ISSUE 1423 Sunday 18 April 1999

It's bad now, but what if the KLA were in control?
By Anthony Daniels

THE current outrage against President Milosevic of Serbia has a distinctly orchestrated quality about it. This is not to say that he is anything other than a brutal politician, undeserving of even a moment's sympathy, who has caused untold misery and death. But at the very time he was responsible for the appalling atrocities in Bosnia, he was treated as a statesman and restraining influence by some of the people who have recently discovered that he is a bad man. Generals fight the last war; humanitarians, it seems, react to the last atrocity.

 But the situation in Kosovo is considerably more nuanced than that in Bosnia. It is not a straightforward struggle of good against evil: indeed, the West as a whole bears a considerable degree of responsibility for the present disastrous polarisation, in which anyone opposed to the Kosovo Liberation Army (the KLA) is for Milosevic, and vice versa.

 So eager was the West to gain Milosevic's agreement to the Dayton Accords that the problem of Kosovo was specifically excluded from them, thus leaving an incipient sore waiting to fester. As recently as last year, Richard Holbrooke, the US envoy to the Balkans said: "President Milosevic is a man we can do business with, a man who recognises the realities of life in the former Yugoslavia." Mr Holbrooke hasn't explained in what way Milosevic has changed since.

 The Kosovo problem really erupted in widespread violence, however, only with the downfall of President Berisha in Albania, which was so widely applauded in the West. Berisha had been a supporter of Ibrahim Rugova, the moderate and peaceful Albanian opponent of Milosevic, and the only Kosovo politician with a genuine democratic mandate.

 Rugova knew only too well the Serb potential for extreme violence, which he was careful not to provoke; and he knew also that time was on the side of the Albanian Kosovars, since their demographic growth was vastly greater than that of the Serbs. Rule from Belgrade, while oppressive, was not insupportable. Rugova, also, was aware that things could get worse as well as better.

 Berisha's downfall came as the result of a coup d'etat organised by ex-Sigurimi men (the old communist secret service) whose mafia-like smuggling activities the Berisha government had attempted to suppress.

 Far from being a bloodthirsty dictator, Berisha had little force at his disposal to suppress the revolt of the Sigurimi mafia, and in any case was strongly discouraged from even attempting to do so by the Western powers. With the West's support, Berisha would have survived, and the Kosovo tragedy would not have occurred.

 It was clear to me as an international observer at the Albanian elections in May 1996 how ardently the Western powers desired the downfall of Berisha. The attitude of the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) was particularly telling. The OSCE declared these elections, which Berisha won and which were carried out in a perfectly peaceful atmosphere, "unprecedentedly fraudulent": a grotesque judgement.

 A year later, after more than 1,000 people had been killed by the revolt, in an atmosphere of mass intimidation in which gun-toting enforcers operated everywhere, the OSCE declared the elections which confirmed Berisha's downfall "acceptable". In other words, the OSCE aided and abetted the coup d'etat from which Albania has not recovered.

 In the course of the revolt, large supplies of weaponry were passed to the KLA, which until then had hardly existed as a fighting force. It had been founded in 1982 by the Albanian regime as an irritant to the hated Yugoslavs, but had largely confined its activities to raising funds by dubious means.

 Once the KLA was armed, there was an escalation of political violence in Kosovo. Until then, there had been 10 or 12 "political" murders a year in Kosovo. Every death is regrettable, of course, but Kosovo was no inferno. Even in the 18 months before Nato started bombing, there were "only" about 3,000 deaths in Kosovo: bad, but no holocaust.

 Moreover, of the 3,000 deaths, 500 to 600 were of Serbs or Kosovar government officials. While the majority of the deaths were undoubtedly caused by the Serbian security forces, it is not true that there was no terrorist activity. Indeed, until the American government suddenly discovered the transcendental evil of Milosevic, it had no compunction in branding the KLA as a terrorist organisation.

 IN this, they were almost certainly right. How many examples do we need of national liberation movements that intimidate those whom they claim to liberate? And how many such liberation movements have ushered in an age of freedom and democracy once they have achieved power? There are already reports of the KLA impressing young men into its service.

 The West now desires the KLA to take power. William Cohen, the US Defence secretary, this week described it as "a guerrilla force that over time will defeat Milosevic's army. The bombing campaign will shift the military balance decisively in favour of the KLA". 

If ex-president Berisha also now supports the KLA, as he has done in some intemperate and foolish recent speeches, this is only an illustration of how Western policy has successfully brought about a complete polarisation in which there is no room for wise moderation.

 It may be impossible for an Albanian to view the present situation coolly, but that should not disguise from us the degree to which the incompetence, arrogance and fickleness of the West have brought this about.

 Once the KLA is installed in power, it is virtually certain that the West will delicately avert its gaze, and move on to the next thing: the Kurdish problem in Turkey, for example. What a rich field for shallow yet fervent moral indignation lies still untilled there. Turkey beware!