The violence that disfigured Kosovo in March led to 19 deaths, mostly among the ethnic Serb minority. In the wider scheme of international bloodshed, not least in Iraq, such a small number of deaths hardly registers. Yet murder is murder whether it is committed in ones and twos or by the hundreds of thousands as in Rwanda.
The United Nations Administration in Kosovo (UNMIK) is therefore to be applauded for acting with such decisive speed in identifying and arresting some 260 people, from both the ethnic Albanian and Serb communities, on suspicion of being involved in the intercommunal violence. If prosecutions follow swiftly and are seen to be conducted fairly, an important message will be sent out far beyond the borders of Kosovo.
For too long terrible crimes have gone unpunished because they took place in riots involving whole communities. Changing people’s hearts and melting the granite walls of often ancient prejudice is a task of years, if not generations. But appropriate punishment for crimes motivated by those timeworn hatreds must be firm and swift. If a man allows himself to give savage vent to his feelings, he must know that he will bear the consequences under the law.
It is not simply a case of identifying the ringleaders, though they are the most culpable. It is also important that ordinary people who allowed themselves to be caught up in the vicious hysteria of the moment should also be punished for their abandonment of all standards of decency. If they had listened to the rabble-rousers and then turned their backs and walked away, there would have been no serious riots. The bigots could have done their worst but it would have amounted to nothing without a mob to carry them along. That they found such a mob is a blot upon the people of Kosovo.
That said, the UN must now do a lot more than prosecute all those with blood on their hands. Though it can in no way excuse what happened, there is frustration among the Albania majority at the slow pace of negotiations on the future of this UN-administered province.
UNMIK’s plan is to develop a multiethnic democracy and the rule of law and hold off the final decision as to whether Kosovo will become fully independent, as the majority want, or will become a fully autonomous part of the Federation of Serbia and Montenegro of which it is still legally a part. On the face of it, Kosovo ought to be flourishing under UN protection and with international aid. That it is not suggests that the UN has underestimated the challenge of re-establishing confidence among a once marginalized and brutalized ethnic Albanian community.
