PRISTINA, Yugoslavia -- A faint semblance of normal life has taken hold in parts of Kosovo, if life can be considered normal when thousands of NATO soldiers are patrolling the streets and highways in light and heavy armor.
Couples stroll the main boulevard here, while British soldiers ride by in open-hatched vehicles, pointing their automatic weapons at apartment house balconies as they pass.
Kosovo Liberation Army soldiers have taken off their uniforms and put away their guns -- but not so far out of reach that they couldn't retrieve them in a hurry.
The relative calm that prevails in such cities as Pristina and Prizren is an illusion of sorts -- an illusion imposed by the armies of the Western powers. In those towns where NATO has not been out in force, houses have been pillaged and burned, and people are still dying. Last week, it was the Serbs doing the damage; this week, it is ethnic Albanians.
The KLA has agreed to "demilitarize" over the next 90 days, which NATO hopes will help to transform the illusion of calm into something closer to reality.
The political leader of the KLA, Hashim Thaci, told a news conference here yesterday: "We are not interested in building a criminal society."
But building a civil society is going to be a tall order.
Kosovo is full of guns, hatred, shattered buildings and ruined lives. The alliance commander, Lt. Gen. Sir Michael Jackson of Britain, said yesterday of the first 10 days of the peacekeeping mission: "I wouldn't pretend it's all been plain sailing -- but perhaps a little less volatile than I thought it would be."
In a short time there will be more NATO soldiers in Kosovo than there were Yugoslav soldiers and police combined, and no one imagines that they'll be leaving anytime soon. At the end of next week, an international police force will be deployed, answering to Sergio de Mello, the interim special representative of the United Nations, who will be running the civilian side of things here.
Aid agencies, including Catholic Relief Services of Baltimore, are bringing in millions of dollars' worth of food every week.
Kosovo is almost wholly dependent on the rest of the world. Security, order and basic necessities are in the hands of foreigners.
For many Kosovar Albanians, that is fine for now. Qamil Braha, who says he was a KLA soldier, left the rebels last week and went to Albania to retrieve his family, who had been staying in a refugee camp. They headed for home in the village of Grejkovc, where Braha says he intends to take up the life of a farmer again and forget about war.
He knows he will have to live on food aid until next year's harvest.
The angels of peace
Throughout Kosovo, people who cheer the KLA were at the same time expressing relief yesterday over its promised demilitarization. They are glad that the guns the KLA so swaggeringly toted on the street last week have largely disappeared -- and they know that it's because of the NATO peacekeeping force known as KFOR that this has happened.
"KFOR soldiers will be the angels. They'll keep the peace," said Dr. Fazli Zyferi, a surgeon who returned to work yesterday at the Pristina hospital from which he was fired 10 years ago for being Albanian.
Even Serbian civilians, some of whom fled Kosovo in the past week and are now beginning to return, have realized that NATO troops are their best defense against vengeful Albanians.
Just now, said Dr. Salih Ahmeti, an infectious disease specialist, seeing the soldiers every day is the best thing imaginable for the Kosovar Albanians who are experiencing simultaneous feelings of euphoria and terrible pain.
"Our nation is in deep trauma," he said. "And my patients' traumas are more psychological than organic. We need some sort of psychological rehabilitation. I'd say the best therapy for people right now is to have KFOR troops in the streets of Kosovo."
His friends tell him that because of those troops they can sleep well again, and they aren't haunted by fears of death or torture. After 10 years in which they were deprived of rights, and a year of vicious warfare, Kosovar Albanians act genuinely grateful to the Western soldiers who have restored them to their land and now stand guard over it.
"But this won't last long," Ahmeti said. "People like to work for themselves and to not expect something from someone else."
Gratitude almost inevitably will turn to resentment. And the people of Kosovo will begin to think they want to run their own lives.
Before that happens, Western agencies are intent on embedding what might be called European standards as deeply as possible.
The international police force will train a new local police organization in modern methods and discipline. KLA members will receive preferential consideration for the new force, but only after thorough screening.
Thaci said yesterday that his organization will be "uncompromising" when it comes to dealing with crimes, whether committed by Albanian or Serb. As he spoke, James P. Rubin, the State Department spokesman, sat beside him, nodding assent.
The European Union plans to provide development aid for Kosovo, an area where people have always had a head for business, but where, because they were marginalized by the Serbs, they often had to deal on the shadowy edges of the economy. The goal is to rebuild the province and bring it into the world of international business.
In the schools, Catholic Relief Services plans to create programs aimed at breaking the generations-long enmity between Balkan ethnic groups. The idea is to introduce notions of tolerance according to the standards of Western Europe.
Uncertainty and memories
"But there's going to be a lot of frustration along the way," said Tom Garofalo of the CRS office in Pristina. For one thing, the status of Kosovo -- and Kosovars -- is unclear.
And memories here are long-lasting.
"This is the second time that the Germans are liberating Prizren," said a delighted Naxhi Bilibani, who owns a photo shop there, as he watched armored vehicles painted with the Iron Cross pass by. "When the Germans came during the Second World War, we were free. We were really free."
To Albanians, the Nazi occupation meant getting one up on the Serbs. To the Serbs, whose partisan fighters were among the Nazis' most determined foes, the Albanians were despicable collaborators. Neither side can forget those wounds.
And now the Kosovar Albanians have a new set of memories to nurture.
"You see what they did to us; they stole everything," said Ahmeti, who returned to his job at the Pristina hospital yesterday. "They stole my stethoscope. They stole all my books. My Serbian colleagues."
Then, in what sounded eerily like the refrain of a new national epic, or perhaps a folk song, about a city in western Kosovo that is coming to stand for all that the Serbs did to the Albanians, he said, "Have you been to Peja? They destroyed everything."
Pub Date: 6/22/99