Liberation Movement, or SOAP, a group he
claimed had 7,500 members that were unarmed but ready to act if necessary.
Every Serb is a member of this organization, because we are threatened by
terrorists, the paper quoted Velinovic as saying.
Fears are flying high
that the opening of status talks will provide incentives for extremists on both
sides to make trouble.
Ramadan Qehaja, a security adviser to Prime Minister
Bajram Kosumi, is concerned that the situation might be exacerbated by foreign
secret services present in Kosovo, especially from Serbia.
Elements of the Serbian Interior Ministry are active in Kosovo, especially in
the northern part, he told TOL, saying that the fact that Kosovo did not have a
regular secret service made it very difficult to monitor the presence of other
secret services.
Political analyst Shkelzen Maliqi also told TOL that the
threat of extremism was a convenient pretext that the sides could use to their
advantage, but that the threat by these groups was real. I fear the organized
groups of Serbs and Albanians that are out of control. Serbs especially, because
they have much more motivation and discontent. But Albanians at the same time
may be determined to get their revenge if theres a domino effect.
For UNMIK
spokesman Neeraj Singh, messages, real or fake, like that the UPK delivered to
Kosovo's status negotiators are to be expected given whats at stake in the
status talks.
Despite the comments in the media, the threats, electronic
messages, and other forms of pressure, the status of Kosovo will not be decided
on the street or through the Internet, neither from Pristina nor from Belgrade, Singh told a
press conference in remarks that were echoed by KFOR commander Giuseppe
Valotto.
Alma Lama is a journalist for the public Radio Television of
Kosovo and a correspondent for Osservatorio sui
Balcani.
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