Murder of a mediator fanned flames of genocide
The Sunday Times, April 4, 1999
The life and death of Bogoljug Staletovic went largely
unnoticed amid the broader calamities of the Kosovo
crisis last week. Yet the ambush that killed a popular
Serbian police commander a month ago may turn out to
have been one of the key turning points in a
complicated regional ethnic conflict that has suddenly
exploded into a full-scale Balkan tragedy.
His is the story of a 31-year-old Serb whose
even-handed approach in the southern Kosovo town of
Kachanik had earned him admirers among all the local
ethnic groups.
According to Macedonian sources in Skopje, Staletovic
regarded himself as a friend of prominent Albanians in
Kachanik and would often visit their homes. The only
big town on the Kosovo highway between Skopje and
Pristina, Kachanik was well known to passing
Macedonian businessmen, one of whom, a mechanical
engineer, commuted to work in the town.
"When the peace talks were going on, both sides, Serbs
and Albanians, were afraid of what the other might do
in Kachanik," the engineer said last week. "Staletovic
was trying to persuade his friends in both groups not
to get angry with each other. Nobody wanted trouble.
This part of Kosovo always had a peaceful life."
Yet on Sunday, February 28, a Kosovo Liberation Army
(KLA) unit ambushed the chief as he visited a police
station in the nearby village of Gajre. The Albanians
opened up with mortars, rocket-launchers and machine
guns. Staletovic was killed instantly; four of his men
were seriously wounded.
The chief was buried in his home village of Berezovce
two days later, wearing his blue camouflage uniform. A
funeral procession was followed by 7,000 mourners.
"Albanians also felt sorry he died," said the
Macedonian engineer. Refugees who later arrived from
the region confirmed that their trouble with the
police had started the day Staletovic died.
Leaders of the Serbian minority party in Macedonia
last week claimed that for weeks before the final
breakdown of the Rambouillet peace process, KLA
leaders had embarked on a calculated cam paign of
assassination and assaults on police in the hope of
provoking a Serbian reaction that would hasten Nato
intervention in Kosovo. Serbian leaders in Belgrade
also complain that the West has chosen to overlook the
provocative actions of an Albanian guerrilla army
whose tactics seem closer to terrorist outfits than to
orthodox military units.
Between February 25 and the day Nato's bombing started
on March 24, the Yugoslavian foreign ministry reported
71 KLA attacks on Serbian policemen or other police
targets. While few of the attacks could be
independently confirmed, the Serbs are furious that
KLA claims of Serbian atrocities are being seized upon
by Nato spokesmen while the KLA's earlier campaign of
alleged "terrorist provocation" has been conveniently
ignored.
At the Skopje offices of the Serbian Democratic party
last week, Malasa Bozovic, the party's general
secretary, mourned what he described as a "loss of
reason" in the Nato alliance, particularly in Britain
and France, which had counted Serbia as an ally in the
first world war fight against Germany.
"We are very sorry the English have swallowed the
American propaganda," Bozovic said. "In Skopje there
are English and French cemeteries from the time we
fought together on the Salonika front (1915-18). Now
you are dropping bombs on Serbia. I think in the
English cemetery your soldiers must be turning in
their graves."
There is no sign of disturbance at the English war
graves behind the Orthodox Church of St Michael, but
the gates of the French war cemetery have been defaced
with the words "Jack Chirack" (sic) and a swastika.
It now seems clear from the scale of the Kosovo exodus
that not even Staletovic's diplomatic skills could
have saved the residents of Kachanik from expulsion to
Macedonia. Yet questions seem certain to be asked
about the extent to which the KLA's reckless campaign
of assassination and assault provoked Serbian forces
into seeking bloody revenge. By the time Nato's air
campaign started, many Serbian units had been goaded
into all-consuming hatred of Albanians.
As for Staletovic's patient construction of communal
harmony in Kachanik, refugees fleeing the town last
week reported that Serbian units were targeting any
Albanian men who looked the right age to be KLA
fighters. There were reports of corpses in the street
and of a group of 100 men being marched into the local
police station. They have apparently not been seen
since.
What exactly was the KLA up to when it started
attacking police units, knowing Serbian forces would
retaliate, almost certainly against civilians? In
Skopje last week, Balkan conspiracy theorists were in
overdrive. The KLA knew it could never win control of
Kosovo without Nato military intervention and wanted
to sabotage any peace deal, said some sources. The
more it could provoke Serbian forces into vicious
retaliation against civilians, the sooner Nato bombs
would begin to fall. The greater the refugee exodus,
the better the chance that Nato ground troops would
invade to create an Albanian homeland - to be run by
the KLA.
None of this came as much consolation to Slobodanka
Staletovic, the murdered police commander's mother.
She wept over her son's coffin last month, and has
watched all his work come undone. |
