hands by killing Serbian civilians. The Civic League does not condone the retaliation of Kosovars against Serbian civilians in Kosova, and the provisional government of Hashim Thaci and the UCK commanders have also made it clear that they do not condone acts of retaliation.

Nevertheless, the Albanian American Civic League believes that it is grotesque for anyone to equate Albanians engaged in acts of revenge with the Serbian perpetrators of genocide. The Civic League asks the United States and Europe to recognize that, after a decade of Serbia's brutal occupation, followed by a year of mass expulsion and mass extermination, it is not surprising that Kosovar Albanians would retaliate against the Serbian population in Kosova. This is regrettable, but all the more understandable, because a large number of Serbian civilians were directly responsible for the torture, murder, and flight of their Albanian neighbors during the war, and because they continue to prey on Albanians in postwar Kosova.

In order to put a stop to violence against Serbs, the West must also examine its own role as a catalyst of ethnic revenge. NATO and the UN Mission have yet to confront the fact that Albanian reprisals are the direct result of Western indifference to and complicity in the destruction of Kosovar Albanians since the beginning of the occupation, inaction while Serbian war criminals go free, insistence that Kosovar Albanians work together with their tormentors, reneging on the promise to transform the KLA into a national police force, failure to protect Albanians from armed Serb civilians and paramilitaries who have remained in Kosova, and lax enforcement of the KFOR's mandate in the French and Italian zones, which has led to the creation of protected Serbian enclaves in cities of economic and political importance to Albanians, such as Mitrovice and Rahovec.

Demilitarization of the KLA Must Be Linked to Albanian Security

General Michael Jackson, head of NATO's defense force in Kosova, and Clinton administration have emphasized since the end of the war that the provisional government of Hashim Thaci and the KLA were cooperating with the interim administration in every way. The cooperation has included the surrender of UCK's weapons to the occupation force.

However, the Albanian American Civic League believes that the KLA should not comply with the September 19, 1999 deadline for demilitarization and disbanding as long as Serbian civilians refuse to turn over their weapons to NATO and as long as Serbian paramilitaries and Russian members of the peacekeeping force who previously fought in the Yugoslav Army as the "Czar's Wolves" remain in Kosova.

Until the perpetrators of genocide are arrested and removed from Kosova, the Albanian people will need protection. The need for protection has intensified, now that the Yugoslav army has threatened to invade Kosova if the UN administration does not allow a quota of Serbian soldiers and police to return to Kosova, as it indicated it would in the war-ending agreement.

The Albanian American Civic League believes that because the KLA has the respect of Kosovar Albanians they should be transformed into the Kosova Army. As the KLA has recently demonstrated in Mitrovica, where they have stopped the rioting in favor of organizing nonviolent protests against the ongoing partitioning of the city, they have the ability to provide security to the entire population of Kosova.

Throughout the summer, NATO accused the KLA of not doing enough to stop the arbitrary seizure of Albanian property and businesses and the imposition of taxes and the terrorization of Serbs and Roma. Some of this activity is coming from Albanian gangs who have crossed the unpatrolled border to subject Kosovar Albanians to intimidation and extortion, and some of this activity is being carried out by local thugs and rogue elements within the KLA. But the onus should be placed not on the KLA, but on NATO, as the only organization capable of preventing the criminalization of Kosova. The Civic League calls on NATO to stop the flow of criminal elements across the Albanian border.

The Future of the KLA

The Albanian American Civic League was the first organization in the United States to come out publicly in support of the KLA in February 1998. From that time onward, the Civic League has played a major role in promoting political and material support for the KLA within the U.S. Congress and the Clinton administration. At the conclusion of the NATO bombing campaign, the Civic League announced support for the provisional government of Hashim Thaci, until democratic elections could be held in a free, unoccupied Kosova. The Civic League went public with its support because it believed that Albanians everywhere owed a debt to the Kosova Liberation Army.

In spite of the fact that some members of the provisional government are committed and able patriots, today we find it necessary to seriously question support for the Thaci government. The Civic League is concerned about: 1) the provisional government's exclusion of many Albanian intellectuals and professionals in Kosova and in the diaspora from the political reconstruction effort, 2) the breakdown in its relationship with many of KLA's commanders, 3) its maintenance of close ties with the Communist government of Tirana, after the need to transport weapons through Albania has passed, 4) its enduring relationship with some of the people who were responsible for the Communist takeover of Albania in 1997, and 5 ) its alliance with some of the people in the U.S. government and in the Albanian American community who support Kosova's independence half-heartedly. (continued on next page)

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