Policing the Protectors

Tuesday, 6 September, 2005

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Naser Miftari

Amid repeated allegations of violent criminal activity, the Kosovo Protection Corps, heir to the KLA, is in desperate need for reform.

Four years after the NATO intervention ended Serb rule in Kosovo, the reputation of the Kosovo Liberation Army, KLA, and its successor, the Kosovo Protection Corps, KPC, is once more being called into question.

Recent events have done nothing to improve the standing of the KPC. Two men in KPC uniform and driving a KPC-marked vehicle were arrested on June 18 under suspicion of kidnapping and assaulting a Kosovar Albanian man from Obilic/Kastriot in central Kosovo on June 17.

UNMIK police have confirmed to IWPR that they are being held on suspicion of "interfering with a police investigation". UNMIK sources refused to elaborate on what this investigation concerns.

In May, the international community began openly talking of links between the protectorate's civil defence force, the Kosovo Protection Corps, and the militant Albanian group the Albanian National Army, ANA, which aims to rid Kosovo of its remaining Serb population, estimated by the UN to be between 100,000 and 130,000. In March, the United States joined the fray, drafting a plan calling for a radical overhaul of the KPC.

And in January, Tahir Zemaj, former leader of the KLA’s one-time rival, the Armed Forces of the Republic of Kosovo, FARK, was gunned down in Peja/Pec shortly after announcing his intention to become the next leader of the KPC.

The ongoing violence has also come under the spotlight with two landmark trials that have revealed the depth of the divisions within the Albanian community before, during and since the war.

In a special investigation, IWPR has gone back and interviewed some of the major players in the establishment of both the KLA and the KPC to see where the seeds of the current crisis were sown.

FOLLOWING THE TRIAL

On March 24, 2003, the murder trial of former KLA commander Ekrem Rexha, aka Commander Drini, finally ended in the southern Kosovo town of Prizren. The regional court found Sali Veseli, another former KLA commander and later a member of the KPC, had "encouraged, planned and paid for" the murder of Rexha. He was sentenced to ten years in prison. Three other defendants were acquitted of murder but found guilty of illegal possession of firearms.

Rexha died after a drive-by shooting in Prizren in front of his house in May 2000. After the war, analysts and international officials regarded him as a trusted source of advice on the transformation of the KLA into the KPC. The prosecution argued that it was Rexha's good relationship with the United Nations Mission in Kosovo, UNMIK, that led to his assassination.

Over the past two years, 27 ex-officers and senior KLA commanders have been charged with murder and other crimes by NATO's Kosovo Protection Force, KFOR, and the UN police. Eleven have been released for lack of evidence, according to the KPC’s general commander, General Agim Ceku.

But despite ongoing allegations against its members, the KPC, as heirs to the KLA, oppose certain charges on principle, as a statement released by its general staff in response to Veseli's arrest in March made clear: "We do not oppose any investigations into our members because we respect the rule of law. But we have spoken out against our people being accused of war crimes because that is unacceptable. We consider such accusations make a wrongful comparison between the crimes carried out by the Serbian police and army in Kosovo and the just war waged by the KLA."

WITNESSES OR COLLABORATORS?

The view that former KLA members cannot be guilty of war crimes because they were waging a just war is only one reason why many witnesses have been reluctant to come forward. The International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia's, ICTY, Chief Prosecutor Carla del Ponte has acknowledged that her investigators working at three separate sites in Kosovo have had difficulties finding witnesses to give testimony that could help indict former guerrillas.

Lack of active Albanian support is one thing. Intimidation is another. For this reason, discussions are under way with foreign governments to Establish a witness protection programme.

"In several cases we are investigating, potential witnesses have been threatened," said Michael Hartmann of the ICTY's prosecutor's office. "You cannot possibly ask witnesses to go public without proper protection," he added.

But many remain sceptical about the chances of any such programme Working without the help of foreign governments. Barry Fletcher, deputy chief of information for UNMIK police told IWPR in April that they could only do so much.

"We have a witness protection system already, in the sense that we can provide body guards. But we are not able to provide effective protection to those who were members of accused groups or organisations."

For UNMIK the priority remains getting witnesses out of the protectorate.

"We can't relocate them and they need to be out of Kosovo, ideally into countries which have no Albanian community, so Germany, Switzerland or North West USA are not suitable. For us this is our number one issue," Fletcher said.

The dangers of testifying, or even being identified as a possible witness, were all too apparent in the case of Major General Rustem Mustafa. Mustafa, better known by his nom de guerre "Remi", is one of four defendants charged with illegal arrest and detention, inhumane treatment, torture and murder at a series of KLA-run detention camps in Bradash/Bradas, Bajgore/Bajgora, Llapashtice/Lapastica, Majac, Kolec and Zlash/Zlas.

The preliminary investigation, concluded in November 2002, showed that Remi had authority to order the arrest, imprisonment and the killing of civilian detainees, mainly Albanians suspected of collaborating with the Serbian regime.

Fehmi Potera is one of those illegally detained by Remi who is still alive. He was mentioned in the Remi indictment, and his name appeared in the Media as a potential witness. Soon afterwards, an unknown attacker wounded him in front of his house in the north Kosovo town of Podujeve/Podujevo. He now refuses to speak, insisting, "I do not even know Commander Remi".

EXECUTING COLLABORATORS OR REMOVING RIVALS?

Another high profile case has shed light on the lingering hostilities between the rival Albanian camps.

In November 2002, an international panel of judges in Pristina convicted General Daut Haradinaj and four other former KLA members known as the Dugagjini group, of torturing and killing four people in June 1999, at the end of the Kosovo war. They sentenced Idriz Balaj to 15 years, Daut Haradinaj and Bekim Zekaj to five years and Ahmet Elshani and Ramush Ahmeti to three years.

Their four victims, Bashkim Balaj, Rexhe Osaj, Sinan Musaj and Rame Idrizaj,were members of the Armed Forces of the Republic of Kosovo, FARK. This piecemeal fighting force was set up before the war by the long-established Kosovo government in exile led by the current president Ibrahim Rugova and his party, the Democratic League of Kosovo, LDK. The four KLA officers seized them after they returned from training in Albania.

A fifth FARK member, Vesel Muriqi, escaped from the group and gave Important evidence at the trial, run by UNMIK, in November 2002. But guerrillas of the KLA stand accused of killing not only FARK rivals but also Albanians who allegedly collaborated with Serbs and one of their own commanders as well.

Another key prosecution witness in the trial was Ilir Selimaj, a former KLA fighter and member of Daut Haradinaj's Dugagjini unit. Selimaj admitted to having been present at the crimes, but was released in return for agreeing to testify. On April 14, he was shot in dead in an ambush in the village of Nabergjan/Pobrdje, near Peja/Pec in western Kosovo. UNMIK says he had declined their protection because it may have been "inconvenient to his business dealings".

Selimaj's murder will serve as yet another warning to other former guerrillas who might consider testifying in high profile war crimes cases, damaging UNMIK's efforts to build an effective justice system in the protectorate. The trial itself had sparked popular protests in Kosovo, where former KLA members are still regarded as war heroes and liberators.

THE RIVALRY BETWEEN THE KLA AND FARK

The roots of the rivalry between the KLA and FARK stretch back to before the war began.

In March 1998, Serbian security services killed 45 members of the Albanian Jashari clan at their family compound in Drenica, Kosovo. The massacre, which included children and a pregnant woman, marked a turning point in the simmering conflict. A new generation of Kosovar and diaspora Albanians were moved to take up arms for the first time.

Those who fled to the mountains eager to take revenge against Serb forces, found a new force in place on the ground: the KLA. The FARK were barely in evidence - most of their officers were in Tirana. Instead, volunteers found commanders from the Popular Movement of Kosovo, LPK, later to evolve into the KLA, occupying all the major battle positions.

It has been widely perceived that the LPK gained a lead over rival Albanian groups because, in part, the international community took them more seriously than others. "Out of the several guerrilla groups that were operating in Kosovo, the LPK were the group we considered to be the most serious," one western diplomat recalled to IWPR.

During interviews with IWPR, Xhavit Haliti, a former LPK commander who many consider to be the eminence gris behind the rise of the KLA, said that the international community was right to take the LPK seriously. "We were prepared for a guerrilla war of up to 20 years."

The response to the Jashari massacre was vital in determining who would lead the subsequent war against Serb forces. It also marked the culmination of divisions within Albanian ranks, which would continue to be played out after NATO bombing liberated the province.

FROM PASSIVE TO ACTIVE RESISTANCE

By the time of the Jashari killings, the Kosovars had been running a government in exile for almost a decade. With Kosovars excluded from state institutions by the Milosevic regime, the exile government collected funds from the Albanian diaspora to support parallel health and education systems within the province.

Led by the Democratic League of Kosovo, LDK, Ibrahim Rugova and his prime minister in exile, Bujar Bukoshi, the government promoted a policy of passive resistance within Kosovo, while armed conflict raged first in Croatia and then in Bosnia.

Kosovo Albanians were hugely disappointed in 1995, when the Dayton Accords, which ended the war in Bosnia, failed to address the future status of Kosovo. Feeling abandoned by the international community and facing a future locked into Milosevic's Serbia, many Albanians began to demand direct action to drive the Serbs out.

The exiled LDK government began to enlist former ethnic Albanian Yugoslav army officers into the newly created FARK, set up to mount guerrilla attacks against Serb targets within Kosovo. But indecisiveness over the right time to strike meant that few of the planned attacks ever materialised, and the FARK remained largely ineffective.

Frustrated by the FARK's lack of action, a number of nationalists from The LPK – later to change into the KLA - and the National Movement for the Liberation of Kosovo, NMLK, began collecting money in a special fund named Vendlindja Therret or Fatherland Calling. While the FARK continued to wait for orders from the exile government, activists from the LPK began mobilising fighters within Kosovo and carrying out operations on the ground.

As attacks began on Serbian police controls, the LPK grew in strength and stature. FARK began to seem more and more marginal. Moreover, the new fighters rejected the authority of the exile government, which through Bukoshi, was attempting to make Rugova the supreme commander of all ethnic Albanian forces fighting in the province.

Stung by the exile government's diminishing influence on the ground, Bujar Bukoshi arranged to meet some LPK representatives in the spring of 1997 in Istanbul. The meeting was intended to establish a joint strategy for future action.

"First of all, I think Bujar Bukoshi called the meeting in the wrong place at the wrong time," said Haliti, who refused to attend.

Bukoshi was reluctant to meet in Tirana because of allegations that he was involved in the brief civil war that had broken out in Albania following the collapse of the country's pyramid savings system in 1997.

"We could have met in Tirana or anywhere else in Albania without a problem, instead of the luxury hotels of Istanbul," Haliti added.

"Secondly, we were not invited in our roles as the general staff of the KLA or LPK. No one understood why we needed to go to Istanbul when our position was clear, to unite against our common enemy. Bukoshi's main concern seemed to be to take control of the KLA."

For his part, Bukoshi claims that the LPK/KLA delegation were at fault for the split.

"Unfortunately those who came to Istanbul didn't want to work together, although they paid lip service to the need for collaboration. We had hoped that two high-ranking officers from the KLA, would try to overcome the differences, but they came only to deliver missives from their leaders," Bukoshi has told IWPR.

"One of them was more constructive while his colleague went to the restroom, but then reverted to form when he came back. We were getting nowhere."

Haliti insists that there were several attempts at cooperation, including one brokered by the Albanian government, but all foundered because Bukoshi's main objective was for the government-in-exile-to take control of the KLA.

"I continually said we should cooperate. Once, I even waited for two days for Bukoshi to come and meet me in Tirana, but he never showed up," Haliti claims.

Bukoshi is insistent that his FARK forces were as effective as the KLA On the ground at the time. He still accuses the KLA of rejecting cooperation in order to establish predominance.

"They behaved as if they were the only ones fighting the Serbs," he said.

The struggle between the two forces was fuelled by the shared view that whoever gained dominance during war would wield greater influence in the peace. A few months after the Jashari massacre, an operation in which the two forces were cooperating on the ground sealed the division between them.

By the summer of 1998, both forces were amassed in Decani in western Kosovo, following the systematic attacks on Kosovar villages by Serb forces which had forced tens of thousands of Albanians into the area.

Ramush Haradinaj, brother of Daut Haradinaj - recently jailed in Pristina for his part in the Dugagjini unit's murders - told IWPR he had as many as 10,000 armed KLA men under his command at the time.

But following disputes between the FARK and KLA leadership on the ground over what should be done about Serb demands for Albanians to hand over weapons, many of Haradinaj's troops began to leave.

"Many of our men departed and we were left with only a few hundred fighters," he later told IWPR.

The guerrillas who fled claimed they did so in order to prevent Serbs attacking some 50,000 civilians in Decani who were at that point coming under siege.

Tahir Zemaj, leader of the FARK, recalled in his biography that the divisions had become so bad that Hashim Thaci, by that time the head of the political directorate and de-facto boss of the KLA, told him: "You have 10 days to leave Kosovo, otherwise my men will fight you as though you were Serbs."

Forced to leave with his men, Zemaj did not return to Kosovo until 2001, almost two years after the war. He was shot in January 2003 by, as yet unknown assailants.

FROM NATO ALLIES TO TROUBLE-MAKERS

By the time the war in Kosovo ended, it is estimated that the KLA had 15,000 soldiers in the protectorate. While the NATO bombardment was underway, in Tirana Hashim Thaci set about establishing a provisional government for Kosovo. On June 12, 1999, NATO's ground troops entered the province. The KLA gained global respectability as NATO's ally and, ultimately, joint victors.

But while events moved fast, Ibrahim Rugova and his Democratic League of Kosovo, LDK, were slow to return. Their absence left the stage set for the KLA and its provisional government to assume the day-to-day running of the province. Thaci moved into politics, leaving Agim Ceku to take his place as supreme commander of the KLA. The rest of Kosovo was divided between regional KLA commanders: Rustem Mustafa in the LlapLab region; Ramush Haradinaj in Dukagjin/Metohija; Sami Lushtaku in Drenica; Gezim Ostreni in Pashtrik/Pastrik; Shukri Buja in the Karadak region, and Rrahman Rama in Shala.

On its return, the LDK also established a provisional government in the province, which operated in opposition to the KLA administration.

It took three months before the international community established proper authority over Kosovo. KFOR and UNMIK did not have the necessary structures and personnel to make immediate arrests or establish the rule of law. Newly arrived international police officers, who did not speak Albanian, were helpless in the face of organised crime. Moreover, the KLA had not yet been demilitarised.

During this immediate post-war period, the KLA entrenched its position across the protectorate, establishing itself as a major player in the shaping of the new civil administration.

Demilitarisation took place on September 20, 1999, when the then UN administrator for Kosovo, Bernard Kouchner, signed a regulation establishing the Kosovo Protection Corps, KPC, from disbanded units of the KLA.

And in December 1999, Rugova and Thaci both agreed to disband their rival provisional governments. In return, UNMIK pledged to make members of Rugova's LDK and Thaci's Democratic Party of Kosvo, PDK, heads of departments within the interim administration overseen by UNMIK. Agreement on the council was finally reached in February 2000, after weeks of tortuous negotiation.

PART OF A LARGER GAME PLAN?

With often radically differing aims, did some Albanian fighters regard the liberation of Kosovo as the first step along the road to a greater Albania, unifying all ethnic Albanian areas in the Balkans?

Certainly, the long-established diaspora party and political brother of the KLA, the LPK, did not originally limit its vision to the liberation of Kosovo alone.

Haliti confirmed to IWPR what their aim had been, "As the only serious organisation fighting for the liberation of the fatherland, the LPK, had the goal of liberating all Albanian territories in Yugoslavia and uniting them in a single republic."

However, he claims that such ambitions had already been abandoned by the time the LPK began collecting funds for a fighting force in the 1990s.

"After the dissolution of the Yugoslav federation, we reconsidered our platform and abandoned former aims in order to get closer to new realities. Some of the members in the movement disagreed, and resigned as a result," he said.

Whatever the aims, what is true is that the KLA was a pan-Albanian Force which included many fighters from Macedonia and southern Serbia, as well as Albanians with roots outside Kosovo.

But while the KLA took all comers during the war, this was not meant to be an army of Albanian brotherhood in peacetime. After the fighting stopped, the KLA leadership decided that soldiers who could not prove family connections in Kosovo would have to leave the country.

Ramush Haradinaj told IWPR, "Many of them returned to where they had been living in Europe or to their places of birth in Albania and Macedonia."

However, not all did leave. Demobbed fighters transferred into the KPC included Albanians from outside Kosovo, most famously their then chief of staff, Gezim Ostreni, a former high-ranking KLA officer and an Albanian from Macedonia.

With the dream of a greater Albania shattered by the international peacekeeping force in Kosovo, some in the Albanian community remained determined to keep on fighting elsewhere in the Balkans.

And it wasn't long before further conflict broke out.

THE CONFLICT SPREADS

The ethnic Albanian Liberation Army of Preseve/Presevo, Medvegje/Medvedja, and Bujanovc/Bujanovac, UCPMB, was formed in January 2000 and operated in the demilitarised Ground Safety Zone between Kosovo and Serbia.

Between March and May 2001, NATO gradually allowed Serbian forces to reoccupy the area in an attempt to secure it and reassure the local Serbian population. And in May 2001, the Serbian government envoy Nebojsa Covic put forward a plan to end discrimination against some 70,000 ethnic Albanians through a series of confidence-building measures.

In return the UCPMB handed over significant quantities of weapons, disbanded and withdrew from the Presevo valley. Sporadic violence has continued in the area, but in last year's local elections Albanians peacefully won three municipalities in the valley.

But whilst local and international solutions to the Presevo issue were rapidly found, the problem of establishing truly multi-ethnic democracy in both Kosovo and southern Serbia remained.

In spring 2001, ethnic conflict started in Macedonia. And here the hard line Albanian nationalists, radicalised by years of conflict, took the floor once more.

In a blatant snub at attempts by the international community to moderate and civilianise the KLA into the KPC civil defence force, the then KPC chief of staff Gezim Ostreni reappeared in early 2001 in Macedonia as chief of staff of the Albanian fighting force there, the National Liberation Army, NLA.

KPC General Commander General Agim Ceku, suspended Ostreni and later dismissed him.

"The KPC supports the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Macedonia, but also believes that ethnic Albanians should enjoy equal rights there," he said in March 2001.

Any KPC member found to be involved in violence in Macedonia or the Presevo Valley would be fired, he added. In another case the former commander of KPC Zone 6, Shukri Buja, was dismissed following charges that he had helped smuggle arms into southern Serbia.

Asked by IWPR in 2001 about alleged links between the fighting in Macedonia and the KPC, Major General Andrew Cumming, UNMIK's coordinator for the KPC, said that Macedonia was outside the KPC's field of responsibility but admitted that KPC members could not be placed under 24-hour control, so it was difficult to stop some joining in the conflict next door.

"At the end of their working day they are free to take off their uniforms and continue with their private life," he said. "But they can not express political views the way regular civilians can. We expect UNMIK/KFOR and the KPC to respect each other, and the KPC must be ready to fulfil their main duty which is to respond to civil emergencies."

Cummings acknowledged that the KPC was not universally admired.

"There are some countries, mainly European, which hold different opinions not just on the KPC but on other issues as well," he said, adding that the US and UK remained the force's strongest supporters.

But while the UK and US governments do give a broad backing to the KPC, it has not stopped them being critical of its possible connections. On July 1, 2001, US president George Bush signed an executive order barring 24 Kosovo Albanians suspected of fighting in Presevo and Macedonia, from entering the USA or engaging in business there. Four former KPC generals appeared on the list.

Two of them, Daut Haradinaj and Rrustem Mustafa are currently in prison. The third was Sami Lushtaku, general of the Drenica Operational Zone of the KPC. The fourth was Gezim Ostreni, former KLA commander in Pashtrik and currently a member of Macedonian parliament.

Although Ostreni was later removed from the US list, for reasons which are not in the public domain, two other leading KPC members were found to be on it: Ramiz Lladrovci, deputy commander of the KPC's rapid reaction force and Kosovo's former public order minister, and KPC member Rexhep Selimi. Having heard the news he is part of the modified US list, Lladrovci resigned from the KPC.

THE KPC – A CASE FOR REFORM?

Kosovo may be inching its way to some sort of territorial settlement which may take it out of its sovereign limbo. At the EU's Balkans summit in Thessalonika on June 21-22 the Belgrade government surprised delegates by announcing that it was willing to start talks on the future of the protectorate.

What such talks may mean is unclear but it is likely that some sort of KPC reform will have to be on the table before minorities, particularly Serbs, feel safe enough to back any change in the protectorates status.

For its part, the KPC is doing its utmost to include members of minorities, in particular Serbs (despite cries of the Serbian government to Kosovo Serbs that they are not to join the force), and the KPC has succeeded so far in enlisting a good number – around 200 Serbs, Bosnians, Turks, Roma and others.

And whilst EU Commission president Romano Prodi announced plans at Thessalonika to increase development aid to the Balkans to help "complete Europe's unification", some influential bodies in the US are simultaneously discussing how to settle the Kosovo issue.

A February 2003 special report by the influential think tank the United States Institute for Peace singled out KPC reform as essential for a successful final settlement of Kosovo's status.

The report makes uncomfortable reading for those charged with running the KPC. "Professionalism within the KPC is lacking; criminals and extremists remain within its ranks; and firm civilian control, eventually by Kosovo's elected authorities, is needed," it says. According to plans presented by the Institute, all criminal elements should be purged, and the organisation then placed under the Supreme Defence Council and the president of Kosovo.

But whatever the international community may think, among Kosovar Albanians the KPC is revered. A recent report published by Riinvest, a Kosovar NGO polling agency that works for the UN Development Programme, found that 80 per cent of Kosovars said they admired the KPC.

But others recognise that the KPC has a poor reputation, one which, they argue, was damaged at birth.

Haliti, who took part in negotiations to transform the KLA into the KPC, has told IWPR that in retrospect, he has doubts about the choices he made.

"I started the negotiations, but the talks were held under pressure, and my colleagues and I are not satisfied with the results. There were two options on the table, and I am now convinced that the option we turned down was better than the one we accepted."

KLA leaders were offered the chance of keeping their weapons, but under the condition they stayed confined to their barracks under civilian control, he said. Instead, they opted to hand over their arms and become the KPC.

"Had we agreed to place the KLA under civilian control, then the law-breaking would have been laid at the door of those who committed the crimes and not blamed on the KLA that has liberated Kosovo," he said, "but it's too late for that now".

But whatever the future for Kosovo and the KPC, one thing remains clear. An honest reckoning with the past, and the role played by the KLA, will have to be made before any long-term peace can be found.

Naser Miftari is an editor with the Koha Ditore daily in Pristina. David Quin is assistant investigations editor at IWPR in London.