Part 4. Prowess, courage and plastic socks

Not until he starts describing how he and the other soldiers started thanking each other for what they had been through do I realize what he is trying to tell me. Negative thoughts to this sergeant from Gotland means they would not survive the night. "Hard to focus" means "scared to death". But he does not express himself that way. In Mickes vocabulary you dont even walk. You regroup.

Micke has participated in the battle of Caglavica, which took place on the 17th of March 2004. I guess the reader never heard about it. Nor had I until I came to Kosovo.
Strange, because realizing what was at stake it must have been Sweden's most important armed intervention since maybe a hundred years. And even more remarkable since it was carried out by bakers, carpenters and other voluntaries, that day under the command of an officer who did not obey orders.

That is already reason enough to tell this story. There are more: On that same day the UN-led peace keeping forces met with the biggest rebuff since Srebrenica. In the presence of 17,000 NATO troops and 4,000 UN police Albanian hooligans fell upon their minorities. 900 people were wounded, 19 died, some thirty churches were destroyed, 700 houses burnt down, 4,500 put to flight.

"I do not understand this", says Hans Håkansson, lieutenant-colonel from Gotland. "To defend the monastery in Prizren - it must be a soldier's wet dream! Ravines on all sides, a river, one small narrow bridge. Give me twenty men and I will hold it against a thousand. So, what happened?"

Yes, what happened? When two hundred Albanian extremists, armed with Molotov cocktails reached the 16th century monastery they sent out a negotiator with a white flag. He informed the German KFOR soldiers that not a hair would be touched on their helmets if only they moved aside and let them burn in peace. If they remained in place they would face death. So, the Germans rolled away their armoured vehicles and then watched the monastery burning from afar.

"They obeyed their orders" explained their general, Holger Kammerhoff. According to "Rules of engagement", which everybody carried a copy of in his pocket, they were supposed to protect lives. But there was no mention if they were allowed to use force to protect a building. Result: At the end of the day no German soldier had suffered the tiniest scratch. But most of what they were supposed to protect was burnt to the ground.
The same thing happened to what was under French protection: the monastery in Drenica and all the Serb houses in Svinjare.

That day Hans Håkansson had 700 men under his command. Mostly Swedes, but also Czech, Finnish, Slovak and Irish troops. They mobilized in such a hurry that they forgot to bring both maps and water. Thousands of Albanians were on the march towards the Serb enclaves Caglavica and Gracanica with its famous monastery. They carried iron bars, stones, some weapons, and rugs drenched in petrol rapped around long poles. (Thats the way you burn down houses in Kosovo. Smash the window and set fire.)

Håkansson lined up his men outside the village, there was no other choice. They got the same proposal as the Germans. "Get out of our way!" They answered no. Then they stood on line and held back. "It was a medieval battle" an observer noted. Truncheon against pole and shield against steel chain, seven hundred against ten thousand who attacked in waves. For how long would they be able to stand their ground? Maybe an hour, thought Håkansson. You could forget about reinforcements because that day the whole of Kosovo was on fire. Soon the whole Swedish camp was empty of people. "Everybody who could walk or crawl, people from the kitchen and from the repair shop who had never handled a truncheon before". No one gave them orders, they came of their own accord. They fought for two hours, four, six...they could not drink, they fainted from dehydration, they wet themselves, they got arms and legs broken and heard bullets whistling above their heads. But they fought for eleven hours non-stop. Until darkness fell and the aggressors got tired.

Thirty-five soldiers were wounded. But Caglavica was not burnt down. And the monastery in Gracanica is still standing. When Håkansson realized that they risked being outflanked he called on his radio: "Defend monastery. Use deadly force if necessary". Still he had the same manual in his pocket as the Germans in Prizren. Why did he do it?

Before Håkansson was sent to Kosovo he thought the Swedish Ministry of Foreign Affairs would educate him in the history of the province. When that did not happen he bought the books himself. So he knew, he says, that the monastery in Gracanica was a major Serb cultural symbol. If it was destroyed the whole of Serbia could get on its feet. And for that matter, says Håkansson, "every order has its "best before" date. Then you are left to make your own decisions."

"It was Håkansson personally and his men who that day made the difference between right and wrong" says general Anders Brännström, who has been Håkansson's superior in Kosovo. "If he had put the safety of the soldiers first, as so many others did, Sweden would have had a new Srebrenica on its conscience."

I am describing all of this in such detail because in the native press the Swedish efforts got less space than the naked behind of a someone on a reality show. I find it symptomatic of our times. Håkansson just thinks its odd. Maybe the general belief in Sweden is that "UN soldiers distribute dolls to the kids and the rest is in support of gender equality. People probably get embarrassed from seeing us carrying arms."

When NATO and independent institutes analyzed the debacle on the 17th of March it became clear that the most responsible action an officer could undertake was to break the rules. But that only Swedes and Italians did so.

All over Kosovo military officers discovered that they were not heading an army but something more resembling of a sanatorium on picnic. Each group of patients had its own pack of guidelines. Americans were not allowed to fight against civilians. Slovaks were not allowed to use truncheons. Germans were forbidden to cross the street, because that was the limit of their section. And so on...

These were caveats, provisions each nation had put up as a condition for their participation in the mission. As a consequence of this most of the KFOR forces were useless when needed. Only 17 out of the 55 units were allowed to intervene in the event of riots. And there was not a single general in all of Kosovo who could keep track of what else they were forbidden to do. "Some were probably not allowed to stay out after five, P.M." a Swedish officer guesses.

You would like to think that a UN Mission is like a polar expedition: Clear goals, decisive leadership, adequate equipment, the most sought-after specialists dedicated to the task. You are in your right to expect this considering the sky-high salaries and that there are 229 applicants for each UN post. But the UN Mission in Kosovo has none of this. It cannot be compared to any other known phenomenon, but there is some resemblance to the health care centre in Sveg.

In Sveg they change doctors once a week. In Kosovo soldiers are sent home once they learnt to find their way. Six months is the period of rotation and the same goes for UN police. The Governor is replaced once a year and most of the UN superiors about as often. But there ends the resemblance to Sveg. Because if a short-term doctor prescribes the wrong treatment he will be accountable to the Health Board. But a UN police throwing crime reports on the rubbish heap has nothing to fear. In UN there are no sanctions against breach of duty. The worst thing that can happen is that the contract isnt prolonged.

A British source tells about a closet at the UN police quarters filled to the ceiling with crime reports nobody has ever read. It sounds unbelievable but most crimes in Kosovo are not investigated. But then again why would the police investigate if they do not feel like it? Actually it is not such a stupid question. Like this one:

What is Mr. Bangura doing in Pristina? He teaches the Kosovans how to run a railway and is paid some 8,000 euros a month. Local railwaymen who are supposed to live on 150 feel a bit humiliated by the project, especially since Mr. Bangura knows nothing about railways. How could he? He is from Sierra Leone where the last train stopped in 1975. He is an expert in harbours.

Mr. Bhattacharya from Bangladesh, to the contrary, is expert in nothing. He is a parking guard, without a drivers license and speaks only Bengali, but he must have paid handsomely in Dhaka, because now he is a UN policeman. There are hundreds of them, incompetent people, within the UN police, within finance and even within the justice system. (How about an expert in riparian rights assigned to judge murder cases.) They often come from "non-skiing nations", UN slang for Africa and Asia.

No, its not a riddle how they ended up in Kosovo. Its the UN system. "It is important to show that the whole world is taking responsibility" clarifies a diplomat. Right, some of them are useless, "but quotation is the price we must pay for the legitimacy".

Who are we? Kosovo was made to pay. Who seriously believes that a police force, drawn from 44 nations, of which one half is from semi-democratic states, of which one half is from dictatorships, of which one half does not understand what the others are saying, whereof one half are not even policemen, would risk their own lives to enforce law and order in a country that never had it?

They didnt. They looked on as mafia gangs infiltrated first the Kosovo institutions and then the UN Mission. (If there is an obvious conclusion to draw from this story it is that the UN needs its own police force, preferably highly paid crime experts from EU-countries, who could take to the field on short notice - and for which we would have to pay.)

If the reader feels that this article is about far away problems of no concern to him or her, let me inform you that it is today the Kosovo mafia deals in heroine in Kalmar and sex slaves in Oslo. And they are likely to sponsor the government in Pristina once the province gets its independence. And Kosovo is not to blame for this - we are responsible, we, who let it happen.

None of the seven Kosovo governors even tried to tackle the bands of gangsters in the province. The most powerful among them, with roots in the Kosovo Liberation Army, enjoyed close to immunity from the UN, who feared that otherwise they might cause unrest. Or even hurt the UN people. For the same reason the UN avoided to look for the guilty persons behind hundreds of murders of Serbs, Roma (and suspected collaborators) which happened in 1999.

It was a fateful appeasement policy. But not entirely incomprehensible once youve understood how the UN Mission is construed. To combat the organized crime would have required strategy, perseverance, courage and a spirit of self-sacrifice. Thats right, a mission, an inspired task. But the world community, in spite of its name, has no mission in Kosovo. Most of what it has are substitute UN bums, extremely well-paid but without any responsibility except for their own career and to whom Kosovo is just an episode. And the career is furthered if you can report stability and progress, not gunfire contests with the mafia or other upheaval. (Not to mention wounded UN policemen.)

This is how it came about that seven different UN governors reported about stability and nothing but progress, only to eight years later leave behind a mafia-ridden province. (Which the EU now will take over). And the common Kosovo citizen watched and learnt. Oh yes, the UN principles were really fine but nobody dared to stand up in their defence when it got too trying. So much for principles.

Why do the Swedish contributions seem to shine so differently against this background? Is it the auditor Inga-Britt Ahlenius, who acts as if she were not in the Balkans? Who says no, the same demands should go here as in Stockholm. The lieutenant-colonel Håkansson, who fights for the Serbs as if they were from Gotland. And the Ombudsman, certainly a Pole, but so typically Swedish, stubbornly upholding the laws.

The military Camp Victoria outside Pristina is a Sweden in miniature. There is a church, a gym, a post-office, pancakes with jam and recycling. Outside Albanians throw most things in the ditch, but in here they stick to composting and
ISO 14000. "Unfortunately", says lieutenant-colonel Håkansson, (the fighter from Caglavica) "in all of Kosovo there is no authorized way for recycling tyres". So, what do you do? "Ehmm...we...transport them to Sweden."

Picturing a truck passing by thousands of rubbish heaps in Kosovo on its way to the authorized 2,000 kilometres away is so bizarre that its hardly possible to refrain from jeering. But I have to. In honor of Ahlenius, in honor of Håkansson and in honor also of sergeant Micke from Gotland, the guy who at the beginning of this article was prepared to die at Caglavica. He is back Kosovo, now as head of a search team looking for explosives and weapons. Now and then his group makes a "hard entry". It means that during the night they rush into a house through closed doors and windows. But if no dangers are lurking inside then it means deescalating. "We ask for pardon, hang up our weapons, put on our shoe protectors and take photos of everything we damaged so people can claim compensation at Camp Victoria".

"Shoe protectors? Youre joking."

"Not at all. So we dont dirty the carpets. Like these..." He unloads the pockets of his fighter vest. Out come a torch, a compass, something lethal and at the bottom a couple of blue plastic socks.

Sergeant Micke tells me there have been incidents when people have had their doors kicked in and then invited them for coffee. Because of the plastic socks?

"Yes, we showed respect."

"Use deadly force" on the one hand, plastic blue socks on the other. Respect. Could one venture to say that the UN has a lot to learn from these soldiers from Gotland? There is much to be said about these peculiar people in the Balkans, but they show a sympathetic medieval trait: They despise protectors who do not take themselves seriously. Like UNMIK, for example. But they respect adversaries who stand up for what they believe in. Like this Micke, for example.

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