After the Bombing Stops in the Balkans, What's Next?

0 Comments | Insight on the News, May 31, 1999 | by Jamie Dettmer

What happens after? Will it be like Northern Ireland in the 1970s? Two decades ago British troops were dispatched to protect Roman Catholics from marauding, house-burning mobs of militant Protestants. They were welcomed with open arms by Catholics but within weeks all had changed and the people the soldiers were sent to defend started to shoot at them. Will militant Kosovar Albanians start shooting at NATO peacekeepers policing some kind of international protectorate?

With diplomatic efforts in the Balkans now on fast-forward and both NATO and Belgrade seemingly angling for some kind of agreement, the intentions of the Kosovo Liberation Army, or KLA, are increasingly worrying some European diplomats. They fear that the separatist organization will not settle for Kosovo to remain a protectorate for long and will push for independence or union with Albania almost as soon as Slobodan Milosevic's army has left.

The brief unity Kosovar Albanians displayed during the Rambouillet peace talks in France a few months ago quickly has unraveled. The infighting is set to complicate the bringing of peace to Kosovo and already is destabilizing Albania. "The bickering is not helpful to the reconstruction of Kosovo," said Daan Everts, an ambassador for the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe.

The sharpest division is between the nonviolent League for a Democratic Kosovo, led by Ibrahim Rugova, who Milosevic allowed to fly to Rome on May 5, and the violent KLA, which has been linked to the narcotics trade. The latter's goal is to create a greater Albania, uniting Kosovo, Albania and parts of Macedonia and Montenegro. But within the KLA itself there are clan divisions and splits between Marxists and fascists. Firefights between the groups have occurred, and the KLA has assassinated supporters of the Rugova group.