|
Kosovo uncertain { September 20 2000 } Original Source Link: (May no longer be active)
http://washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A39819-2000Sep19.htmlhttp://washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A39819-2000Sep19.html
In Kosovo, an Uncertain Mission
Peacekeeping Troops Find Frustration, Little Appreciation
By Roberto Suro
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, September 20, 2000; Page A01
SILOVO, Yugoslavia –– Every four hours, day and night, soldiers of the U.S. 1st Armored Division patrol this Kosovo village, carefully avoiding the open sewers, standing silently in cornfields on guard against intruders who might bomb a house or burn a crop to drive away the few hundred Serbs who remain here.
The soldiers live in a former mortuary, a windowless building that shares a hilltop with a cemetery and a small church. When they are not patrolling, they escort townspeople who need to leave the village to work, shop or visit relatives. With loaded guns at the ready, they keep watch over soccer games, birthday parties and any other event that might draw a crowd.
A little more than a year after they arrived, the main mission of the 5,500 U.S. troops in Kosovo has completely reversed: Instead of protecting ethnic Albanians from Serb paramilitaries, they go to great lengths to protect the small Serbian population from vengeful Albanians. It's a nearly thankless role that requires hundreds of soldiers to do daily bodyguard duty for people considered foes not long ago.
Kosovo has become a treadmill. In dozens of interviews, officers and enlisted men said they can do valuable work here--and do it carefully and enthusiastically--but still never know whether they have achieved anything meaningful. For many GIs, Kosovo is a mission without goal posts or time limits.
"It's a good mission to help a country put its past behind and get off on the right foot," said Staff Sgt. Henry Gonzalez, who leads patrols from the hilltop outpost. "I just wish we were better at it, to the point they appreciated it."
On one recent Sunday, Gonzalez and his men spent several hours standing in full battle gear in 100-degree heat to keep watch over a Serb wedding. The revelers did not offer a word of acknowledgment in return.
Although the peacekeepers of NATO's Kosovo Force, known as KFOR, have undoubtedly made this a less violent and more orderly place, military commanders admit they still have not accomplished their original mission: providing a "safe and secure environment" so that the ethnic Albanian majority and the local Serbian minority can start healing their wounds. Not only do the old hatreds persist, but new forms of criminality and political violence are enmeshing the U.S. troops in Kosovo.
"It is like sticking your hand into a spider web," said a senior Army official who asked not to be identified.
With dismay evident in their voices, some U.S. soldiers complain that neither Serbs nor ethnic Albanians seem interested in peace. More than half the troops interviewed in a recent survey conducted by Charles Moskos, a military sociologist at Northwestern University, said they expected Kosovo would be the same when they left as when they arrived.
Unbecoming Conduct
That kind of frustration now reveals itself in small acts of impatience or arrogance among soldiers who spend six months at a time here, with little relief from repetitious guard duty. When U.S. troops first poured into Kosovo in June 1999, the problems were much more severe--at least in one elite Army unit, according to a Pentagon report released this week.
More than 800 soldiers from the 82nd Airborne Division arrived in Kosovo last September, when it was more unsettled and violent than today. With scant training in how to manage conflict between civilians, some of the paratroopers routinely manhandled Albanians. But their officers kept quiet about it--until a member of the unit was accused of murdering a Kosovo Albanian girl in January.
Staff Sgt. Frank Ronghi was sentenced in August to life in prison for luring an 11-year-old into the basement of a building, then raping and killing her. During Ronghi's court-martial, evidence emerged that other soldiers in his unit had routinely groped the breasts and buttocks of women during searches in the town of Vitina, and had beaten civilian men during interrogations. Their behavior, the Pentagon said in its report this week, "violated basic standards of conduct, human decency and Army values."
Moreover, the report went beyond identifying a few wrongdoers and pointed to a systemic problem. Many of the first U.S. soldiers to arrive in Kosovo last year were from elite divisions, such as the 82nd Airborne, that were expecting combat and had not been trained for peacekeeping. Soldiers in Ronghi's unit--whose motto was "Shoot 'em in the face"--had "difficulties tempering their combat mentality," the report concluded.
The Pentagon says that all U.S. troops now in Kosovo have received at least some preparation for peacekeeping duties, although the extent of that training varies greatly, from a few days to more than two months. The report is certain to fuel a debate over whether the military should have a separate cadre of peacekeepers rather than ask war-fighting units, such as the 82nd Airborne or the 1st Armored, to put aside their combat mind-set. As something of a compromise, the U.S. troops who have the most contact with ordinary Kosovo residents are reservists in civil affairs and military police units who bring something of a civilian mentality, as well as specialized training, to the mission.
But no one in Kosovo is cutting the peacekeepers much slack. American troops guard Serbs, then dodge rocks when Serbs riot to protest their living conditions. Ethnic Albanians have benefited hugely from the U.S. intervention, and yet they defy KFOR with attacks on the Serbs and by continuing to hoard weapons and train militias.
"The KFOR say they are doing their jobs, doing their jobs. But then nothing happens," said Petar Dinkic, a Serbian shopkeeper in Vitina.
Among U.S. military officials all the way up the chain of command, a major frustration is the lack of a bottom line for the Kosovo mission. The Army's standard briefing on the situation includes a chart titled "Destabilizing Factors." At the top of the list is "Political end state undefined," followed by "Lack of functional government."
Defining the mission in Kosovo--its purpose and end point--has emerged as one of the most contentious national security issues in the presidential campaign. George W. Bush, the Republican nominee, has criticized the Kosovo mission as an example of how the U.S. military is overextended with humanitarian duties around the world. Vice President Gore, the Democrat, defends the U.S. intervention last year and the current effort to rebuild Kosovo as the kind of "forward engagement" necessary to preserve American interests.
Neither candidate has explained in detail how he would proceed in Kosovo, but it is clear that U.S. military commanders will press the next president for hard decisions.
"You have to wonder whether we are going to be rotating troops through there for years just to keep the place more or less stabilized, because there are no peace talks, no negotiations, not even a real plan for what Kosovo is supposed to become in the long run," said one senior military policymaker.
"When we go on patrol, I like to ask people, 'How long do you think KFOR will be here?' And they tell me, 'You are not leaving soon, and maybe not ever,' " said Sgt. Hector Roman, who is on duty here with a National Guard military police unit from Puerto Rico. "I don't know if that means we are doing our jobs well, or not."
Sitting in his tiny jewelry shop on a busy street in Urosevac, Zylfis Shehu answered Roman. "We would like to have taxes and police and government, but all that is difficult and will not happen in a day," the ethnic Albanian shopkeeper told the American sergeant. "My opinion is that I want KFOR to stay for a long time, because without them, there would be no law. Everybody with a gun would be their own law."
Hot Cars
The Puerto Rican MPs hit the streets ready for combat, with machine gunners atop their vehicles. Once they set up a checkpoint, though, the gunners tap out salsa tunes on the roofs of their Humvees for the entertainment of passersby.
"We have our own style," says Roman.
One Saturday night, Roman's squad set up a roadblock and pulled over automobiles to search for weapons. Their sniffing German shepherd did not discover any guns or explosives. But they did find a steady stream of luxury cars, mostly Mercedes-Benzes and BMWs, driven by young men without any ownership or registration papers. The excuse was always the same: All the papers got lost during the war.
From the darkness, one of Roman's soldiers offered a verdict on each vehicle that soon became a refrain: "Esta caliente"--It's hot.
The most pressing danger, according to U.S. officials, stems from criminal enterprises run by ethnic Albanians who already have made this corner of the Balkans into a European hub for trafficking in narcotics, illegal aliens, stolen cars and prostitutes.
"Crime is a significant problem in the way of developing a sound economic system and freedom," said Lt. Gen. Dennis Hardy, commander of the American sector of Kosovo, which covers nearly 900 square miles. But, he said, U.S. troops will not go after crime kingpins. "I don't see us going after drug trafficking or prostitution," he said. "It is not our intent, not our mission."
Instead, when U.S. peacekeepers come across criminal activity, they turn the information over to the U.N. police, who are responsible for law enforcement. All the U.S. military can do is provide some muscle when the police make an arrest or conduct a search.
"It is very frustrating because you see what's going on here, but you don't have all the tools or the legal authority you would have back home to clean things up," said Roman, a police detective in civilian life.
Taking on the criminals is all the more difficult because of their links to local leaders, including many of the ethnic Albanian nationalists who fought the Serbs and are treated as heroes in their communities.
"We call it the thugocracy," said a senior U.S. Army officer. "The mafia, the politicians and the so-called freedom fighters are all connected."
No Reconciliation
To support the Kosovo mission, the U.S. Army has built three base camps that continue to expand every day. The largest of them, Camp Bondsteel, now covers 1,000 acres. Its more than 350 buildings include a hospital, a prison, two chapels, two gyms and two huge mess halls that serve 20,000 meals a day for soldiers and a huge supporting cast of civilian contractors.
When the sun is up, the sounds of earthmovers and construction crews fill the air. At night it is quiet except for the helicopters setting off or returning from patrols. Almost every corner of Bondsteel is brightly lit with orange streetlights. Stadium lights point outward, starkly illuminating the landscape for a few hundred yards beyond the eight-foot-high dirt berms and barbed-wire fences. Vast and alone in the night, Bondsteel is called "the Death Star" by soldiers in support jobs, who often go for weeks without leaving the base.
Aside from a few enterprises in which Serbs and ethnic Albanians work side by side under KFOR auspices, there are no substantial efforts to reintegrate the ethnic Albanian and Serb communities in Kosovo. Instead, the peacekeepers are just trying to ensure the safety of the remaining Serbs in the hope that someday Kosovo can become a functioning multi-ethnic society.
In the town of Vitina, for example, the black flag of the 101st Airborne "Screaming Eagles" flutters over a sandbagged guard post between two general stores where Serbs often gather. In Urosevac, the 29 Serbs who remain, out of a prewar population of about 30,000, receive almost daily visits from soldiers bringing groceries or just checking on their welfare. And across the U.S.-patrolled sector of Kosovo, soldiers keep permanent watch on 33 Serb churches and 27 schools.
"If we pulled out, all of the Serbs would be gone within minutes," said Sgt. David Coleman, who leads patrols in Gnjilane, where 65 Serb families live in a sector code-named "Kansas."
The soldiers in "Kansas" man checkpoints where they spot intruders by referring to binders with photos of all the neighborhood's residents and their cars. Once a week the peacekeepers escort Serb farmers to a stone courtyard outside a Serb church to operate a heavily guarded market for their fruits and vegetables. With prodding, some ethnic Albanians have begun shopping there.
"We see some progress," said Lt. Col. David Hogg, "but they aren't exactly having each other over for barbecues yet."
Living as a virtual prisoner inside the church compound, Vitomis Vasich, a Serb, does not see much improvement.
"We are not satisfied with KFOR, and we cannot accept that the most powerful army in the world cannot find out who commits murders and burnings right under their noses," Vasich said.
Busy No Man's Land
In the view of U.S. commanders, the constant shootings and house burnings reflect "unfulfilled expectations" that the war would produce an independent Kosovo. How far the people of Kosovo are willing to go to achieve that dream is a question that looms every day as the sound of gunfire grows louder in a patch of woodland just outside the American sector.
Under the agreement that ended the NATO bombing campaign, a "ground separation zone" about two miles wide was created along the boundary between Kosovo and Serbia. Neither KFOR nor Serb forces are allowed to enter it. But the village of Dobrosin, with a population of about 400 ethnic Albanians, falls within that no man's land and has become a busy training camp for pro-independence militants.
Checkpoint Sapper, manned by a platoon of the 1st Armored Division, sits on a bluff a few hundred yards from Dobrosin. From that vantage, U.S. soldiers have watched hundreds of men descend on the village for a three-week training cycle that has grown so predictable that U.S. troops know which days the trainees get target practice.
Ethnic Albanian leaders have repeatedly promised U.S. officials that they have nothing to do with this activity. They insist that it can be ascribed to a small militia, known by its initials in Albanian as the UCPMB, which they say is a ragtag outfit of no political importance. The Albanians claim that the group's sole goal is to liberate a handful of Albanian villages that remain under Serb jurisdiction. But there is ample evidence that the training in Dobrosin is supported from within the American sector.
On average 300 people a day go down the narrow road into the village, a huge amount of traffic for a hamlet otherwise isolated from the world. Moreover, the amount of ammunition that U.S. troops hear expended daily far exceeds anything that might have been stored in the village.
"We have blocked the majority of the key points of entry, but we have not completely sealed off the supply," said Hogg, operations officer for the U.S. command in Kosovo. "It is such a large area that if someone wanted to get something over, sure they could."
The surrounding countryside is heavily wooded and sparsely populated. Motion sensors and other surveillance devices have been planted, and special forces units run patrols at night, U.S. officials said. But to cut off the weapons traffic would require the permanent commitment of several hundred soldiers, the officials said.
This summer the militants in Dobrosin have launched repeated forays into nearby villages, resulting in firefights with Serb forces. U.S. officials worry that one of these skirmishes might spill over into a confrontation with the troops at Sapper. The worst-case scenario is that men trained in Dobrosin will turn on the peacekeepers if Washington tries to pull out under an arrangement that provides less than independence.
On a hot summer night, the troops at Checkpoint Sapper watch "Con Air" and then "Saving Private Ryan" on the TV in their mess tent. They have seen the videos so often that they know the scripts by heart. Outside, a mortar round thumps in the distance. Then another. Then several more in rapid succession.
There is a stir of activity at the command post. A soldier inside a Bradley Fighting Vehicle carefully scans Dobrosin with an infrared sight, but there is little sign of activity--a couple of cars set off down a wooded path, two men slowly walk back from an observation post that allows them to look into Serb territory.
Over the course of an hour and a half, the mortar fire continues sporadically in what sounds like a considerable skirmish in the wooded hills of the separation zone. Except for those left on watch, the soldiers at Sapper get into their bunks, but most just stay in their uniforms because they have been mustered in the wee hours often enough. As they go to sleep, no one really knows what is happening around them.
© 2000 The Washington Post Company
|
|
