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Misleading UN Report on Kosovo - Part A
- By TFF - October 3, 1999
"Those who wrote the Report of the UN Secretary-General on the UN Mission
in Kosovo (UNMIK) must have had other aims than accurate reporting. The
report is biased, embellished, slanted. It omits important aspects which
point toward the fact that this mission ignores Security Council Resolution
1244 on which it is based and is a failure in-the-making on its own
criteria," says TFF director Jan Oberg upon his return from TFF's 37th
mission to the region and his visit to Pristina, Skopje and Belgrade.
"The report (S/1999/987 of September 16) covers the period in which at
least 150.000 legitimate non-Albanian (Serbs, Roma,etc) citizens were
driven out of the province. Normally this would be called ethnic cleansing.
It has happened under the very eyes of 45.000 NATO soldiers, 1.100 UN
civilian police and thousands of other internationals, including the OSCE
and EU. The report does NOT state that this is a fatal blow to both NATO
and the UN. Res. 1244 states that the mission is to 'ensure conditions for
a peaceful and normal life for all inhabitants of Kosovo' as well as, among
many other things, maintain law and order, protect and promote human rights
and ensure public safety. The report states that 'KFOR deserves great
credit for its efforts...'
I do not think it does," says Oberg. "The international community condemned
Yugoslavia for having, at the height of the war and bombing, about 40.000
soldiers and police in the province to maintain law and order and - as they
saw it - to protect the Serb and other minorities. Now the total
international presence is almost twice as big and IT has not been able to
fulfil the centre-piece of the UN mandate: to preserve a multiethnic Kosovo
in safety for everybody.
For all practical purposes, Kosovo has been ethnically cleansed by the KLA
and other Albanians AFTER the international community arrived. This is
neither regretted nor condemned in the report. Rather, the report states
that 'senior Kosovo Albanian personalities, including the leadership of the
Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA), have voiced increasingly forthright public
positions on tolerance and security for minorities. Senior KLA figures
have denied KLA involvement in attacks and called for non-Albanians to
remain in Kosovo and repeatedly affirmed their commitment to human rights,
tolerance and diversity.'
The report, issued in the name of the UN Secretary-General, does NOT
mention that KLA set up a self-appointed government, installed local
leaders in virtually all municipalities and, thus, see themselves as the
legitimate authority of Kosovo. In short, the report omits any mention of
who is or must be made responsible for the recent ethnic cleansing of
Kosovo. Could the reason be that the KLA and the political Kosovo Albanian
leadership was NATO's ally during the war and the international community's
partner now? That its prime minister, Hacim Thaci, is the favoured leader -
for the time being at least - by the United States and other leading
actors? In short, that the West's partner is doing what we accused
Milosevic of doing?
The Yugoslav government was always pointed out as the culprit of ethnic
cleansing of Albanians. Fantastic stories circulated without evidence about
Serb plans to drive out all Albanians from the region during NATO's bombing
campaign. With perhaps 90% of all non-Albanians now driven out, the
Kosovo-Albanian leadership is responsible for the proportionately largest
ethnic cleansing in the Balkans since the wars started in 1991.
But those who wrote the text of this report - presumably UNMIK staff and
the office of UNMIK head, Dr. Bernhard Kouchner in Pristina - see no reason
to condemn this! The formulation of the report is: 'In the period since
mid-June 1999, non-Albanians, primarily Serbs and Roma, have been the
target for harassment, intimidation and attacks. As a result, many have
left Kosovo.' And then it mentions that the Yugoslav Red Cross estimates
that 150,000 have gone to Serbia and Montenegro.
They have been the target - by whom? If Belgrade or Serb paramilitaries had
ethnically cleansed 150,000 Albanians or more from their province, you may
wonder how the international community - the UN, U.S. State Department, the
media - would have formulated it. At no point does the report state who
should be made responsible for this latest ethnic cleansing campaign, there
is not a word about Albanian atrocities, war criminals or any hesitation on
the part of the West to co-operate with individuals, groups and
institutions who is likely to have caused this exodus. Neither does it
regret that Albanians are intimidated by KLA and forced out of their
temporary houses upon return, or punished for not wanting to join KLA.
The bias is put in perspective when the report immediately after states
that: 'Hardening Serb attitudes towards Kosovo Albanians, driven in part by
outside extremists, are helping to radicalise Albanians in Mitrovica.' The
authors of the report has evidently never noticed any outside extremists on
the Albanian side, now or earlier. Neither have they observed hardening
Albanian attitudes. The formulation also makes the few remaining Serbs the
causal factor and the Albanians innocent, non-guilty of their own
radicalisation.
If the basic character of Western policy and its UNMIK/KFOR mission had
been genuinely humanitarian, this would have been dealt with in different
terms. Human rights violations play a conspicuously modest role in this
report!
Secondly, the report argues that demobilised KLA soldiers can be a source
of instability in the future which may be true," says Jan Oberg. "However,
the report enigmatically argues that there is not enough civil employment
opportunities for these 10.000 fighters. One would otherwise believe there
was enough to do in a war-torn society such as Kosovo! So KFOR and the UN
Special Representative, Dr. Bernhard Kouchner, are thus 'developing a
concept for demobilisation of the KLA, offering individual members an
opportunity to participate in a disciplined, professional, multi-ethnic
civilian emergency corps' of which KFOR will provide day-to-day direction.
This is what a few days later was established formally as the Kosovo
Protection Force, KPF.
The report conveniently omits reference to the fact that such a force is
not even mentioned in SC Resolution 1244 which talks only about
demilitarisation. We see here why the Rambouillet document stipulated
neither a time table nor the modalities of demilitarisation of the Albanian
side as it did for the Yugoslav side: 1244 says that KLA and other armed
Kosovo Albanian groups shall 'comply with the requirements for
demilitarisation as laid down' by the heads of KFOR and UNMIK. The fact
that KPF is hardly distinguishable from, but indeed looks like the embryo
of, a new Kosovo Army shall be dealt with in a forthcoming TFF PressInfo.
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Dr. Jan Oberg
Director, head of the TFF Conflict-Mitigation team to the Balkans
and Georgia
T F F
Transnational Foundation for Peace and Future Research
Vegagatan 25, S - 224 57 Lund, Sweden
Phone +46-46-145909 (0900-1100)
Fax +46-46-144512
Email: tff@transnational.org
http://www.transnational.org
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