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 An
army made from scratch
It was not the most efficient way to build an army
— hand delivering walkie-talkies, flying halfway around
the world with a few thousand dollars in cash to buy some AK-47s,
while at the same time running a roofing business and battling
Bajram Curri’s thugs — but somehow it worked. With
Florin’s efforts, and those of the Homeland Calling Fund’s
European fund-raisers, the Kosovo Liberation Army continued to
function. In spite of the increased Serb border patrols, a communication
network bought at Radio Shack, and a limited arms supply interrupted
by fellow Albanians in both official and unofficial capacities,
the weapons smuggling convoys continued to penetrate into Kosovo.
Night after night, the KLA grew bigger as Albanians across Kosovo
took up arms and declared themselves loyal to the rebel force.
Before long, uniformed KLA soldiers were visible in the outskirts
of most towns and across the province, building bunkers and setting
up roadblocks. They didn’t look very elegant. The men were
dressed in a mishmash of camouflage that reflected the countries
that had significant Albanian communities. Their guns were mostly
AK-47s and hunting rifles. Their bunkers were made out of tree
branches, rocks, tablecloths and whatever else they could find
rummaging through their houses. They made roadblocks out of old
tractors, trucks, farm tools, tires, bales of hay and bulldozers.
But they were the most welcome presence on the ground that Kosovo
Albanians had ever seen.
Suddenly what had always seemed impossible now seemed possible.
The Albanians outnumbered the Serbs nine to one and virtually
every one them was supporting the KLA. Their fear of the police
seemed to diminish by the day. The guerrillas seemed to grow bolder
and bolder in challenging the police. Soon, they were moving to
within a few hundred yards of sandbagged police checkpoints and
firing regularly on police convoys. They dug trenches on ridge
tops and manned them with machine guns overlooking Serb positions.
In one village, they even sent a note to the police station daring
the officers to come and get them. By the end of April, the attacks
and counterattacks had grown so frequent that the rap-rap-rap
of automatic weapons was constant in the countryside. Kosovo was
at war.
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As the KLA and the Serb police and military faced off against
one another, the international press corps descended on Kosovo
to cover the conflict. At first view, the vagabond KLA, with its
motley uniforms, silly roadblocks, pathetic hunting rifles and
sheer determination, seemed to be engaged in a heroic struggle.
Against all odds, it had risen up from nowhere to battle a far
better-armed force.
The KLA did its dirty work at night, in small groups, out of view
of the media. For many weeks, the guerrillas picked off a policeman
here and there. Soon however, the emboldened guerrillas started
intimidating and threatening local Serbs. Rumors also spread that
they were kidnapping Serbs and holding them prisoner. But the
press didn’t see any of this.
The Serb troops, by contrast, did their dirty work in plain view.
With their faces painted black, police and military convoys began
driving through Albanian villages with their assault weapons pointed
out of their windows, spreading terror among the population. When
they went in to attack a village, they set up checkpoints to keep
the press out, but inevitably, when they were finished with their
operation they left behind traces of their crimes. Once it was
the mutilated corpses of two Albanian cattle herders in the Bistrica
River. Another time it was the headless corpse of an old man who
was probably too weak to flee with the rest of his family. Such
horrors ensured that the KLA stayed well ahead on the public relations
front.
As the rebels staged their nighttime guerrilla raids and Serb
forces retaliated by attacking the villages that harbored them,
the death toll slowly crept up, and each death was commemorated
with much ceremony. Thousands upon thousands of Albanians attended
the funeral of each slain civilian and fighter, and inevitably
the funerals turned into KLA rallies. After each one, the Albanians
left with more resolve to fight. The populace seemed undeterred
by death. Each Albanian who died became a martyr for Kosovo, and
scores of willing new fighters were born. Families talked about
the need to sacrifice their sons to the cause. They knew that
the Serbs had overwhelming military power, but over and over they
repeated that they were on the side of right and had more motivated
fighters. They might have to fight a war of attrition, but they
had tens of thousands of willing fighters at home and in the diaspora,
and eventually they would triumph.
For the Serbs, it was different. Thousands of them turned out
to commemorate the death of their slain policemen as well, but
while those gatherings no doubt cemented the Serbs’ bitterness
and hatred of the Albanians, they did not breed a resolve to fight.
Most of the army and police fighting in Kosovo were not from there;
they had been sent there to fight from elsewhere in Serbia and
they resented it. They felt for the two hundred thousand Serbs
who lived in Kosovo, but that didn’t mean they were willing
to risk their lives for them. When Serb troops moved in and attacked
a village, they did not dare try to hold it, because that made
them too vulnerable to Albanian attacks. Spooked by how quickly
the KLA grew, they were increasingly confining themselves to the
cities or hiding behind sandbagged bunkers on the province’s
main roads.
Soon, counterinsurgency experts were saying that Milosevic had
vastly miscalculated in Kosovo. In order for the Serbs to squash
the guerrilla movement, they would need to outnumber the KLA by
a ratio of ten to one. The Serbs had nowhere near those numbers
and they probably never would. Even if Milosevic increased the
number of troops in the province, the rebels could still call
on tens of thousands of potential fighters living in the diaspora.
Indeed, many were already coming. On any given day the rusted
hulk of a ferry from Koman was packed full of Kosovo Albanians
returning to their homeland from abroad, many of whom spoke better
German or French than they did Albanian.
Although the Albanian government continued to insist that it was
doing everything it could to crack down on the gunrunning, many
government and army officials began aiding the KLA. They began
providing them army vehicles and armed escorts to move their weapons
north. They also opened up several military facilities to the
KLA and allowed several Albanian army officers to provide training
and assistance.
At long last, all of the ingredients for a successful guerrilla
insurgency were now in place. The KLA had overwhelming popular
support; a steady supply of money, arms and fighters; and a safe
haven across the border in Albania, where the guerrillas could
receive training.
The two-headed eagle of the Albanian flag
(top), also the symbol for the KLA; the Koman ferry that the KLA
used to transport weapons to the Kosovo border
Ron Haviv, VII Photo Agency
Stacy Sullivan
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