Thaçi’s departure for and return to Kosovo, a barometer of the West’s seriousness
Andi Bejtja When KLA leader Hashim Thaçi was to set off for Rambouillet to sign the peace plan, which the West was insistently demanding, he departed from Pristina airport surrounded by foreign soldiers and NATO aircraft, making the Serbian soldiers gnash their teeth in anger. But after Rambouillet, where his signature and that of the force he represented were decisive, the same care was not shown for him. He was left completely “orphaned” by the international community, to the point that he was forced to risk his life in his attempts to cross the Yugoslav border, where he was expected to speak with the KLA General Staff about the agreement. Moreover, on his return, he was not merely the KLA leader, but Kosovo’s new Prime Minister—the leading figure, the true key to peace for the Albanian side. The contrast is truly painful and tragic. At a time when the West, NATO and the United States are talking about bombing Serbia and have, in a way, become a sort of party alongside the Albanians against the Serbian offensive, letting the people who stand against the peace cross the border by “heads or tails” is deeply disturbing. One of Thaçi’s companions, speaking to the Tirana press, said that their lives really were in danger as they crossed the border, and that if they had run into the Serbian patrol, either they or the Serbs would have been killed. How can the West leave the “key” in the hands of a patrol of soldiers, especially when it is known that Thaçi has been sentenced by the Serbian authorities to 10 years in prison? What would have happened, for example, if Thaçi—God forbid—had died trying to cross the border? How would the West and NATO justify themselves, when Thaçi had visited NATO headquarters with the status of a senior official? And, after all, how can the prime minister of a country that has, not unwillingly, become an ally of the West once again be left at the mercy of fate and a Serbian patrol, which, to be fair, must be said to be legally entitled to shoot anyone who crosses the border illegally? This detail, about Thaçi’s departure for and return to Kosovo, is the true mirror in which the West sees itself in Kosovo. It is something serious and unserious, something between bombing and not bombing, something between violating human rights and diplomatic interests that point in the opposite direction, something between determination and indecision, something that even the West itself does not understand. And that is not all. Everyone knew Milošević’s scenario after the Serbian “No” at Rambouillet: wait until NATO decides, wait until the Russians finish their visits to Belgrade, while we kill as many as we can. Western bureaucracy once again, as in many other cases, proved more important than other people’s lives, more important than the lives of innocent people—to the point that all parties to conflicts, anywhere in the world, have adopted an unwritten rule: if the blood quota has not been filled, the West does not implement the agreements it talks about every day.