Artikkelen er skrevet før bombingen opphørte, men inneholder likevel mye
interessant informasjon.
Øistein
Et utdrag:
"The KLA splits down a bizarre ideological divide, with hints of fascism on
one side and whiffs of communism on the other. The former faction is led by
the sons and grandsons of rightist Albanian fighters -- either the heirs of
those who fought in the World War II fascist militias and the Skanderbeg
volunteer SS division raised by the Nazis, or the descendants of the
rightist Albanian kacak rebels who rose up against the Serbs 80 years ago.
Although never much of a fighting force, the Skanderbeg division took part
in the shameful roundup and deportation of the province's few hundred Jews
during the Holocaust. The division's remnants fought Tito's Partisans at
the end of the war, leaving thousands of ethnic Albanians dead. The
decision by KLA commanders to dress their police in black fatigues and
order their fighters to salute with a clenched fist to the forehead has led
many to worry about these fascist antecedents. Followin such criticism, the
salute has been changed to the traditional open-palm salute common in the
U.S. Army.
The second KLA faction, comprising most of the KLA leaders in exile, are
old Stalinists who were once bankrolled by the xenophobic Enver Hoxha, the
dictator of Albania who died in 1985. This group led a militant separatist
movement that was really about integration with Hoxha's Albania. Most of
these leaders were students at Pristina University after 1974, when
Belgrade granted the province autonomy. Freed from Yugoslav oversight, the
university imported thousands of textbooks from Albania, all carefully
edited by Hoxha's Stalinist regime, along with at least a dozen militant
Albanian professors. Along with its degree programs, Pristina University
began to quietly school young Kosovar leaders in the art of revolution. Not
only did a huge percentage of the KLA leadership come out of the
university, but so, ominously, did the ethnic Albanian leadership in
neighboring Macedonia.
The two KLA factions have little sympathy with or understanding of
democratic institutions. Split bitterly between radical left and radical
right, they are now arguing over whether to carry the fighting to the
pockets of ethnic Albanians who live in western Macedonia and neighboring
Montenegro. The only thing they agree on is the need to liberate Kosovo
from Serbian rule. All else, menacingly, will be decided later. It is not
said how."