The New York Times
>
>November 1, 1987, Sunday, Late City Final Edition
>Section 1; Part 1, Page 14, Column 1;
>
>"In Yugoslavia, Rising Ethnic Strife Brings Fears of Worse Civil
>Conflict"
>
>By DAVID BINDER, Special to the New York Times
>
>BELGRADE, Yugoslavia
>
>Portions of southern Yugoslavia have reached such a state of
ethnic
>friction that Yugoslavs have begun to talk of the horrifying
>possibility of ''civil war'' in a land that lost one-tenth of its
>population, or 1.7 million people, in World War II.
>
>The current hostilities pit separatist-minded ethnic Albanians
against
>the various Slavic populations of Yugoslavia and occur at all
levels
>of society, from the highest officials to the humblest peasants.
>
>A young Army conscript of ethnic Albanian origin shot up his
barracks,
>killing four sleeping Slavic bunkmates and wounding six others.
>
>The army says it has uncovered hundreds of subversive ethnic
Albanian
>cells in its ranks. Some arsenals have been raided.
>
>Vicious Insults
>
>Ethnic Albanians in the Government have manipulated public funds
and
>regulations to take over land belonging to Serbs. And politicians
have
>exchanged vicious insults.
>
>Slavic Orthodox churches have been attacked, and flags have been
torn
>down. Wells have been poisoned and crops burned. Slavic boys have
been
>knifed, and some young ethnic Albanians have been told by their
elders
>to rape Serbian girls.
>
>Ethnic Albanians comprise the fastest growing nationality in
>Yugoslavia and are expected soon to become its third largest,
after
>the Serbs and Croats.
>
>Radicals' Goals
>
>The goal of the radical nationalists among them, one said in an
>interview, is an ''ethnic Albania that includes western Macedonia,
>southern Montenegro, part of southern Serbia, Kosovo and Albania
>itself.'' That includes large chunks of the republics that make up
the
>southern half of Yugoslavia.
>
>Other ethnic Albanian separatists admit to a vision of a greater
>Albania governed from Pristina in southern Yugoslavia rather than
>Tirana, the capital of neighboring Albania.
>
>There is no evidence that the hard-line Communist Government in
>Tirana is giving them material assistance.
>
>The principal battleground is the region called Kosovo, a high
plateau
>ringed by mountains that is somewhat smaller than New Jersey.
Ethnic
>Albanians there make up 85 percent of the population of 1.7
million.
>The rest are Serbians and Montenegrins.
>
>Worst Strife in Years
>
>As Slavs flee the protracted violence, Kosovo is becoming what
ethnic
>Albanian nationalists have been demanding for years, and
especially
>strongly since the bloody rioting by ethnic Albanians in Pristina
in
>1981 - an ''ethnically pure'' Albanian region, a ''Republic of
Kosovo''
>in all but name.
>
>The violence, a journalist in Kosovo said, is escalating to ''the
>worst in the last seven years.''
>
>Many Yugoslavs blame the troubles on the ethnic Albanians, but the
>matter is more complex in a country with as many nationalities and
>religions as Yugoslavia's and involves economic development, law,
>politics, families and flags. As recently as 20 years ago, the
Slavic
>majority treated ethnic Albanians as inferiors to be employed as
>hewers of wood and carriers of heating coal. The ethnic Albanians,
>who now number 2 million, were officially deemed a minority, not a
>constituent nationality, as they are today.
>
>Were the ethnic tensions restricted to Kosovo, Yugoslavia's
problems
>with its Albanian nationals might be more manageable. But some
>Yugoslavs and some ethnic Albanians believe the struggle has
spread
>far beyond Kosovo. Macedonia, a republic to the south with a
>population of 1.8 million, has a restive ethnic Albanian minority
>of 350,000.
>
>''We've already lost western Macedonia to the Albanians,'' said a
>member of the Yugoslav party presidium, explaining that the ethnic
>minority had driven the Slavic Macedonians out of the region.
>
>Attacks on Slavs
>
>Last summer, the authorities in Kosovo said they documented 40
ethnic
>Albanian attacks on Slavs in two months. In the last two years,
320
>ethnic Albanians have been sentenced for political crimes, nearly
>half of them characterized as severe.
>
>In one incident, Fadil Hoxha, once the leading politician of
ethnic
>Albanian origin in Yugoslavia, joked at an official dinner in
Prizren
>last year that Serbian women should be used to satisfy potential
>ethnic Albanian rapists. After his quip was reported this October,
>Serbian women in Kosovo protested, and Mr. Hoxha was dismissed
from
>the Communist Party.
>
>As a precaution, the central authorities dispatched 380 riot
police
>officers to the Kosovo region for the first time in four years.
>
>Officials in Belgrade view the ethnic Albanian challenge as
imperiling
>the foundations of the multinational experiment called federal
Yugoslavia,
>which consists of six republics and two provinces.
>
>'Lebanonizing' of Yugoslavia
>
>High-ranking officials have spoken of the ''Lebanonizing'' of
their
>country and have compared its troubles to the strife in Northern
>Ireland.
>
>Borislav Jovic, a member of the Serbian party's presidency, spoke
in
>an interview of the prospect of ''two Albanias, one north and one
>south, like divided Germany or Korea,'' and of ''practically the
>breakup of Yugoslavia.'' He added: ''Time is working against us.''
>
>The federal Secretary for National Defense, Fleet Adm. Branko
>Mamula, told the army's party organization in September of efforts
>by ethnic Albanians to subvert the armed forces. ''Between 1981
>and 1987 a total of 216 illegal organizations with 1,435 members
>of Albanian nationality were discovered in the Yugoslav People's
>Army,'' he said. Admiral Mamula said ethnic Albanian subversives
>had been preparing for ''killing officers and soldiers, poisoning
>food and water, sabotage, breaking into weapons arsenals and
>stealing arms and ammunition, desertion and causing flagrant
>nationalist incidents in army units.''
>
>Concerns Over Military
>
>Coming three weeks after the ethnic Albanian draftee, Aziz
Kelmendi,
>had slaughtered his Slavic comrades in the barracks at Paracin,
the
>speech struck fear in thousands of families whose sons were about
to
>start their mandatory year of military service.
>
>Because the Albanians have had a relatively high birth rate,
>one-quarter of the army's 200,000 conscripts this year are ethnic
>Albanians. Admiral Mamula suggested that 3,792 were potential
human
>timebombs.
>
>He said the army had ''not been provided with details relevant for
>assessing their behavior.'' But a number of Belgrade politicians
said
>they doubted the Yugoslav armed forces would be used to intervene
in
>Kosovo as they were to quell violent rioting in 1981 in Pristina.
>They reason that the army leadership is extremely reluctant to
become
>involved in what is, in the first place, a political issue.
>
>Ethnic Albanians already control almost every phase of life in the
>autonomous province of Kosovo, including the police, judiciary,
>civil service, schools and factories. Non-Albanian visitors almost
>immediately feel the independence - and suspicion - of the ethnic
>Albanian authorities.
>
>Region's Slavs Lack Strength
>
>While 200,000 Serbs and Montenegrins still live in the province,
>they are scattered and lack cohesion. In the last seven years,
20,000 of
>them have fled the province, often leaving behind farmsteads and
>houses, for the safety of the Slavic north.
>
>Until September, the majority of the Serbian Communist Party
>leadership pursued a policy of seeking compromise with the Kosovo
>party hierarchy under its ethnic Albanian leader, Azem Vlasi.
>
>But during a 30-hour session of the Serbian central committee in
>late September, the Serbian party secretary, Slobodan Milosevic,
>deposed Dragisa Pavlovic, as head of Belgrade's party
organization, the
>country's largest. Mr. Milosevic accused Mr. Pavlovic of being an
>appeaser who was soft on Albanian radicals. Mr. Milosevic had
>courted the Serbian backlash vote with speeches in Kosovo itself
>calling for ''the policy of the hard hand.''
>
>''We will go up against anti-Socialist forces, even if they call
us
>Stalinists,'' Mr. Milosevic declared recently. That a Yugoslav
>politician would invite someone to call him a Stalinist even four
>decades after Tito's epochal break with Stalin, is a measure of
the
>state into which Serbian politics have fallen. For the moment, Mr.
>Milosevic and his supporters appear to be staking their careers on
a
>strategy of confrontation with the Kosovo ethnic Albanians.
>
>Other Yugoslav politicians have expressed alarm. ''There is no
doubt
>Kosovo is a problem of the whole country, a powder keg on which we
>all sit,'' said Milan Kucan, head of the Slovenian Communist
Party.
>
>Remzi Koljgeci, of the Kosovo party leadership, said in an
interview
>in Pristina that ''relations are cold'' between the ethnic
Albanians
>and Serbs of the province, that there were too many ''people
without
>hope.''
>
>But many of those interviewed agreed it was also a rare
opportunity
>for Yugoslavia to take radical political and economic steps, as
Tito
>did when he broke with the Soviet bloc in 1948.
>
>Efforts are under way to strengthen central authority through
>amendments to the constitution. The League of Communists is
planning
>an extraordinary party congress before March to address the
>country's grave problems.
>
>The hope is that something will be done then to exert the rule of
>law in Kosovo while drawing ethnic Albanians back into
Yugoslavia's
>mainstream.
>
>Copyright 1987 The New York Times Company
> |
