By Steven Komarow
USA Today
KACANIK, Yugoslavia - It’s hard to imagine
who’d want this forlorn town, just off the main road
to Macedonia. But Lt. Col. Joe Anderson has no
choice; he must make every town in his sector
heed NATO’s lead.
So Anderson rides a dusty Humvee truck to the
front of a concrete building guarded by guerrillas
of the Kosovo Liberation Army. It’s time for what
his boss, Brig. Gen. John Craddock, calls “a
dog-sniffing session.” Anderson is here to meet
his KLA counterpart and let him know that NATO
is the big dog.
“I don’t want to kill anybody,” he said flatly,
referring to several near-firefights between U.S.
and KLA troops. “But it keeps getting closer and
closer and closer.”
Despite signing a peace plan that requires them
to give up weapons and submit to international
peacekeepers, the ethnic Albanians who
benefited from NATO’s 78-day bombing
campaign are aggressively asserting control over
Kosovo.
They’ve taken over the town halls and the
headquarters of the Yugoslav military that NATO
forced out. They’ve resisted NATO’s entreaties
that they put down their weapons. And, most
troubling to NATO, the ethnic Albanians are using
some of the same violent tactics the Serbs
perpetrated against them.
Anderson came to Kacanik on Tuesday to tell the
local KLA commander, Xhabir Zharku, to close
down checkpoints he’s set up on local roads.
Zharku said his motive is simply to guide
returning refugees to food and safe shelter. But
Kosovo’s remaining Serbs fear that the
Albanians will seek retribution for atrocities
committed during Serbia’s campaign to drive
Albanians out of Kosovo, Serbia’s southern
province.
Their exchange was tense:
Anderson: “Checkpoints aren’t authorized.”
Zharku: “The checkpoints? What do you mean,
the checkpoints? Those are not checkpoints. We
don’t check the people if they have arms or
anything. They just register the people in terms of
help - humanitarian organizations here are asking
for the refugees coming here.”
Anderson: “I’ll make it simple for you. If we come
in and find checkpoints, we’re going to
apprehend the people at the checkpoints. Do you
understand what I’m saying? Got it?”
Anderson’s patrols Tuesday take him from town
to village, from Albanian strongholds to Strpce, a
Serb enclave in the mountains. About 200 people
from another town have fled because KLA
members scared them off, and they want NATO
protection.
“The bottom line is, we will continue to protect
and secure the villages in your area,” he told the
mayor.
Anderson finds it ironic that the Serbs who for so
long thumbed their noses at the world now seek
NATO’s help. But as more and more Albanian
refugees stream into Kosovo and find their
homes burned and relatives gone, Serbs have
plenty to fear.
And the Albanians expect NATO and U.S. troops
to stand aside.
Soldiers from the KLA strut through the towns
wearing a distinctive red patch with a black
double-headed eagle.
“I’m here nine months. I’m killing ... Serbs
peoples,” a furious Albanian militiaman told U.S.
soldiers in Urosevac on Sunday as they forced
him to disarm. “I can’t believe this!” he screamed.
With the tables turned, some Serbs are now
resorting to the kind of guerrilla resistance they
once condemned in the Albanians. Serb snipers
and assassins have killed several people,
including presumably the four KLA members
found dead last weekend under a bridge in the
U.S. sector.
“There are some very rough and confusing
situations” for the troops, said Col. Kenneth
Glueck, commander of the 26th Marine
Expeditionary Unit. “They’ve done great,” he said,
“But we really don’t have the capability to keep up
pressure in every single location.”
