The Kosovo Police continues the KLA fight: Is Kurti announcing a new terror against the Serbs with this statement?

Albin Kurti's message that the Kosovo Police is a continuation of the "KLA's fight against the Serbian occupier" is seen by the interlocutors of Kosovo Online as another confirmation of the justification of the demands of the Serbs in the north of Kosovo that the Special Forces withdraw from there and as a kind of recognition that Kurti's main goal is to implement a policy of torture and persecution of the Serbs.

Lawyer Goran Petronijevic and security commentator Darko Obradovic point out that Kurti's confession that the KLA, an organization that the US considered terrorist, is deeply "woven" in its idea and mission, in the structures that should take care of the security of everyone in Kosovo.

Kurti emphasized yesterday that he saw the KLA as the forerunner of today's Kosovo Police, but the State Department put this organization on the terrorist list in November 1997, and it had that status until the summer of the following year.

As security commentator Darko Obradovic explains, the KLA received the status of a party to the conflict a few months before the bombing of Serbia, but its "extended arm" the Albanian National Army was listed in the order on maintaining security in the Balkans, signed by US President George Bush (number 452 and by proclamation number 13219 of June 26, 2001), where it is stated that Albanian ethnic extremism is a threat to Serbia, Macedonia, and Kosovo.

For the director of the Office for Kosovo and Metohija, Petar Petkovic, there is no doubt that Kurti's statement about the Kosovo Police as the successor to the KLA is an acknowledgment of Pristina's militant policy and that even those who wanted to close their eyes to the terror being carried out on Serbs can no longer do so.

"And indeed, Kurti's police in the north of Kosovo and Metohija used the same methods of violence and intimidation that were used by the terrorist KLA, because the target of their terror in the past weeks was everyone - from children to the elderly, and people are kidnapped, attacked with automatic weapons on bare-handed civilians, an entire nation is being denied the right to exist in an undisguised fascist manner," Petkovic pointed out.

He said that by identifying the Kosovo Police with an organization such as the KLA, Kurti had completely opened the cards and admitted what his goal was - terror and extermination of the Serbs.

Darko Obradovic says that there is no doubt that Albin Kurti is trying to institutionalize extremism and political exclusivity.

"More than 20 years have passed since the war; however, Kurti wants to return to a state of continuous conflict. With such a warmongering speech, Kurti sent a direct message that he expected the tasks of the Kosovo Police to be focused on the ideological or political dimension, not security. Such examples are very well known from history when the Gestapo political police was formed," Obradovic says.

The statement that the Kosovo Police is a continuation of the KLA tradition is, our interlocutor points out, a clear message to the Serbs that they have nothing to look for in that uniform and that the actions are very ethnically managed and carried out.

"It should be remembered that the KLA was put on the list of terrorist organizations by the US in 1997, and in 1998 it was given the status of guerrillas. Referring to the KLA a quarter of a century later is in gross contradiction with the Constitution of Kosovo, which stipulates that the police should be multi-ethnic. This is Kurti's "extremist maneuver aimed at alienating the Serbs from their guaranteed positions in the police, by which he sends a message to everyone that the Kosovo Police, with accompanying Security Forces, is in the function of his extreme politics, not multi-ethnic harmony," Obradovic says.

He warns that Kurti's statement is an invitation to more brutal activities.

"I am afraid that when Kurti leaves power, there will have to be a purge in the ranks of the Kosovo Police, which is deeply mired in extremism," he says.

Lawyer Goran Petronijevic says for Kosovo Online that Kurti's statement that the Kosovo Police is a continuation of the KLA is historically useful because it confirms what Serbia indicated from the very beginning of the formation of the Kosovo Security Forces, which, he notes, were not allowed to grow into the police and the army, this kind of way that we witness today, in some kind of special units.

"Serbia warned that the skeleton of the Security Forces created by Kosovo is made up of the KLA. This is still the case today and Kurti's statement confirms it. What we claimed then is now proven to be true. We will not, I'm afraid, benefit from it, apart from moral satisfaction," Petronijevic notes.

He points out that Kurti told the plain truth, that the Kosovo Police had been created from the KLA.

"Another thing is what the motives for why he said that are. Is he now trying to gain the favor of the entire police force in this way, if he felt that he was losing support in those structures and among veterans? He is probably playing that card in that way because he always lacked the background of a KLA fighter, he was a political commissar, without fighting. He never had any special respect of KLA veterans, he always lacked that. It almost created a complex in him," Petronijevic says.

He believes that especially in the recent events in the north of Kosovo, Kurti saw the importance of the police forces, but also realized that he probably does not fully control a good part of those forces.

"Now it is much clearer where such a scale of terror against the Serbs, especially in the north, and the brutality during arrests came from. I do not believe that one guy, an Albanian, who is educated, who does not have prejudices from that period, who does not remember those things in that way, has with that negative charge, can commit any violation of the law, excessive use of force, mistreatment of civilians. This is exactly what those who were and remain - fighters against, as Kurti says, the Serbian occupier, do," the lawyer points out.

And Petronijevic reminds that at one time the US declared the KLA a terrorist organization.

"Now, Kurti actually admits that the Kosovo Police have elements of a terrorist organization. The US declared the KLA a terrorist organization, but very soon after that they took them off the list and proclaimed them as freedom fighters," he notes.

Petronijevic adds that Kurti in a way, by declaring that the Kosovo Police is a continuation of the KLA, which was declared a terrorist organization, actually admitted that Belgrade would have every right to declare the Kosovo Forces as terrorists, which was also the request of the Serb List, and after Pristina has declared "Civil Protection" and "Northern Brigade" as terrorist organizations.