Kosovo Liberation Army

The Inside Story of an Insurgency

Henry H. Perritt

• Publisher: University of Illinois Press
• Year: 2010
• ISBN:
  9780252092138
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

The military intervention by NATO in Kosovo was portrayed in American media as a necessary step to prevent the Serbian armed forces from repeating the ethnic cleansing that had so deeply damaged the former Yugoslavia. Serbia trained its military on Kosovo because of an ongoing armed struggle by ethnic Albanians to wrest independence from Serbia. Warfare in the Balkans seemed to threaten the stability of Europe, as well as the peace and security of Kosovars, and yet armed resistance seemed to offer the only possibility of future stability. Leading the struggle against Serbia was the Kosovo Liberation Army, also known as the KLA.

Kosovo Liberation Army: The Inside Story of an Insurgency provides a historical background for the KLA and describes its activities up to and including the NATO intervention. Henry H. Perritt Jr. offers firsthand insight into the motives and organization of a popular insurgency, detailing the strategies of recruitment, training, and financing that made the KLA one of the most successful insurgencies of the post-cold war era. This volume also tells the personal stories of young people who took up guns in response to repeated humiliation by "foreign occupiers, " as they perceived the Serb police and intelligence personnel. Perritt illuminates the factors that led to the KLA's success, including its convergence with political developments in eastern Europe, its campaign for popular support both at home and abroad, and its participation in international negotiations and a peace settlement that helped pave the long road from war to peace.

1 Faces of the KLA and Its Kosovar Antagonists

Over the centuries, we struggled against occupation, and a couple of times we managed to come close to winning. Now, a few things were different. One was that Russia lost its power and now would not back up Serbia, and so for once the world would not close its eyes and do what Serbia says. Second, other peoples in the former Yugoslavia like the Croats would not support Serbia this time. Now, it was not too much of a stretch: a few million Albanians against a few million Serbs. Everything was more in our favor than it was in previous generations. The communications were different; now the patriots knew what was going on. The geostrategic possibilities were different because the internationals had already set a precedent, in Croatia and Bosnia.

—Ramush Haradinaj

The Kosovo Liberation Army fought a paradigmatic Fourth Generation War. “Fourth Generation War” is a term coined by some of the more perceptive military theorists in the U.S. Army and Marine Corps communities. “Fourth-generation warfare (4GW), unlike previous generations of warfare, does not attempt to win by defeating the enemy’s military forces. Instead, it directly attacks the minds of enemy decision makers to destroy the enemy’s political will. Fourth generation wars are lengthy—measured in decades rather than months or years.”¹ Fourth generation warfare requires that fighters—and leaders of fighters—be astute about politics, which is often characterized as the art of the possible and the science of timing. What was possible in Kosovo was determined by geopolitical and demographic phenomena beyond the control of the KLA that shaped both attitudes within Kosovo and attitudes of the world toward Kosovo.

Two of these phenomena—Great-Power geopolitical adjustment and Albanian nationalism—were at work long before 1995. Three others—the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact, international sensitivity to Slobodan Milosevic’s human rights violations, and an astutely led, awakened youth—intersected in the late 1980s and early 1990s to set the stage for an armed revolt in Kosovo. The KLA might have been successful anyway, but it would have taken ten or twenty years, and Kosovo might have had an experience similar to that suffered by Northern Ireland or Lebanon. Its quick success was fortuitous. The phenomena making early success possible were not simple in their composition, and their interaction surely was not. Some of the phenomena had been at work for centuries or decades; some were like shooting stars.

Faces of the Struggle

The KLA’s struggle, like most struggles, is the story of singular combinations of circumstances creating windows of opportunity. It is also the story, however, of strong personalities who saw opportunity—and frequently battled over how to seize it. Three relevant leadership groups within Kosovar Albanian society defined the KLA and its path to success: the Peaceful Path Institutionalists, the Planners in Exile, and the Defenders at Home.

Ibrahim Rugova, who died in January 2006, symbolized the Peaceful Path Institutionalists. He hid behind the trappings of power. An eccentric and remote man, his advocacy of passive resistance and opposition to violence may have saved Kosovo from a bloodbath. He infuriated not only those who opposed his methods but some of his closest associates. But fury or not, Rugova was the man who carried the Kosovar Albanian torch for a long time. When Rugova could no longer deny the KLA, he then tried to outflank it. But he never let the flame go out.

Rugova was formally schooled in France and always—always—wore a mottled maroon and indigo scarf. He was president of Kosovo’s Government in Exile and also president of the Democratic League of Kosovo (LDK), the dominant Albanian political party. Rugova’s campaign of passive resistance and creation of a Kosovar Government in Exile fed Albanian desires to resist Serb oppression at low cost, while also allowing Milosevic to deploy his military forces elsewhere, in Croatia and Bosnia. Rugova became the face of Kosovo politics, and largely dominated it even after the war was over. He is loved by those who watched him hold the flame for so long. But the images of Rugova also are the images of a slight, enigmatic man, with his strange silk scarf, standing outside the fence at Dayton Air Force base, looking in and largely ignored by Richard Holbrooke and Slobodan Milosevic as they negotiated an end to the war in Bosnia and turned a blind eye to Kosovo. They include images of Rugova pleading with student leaders to call off student demonstrations lest they annoy the Serbs.

One image depicts Rugova sitting in a booth in a coffee shop during a break at the Fifth Anniversary of the Dayton Accords, talking to the author of this book in quiet, courteous English, smoking cigarettes, drinking coffee, and arguing against any political initiatives until independence had been achieved for Kosovo, and explaining how Kosovo needed only one political party—his.

These images of Rugova wore thin after Dayton. It is very difficult for many Kosovars to forget arguments broadcast and printed by Rugova’s media and press outlets denying the existence of the KLA and describing its members as a motley collection of bandits and archaic Marxists. When KLA activity could no longer be dismissed so easily, Rugova insisted that the KLA fighters and martyrs were Serb secret police and collaborators in disguise, trying to draw innocent Kosovar Albanians into a trap that would be sprung, extinguishing all that he had worked for. He ultimately organized a competing army—the Armed Forces of the Republic of Kosovo (FARK).

The other prominent face of the Peaceful Path Institutionalists was Bujar Bukoshi. A urologist by training, he served as prime minister of the Kosovar Albanian Government in Exile, operating initially from Croatia and then from Germany. Charismatic in a more conventional way than Rugova, his sparkling blue eyes, physical energy, and shock of well-groomed white hair quickly charm new acquaintances. As talk begins, he impresses them with his brilliant intelligence and penetrating analysis. He has an infectious sense of humor, with which he can skewer opponents through memorable turns of phrase. Far less passive than Rugova, Bukoshi recognized early that some form of armed resistance to the Serb presence in Kosovo would be necessary to attract the attention of the international community and keep pressure on diplomacy. Even before the KLA was formed, he collaborated with the Planners in Exile and the Defenders at Home to implement a guerrilla training program in camps in Albania. Indeed, after Dayton, Bukoshi publicly broke with Rugova over Rugova’s passivity. Rugova and Bukoshi understood the peaceful path differently. There was merit in passive resistance, Bukoshi thought, but there had to be some resistance, and it could not be merely passive.

Bukoshi’s personal force and charisma helped build credibility in the West for the Kosovar insurgents, though he was slow to provide resources to the KLA because he feared their recklessness, naivete, and disorganization. As prime minister of the Government in Exile, he organized a “Three-Percent Fund,” whose name reflects the moral obligation of Albanians around the world to contribute three percent of their total incomes to the Kosovar cause, which financed both the Government in Exile and a parallel system of schools and other Albanian institutions in Kosovo. Some of the money funded the promotion of the Kosovar cause. But Bukoshi was a committed institutionalist. Any armed resistance had to be sponsored and controlled by the Government in Exile. And it had to be prepared for, organized, and led by those with experience. The eager “children” in the Planners in Exile’s leadership who were clamoring for war were brave but dangerous. They would get slaughtered and would bring down the wrath of Milosevic’s Yugoslav Army on the heads of innocent Kosovar Albanians, unless they could be brought under control.

Bukoshi had several opportunities to coordinate with the Planners in Exile. Each time, his dismay at their naivete and recklessness caused him to pull back from working with them as equals. Each time, he insisted that they turn the war over to him, and promised them his help to achieve success. Each time he did that, he drove a wedge deeper into the fault line that already separated the Peaceful Path Institutionalists from the Planners in Exile and the Defenders at Home. The Peaceful Path Institutionalists particularly mistrusted two of the most prominent faces of the Planners in Exile: Hashim Thaçi and Xhavit Haliti.

Thaçi caught the leadership bug in college. Grandson of a leader of resistance to the Communists after the Second World War, he took part in some of the earliest armed conflicts as the KLA was being formed, and then escaped arrest by fleeing to Switzerland, where he studied political science and history. The ambitious yet youngest member of the political directorate that created the KLA, he linked generations and sneaked back and forth across Kosovo’s border to keep the planners and strategists of the exile group in touch with the group inside Kosovo, who thought it had no choice but to begin fighting without waiting for a clear strategy. Tall, straight, and handsome, Thaçi found himself the face of the KLA to the outside world, and was the star of the 1999 Rambouillet conference, the first international peace conference that supported Kosovar Albanian aspirations. After this he was one of the architects of an independent, democratic Kosovo, served briefly as prime minister of an interim postwar government, and then became prime minister more formally in late 2007, just in time to preside over Kosovo’s declaration of independence on 17 February 2008.

Thaçi had combined his academic studies at the University of Prishtina with practical learning at the foot of Adem Jashari, icon of the Defenders at Home, about the need for a new generation of militancy. At the University of Prishtina, he became student vice rector in 1992–93, and sought to provide some nationalist fire for the backward-looking and essentially passive attitudes of the faculty. Flexible and willing to learn, Thaçi earned the nickname “Snake,” which was appropriate: His apparent ability to be in several different places at the same time complemented his knack for interpreting cues from the West about how the KLA could shape its activities to maximize Western sympathy. Thaçi often was the bridge between the Planners in Exile and the Defenders at Home. A thinker and a political guy, he appears in some photographs in a jacket and tie, with everyone else around the table in military uniform. But he also was a fighter. He stayed in Jashari’s house in 1992 for two months after the Serbs came to arrest him. He and Jashari held a rifle and had their picture taken together. Later, Thaçi was a constant presence on the battlefield who often participated in armed conflict and thereby earned respect from both KLA camps.

The other prominent face of the Planners in Exile, Xhavit Haliti, is about a generation older than Thaçi. While Thaçi is Western-style handsome, Haliti is a secretive, behind-the-scenes cross between a Communist apparatchik and a clandestine shadow operative. Remote, suspicious, and slightly dour in manner, Haliti nevertheless was, at heart, a strategist, though one key American supporter of the KLA denied that Haliti was capable of real strategy, and dismissed him as “a street fighter, with connections.” Despite their differences in age and style—or more probably because of them—Thaçi and Haliti were a perfect team. Haliti provided greater sophistication forged from experience and an uncanny ability to plot with hardened representatives of helpful groups from across the spectrum of legality and illegality; Thaçi brought not merely an appealing public face, but the energy and physical courage to take the vision of the Planners in Exile to the Defenders at Home. Thaçi’s bravery and participation in actual conflicts gave him credibility that overcame his youth, while Haliti’s reputation for toughness and useful connections built respect for the Planners in Exile that Thaçi could not have provided on his own.

The Defenders at Home were more impulsive than the Planners in Exile. The Defenders focused on action, and figured that strategy could come later. They were never able to rid themselves entirely of a slight disdain for those who spent more time thinking than fighting. Nevertheless, they understood that they could not win the fight alone. They needed the Planners in Exile—Thaçi and Haliti—to get money and arms, and to build support in the international community.

Ramush Haradinaj and Rrustem Mustafa (Commander Remi) exemplify the Defenders at Home, though both came to prominence as leaders of the group relatively late, only after others had fallen to Serb annihilation efforts. Haradinaj looks like a tough street fighter but has charisma of the Bill Clinton variety. He charms everyone—important or not, young and old—with his friendly acceptance and genuine interest in whomever he is talking to. Right after the war, young Kosovar Afrim Ademi, who went to meet Ramush, found himself much in awe. Haradinaj “bounded down the stairs, dressed in blue jeans, his arms full of folders and papers. When he saw me, he stopped. ‘I am Ramush Haradinaj,’ he said. He was much, much smaller than I expected. I had thought he must be a giant. Within a few days of working for him, I decided that I would give him my life.”

Quick to answer, quick to make a joke, and quick to understand, Haradinaj is more a man of action than a man of reflection, plans, and strategy. When asked about the connection between grand strategy and the KLA’s early initiatives, he says repeatedly, “We had no choice. It would be good if we had international intervention in our favor, but we were not going to wait for anyone else. We had to answer [the Serb forces attacking our homesteads].” The Haradinaj family had long opposed the Serb domination in Kosovo: Ramush’s uncle had known and worked with Jusuf Gërvalla in the 1970s and early 1980s, and Ramush and his brothers recognized that only force could make Kosovo independent.

As the commander of the KLA’s Dukagjini Zone, Haradinaj concentrated on military activities, while grudgingly respecting political leadership by Thaçi and others. He washed dishes, dug latrines, fired weapons, and commanded his troops in more traditional ways. He embraced his young fighters, making them feel important and helping them shape their roles in the fight. After the war, Haradinaj accepted the prime minister’s post in a coalition government with the LDK, even though his party held only eight seats out of 120 in the assembly. Haradinaj was indicted by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) in 2005, and immediately resigned the prime minister’s office and surrendered to the ICTY.

Rrustem Mustafa, usually known as “Commander Remi,” is smaller than one might expect for the commander of the Llap Valley Zone of the KLA. He stands about five-foot-nine and weighs 160 to 170 pounds. His face more lined than that of most forty-year-olds, Commander Remi has piercing, intelligent eyes, and a big smile that he flashes with increasing frequency as he warms up to a new acquaintance. Remi’s charisma is manifest, though he is quieter in movement and speech than Ramush. He fixes your gaze in his blue eyes and stops smiling while you are talking to him, pulling meaning out of you quickly. Otherwise relaxed and affectionate, his smile and pat on the back make you feel that you and he are buddies, though it is hard to ignore the intense seriousness that comes when he is listening. His short stature is soon forgotten, as one is drawn in to his careful assessment of how best to organize and deploy outgunned and outnumbered but committed fighting forces. Remi learned military tactics by watching American movies about the Marine Corps and worked secretly with early resistance fighter Zahir Pajaziti north of Prishtina, even while he was head of the LDK youth group in Podujevë and, thus, nominally part of the Peaceful Path Institutionalists. In 2003, international judges in Kosovo sentenced him to seventeen years in prison for activities conducted by forces in his area before and after the war. His conviction was reversed on appeal in 2005 by another panel of international judges in Kosovo.

Where Haradinaj was impulsive, Remi was deliberate. Alone among the major figures in the KLA, Remi had administrative experience. He thought and functioned as a good military manager should, delegating pursuant to clear policies, and organizing a training academy and financial networks of his own. Haradinaj’s methods enabled him to start fighting sooner—indeed, the Serb focus on his location near the arms smuggling routes near the Albanian border forced him to fight sooner. Remi’s emphasis on preparation delayed hostilities and sometimes frustrated Ramush. But Remi was more willing than were any of the other commanders both to recruit skilled, experienced subordinates and to delegate responsibility to them. His was no do-it-yourself operation, though Remi himself led groups of thirty to forty soldiers, walking to Albania and back to fetch weapons.

The affection between Remi and his soldiers is still tangible. Six years after the end of the war, one young soldier who worships Remi accompanied the author of this book to visit him in the Dubrava prison. Both at the beginning and, more extensively, at the end of the meeting, Remi leaned through the opening in the barrier, grasped the young soldier’s neck with one hand and affectionately slapped his face, all the while smiling and expressing his gratitude in seeing him. The young soldier was aglow for an hour afterward.

Albanian Nationalism and New Possibilities

The KLA’s war in Kosovo was a nationalist revolution, a final effort by the 90 percent ethnic Albanian population to displace the Serbian authorities—whom the Albanians saw as foreign oppressors. The six leaders profiled were Albanian nationalists. None had a religious background. Albanian nationalism, however, long had coexisted with an Albanian defeatism and a sense of victimization. The League of Prizren, formed mostly in Kosovo, fought for more autonomy and resisted the breakup of Albanian territories as the Ottoman Empire crumbled. Three hundred members of the league met in Prizren on June 10, 1878, declared Albanian autonomy from the Ottoman Empire, and subsequently expelled the Ottomans from a territory reaching as far north and east as Mitrovica and Prishtina, before being crushed by a considerably larger Ottoman army. During the two “Balkan Wars” of the early twentieth century, Kosovo and Albanian areas of Macedonia were battlegrounds between Serb and Ottoman forces in the first war, and then between Serb and Bulgarian forces in the second.² Serbia penetrated all the way to the Adriatic at one point. Negotiations over the borders of the new state of Albania continued, even as Serb forces took more territory. Finally the allies, not wanting to anger Russia, reluctantly ceded Albanian-dominated lands in present-day Kosovo in December 1913, in the Protocol of Florence. For the remainder of the twentieth century, Kosovar Albanians nursed a grudge not only against the Serbs, whom they saw as foreign occupiers in Kosovo, but also against the great powers of Europe, whom they saw as having repeatedly betrayed or ignored them, and, later, against Tito’s Communism. The Albanian dream had not been extinguished. It lived on in village custom and folk music. But it was hard to see how it could ever be realized.

Protected both by a close-knit extended family structure and by geographic isolation, Albanian nationalism was fueled by a rich set of historical myths, distinctive folk music closely tied to traditional celebrations of marriage and harvest, and a well-developed body of clan-based law. Kosovar Albanians viewed Yugoslavia and Serbia as oppressors who replaced the Ottoman Empire as a barrier to a natural claim for national autonomy. Foreign oppression was the central theme of Albanian folk culture. The Highland Lute, a 15,613–line epic poem, composed between 1902 and 1909 by Albanian author Gjergj Fishta, begins, “Five hundred years are now behind us, since Albania the fair was taken, since the Turks took and ens...