October 19, 2007	Friday	Shawwal 6, 1428

CAMP BONDSTEEL (Serbia): From the vantage point of a US Black Hawk helicopter, the new road to Debelde cuts a tidy yellow line through tilled farmland on Kosovo’s southern border with Macedonia.

The road was a US military project completed six weeks ago, transforming the mud path to the remote mountain village and improving access for the ethnic Albanians living there.

It represents the ‘soft-power’ of US peacekeepers in a region where gunrunners and smugglers flit back and forth over the porous border that cuts Debelde from its sister village of Tanusevci in Macedonia, a niggling threat to stability.

Stretched by campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan, the US military had hoped to be out of Serbia’s breakaway southern province by now, eight years since being deployed with Nato in the alliance’s second Balkan mission after Bosnia.

But faced with a Russian-versus-West deadlock on Kosovo’s demand for independence, and the prospect of the Albanian majority striking out alone, an influential US presence — currently 1,600 National Guardsmen — is seen as crucial.

Thoughts of a drawdown with the planned end of Serb-Albanian talks in December are on hold for at least another 18 months.

At some point in this period, the Albanians are expected to declare independence and seek recognition, in a messy end to their eight-year limbo as a UN protectorate.

Leaders of Serbia and Kosovo will hold more talks next Monday in Vienna, with still no sign of breakthrough in sight.

Nato’s Kosovo Force, KFOR, “is going to be here for a long period of time, at some level over the next three or four years”, said US Brigadier General Douglas Earhart, who hands over command of US troops in Kosovo next month.

“I think the US will be part of that as long as there is KFOR,” he told Reuters, adding that the next US troop rotation was no smaller than the current presence and “there’s another rotation already planned after them, of the same size”.

“In 18 months you can probably make the case that even more progress is going to be made, it’s going to be even more stable ... and that a reduced security presence might be okay.”

Reports of armed men around Tanusevci, where smugglers and criminals have carved out a police no-go area, have heightened fears of regional unrest if Kosovo Albanians lose patience with the West’s stalled bid to grant independence in the face of Serb and Russian opposition.

Disruptive ‘Bad Guys’: Nato bombed Serbia for 11 weeks in 1999 until then strongman Slobodan Milosevic agreed to stop killing and ethnic cleansing of Albanian civilians in a two-year counter-insurgency war.

It now leads 16,000 soldiers in Kosovo, down from 45,000 when it deployed in 1999 on the heels of retreating Serb forces.

But analysts say that a messy endgame at the end of this year could revive insurgencies by Albanians in Macedonia and southern Serbia, put down in 2001 by Nato and European Union diplomacy. The Macedonian conflict began in Tanusevci.

US troops have a ‘forward operating base’ in Debelde and soldiers regularly camp in the village for days at a time.

“It’s just to keep everybody on an even keel and remembering that we’re here not only to support them but to keep order down there, and prevent bad guys doing things that would be disruptive to the process,” Earhart said.

“My interest is in making sure that outside influences don’t get inside Debelde and create an unstable environment.”

The interview took place in the US military’s sprawling Camp Bondsteel in southern Kosovo, built in three months in 1999 to house 7,000 troops, inside a seven kilometre perimeter.

Earhart spoke before flying to the opening of a community centre in the Serb village of Partes in the east, built by Serbs and Albanians with 180,000 dollars of Pentagon funds.

An aerial tour of the US command zone takes in US humanitarian projects in hard-up villages with once-leaking school roofs and remote hamlets, now with new roads to improve medical access - one million dollars worth in the past year.

Earhart said he focuses on 40,000 Serbs in enclaves across his zone, about a third of the remaining Kosovo Serb population.

Their future is uncertain, particularly if Kosovo declares independence without a UN resolution and wins recognition from Washington and its major European Union allies.

A backlash by the Serb-dominated north could spark violence against Serbs elsewhere. Recognised by some but shunned by others, Kosovo could be a source of tension for years to come.

Earhart dismissed reports that some states might withdraw their troops from KFOR rather than recognise the new state.

“There is no doubt in my mind about KFOR’s resolve to manage the situation in a way that keeps everything under control, even in the face of more status delays or perhaps postponement of decisions and that sort of thing,” the US general said.—Reuters