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"One of the main messages from President Clinton today was that the international community is very much interested in helping Kosovars, but can help them only if they help themselves," said Veton Surroi, publisher of the Albanian-language daily Koha Ditore. Surroi was recently threatened by a publication linked to the Kosovo Liberation Army for an article he published urging an end to the revenge attacks.

"Non-Albanians don't feel safe, except in a few places where they have created enclaves," said Marcus Pushnik, an analyst with the International Crisis Group, a think tank and advocacy group in Pristina. "Who has created the atmosphere where minorities don't feel safe? We know that politicians have used such a mechanism in other parts of the Balkans. The atmosphere of fear helps their reign of ethnic cleansing. Is the violence against minorities orchestrated? Very many people think so, and there are strong indications that it is."

International officials, still struggling to better understand Kosovars' insular culture, are trying to investigate possible links between the KLA, which was officially disbanded in September, and organized crime groups working in the province; investigators are also looking at KLA ties to other seemingly coordinated efforts to evict the province's remaining Serbs.

Father Sava, a leader of Kosovo's Serbian minority and an Orthodox priest, says Albanian extremists are not just trying to evict remaining Serbs, but also are destroying their cultural and religious monuments. Father Sava, sometimes called the Cybermonk, publishes a list of Orthodox monuments and churches he claims were damaged on his Web site.

"The president said that the churches must be rebuilt, the Serb refugees must be brought back, that we all have to work in finding the missing and kidnapped people," Sava said after meeting with Clinton Tuesday. But "we would have been much more pleased if the political support and financing were conditional on more active involvement of Albanian leaders in preventing violence."

There's some dispute about how much damage has been done to Orthodox religious sites, however. Andras Riedlamyer, a scholar of Balkan art and architecture at Harvard University who recently returned from a trip researching damage to Kosovo's cultural heritage and monuments, says he didn't see much evidence of recent attacks on Serbian monuments.

"Going by Father Sava's rhetoric, one might be justified in thinking that attacks on Serb churches are increasing," Riedlmayer says. "As far as I can determine, however, the bulk of such attacks occurred in the first half of the summer; there have been only two reported since early September. That does not mean that these sites are no longer endangered -- just that KFOR is in fact doing a good job of guarding them. The notion that [Yugoslav president Slobodan Milosevic] needs to send his police and troops in order to save medieval cultural treasures from destruction is pure propaganda."

In a speech to some of the 6,000 U.S. troops serving in Kosovo, Clinton said the ethnic hostilities that still plague Kosovo define the nature of the conflicts and security threats the United States and its allies face all over the world.

"The biggest problem in the world today is the oldest problem of human society," Clinton told troops based at Camp Bondsteel, near the southeastern Kosovo town of Gjilane -- the biggest base the United States has built since Vietnam. "People tend to be afraid of people who don't look like them. The No. 1 problem is racial and ethnic and religious hatred."

Looking over the troops gathered in front of him, Clinton said, "But our military is a stunning rebuke of that. All of you come from all different races, walks of life, religions. You can appreciate differences. You realize your common humanity is more important than your differences."
salon.com | Nov. 23, 1999

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