War 101 Taught Kosovo Kids to Kill

Imagine a secondary school class where students learn how to blow up tanks, make booby traps, shoot machine guns and throw hand grenades.

This “civil defense” course was taught at Ulpiana secondary school in Kosovo, along with the rest of the standard curriculum that included math, chemistry, Russian, Serbian literature and gym.

The class appears to have been standard throughout Yugoslavia--one that both Kosovo’s Serbs and ethnic Albanians would have taken. It may help explain the ubiquity of arms and munitions in the province, which these days seems like the Wild West.

Gunfire is background noise, and NATO troops routinely strip automatic rifles, grenades, rocket launchers, pistols and knives from vehicles stopped at random alliance checkpoints. The countryside is littered with land mines, laid by both Serbs and the rebel Kosovo Liberation Army over the past several years.

The course “might explain why all these people are all running around with all these munitions,” British Lt. Col. Andy Reedy said Monday. “We wouldn’t dream of teaching young children to lay booby traps.”

The emphasis on self-defense goes back to the rule of Communist leader Josip Broz Tito, a World War II partisan fighter who led Yugoslavia for more than three decades until his death in 1980. Yugoslav defense policy was predicated on the need to fight off invaders. Arms and military bases were dispersed throughout the country.

British troops stumbled upon the “civil defense” labs in two classrooms in a pleasant, tree-shrouded school in the suburbs of Pristina, the capital of Kosovo. The troops were turning the school into temporary sleeping quarters and, as in many other places that the Serbs had left in a hurry, they found the classroom doors nailed shut.

Once inside, they feared for their own lives. On the floor were dozens of mines of many types--stake mines, antipersonnel mines, antitank mines and bounding mines that spring to waist-high levels.

The troops called in de-mining squads, who realized that the mines were “demonstrator” models intended for educational purposes.

The shelves around the classrooms were filled with gas masks; displays of various types of bullets, grenades and launchers; cases of ammunition; and chemicals in small bottles resembling spice jars. Reedy said they appeared to be used for making small explosive devices.

On the desk were notebooks--whose covers featured innocuous pictures of kittens and hand-drawn hearts--filled with students’ drawings of tanks and grenade launchers.

There were dozens of slides and overlays for overhead projectors, explaining biological and chemical warfare. Another showed the parts of a grenade launcher: the trigger, detonator, stabilizer and tripod.

Slide Shows How to Attack a Tank

“Here’s one that shows how to attack a tank,” Lt. Col. Robin Hodges said. “I’m not sure how many 12-year-olds in England there are who know how to attack a tank.”

The troops also found a textbook with a 1989 copyright--called “Defense and Protection”--featuring a prologue from Tito that says: “We must never forget the fact that youth will bear the biggest burden of war: It means we have to prepare the young so that they can successfully assume these most complex military duties.” Tito always feared an invasion.

Though the book begins with defensive measures such as orienting oneself in a new place and treating injuries, it moves into offensive measures with chapters explaining how to plant a booby trap in a radio. A review section asks students to write down the devices needed to booby trap a radio. The answers, written in pencil in the book, were: an on-off button, an electric detonator, explosive material, a source of electricity.

Booby traps have been reported throughout Kosovo since NATO’s 78 days of bombing ended and refugees began heading home. Representatives for the North Atlantic Treaty Organization say many of the reports have turned out to be false alarms, though at least one booby trap has killed a looter.

The book also offers suggested essay topics, such as “Why rifles sometimes can be used more effectively than a cannon.”

It appears that the Ulpiana school taught the course to both ethnic Albanian and Serbian children until political disputes forced a split in the school system in 1991. The British troops found some materials in the Albanian language stuffed in a closet.

Ethnic Albanians later taught similar courses in their own schools.

Booby-Trap Lesson Came in Handy

Mimoza Salihu, 19, an ethnic Albanian resident of Lipljan, said she learned about mines, hand grenades and booby traps in her civil defense course. She explained how to booby trap a lamp so that it explodes when the light switch is turned on. The course came in handy, she said.

“When we went back to our homes [after the war], it was useful to figure out whether there were booby traps and how they could be planted,” she said.

The British troops plan to pack up the classroom gear and send it to Britain to be analyzed. Then it will be used in courses teaching soldiers about mines, Reedy said.

Such models are difficult to find and are expensive in Britain, he said.

* ANOTHER GRIM DISCOVERY: The charred remains of 20 Kosovars are uncovered. A10

* SERBIAN CLERGY’S OUTCRY: Global acquiescence to a Kosovo Serb exodus is decried. A10