Kosovo Militia Fails to Honor Vow to Disarm

By Peter Finn

The Washington Post

Tuesday, March 28, 2000

GNJILANE, Yugoslavia, March 27 -- An ethnic Albanian militia group whose leaders agreed in the presence of U.S. diplomats last week to end an insurgency in southern Serbia has taken no steps to live up to its pledge, according to U.S. and Kosovo officials.

Elements within the organization--the Liberation Army of Presevo, Medvedja and Buganovac, which is composed largely of former Kosovo Liberation Army members--seem determined to continue their challenge to Serbian security forces in the Presevo Valley, a predominantly ethnic Albanian-populated area of southern Serbia just outside the U.S.-patrolled zone of eastern Kosovo, the officials said.

Despite the agreement last Thursday, these militiamen have continued to wear uniforms and conduct training exercises with AK-47 assault rifles in and around the village of Dubrosin, which lies in a neutral zone between U.S. forces in Kosovo and Yugoslav forces in Serbia proper. In addition, some members of the militia group have continued to cross back and forth between the U.S.-patrolled area of Kosovo and the neutral zone, where they undergo military training.

The group has been able to operate with a certain impunity because neither NATO peacekeeping forces nor the Yugoslav military can enter the neutral zone under an agreement reached in June that ended NATO's 78-day bombing campaign against Yugoslavia and compelled President Slobodan Milosevic to withdraw his security forces from Kosovo--which technically remains a province of Serbia, the dominant republic of Yugoslavia.

The militia group's leaders publicly renounced violence last Thursday and said they would seek a political solution to the problems of the Presevo Valley. But it now appears that the organization, which announced itself to the world on Jan. 26, is internally divided. The leaders who met here with U.S. officials and Hashim Thaqi--former head of the disbanded Kosovo Liberation Army--have been unable thus far to make good on its promises.

The agreement to demobilize involved a direct investment of U.S. diplomatic capital in the little-known and fractious ethnic Albanian group, but the insurgents have frustrated American expectations by issuing conflicting statements about their intentions and stepping up the very training they were supposed to suspend.

"We haven't given up on this," said one U.S. official. "We encourage the group to show some sign that they are implementing the agreement. We are waiting to see those signs, and sooner rather than later."

U.S. officials fear that if Milosevic cracks down on the group, which has been mounting operations from inside Kosovo, a new refugee crisis could unfold, putting pressure on NATO to respond. "It's a potentially dangerous situation," said a U.S. official, "because they feed on each other and this could spiral."

The agreement is also a test of Thaqi's strength among ethnic Albanian radicals. He has been one of the West's principal interlocutors with Kosovo's ethnic Albanian majority in its efforts to stabilize the province. While reining in the whole ragtag band of guerrillas may be an impossible task, Thaqi has staked some of his reputation on the agreement; failure to secure it would be symptomatic of his falling star in Kosovo. The youthful former guerrilla leader, who trails far behind moderate Kosovo political forces in opinion polls, has also seen his natural constituency, former KLA membership, split into a number of political parties.

To demonstrate his leadership, according to an aide, Thaqi brokered Thursday's meeting in Gnjilane, 20 miles southeast of Pristina, the Kosovo capital. Representatives of the Presevo Valley group, including one identified as its military commander, Shefket Musliu, met with the head of the U.S. mission in Kosovo, Christopher Dell.

Thaqi, eager to show the insurgents that he could bring the United States to the table and intent on demonstrating his continuing relevance to U.S. officials, is still pushing the militia force to comply. "He's sweating it," said one Western official.

"We are consulting among ourselves every night and every day," said Jonuz Musliu, president of the group's political council and a cousin of its military commander. "Some are against it, and that's why we need time."

Just hours after making the declaration last Thursday, however, the group--known as the UCPMB in Albanian--staged "platoon-type training exercises" around Dubrosin, according to a U.S. military spokesman with the Kosovo peacekeeping force. "As a matter of fact, the numbers of soldiers training in and around Dubrosin continues to increase," said Army Lt. Col. Jeffrey Snow.

Jonuz Musliu said he could not explain the group's stepped-up training of guerrillas while internal consultations were taking place. "We understood the agreement," said Musliu. "But this should be done gradually. We are trying to convince the soldiers to take off the uniforms. We are working in that direction, but we don't want a rebellion on our hands."

But there are already clear signs of internal dissent. The Kosovo newspaper Koha Ditore today published a copy of a letter it received under UCPMB letterhead declaring that the commanders of the organization wished to state that "UCPMB is and will be, and will not cease ever until eastern Kosovo is liberated"--an apparent reference to the Presevo Valley.

Western military and diplomatic officials believe the group has little popular support either in Kosovo or the Presevo Valley but that it contains some elements--including supporters of an expanded Albania--that are determined to continue armed struggle against Serbia. Moreover, according to ethnic Albanian sources, some of the group's sponsors anticipate that a fresh guerrilla conflict could tap large amounts of money from Albanian communities in Western Europe and the United States.

The group is already drawing funds through some of the same expatriate channels that raised millions of dollars for the KLA in the United States and Europe, Western officials said. Little, however, is known about the organization itself. Its reputed numbers vary from 80 to about 500, and it is believed to have five or six factions that cooperate loosely under the command of Musliu, a former KLA member.