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

To: Les H who wrote (12221)	6/16/1999 5:16:00 PM
From: Les H	Respond to of 17770

FrankeNATO's Monster ( stratfor.com ) NATO's decision to exploit the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) during Operation Allied Force to maintain pressure on Serbian forces on the ground is coming back to haunt it. While Albania helped create the KLA, NATO nurtured it, and now that the KLA is running amok, NATO must tame or destroy it. Much to NATO's chagrin, the KLA did not simply accept NATO control over the province, lay down its arms, and join the UN sponsored political process. Rather, seizing the opportunity and the initiative, the KLA has poured into the province ahead of NATO and on the heels of withdrawing Serbs – filling the power vacuum and establishing de facto control. KLA forces have seized control of two border crossing points into Albania, as well as most of the towns and villages of southern Kosovo including nearly all of Prizren. The KLA has presented its own "interim government," and has as yet refused to disarm. Worse, multiple sources report the KLA are carrying out reprisal attacks against Serbs, burning Serbian homes and setting in motion a mass exodus of Serbs from the province. NATO has now reportedly negotiated a settlement with the KLA, whereby the KLA will be disarmed, though the document will not be signed for another three days and it is unknown how long the agreement will take to be carried out after that. In the meantime, NATO continues to explain its inability to control the KLA and defend ethnic Serbs by arguing that it does not have sufficient forces in place to control the province. In fact, refugees report that NATO controls little more than the main roads to Pristina. And to be more precise, it is not simply that NATO does not have enough troops to establish a presence throughout Kosovo. NATO does not have enough troops to confront and forcibly disarm the KLA throughout Kosovo. While the KLA has said it may agree to demilitarization, and hand over its heavy weapons, it has steadfastly refused to give up small arms. And why should it? As far as the KLA is concerned, it is the victor. NATO has confirmed this by declaring the Serbs defeated. The KLA fought, with NATO's assistance, for an independent Kosova. NATO says it won, and so the KLA is establishing its independent Kosova. If NATO has different ideas, what is it going to do, go to war against the KLA? The problem is, while NATO used the KLA, it did not share the KLA's goals. Despite what Serbs believe about Washington's insidious desire for a Greater Albania, for the Clinton administration, Kosovo was little more than a clumsy and distracted attempt to avoid the same condemnation it received for failing to respond to claims of genocide in Rwanda. Now it is caught in the potential hypocrisy of presiding over a reverse ethnic cleansing in Kosovo and the redrawing of the map of the region along ethnic lines. And even if mysterious dark forces in Washington have somehow duped the naïve Stratfor on this count, and Clinton actually flies the KLA flag in his bedroom, they have not changed the fact that NATO is not merely the U.S. It also includes countries like Greece and Italy, who with aspiring NATO member Macedonia are appalled at the prospect of either a KLA-dominated independent Kosova or a Greater Albania. The KLA is a monumental problem for NATO, with the potential to divide and discredit the alliance more deeply than the bombing campaign. Not only can NATO politically not afford to live down to Belgrade's claims that it was truly fighting to dismember Serbia, nor abide the Serbian and Russian military responses to a de facto KLA "victory," its individual members can not tolerate such a dismemberment or victory either. That said, NATO has now been presented with the prospect that the ground casualties it sought so hard to avoid sustaining will come, not from the Serbs, but from uncooperative Kosovar Albanians.