NATO peacekeepers 'unable' to keep lid on violence in Kosovo

The report, by a five-man team sent from UN headquarters in New York, paints a picture of a mission in crisis.

It says the 18,000-strong NATO force cannot currently maintain safety and security in Kosovo, adding that the UN administration is even incapable of providing security for foreign diplomats and for itself.

The findings have wide- spread implications for the UN’s so-called "nation-building programmes", from East Timor to Haiti.

The report focused on the response of the UN’s mission in Kosovo (UNMIK) to an outbreak of ethnic violence that engulfed the province in March this year, the worst such outbreak in the former Yugoslav province since NATO and the UN arrived in June 1999.

"Many [of those interviewed] believe that UNMIK and K-FOR (NATO’s peacekeeping mission) would have collapsed had the riots gone on for another day or two," says the internal audit.

It continues: "Both UNMIK and K-FOR were overwhelmed by the events. K-FOR currently has neither the strength nor the posture required to maintain a ‘safe and secure environment’ within a civilian population."

The report is damning, and would be a blistering indictment of any UN mission anywhere in the world. The huge difference with Kosovo is that the UN administration is the de facto government, and when crisis strikes the UN cannot simply evacuate.

The province has been under international administration since a 78-day NATO bombing campaign ended in June 1999, and ex-president Slobodan Milosevic went to the negotiating table with NATO and the international community.

On 17 and 18 March this year, after months of comparative peace, a concerted and orchestrated Albanian ethnic cleansing operation went into action in Kosovo, targeting Serbs and other ethnic minorities. It took NATO and the UN by surprise.

"[UNMIK] appears to have developed a habit of closing its eyes to the facts on the ground ... the leadership was not interested in what goes on in the province," says the report.

The UN mission was at that stage led by a timid Finnish politician, Harri Holkeri. As the violence spread, the UN’s command and control structures proved inadequate in the face of large-scale civic disorder.

Nineteen Serbs and Albanians were killed, some 900 wounded, and 550 Serb and minority homes burnt along with 27 Orthodox churches and monasteries, as an estimated 50,000 Albanians went on a rampage in the province.

The NATO-led force, known as Kosovo Force, or K-FOR, "failed catastrophically" to protect ethnic minorities, said Human Rights Watch in a report released this June.

UNMIK carried out a series of performance assessments shortly after the violence, but so bad was the leadership and tactical co-ordination of the mission during the rioting that in late May a five-man internal affairs team arrived from New York headquarters to report back directly to Jean-Marie Guehenno, under-secretary-general for UN peacekeeping operations. They spent ten days in Kosovo.

"UNMIK is in a funk," their report says. "After five years on the ground, progress towards UNMIK’s objectives remains elusive and the mission seems to be nearing the point of overstaying its welcome. There are obstacles on all fronts, and the outlook for the medium term is worse.

"The [UNMIK] line staff reflected a sense of futility, compounded by a sense of deep frustration over what they experience as an operation adrift, with an organisational culture that inhibits communication, frowns on candour and stymies initiative.

"UNMIK is seen as aloof and are strangers in the society they govern."

Neither UNMIK in Kosovo or UNHQ in New York would comment on the report. However, UNMIK now has a new pro-consul, the experienced Dane Soren Jessen-Petersen, an old UN hand. Meanwhile, NATO has a new force commander, the experienced French general, Yves de Kermabon.

It might not be too late to turn UNMIK and K-FOR around. Both bodies say that things have improved since March.