Ukrainian Peacekeepers to Go to a Troubled Area

President of Ukraine Leonid Kuchma has signed a Decree whereby 800 Ukrainian servicemen will join the international peace-keeping forces in Kosovo (KFOR).

And although life in the long-suffering province is gradually being normalized, the Ukrainian peacekeepers will find it hard to serve there. Despite UN and NATO assurances about creating equal conditions for the existence of all ethnic groups in the area and the defense of Serbs, Montenegrins, and Gypsies, who made up about 10% of the Kosovo population before the war (the rest being ethnic Albanians), the non-Albanian Kosovars now feel uneasy, to put it mildly. Information agencies report daily on murders, beatings, and intimidation of Kosovo's Serb population. For example, AP reported yesterday that the body of a 90-year-old Serb woman was found strangled in her own bathroom in the provincial capital Pristina. In addition, two Serbs were killed in Prizren, one near Vitin, and the bodies of another two, killed a few days before, were found near Kamenica. This is why most Serbs, who did not leave Kosovo during the NATO bombings, are now fleeing the province under the pressure of violence on the part of their Albanian neighbors. The calls of peacekeepers to behave in a civilized way, to refrain from taking revenge on the innocent peaceful residents for the crimes of Milosevic's army, police and paramilitaries, are not heeded by a considerable part of Albanians. They proceed not from the high principles of 20th-century humane morals but from the medieval maxim: «An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth.» Peacekeepers are unable to guard each and every Serb, so they now confine themselves only to providing transport and protection to the Serbs who flee Kosovo. More fuel to the fire is also being added by ethnic cleansings reportedly carried out by Serbian authorities with respect to Albanians living in southern Serbia proper, on the border with Kosovo. In any case, 4,500 refugees have already arrived in Kosovo from there over the past few days.

Meanwhile, Kosovo University opened its doors last Tuesday after a ten-year break. In 1989, it was closed, and all teachers were dismissed. The university has existed semi-legally for a solid decade: classes were conducted in private apartments, but the degrees the students received were not recognized by the Yugoslav state. This is why the graduates could not be employed according to their special training. Now justice seems to have prevailed, but university rector Zenel Kelmendi does not plan on teaching any subjects in the Serbian language. Hence, local Serbs are now in fact deprived of the right to higher education, as once were the Kosovo Albanians.

Interethnic tension in Kosovo may diminish a little if power changes in Belgrade and Yugoslavia are led by forces the West will agree to deal with. And chances for this are not so slim: protests against the rule of Slobodan Milosevic are becoming more and more active, and the Monday before last the Serbian Orthodox Church in Kosovo came out against him in as strongly-worded terms as never before. Its head, Bishop Artemius, called not only for relieving Milosevic of his post but also for putting him, as a war criminal, on trial at the International Tribunal in the Hague.