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It has been a good summer for the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA).
Their ardent foes, the Serbs, were forced to run in retreat from Kosovo in the face of an unprecedented NATO air campaign.
Then, they were toasted by the media and the U.S. State Department as victorious, freedom fighters--a propaganda victory that far eclipsed any battlefield success. Now, the word out of Brussels is that NATO is planning to turn 3,000 of these paramilitary terrorists into the national police force--the Kosovo Corps.
The question of how to handle the KLA in peacetime has always been a complex one for NATO. On one hand, the European military alliance benefited from KLA guerrilla activities in the final days of the conflict. Their reconnaissance activities ferreted out many Serb units, exposing them to deadly aerial assaults that quickened the Serb surrender. They also realize that their war-time efforts have won them popular support in Kosovo.
On the other hand, the KLA has a record of drug-running to finance their terrorist activities. They do not respect the rule of law, and their terror campaign has continued, unabated since the end of the war, even though they were supposed to be decommissioning in June. Their activities have led to the forced departure of thousands of Serbian Kosovars--an ethnic cleansing that has reminded many of Serbian activities during the conflict.
But NATO's plan to turn the KLA into cops goes over the line and must be reconsidered before it is too late. NATO has to realize the truth about the KLA and end its acquiescence and coddling of these terrorists. A lasting peace will never be forged in Kosovo, or in any part of the world, when the former guerrilla army of one side is put in charge of the police.
Terrorists rarely make good law enforcement professionals, because, truth be told, they do not respect the law. They have proven so by their terrorist activities. The KLA, with their drug-running, their alleged training of Islamic fundamentalist warriors, their terrorizing of Serbs in Kosovo, and their disregard for KFOR's authority has proven, over and over again, that they care only about their power.
Surely, any peace in Northern Ireland could never be achieved if members of the IRA or some loyalist, paramilitary group were given control of the state police force. So why does NATO Secretary Xavier Solana believe that putting thugs in charge of the police in Kosovo will build a peaceful society?
Not only is NATO planning to establish the Kosovo Corps with former KLA fighters but to equip and train them. This will provide the KLA with 3,000 well-trained and highly disciplined fighters to use in the future, after NATO's role in Kosovo has ended. A 3,000-person force whose main goal is to maintain the KLA's power base.
In addition to the practical problems of arming KLA fighters as policemen, this solution runs contrary to the June demilitarization agreement signed by KLA Leader Hasim Thaci.
What Slobodan Milosevic and his army did in Kosovo was wrong, and he and his henchmen should be punished for their crimes. But building a peaceful and pluralistic society in the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, and specifically in Kosovo, demands that NATO and the U.N. avoid playing favorites.
NATO's vision of the Kosovo Corps puts the KLA in the driver's seat and will only lead to more bloodshed and a continuation of the centuries of conflict that have plagued Kosovo. NATO should drop this bad idea and begin the process of demilitarizing all the combatants, rather than arming a select few.