SERBIA: Messy endgame delays U.S. exit from Kosovo

The United States will maintain the level of troops in Kosovo unchanged for the next 18 months, until the status of the Serbian province is resolved. From the vantage point of a U.S. Black Hawk helicopter, the new road to Debelde cuts a tidy yellow line through autumn leaves and tilled farmland nudging Kosovo's southern border with Macedonia. The road was a U.S. military project completed six weeks ago, transforming the mud path to the remote mountain village and improving access for the ethnic Albanians living there. It's the 'soft-power' of U.S. peacekeepers in a region where gunrunners and smugglers flit back and forth over the porous border that cuts Debelde from its sister village of Tanusevci in Macedonia, a niggling threat to stability. Stretched by campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan, the U.S. military had hoped to be out of Serbia's breakaway southern province by now, eight years since deploying with NATO into a second Balkan conflict after Bosnia. But faced with Russian-West deadlock on the Kosovo demand for independence, and the prospect of the Albanian majority striking out alone, an influential U.S. presence - currently 1,600 National Guardsmen - is seen as crucial. Thoughts of a drawdown with the planned end of Serb-Albanian negotiations in December are on hold for at least another 18 months, during which Albanians are expected to declare independence and seek recognition in a messy end to their eight-year limbo as a United Nations protectorate. Leaders of Serbia and Kosovo hold another round of talks on Monday (October 22) in Vienna, with no breakthrough in sight. "Our successors that are here on the ground, I know for a fact they are same size as we are. There's another rotation already planned after them, of the same size as we are," said U.S. Brigadier General Douglas Earhart, who hands over command of U.S. troops in Kosovo next month. "As you start looking at what it's going to be different 18 months from now, I think that you can probably make the case that even more progress is going to be made; it's going to be even more stable, and depending on the exact outcome of the diplomatic process, you can certainly make a case that a reduced security presence might be okay," Earhart told Reuters. Earhart spoke before flying by helicopter to the ribbon-cutting ceremony at a new community centre in the Serb village of Partes in the east, built by Serbs and Albanians with 180,000 U.S. dollars of Pentagon funds. U.S. command zone takes in U.S. humanitarian projects in hard-up villages with once-leaking school roofs and remote hamlets with new roads to improve medical access - 1 million dollars worth in the past year. Earhart said he focused on the 40,000 Serbs in clustered enclaves across his command zone, around one third of the remaining Kosovo Serb population. Reports in recent months of armed groups operating around Tanusevci, where smugglers and criminals have carved out a police no-go area, have heightened fears of regional unrest if Kosovo Albanians lose patience with the West's stalled bid to grant independence in the face of Serb and Russian opposition. "There is no doubt in mind about KFOR's resolve to manage the situation in a way that keeps everything under control, even in the face of more status delays or perhaps postponement of decisions and that sort of thing," said Earhart. Eight years later, analysts warn a messy endgame could revive insurgencies by Albanians in Macedonia and southern Serbia, put down in 2001 by NATO and European Union diplomacy. The Macedonian conflict began in Tanusevci. Earhart said U.S. troops had established a 'forward operating base' in Debelde and soldiers regularly camped in the village for days at a time. "It's just to keep everybody on an even keel and remembering that we're here not only to support them but to keep order down there and prevent bad guys doing things that would be disruptive to the process." The interview took place in the sprawling U.S. military base Bondsteel in southern Kosovo, built in three months in 1999 to house 7,000 troops, its perimeter stretching seven kilometres. NATO leads 16,000 soldiers in Kosovo, down from 45,000 when it deployed in 1999 on the heels of retreating Serb forces bombed into stopping their killing and ethnic cleansing of Albanian civilians in a two-year counter-insurgency war. Their future is uncertain, particularly if Kosovo declares independence without a U.N. resolution and wins recognition from Washington and its major European Union allies. A backlash by the Serb-dominated north could spark tit-for-tat violence against Serbs elsewhere. Recognised by some states but shunned by others, Kosovo could remain a source of regional tension for years to come. Earhart said KFOR was up to the test, and dismissed reports that some states might withdraw their troops rather than recognise the new state.

ITN Source | October 19, 2007

Tags:. .breakthrough. .mud. .elsewhere. .autumn. .rotation