Frontiers and Ghettos "ss3.20"

The KLA Insurgency Begins

Serbia began to move away from ethnic policing only in 1998, when the ethnic Albanian insurgency finally began to disrupt Serbia's iron grip over the province. The KLA had assumed responsibility for attacks on ethnic Serbs as early as April 1996, earning them a "terror group" designation by Serbian and Western officials. Until 1998, however, the fighting did not take on serious proportions. Serbian officials counted thirtynine persons slain by ethnic Albanian guerrillas between 1991 and 1997, with the bulk of those coming in 1996 and 1997.^[64] In 1997, the KLA informed Albanian-language papers it was the national liberation movement's "armed wing,"^[65] and the organization's first public appearance came on November 28, 1997, at a funeral for an ethnic Albanian slain by Serbian police in a gunfight. Three masked men in military fatigues delivered a short speech favoring independence to 20,000 mourners and then slipped away, sparking widespread enthusiasm.^[66] Serbian officials took the KLA threat seriously, jailing dozens for alleged military activities in 1997, but the Democratic League dismissed the group's attacks as Serbian provocations.^[67]

Toward the end of 1997, local gunmen claiming KLA ties stepped up attacks in the Drenica region, chipping away at Serbia's monopoly over violence. In late January, Serbian police raided Donji Prekaz village, home to the KLA-affiliated Jashari clan, but were repulsed by gunfire. A larger Serbian force returned in early March, destroying the Jashari compound entirely and killing fifty-eight persons, including twenty-eight women and children.^[68] Serbian forces launched similar operations in Likošane and čirez villages, killing twenty-six.^[69] In each case, the police shelled residential areas, executed prisoners, and looted valuables. One Serbian officer reportedly acknowledged that security forces had gotten "out of hand," with more killings averted at the last minute by a senior commander.^[70]

Serbian intelligence initially assumed the KLA to be a small guerrilla faction whose activities could be easily crushed. Belgrade leaders reportedly debated using specialized units, which would have granted the KLA political significance, or deploying regular forces, which would have played down the group's importance. The government chose the latter, but according to Zoran Kusovac, "The only tactics regular troops

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knew was to pound any suspected ‘terrorist resistance' with all means available."^[71] The result was a bout of spectacular brutality and, contrary to Serbian expectations, a dramatic upsurge in rebellious sentiment. The KLA had begun with only a few hundred members, drawing on a handful of extended families and activists smuggled from abroad. Once Serbia began killing civilians and combatants alike in early 1998, however, the group's ranks swelled dramatically.^[72] This remarkable growth stemmed from a combination of factors. First, the KLA's political colleagues in the LPK had reportedly organized loose networks of supporters in Kosovo since 1993, and these became active once the fighting began. More importantly, the notion of armed rebellion apparently enjoyed considerable support in rural Kosovo, where the urban elite's preference for passive resistance had been discredited.^[73] Third, the Drenica killings prompted entire social networks, such as extended families and rural LDK chapters, to enlist en masse. "Once the rebellion erupted," Hedges writes, "local LDK leaders immediately picked up weapons and became commanders of village units," while villages "formed ad hoc militias that, while they identify themselves as KLA, act independently."^[74] As a result, intra-KLA coordination became a serious problem as autonomous groups sprang up wholesale throughout the countryside.^[75] At the same time, however, the notion of armed struggle remained unconvincing for some key urban intellectuals, as well as some leaders of extended families.^[76]

The KLA's initial funding reportedly came from drug trafficking, money laundering, and migrant smuggling, ^[77] with one source estimating in early 1999 that half the KLA's budget was drug related.^[78] In March 1999, British reporters "established that police forces in three Western European countries … are separately investigating growing evidence the drug money is funding the KLA's leap from obscurity to power."^[79] Although some of this was speculation based on the growing European prominence of Albanian-speaking drug traders, the Kosovo Liberation Army most likely did draw at least some funds from criminal activities.^[80] The Serbian killings in Drenica, however, broadened the KLA's appeal among the large Kosovar Albanian diaspora, making it easier to raise legal funds there.^[81] Until then, the 800,000 to 1 million strong community^[82] had mostly donated to the LDK's fund-raising agency.^[83] With money and arms becoming increasingly available, KLA convoys began infiltrating the Kosovo border from northern Albania, often in columns as large as 200 horses and 1,000 persons.^[84] Between January and September 1998, according to the Serbian authorities, border guards killed

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90 suspected KLA infiltrators and captured 947 rifles, 161 light machine guns, 33 mortars, 55 mines, 3,295 grenades, and almost 350,000 rounds of ammunition.^[85] Serbian control over Kosovo's boundaries was beginning to slip, and a central pillar of Kosovo's ghetto status was crumbling.^[86] A second threat to Serbian domination was the decline in its empirical sovereignty in Kosovo itself. Here, the KLA enjoyed some early successes in summer 1998, holding up to 40 percent of rural Kosovo for short periods.^[87] At one point, "The asphalt belong[ed] to the Serbian security forces and forest paths to the UCK [KLA]."^[88] This established the KLA as a political player to be reckoned with, but civilians paid a heavy price. With Kosovo no longer fully under Serbian control, Serbian forces began to shift from ethnic policing to cleansing.