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Pastimes : Kosovo -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Enigma who wrote (11900)	6/14/1999 6:34:00 AM
From: GUSTAVE JAEGER	Respond to of 17770

Why not look at the current Kosovo snafu just as we'd look at Liban in the early 1980s? Here's my analysis grid map: Kosovo = Liban Pristina = Beirut Albania = Israel Serbia = Syria Russia = Iran Greece = Saudi Arabia Montenegro = Jordan Striking (geopolitical) resemblance, isn't it?

To: Enigma who wrote (11900)	6/14/1999 7:49:00 AM
From: JBL	Respond to of 17770

Amen to this Stratfor analysis... Following is an article on KFOR in Kosovo, and the dilemnas it is faced with. Confrontations come in all sizes Toronto Sun June 14, 1999 Matthew Fisher GENERAL JANKOVIC, Yugoslavia -- A thousand of little confrontations took place all over Kosovo this weekend as Serbian and Albanian forces tested the resolve of the NATO peacemaking force pouring into the disputed Serbian province. A typical dispute took place in this town bordering Macedonia which Serbian forces ransacked before leaving so quickly on Friday night that they left some of their packsacks on the side of the road. A foot patrol of soldiers of the 1st Battalion Royal Gurkhas Rifles chanced upon a group of 18 Kosovo Liberation Army guerrillas who had come down from the mountains to admire the endless parade of NATO military hardware trundling into Kosovo. The KLA came hoping to make friends, but it didn't quite turn out that way. After thanking the Gurkhas and NATO for "helping us liberate Kosovo," the Gurkhas stunned the ragtag band of KLA fighters by demanding that they immediately surrender their weapons. As the Gurkhas had no one among them who could speak Albanian or Serbian and the Kosovar Albanians had no one among them who could speak English, I was asked to act as a go-between, translating Nepalese-accented English into German so that an Albanian construction worker employed in Bavaria could translate what I told him into Albanian for his commander. The Albanian commander politely answered the Gurkhas' demand by saying that they had come in peace and only wanted to help them locate and destroy land mines and booby traps in General Jankovic. The Gurkhas politely thanked them for this offer and repeated that the Albanians should lay their AK-47 assault rifles and one medium machine gun down alongside the bullet clips and bandoleros they had brought with them. The Albanians repeated that they were volunteering to help and had no intention of using their weapons against soldiers who they considered to be their allies. The Gurkhas' firm reply was as before. Their orders were that all weapons had to be surrendered. The Albanians replied that they, too, had orders and theirs were that they should not give up their weapons. The setting for this numbing exchange, which lasted for more than an hour in the searing midday sun, was a dusty sideroad in which the windows of every home had been shattered and the insides looted or gutted. The conversation included a few digressions about how the homes of KLA soldiers in this group had been looted, a lot of boasts about how the KLA had allegedly defeated Serbian forces in the area and a question from the puzzled Albanians about how the Gurkhas could possibly have Union Jacks on their arm patches when they didn't look the way that Albanians thought the British should look like. 'You must disarm' After a while the Gurkhas rounded up their commander, Maj. Ian Thomas, who arrived on foot with an Albanian interpreter to continue the negotiations. As the Gurkhas swung two heavy machine guns mounted on jeeps into position about 100 metres behind the major, the paratrooper greeted the KLA fighters warmly and then quickly got to the point. "By orders of the commander of KFOR, I cannot let you through here with weapons," Thomas said in the best Queen's English. "It is quite simple. If you wish to stay, you must disarm, just as the Serbs must disarm. I am bound to do this by the terms of the peace agreement which your leaders have said they will honour. "We can only guarantee your protection if you disarm. I understand that you are a soldier, but an agreement exists and you must give us your weapon." There was more of this for a very long time before it was agreed that the Albanians could return to the mountains to consult with their senior commanders. They promised to return in the evening to tell NATO if they would disarm. "They probably won't come back, but I'll have to be here in case they do," Thomas said as the KLA soldiers marched away not so smartly in a single file. "The problem is that if I force this issue we'd have 18 dead people here in no time." It was just such thinking which caused other British commanders farther down the road into Kosovo to demand that Serbian forces surrender their weapons, too. But the Serbs proved as resistant to these orders as the Albanians had. So, for the moment, anyway, guns are still everywhere in Kosovo and the potential for mayhem is obvious. Achieving peace in Kosovo will be no easy thing.