The New York Times

Monday, December 5, 1999

Monitors' Reports Provide Chronicle of Kosovo Terror

By STEVEN ERLANGER

RAGUE -- Two extraordinarily detailed reports on human rights abuses in Kosovo, drawn from official Western sources, present a depressing picture of an ugly war, full of individual and collective cruelty and crime by the Serbs, followed by an ugly peace displaying many of the same depredations, if on a smaller scale, by the province's Albanians.

The reports, obtained by The New York Times from the compilers, are prepared by the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe from its own interviews. They do not fundamentally alter the current view of the war and its aftermath so much as provide overwhelming evidence of a Serbian campaign, organized by a powerful, authoritarian state and its security forces, to drive nearly one million Albanians from the province.

Given the numbers of the interviews, the accretion of fact and the character of the European agency itself, these reports will have an important impact. The 55-nation organization comprises the United States, Canada and all of Europe, including Russia and all the states of the former Soviet bloc; Yugoslavia is the only country under suspension.

But the organization is still seen in Belgrade as more neutral than the International Tribunal in the Hague, which has already indicted President Slobodan Milosevic of Yugoslavia and four of his top associates for the actions of Serbian forces in Kosovo. And the reports, while supporting allegations of Serbian war crimes, are also highly critical of the actions of the former Kosovo Liberation Army and its supporters in committing similar crimes.

The first report provides coherent detail and moving personal testimony about how the Serbs exercised their power, the pattern of the expulsions and the vast increase in lootings, killings, rape, kidnappings and pillage once the NATO air war began on March 24. In general, it is an effort to find a pattern in the war and serves to rebut suggestions that Serbian paramilitaries, who did much killing and looting, were outside the control of regular Serbian army and police officers.

The report also suggests a kind of military rationale for the expulsions, which were concentrated in areas controlled by the insurgents and along likely invasion routes. The idea appears to have been to cut back on Albanian wealth, power and numbers in Kosovo, while disrupting bordering countries.

The second report describes continuing horrors carried out by Kosovo Albanians after the war. Those are often organized by the former Kosovo Liberation Army, the report says, and are generally aimed at non-Albanians with the intention of driving them out of the province.

Those actions, the report makes clear, have taken place under the nose and often under the eyes of NATO-led peacekeeping troops, who took control of Kosovo on June 12.

"The desire for revenge" on the part of Kosovo's Albanians, the report says, "has created a climate in which the vast majority of human rights violations have taken place" and led to "the assumption of collective guilt," so that "the entire remaining Kosovo Serb population was seen as a target."

The report also attributes the violence to "the intolerance that has emerged within the Kosovo Albanian community." It notes that "opposition to the new order, particularly the (former) K.L.A.'s dominance of the self-styled municipal administrations, or simply a perceived lack of commitment to the K.L.A. cause has led to intimidation and harassment."

There is strong evidence of "a more systematic pattern" and organization by the former rebel army, the report says, with "a careful targeting of victims and an underlying intention to expel."

The O.S.C.E. calls for investigation of these allegations, given denials of involvement by leaders of the former rebel army. But the group's summary of its own reporting says it is "littered with witness statements testifying to K.L.A. involvement."

"It is clear that the K.L.A. stepped in to fill a law-and-order void, but this 'policing' role is unrestrained by law and without legitimacy," the summary says.

Both reports are to be released on Monday in Pristina, Kosovo's capital.

The first report covers the period from October 1998, when the European group and diplomats from the member countries were invited into Kosovo to monitor a cease-fire between the ruling Serbs and the Kosovo Liberation Army, through the withdrawal of the monitors on March 20, 1999, just four days before NATO began bombing Yugoslavia.

The report also tries to describe what happened in each of the 29 districts of Kosovo during the 78 days of bombing. Its account -- well-organized and careful about what is hearsay -- is drawn from refugee statements and interviews.

The first report was written by the the European group's Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights, based in Warsaw, using hundreds of individual case reports, daily and weekly reports from the staff of the Kosovo Verification Mission through March 20, and more than 2,760 interviews with refugees who had fled to Albania and Macedonia.

While the report concentrates on Serb abuses of the Albanians, it also details the prewar atmosphere, when Serbian forces were facing off against the rebels, who were kidnapping Serbian civilians and ambushing police officers and soldiers.

The report also raises questions about some allegations reported in the West. It says that allegations of a torture chamber in the basement of the main police station in Pristina and another in a police station in Pec, have so far not been corroborated.

Typically in an expulsion, the report says, the army would hold the ground and roads, and militarized police and paramilitaries would go into a village or town, sometimes after shelling, announcing on loudspeakers that Albanians had to leave and gather in a main area, usually within a short time.

Sometimes paramilitaries would mistreat or shoot laggards, and then the population would be pushed along set routes toward Macedonia or Albania, the report says. Often those expelled were mistreated, threatened with death, rape or beatings unless they handed over money. Sometimes they were beaten anyway, or women were raped.

Some were killed, especially those who had ties to the Kosovo Liberation Army or who were rich, and houses were burned to try to ensure that the residents would not return.

Abuses and killings were worse in the villages, especially in areas controlled by the insurgents, than in the cities, where the insurgents were fewer or less visible, the report says.

The report says that in Pristina, the situation changed considerably once foreign monitors left. Serbian police officers were ambushed, "provoking a strong reaction." The police patrolled vigorously and took up sniper positions, while Albanians remained at home out of fear and then the Yugoslav army shelled parts of the town. Serbian police officers and soldiers killed some civilians. "Dead bodies remained for days on the street because no one dared to remove them, the report says.

"The most visible change in the events was after NATO launched its first airstrikes" on March 24, the report continues. "On one hand, the situation seemed to have slipped out of the control of any authorities, as lawlessness reigned in the form of killings and the looting of houses. On the other, the massive expulsion of thousands of residents from the city, which mostly took place in the last week of March and in early April, followed a certain pattern and was conceivably organized well in advance. The most persistent human rights violations were the systematic expulsions, which were accompanied by numerous killings, looting and the extortion of money."

The perpetrators "included police, army and various groups of paramilitaries, as well as local Serbs and, to a lesser extent, Gypsies," who were described as looting and removing dead bodies from the streets.

The second report, which runs from mid-June of this year through the end of October, was produced by the Human Rights Division of the European group's mission in Kosovo, which has some of the same staff members as the prewar monitors. It provides details of human rights abuses against all groups in Kosovo for each of the five regions designated by peacekeepers, and provides daily summaries of reported abuses.

The report blames the lack of law enforcement for creating a "cycle of impunity."

United Nations officials in Kosovo say they need governments to follow through on pledges of manpower and money to bring the United Nations police force up from its current level of 1,700 to the 6,000 requested.

But Dennis McNamara, the director of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees operation in Kosovo, said the report also pointed to the need for more Albanian cooperation with investigations. "We need a functioning police and legal system," he said. "But we also need support from the local community, for them to be willing to come forward and help."