GET ME OUTTA HERE!

Instinct told me that moving to Kosovo last month would be as spiritually profitable and inspiring as my first trip to Leningrad in 1991, still the most important event in my life, on par with Nixon’s opening China to the West. The problem with that trip to Leningrad was that it got me a-thinkin that somehow my instinct was infallible. So I obeyed my instinct without question last month when it ordered me to move to Kosovo, to the Serb-held north.

I have just suspended Instinct without pay, pending investigation. Instinct is an idiot. Not just an idiot, but a dangerous idiot. As the Russians say, nothing is more dangerous than an idiot with initiative. Instinct, my instinct, is just that: an idiot with initiative.

It dragged me into this dipshit warzone, dropped me off on the north side of Kosovska Mitrovica, and sped away in a cloud of dust, tin cans tied to the space ship tail, rattling mockingly in the distance. So here I am. Fucked.

They call Mitrovica the Berlin of the 21st century. It is divided not so much in half as in eighths. On the south side of the filthy Ibar River, 130,000 Albanians control a near-perfectly ethnically cleansed area; on the North, about 18,000 Serbs, 2,000 Albanians, and another 1,000 gypsies, Turks, Gorani and Bosniaks (the latter two Slavic Muslim people) co-exist uneasily. Only about five or ten Serbs remain on the south Albanian side, half of them priests holed up in a monastery, protected by barbed wire, trip wires, tanks and troops. That’s 5-10 Serbs in a population of 130,000 Albanians. That’s all they’ll tolerate; or rather, that’s all that KFOR can manage to protect. South Mitrovica used to have a massive gypsy quarter, at least 7,000 of them. If you walk up to the miners’ monument on the high hill on the north Serb side, you can look down and see what happened to Mitrovica’s gypsies: an entire section of south Mitrovica, along the south bank of the river, of burned-out white houses, charred white, roofless, blackened beams like burnt ribs. Every last gypsy who wasn’t capped or torched had to flee the Albanian pogrom, right under NATO’s nose. Some live here in North Mitrovica. Others live in Serb-held Zvecan, most in tents. The remainder are scattered around Serbia.

They form part of Milosevic’s core support, along with every other lead-brained victim of that scumbag’s cynicism. Milosevic took the lead-brained war victim’s vote handily—including the Serb vote in the town I live in.

It’s stories like this that not only muddy the once-simplistic moral mathematics of Kosovo fed to us by the Western media; in fact, the accumulation of similar tales turns peoples’ stomachs inside out, their sympathies upside down. You may have read about how members of the United States’ 82nd Airborne have been running amok in their sector, brutalizing the local Albanian population. What you probably haven’t read is the reason why: the soldiers couldn’t take the lawlessness, and the attacks on the totally defenseless local Serbs, and it drove them mad. Literally.

The internationals working here for the UN administration, for the OSCE, for NGOs and news organizations, are the most demoralized, cynical group of people this side of the Moscow Times headquarters. Most came in hating the Serbs, and found themselves soon hating the Albanians at least as much, and now are just trying to save their sanity and get out of this hellhole before they’re dragged down with it.

“We call the Albanians ‘rats’ and ‘cockroaches,’” one top UNMIK official told me. “If they gave guns to the internationals here, there’d be another genocide. Much bigger than what the Serbs did. Much worse.”

His girlfriend, who works for the OSCE here, nodded her head and rolled her eyes, eagerly agreeing. “All the Albanians do is complain. They have no culture, they hate us, they have no respect for us at all. They leave garbage everywhere, they treat women like shit.”

It’s a snotty complaint you hear over and over. The internationals are now just as snotty and racist as the Serbs were, but they lacked the historical basis for it. Like most of the UNMIK people here I know, they had desperately signed up to be transferred to East Timor.

The growing tension between the internationals and Albanians isn’t all one-sided. On the contrary, the Albanians are clearly sick and tired of the internationals. Little of the money and reconstruction promised has come through. The UNMIK administrators are for the most part arrogant dropouts and half-assed middlebrows who couldn’t or didn’t want to land respectable office jobs back home, and now find themselves running entire municipalities, with budgets that never materialize, restless populations, and a totally out-of-control mafia, the KLA, running a far more powerful, parallel structure in every village, town and city south of the Ibar river.

The KLA took power just as NATO moved in some 17 months ago. You can take your pick as to the reason why the KLA was allowed to take over the towns, in spite of all the evidence that they were and are a vicious Mafia/terrorist group: either NATO had no clue what to do and couldn’t stop them, or else NATO was returning the favor for KLA help on the ground during the bombing last year. The fact is that NATO would have had to go to war with the KLA to stop them, and everyone here knows that priority #1 here is “Don’t piss off the KLA.” The consequences would be a rapid undoing of the Western presence, a complete collapse, and bloodshed. That would mean pulling out of Camp Bondsteel, the largest U.S. military base that built since 1968, complete with a Burger King. No fucking way will we ever give up a Burger King, not on behalf of saving some Serbs or Albanians at least. Want proof? In July, the second-scariest KLA thug, Ramush Hardinaj, led 40 gunmen in a hit on his rivals, the Musaj brothers in the Italian Western sector of Kosovo. Ramush was seriously wounded in the hit, and Italian KFOR and UN Police quickly responded, detaining him and his men.

Almost immediately, U.S. forces arrived from their eastern sector and said “we’re in charge here.” They cleaned up all evidence of the shootout, medivac’d Ramush first to Bondsteel, then to a U.S. Army hospital in Germany, patched him up, and returned him in time for the elections. Last week, one Musaj brother was shot and killed, and another wounded. Ramush is riding high. And Burger King is going strong.

The KLA’s parallel power structure was formalized at the end of last year when the UN set up its euphemistic “Joint Interim Administration Structure.” Under the JIAS, the UN “appointed” an “advisory” council of local political leaders to consult with and implement the running of each municipality, alongside the UN. A disillusioned OSCE worker showed me a list of the JIAS council running the south-western city of Prizren: nearly all were members of the KLA’s political party, the PDK. There was one token member from another Albanian political party, one token Muslim Slav, and one token Turk.

No Serb bothered participating, as it would give legitimacy to the KLA’s takeover and subsequent ethnic cleansing. Of Prizren’s pre-war population of nearly 11,000 Serbs, only about 200 remain, protected round-the-clock, like some endangered species.

In the few days I spent in Prizren, I met two internationals (both women, both from English-speaking countries) who were under death threat from KLA-tied structures. One, a middle-aged woman, is supposed to wear a helmet and flak jacket at all times; she has a bodyguard on constant call. The day before I arrived for a piece I was going to write on the German occupation force (“Life Under the New, Improved Einsatzgruppen”), the KLA had set off a carbomb in Dragash, a Muslim Slav enclave outside of Prizren. The carbomb went off one house away from an American working for the OSCE, and in front of the house of an OSCE interpreter. The same day, a bomb had gone off just a couple hundred meters away from the UNMIK police headquarters in Prizren.

When German soldiers arrived on the scene to investigate, two more bombs went off. It’s the oldest terrorist trap in the book, lure ‘em in and bomb ‘em all, although this was clearly a warning: none of the German soldiers suffered bodily injury, although four were hospitalized for shock.

A few days later, the local leader of the PDK party (the KLA’s political arm) was arrested for planting the bombs. Although he’s in jail (along with another local PDK leader recently arrested for possession of illegal armaments), he’s still allowed to run in this Saturday’s municipal elections. As are all the suspected and/or convicted KLA dons.

And this is what all the ugliness is about. There are several insoluble issues in Kosovo which up to now have been allowed to simmer, but are about to converge in a highly explosive mixture. The unexpected victory of Vojislav Kostunica in Serbia, and the West’s rush to embrace him, is the last thing this fucked up province needed. The reason is that Kosovar Albanians saw for the first time that the West doesn’t hold a genetic hatred towards all Serbs the way they do, only towards the Milosevic family. This was a shock that most Albanians are still trying to swallow. Now, the municipal elections could be the last ingredient to a Die Hard 3-type explosion. Here’s why.

Most polls of the Albanians show that the KLA’s political enemy, Ibrahim Rugova’s LDK party, has about 70-plus percent of the province’s support. Rugova, an effete intellectual with a trademark silk scarf, and his LDK party advocate non-violence, tolerance and negotiation. In my 6 weeks here,

I have only met two Albanians who don’t support his party. Just two. What is at stake in the municipal elections is control over each municipality, from running the local services to issuing permits and licenses to administering budgets. Right now, there are two structures: the UN, which runs the budgets and makes the formal day-to-day decisions, and the KLA, which ignores the UN and runs things their own way, siphoning funds from the public utility works, building wherever it wants to, and fucking with its opponents at will. This dual-reality, which suits both the West (since it doesn’t have to confront the KLA) and the KLA (since it gets to run and steal everything it wants) will, theoretically, come to an end this Saturday. There will be no more Join Interim Administration run by the UN and its appointees: rather, there will be a democratically elected power structure made up of moderate, intellectual Albanians.

That, of course, is the worse-case scenario. Ideally, the PDK/KLA will steal the elections, the OSCE will whitewash the theft, and the current tense standoff will continue, the showdown postponed until a later date, to be decided by other people. This isn’t entirely impossible. One OSCE election official told me over the weekend that KLA attacks and intimidation on the Albanian population and on the LDK in particular have been so fierce that it looks like the Albanians will be successfully terrorized into voting their party, the PDK, into office. That would be a relief to most internationals, and it’s likely that the Albanian population wouldn’t rebel against such an outcome; they’d be too afraid to.

Nor will the OSCE likely rebel. Here I’ll quote from their own recently released report on the upcoming Kosovo municipal election campaign violations, including their laughable slap-on-the-wrist punishments, which the OSCE is empowered to do, against the PDK/KLA:

“ECAC Case No. ME 2000/098 – Violence by PDK Supporters: On 21 September 2000, a group of supporters of the Democratic Party of Kosovo (PDK) attacked the Lipjan/Lipljan offices of the Democratic League of Kosovo (LDK) and officials who were present. The ECAC found PDK Lipjan/Lipljan to have violated Electoral Rule 2000/1 and fines the party branch 2,000 DEM.

The ECAC also reserved the right to recommend the removal of a candidate if the fine was not paid. […] On 30 September 2000, the Democratic Party of Kosovo (PDK) held a party gathering in Istog/Istok municipality. During the gathering, members of the audience spoke out loudly against the Democratic League of Kosovo (LDK), with one in the audience issuing threats to kill the local LDK representative. The ECAC decided that the PDK violated regulations on intimidation and violence by failing to actively condemn the threats. PDK Istok/Istog was fined 500 DEM and the ECAC reserved the right to recommend the removal of a candidate if the fine was not paid.[…] In the matter of written death threats received by nine members of the Democratic League of Kosovo (LDK) in KamenicÎ/Kosovska Kamenica, the ECAC was unable to establish that the violation that took place was committed by a political entity or its supporters. The ECAC decided that sufficient evidence had not been produced and dismissed the complaint.”

I love that last one. Some SUV-driving Eurofag telling nine terrified Albanians, “Nope, you didn’t get a death threat from the KLA. You’re just imagining it.”

As the record shows, the OSCE is nervously covering its ass, while preparing for the theft of the elections. However, if Rugova’s people in the LDK actually do win, then all bets are off here. The virtual/dual power structure which has allowed both the UN bureaucracy and the KLA to thrive will have to be replaced. The KLA would be out of power. Its self-appointed heads of local services, utilities, and administrative structures will have to step down in favor of LDK-appointed officials. That would essentially mean surrendering both its military victory and its criminal empire. At the same time, it would have to continue swallowing its bile watching on television as Western officials, and Western aid, pour into today’s darling, Serbia. What’s worse, UN and Western officials have lately reiterated their insistence that Kosovo remain legally a part of Yugoslavia, something the Albanians cannot countenance.

What all this means is that there is only one structure today which stands in the way of an independent, KLA-run Kosovo. And that is the international community. The UN and KFOR. The KLA could respond in two ways: either through increasing low-level terror, driving out elected officials from municipal power or making it impossible for them to run things, a scenario which should theoretically force the UN and KFOR to respond and implement the Albanians’ democratic will with force if necessary. At the same time, they could stage a final mass expulsion of the remaining non-Albanian minorities, something that many people think is possible (two nights ago, KLA terrorists fired a rocket-propelled grenade at the last remaining Serb apartment building in the capital, Pristina; no one was injured). That leads to the second scenario: a KLA-led uprising against the UN and KFOR. It wouldn’t take much to throw the West out of here. A few mines, a couple of snipers, the odd car bomb like we saw in Prizren. Or rocks. Already, twice in the past month, Albanian boys have been throwing rocks at U.S. soldiers.

One busted youth admitted that he’d been paid to do so, probably by “a political entity.”

It might seem incredible to outsiders that the Albanians, still weak militarily, would move to throw out the West. But if the KLA is that threatened, it isn’t totally unthinkable. After all, in the beginning of the last century, the Ottoman Turks were called in to protect Kosovar Albanians from a Serb invasion, which they succeeded in doing. The Albanians’ gratitude was short-lived. One year later, just one year later, the Albanians rose up against their Turkish saviors. And another year after that, the Serbs moved into Kosovo. With consequences we all know.

Yeah, this is a lovely fucking place. Trash everywhere. Trash literally everywhere, in every ravine, gully, roadside, in rivers, streams, besides schoolyards…. Albanian leaders are trying to educate their people about the evils of trash, but they’ve got a long way to go. The entire south side is dusty, filthy, polluted. Power cuts and water cuts are frequent. The Serbs in North Mitrovica view foreigners, particularly Americans and particularly American journalists, as hostile at best, spies more likely.

I’m the only American journalist living here.Every time I cross the Ibar River bridge, I feel like someone’s taped a sign on my back, “Shoot Me!” I feel like the world’s biggest idiot.As for the Albanians, their clannish culture means that you can never get too close to them, and you cannot even think of dating their women. The Albanians tolerate us, the Serbs are waiting for their turn.

The province is filthy, ugly, completely polluted by NATO ordinance, run by half-wits and thugs, soaked in blood and doomed to be the permanent asshole of Europe, a stain on the Balkans.

I can’t wait to get the fuck out.

It’s incredible to me that so much blood and so much bile could be spilled over such a pile of shit that passes for a province. But Europeans are like this, they’re weird, no, insane when it comes to land. It’s so grotesque that it’s almost comical. It reminds me of the jail scene in that Woody Allen movie Love And Death, when Woody’s father pulls a dirt clod from out of his ragged overcoat, points at it urgently, and rasps, “Land, my son! Land is the most important thing. When I die, I’ll give you this land. Don’t ever sell it! It’s ours, our land!”

Here, they’d kill you, your family, your friends, and every genetic trace of DNA extant over that one dirt clod.By next week, we’ll know if the UN and NATO are next in line.

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