Get Up to Speed, NATO

NATO couldn’t muster the political will to commit ground forces to the war over Kosovo and now it’s having trouble deploying the soldiers who are needed there to keep the peace. As of Wednesday, fewer than half of the 50,000 Western troops assigned to KFOR--Kosovo Force, the peacekeeping operation--had arrived in the rebellious Serbian province. With all Serbian military and police forces now gone, a power vacuum exists that the guerrilla Kosovo Liberation Army has moved quickly to fill.

Spread thin, NATO’s soldiers have been unable or, in some sectors, unwilling, to halt the violence between ethnic Albanians and Serbs or to prevent looting and arson. Gen. Wesley K. Clark, the American supreme commander of NATO, wants the buildup accelerated. But so far even the United States, pledging 7,000 troops, has managed to send in only half the number promised.

The KLA’s agreement with NATO calls for its phased “demilitarization” over the next three months. That requires KLA soldiers, believed to number as many as 40,000, to give up their heavy weapons and stop wearing their uniforms and insignia in public. NATO in turn has agreed to consider letting the KLA be reconstituted as a national guard, meaning its members would be civilians who train and serve as part-time soldiers. That could be useful for Kosovo’s future. But NATO’s priority for now is to quickly replace the KLA’s forces in those places where they hold sway.

As is so often the case in rebellions, the KLA has attracted a mix of patriots, opportunists and thugs, some of whom have proven to be no less brutal than the Serbs they fought against. Before the Kosovo war the State Department identified some elements of the KLA as terrorists. Many of NATO’s European members, with long historical memories not shared by Americans, worry that the KLA, unless it is rapidly disbanded and disarmed, could evolve into a radical and destabilizing Islamic movement in the Balkans.

The end of Belgrade’s ironhanded rule over Kosovo brings a chance for representative local government to take root. But that can happen only in a climate free of threats and intimidation. The presence throughout the province of armed KLA troops, some of whom are eager to take revenge against Serbs, some of whom are bent on holding on to power, is inevitably coercive. The countries that are contributing to KFOR, including the United States, should heed Gen. Clark’s urgent call and speed up the pace of their troop movements into Kosovo.