From: cdhart@laurie.net (Carolyn Hart)
Subject: SNET: [piml] Anarchy in Kosovo
Date: 13 Jun 1999 11:22:34 -0400
To: piml@egroups.com


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More of Mr. Clinton's legacy--

Robert Fisk Peace in the Balkans - While Nato squabbles and the Serbs
flee, anarchy fills Kosovo's vacuum 

http://www.independent.co.uk/stories/B1206907.html
6/12/99 Robert Fisk 

Robert Fisk in Pristina So, Wag the Dog was a documentary. "The Russians
are coming," a
Yugoslav army captain announced to the coffee- drinkers on the Corso
yesterday. They roared
in delight and disbelief. But it was quite beyond their comprehension
that Nato forces would
delay their own entry into Kosovo over an infantile squabble about whose
soldiers should cross
the frontier first. And it was, of course, the innocent who had to pay
the price for this farce. 

Outside the Catholic church, an Albanian priest shook his head in
disbelief. "Why hasn't Nato
come?" he pleaded. "Things here are very, very bad." On the other side
of the hill, a clutch of
Albanian homes were smouldering. And in the streets of Pristina
yesterday there were too many
men with guns.

One of them walked into the restaurant of the Grand Hotel on Thursday
night and threatened to
kill the diners. A hundred KLA captives were seen wandering through the
city, still dressed in
their black prison uniforms. And the roads around Kosovo's capital were
lined with civilian cars
as the Serbs of Prizren and Djakovica - trusting in a KLA ceasefire -
abandoned their cities for
northern Serbia. 

"It's what Nato wants," Yugoslav volunteer Private Stefan said with
contempt when I came
across him near the Army Club. "They are delaying so that the Serbs will
leave and give them an
Albanian-only Kosovo. Nato is 'cleansing' us with their delays." Did I
have the nerve to explain
that no, really, General Clark and General "Mike" were arguing like
children about who goes
first? I murmured something I'd heard on the BBC about "logistics
difficulties" and Pte Stefan
snorted with contempt. 

Yet as Nato hesitated - only to find the Russians stealing their thunder
- Kosovo was moving
towards just the kind of anarchy Nato had promised to prevent. When I
drove the road north to
Merdare yesterday, the villages were burning - either Serb homes set
alight by their departing
owners or Albanian property destroyed by Serb gunmen - while the Third
Army's withdrawal
sucked thousands of panic-stricken civilians into its wake. 

The old city of Prizren is almost entirely empty of its Serb inhabitants
- almost every car I saw
bore a Prizren or Djakovica number-plate - while the Serb citizens of
Pristina are turning with
bitterness against their own leaders. At a meeting of civilians called
to halt the exodus, a tall man
in spectacles screamed at his fellow Serbs: "You've been fucked by Tito
and by Milosevic -
may their descendants have bone cancer for 12 generations." 

Meanwhile, along the highway out of Pristina appeared the kind of men we
had hoped not to
see. There were tall militiamen with long hair, and gunmen in black
shirts, and even the departing
Yugoslav troops now displayed an unhappy combination of regular soldiers
in army uniform and
bearded men in military vehicles with slouch hats or cloths wound round
their heads. 

One soldier was waving a beer bottle in the air. Several were driving
tractors among the army
convoys, pulling trailers covered with tarpaulins. Who, I wonder, owned
the tractors? 

The convoys themselves were a Boy's Own of Russian weaponry - BMP
armoured vehicles
tracked radar-guided anti-aircraft guns and batteries of white-tipped
Sam-6 missiles along with
Frog ground-to-ground rockets. And yet again, not a single one had been
scratched by Nato
bombs.

Some of the Sam-6 racks were empty - the missiles must have been fired
at Nato planes - and
many of them were still covered with the branches of the fir trees with
which they had been
camouflaged during the war. Several guns had been draped with flowers,
one anti-aircraft
battery sprouting dark red roses from its barrels. 

But while the Serbs enjoyed Moscow's temerity in tweaking Nato's ego,
they waited in vain for
the Russians to show up. It mattered little to the families driving
north, towing trailers piled with
sitting-room furniture and beds. Over the highway a new banner has been
raised. "The only road
is the road to Kosovo," it says. But yesterday the only road was the
road out of Kosovo - and
the Serbs were using it to flee the land in which they have lived for
generations. 

http://www.FreeRepublic.com/forum/a3763c92c2d55.htm

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->  Posted by: cdhart@laurie.net (Carolyn Hart)