Second paragraph of third section:
Immediately after the war, a commission for transforming the KLA was set up, including representatives of KFOR, UNMIK, the KLA, and the FARK. The commission met approximately 40 times in order to determine the details of transforming the KLA. Three variants were discussed: the transformation of the KLA a) into a National Guard with 14,000 men; b) into a territorial defense with an active reserve, modeled on the old Yugoslavian pattern; and c) a combination of a) and b). KFOR and UNMIK rejected the Kosovar ideas since it was feared they could be a precedent for independence. As a result, the KPC model was actually dictated by the protectorate powers. The ambiguity with regard to the future role of the KPC was accepted by both sides. It is no coincidence that the Albanian name of the organization—Trupat Mbrojtese te Kosoves (TMK)—can also be translated as Kosovo Defense Corps. The question of why KFOR accepted the creation of a thinly veiled KLA successor organization remains open. Some possible answers include the emotional attachment NATO officers felt for the professionalism of their KLA counterparts (German General Reinhardt has, on occasion, noted that KLA commander Hashim Thaci was “like a son” to him). The hope that the KPC might play a useful ‘proxy’ role in combating violent acts by Yugoslav or Kosovo Serb forces may have played a role too. According to a statement repeatedly heard by the authors in Kosovo in early 2001, KFOR was simply interested in retaining some degree of control over the more radical firebrands within the KLA structures—“better in the KPC and under control, than in the hills and on the loose”.
As I work through my books acquired in 2022, there will be quite a few about Kosovo, because I stocked up on the subject in that year for a project that ultimately did not come to pass. This is a very brief start, an analytical paper from the Bonn Institute for Conflict Studies, dating from 2001, so only two years after the end of the conflict and before the debate about Kosovo’s future status shifted decisively in favour of independence.
It does what it says in the title, though the historical part has now been much more comprehensively covered by James Pettifer in The Kosova Liberation Army, and the present to near future part has been completely overtaken by events, starting with the 2001 conflict in North Macedonia which broke out only a few weeks after this paper was published. However it does bust a few myths about the origins and structure of the KLA, which was important to the overall narrative at the time.
In retrospect, the weird thing is that people in the international community were so neuralgic about the future security arrangements of the Kosovo government, independent or not. In my last year at the International Crisis Group (2006), we published a paper advocating a model which was pretty close to the eventual Kosovo Security Force which was founded in 2009. The skies have not fallen.
This was the shortest book on my unread pile acquired in 2022. Next is The Spark the Survived, by Myra Lewis Williams.
