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PRISTINA, Yugoslavia, Sept. 5 (UPI) Kosova Security Co., started three weeks ago by American Lance Johnston, is not a typical security company.
But then, this regional capital of Kosovo isn't a typical place, either.
Looting, car-jacking and grenade attacks are still common, a little more than two months since KFOR soldiers entered. KFOR troops continue to seize large numbers of weapons at road checkpoints and in cities around the province. And organized crime appears to be flourishing in several places, where sleek Mercedes and four-wheel drive vehicles sporting Albanian license plates or no license plates at all crowd the streets.
With an optimism matched only by their energy, Johnston and his ethnic Albanian colleagues want to make Kosovo a safer place, one business at a time. They plan to do that by training unarmed security guards to work as personal bodyguards, security guards and bouncers at nightclubs.
Guards are trained to be non-confrontational and to resolve problems in a diplomatic manner. They're only authorized to use force to protect themselves or clients from bodily harm. So far, Kosova Security Co. has trained about 150 guards to do investigations, risk assessments, and plan for emergencies.
Already, customers range from the popular watering hole Tricky Dick's to an international aid group, the Norwegian Refugee Council, and warehouses.
"Clients are coming to us," Johnston said. The demand is so great, we don't want to advertise and find we don't have enough staff to meet the demand."
The way Johnston figures, he had a much more dangerous job before NATO bombing started. That's when he was part of a security detail for the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe's Kosovo verification mission, a group of international monitors brought in after an agreement with the Yugoslav government in October to monitor the rapidly deteriorating situation in Kosovo. Johnston worked for Ambassador William Walker, mission head, whose focus on a massacre in Racak is widely believed to have drawn international attention to Kosovo's ethnic violence.
"We went unarmed into situations were guys were held at gunpoint," Johnston said, as he sat in a newly leased office in downtown apartment building. "We were providing security, unarmed, during a guerilla war, so this is much easier."
For Agim Musliu, director of training at Kosova Security Co. and an ethnic Albanian who spent 10 years in the Kosovo police force, the current security situation in Pristina isn't as bad as it might seem from the news reports.
"I'm very surprised at how quiet it is," said Musliu. "Imagine New York City without police for one day."
Johnston and Musliu realize they can't supplant the law and order of the 50,000 KFOR soldiers in the region and a future civilian police force expected to reach 3,200 officers by the end of the year. Anyone who threatens a Kosova Security Co. guard with a weapon will be reported immediately to KFOR, for example, Johnston said.