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IN BOLD BLACK STREAKS OF SPILLED motor oil, the Kosovo Liberation Army has scrawled the words ZONA E LIRE, or FREE ZONE, across the pavement of many a Pristina street. Beyond are neighborhoods of Albanians only, where the KLA insurgents openly don their red and black fatigue uniforms and throw up roadblocks, checking IDs and searching cars. Serb civilians, who are a minority in the provincial capital, no longer enter such areas--during the day Serbian police go only in force and wearing body armor, and at night they don't enter at all. In broad daylight KLA fighters don plainclothes and knock on doors of Albanian homes. Letting themselves in, they order their surprised hosts to let them inspect their basements--just in case they need refuge one day. Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic's police and Army still rule in Kosovo, but even in the capital it's increasingly the KLA who rule on the streets.
That's something new. So far the KLA's war has been in rural villages, where the guerrillas control perhaps 25 percent of the countryside. Whenever the apparently disorganized KLA has struck in larger towns, it has been beaten back by Serbs deploying tanks, heavy artillery and even jet fighters. Pristina can still look like a bustling provincial town during the day, and a sleepy one at night. But just beneath the surface, Pristina now is as peaceful--and as pro-government--as Saigon was on the eve of Tet. NEWSWEEK reporters who spoke to people on both sides last week found the possibility of an imminent uprising in the capital on the minds of both Serbs and Albanians. One by one, young Albanian men are disappearing from the city, like 20-year-old Kreshnik did when he finished school last week. "All of us talked about it," said a 17-year-old friend, Visar Xhaferi. "But Kreshnik finally had the courage to do it." Other KLA fighters take some time off from the war in the villages to stroll through Pristina's cafes--confident their fellow Albanians won't turn them in, even though everyone seems to know who they are. "We ran into each other on the street," 21-year-old Fis said of a KLA soldier he knew from a village. "He saluted me as a joke." Miss Kosovo 1997, 19-year-old Adelina Ismajli, wearing KLA-style fatigues, posed for photographers. "I'd pick up a gun myself if I weren't so skinny," she says.
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"KLA Kool" is a real problem for the moderate Albanian leadership. Led by Ibrahim Rugova, the old guard has kept the Albanians on a peaceful course of nonparticipation in Serbian life ever since Milosevic stripped the province of its autonomy in 1989. Western diplomats have managed to get Rugova and Milosevic to begin negotiations; last weekend Milosevic reportedly said he would agree to allow Kosovo to become a republic within the Yugoslav federation. That would make the province nominally equal to Serbia, which it's now part of, and Montenegro, the other remaining republic in the federation. But sources close to Rugova complain that the KLA has threatened to kill any negotiators who support anything short of full independence. And while Rugova remains widely popular among Albanians, his patient approach is not. "The KLA appears to be present a lot in Pristina," said Shkelzen Maliqi, one of Rugova's negotiating team. "They are checking IDs and pretending to be Albanian police. A couple of days ago they were distributing leaflets throughout Pristina calling on Albanians not to trust politicians and to join the armed uprising."
That uprising hasn't all gone the KLA's way. Two weeks ago it made a bold attempt to take Orahovac, using some antitank weapons to drive Serb officials from the mostly Albanian town of 20,000. In the counterattack the entire Albanian population was driven away and dozens of Albanian fighters killed. Orahovac is now a Serb town. An attempt earlier to take the valuable coal mines at Belacevac, only five miles from the capital, ended in a KLA rout. So far the KLA appears to have no coherent strategy, with unruly and disorganized local groups launching their own actions.
The KLA has yet to directly challenge Serb police in Pristina. But if an uprising comes, it won't be pretty. "Conflict in Pristina could be worse than Sarajevo," said a Western analyst based in Kosovo. "To take the city would require a battle for every house." Many Serb families are fleeing--when they can overcome the bureaucratic obstacles Serbian officials put up to prevent their leaving. Prices for Serb homes in the capital have fallen by half, but buyers are scarce. Most Albanians are content to wait, confident that prices will drop even further once the KLA brings the war to town.
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