Critics say U.N. should face reality, turn
KPC into disciplined defensive force
By Terry Boyd and Scott Schonauer, Stars and Stripes
PRISTINA, Kosovo — The program designed to convert Kosovo Liberation Army
guerrillas into firemen, road builders and disaster relief workers never had a chance to
succeed, critics say.
Under funded, ill-equipped and poorly designed, the two-year-old Kosovo Protection
Corps, known as the KPC, needs to change in order to continue, they add.
But the changes proposed remain hotly debated.
There is "a clear perception that the International Community needs to ‘do
something about the KPC’" according to a report by the International Crisis
Group.
The crisis group’s report contends the U.N. should face reality and make the corps
into a disciplined defense force.
But the U.N. disagrees and would rather see a much smaller corps.
A current United Nations report recommends cutting the civil assistance program by 40
percent from 5,000 members to 3,000.
Such a reduction, which would create a nonactive reserve, "was always envisaged,
always part of the deal" creating the corps, said Ian McNeill, a U.N. liaison to the
corps.
Additionally, McNeill said he has met with officials from the Kosovo Force and the
International Organization of Migration, which trains corps members, about changing the
groups’ strategic priorities.
McNeill declined to discuss specifics, saying only that the corps would continue to
follow its five mandates.
Those are:
- Providing disaster response capability, including for major fires and industrial
accidents or spills.
- Conducting search and rescue operations.
- Providing humanitarian assistance in isolated areas.
- Assisting in de-mining.
- Rebuilding infrastructure and communities.
Under the 1999 U.N. resolutions disarming the Kosovo Liberation Army and converting
them into the corps, the former fighters are forbidden from participating in military
training, police work or any sort of law enforcement activities.
Only the U.N.’s general secretary’s special representative in Kosovo can
change the corps’ mission.
The International Crisis Group, based in Brussels, Belgium, is a private, international
organization that advocates international cooperation in preventing conflicts.
Its board includes several former high-ranking U.S. officials including Richard Allen,
head of the National Security Council under the Reagan administration, and retired U.S.
Army Gen. Wesley Clark, who commanded the 78-day NATO air campaign that drove Yugoslav
forces out of Kosovo in 1999.
In the crisis group’s report, it recommends putting the 5,000-man corps under
tighter military control, with greater support for its commander.
Reducing the corps’ numbers would be a mistake, the report states. Large numbers
of ex-fighters would return to civilian life without jobs.
"Having achieved the present situation in Kosovo through violence [as they see it]
many could be tempted to continue the process of the national struggle in this way,"
the report states.
International administrators and peacekeepers would no longer be able to keep track of
the former guerrillas if its numbers are slashed.
Corps leaders — all former KLA commanders — and international administrators
have disagreed on exactly what the TMK should ultimately be.
The crisis group’s top Kosovo official says that the failure of international
administrators wasn’t leaving the KLA’s structure intact in the corps.
The mistake was not letting peacekeepers convert the victorious rebels into a
disciplined defense force under international tutelage, said Bob Churcher, ICG’s
Kosovo director.
KFOR commanders should face reality and train and equip the corps, not try to make
guerrilla fighters into some vaguely defined civil agency, Churcher said. No one can make
former rebel fighters into a civil support group.
"It’s demeaning," he said. "American soldiers wouldn’t do
that. They’d say it’s demeaning. That’s what you have contractors
for."
Instead, KFOR and the U.N. should have fashioned the corps into a national defense
force "with a national ethos," using the example of Rhodesian guerrillas who
were transformed into Zimbabwe’s army during the early 1980s.
Churcher conceded that the fundamental problem with turning the corps into
Kosovo’s army is that Kosovo legally belongs to Yugoslavia. The Serbian
province’s ultimate status remains undecided.
ICG officials "can have any opinions that they want," said McNeill, adding
that U.N. resolutions "are very clear that the corps must remain a civilian emergency
service corps."
In the interim, "if [international peacekeepers] want ambulance crews and
firefighters and people to help old ladies cross the street ... they need to give [the
corps] some pretty intensive training," Churcher said.
Some money, to help train and pay salaries, is on its way.
In the largest donation of the year, the European Agency for Reconstruction provided
about $5 million in March for the purchase of office equipment, fire fighting equipment,
tools, computers, and a number of cargo and passenger vans.
The U.N. will provide the corps with a $9 million budget for this fiscal year — 75
percent of which goes to pay salaries.
Donor nations need to give the corps more equipment to keep members’ attentions,
Churcher said. "They don’t even have fire trucks to polish."
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