Abstract
This chapter scrutinises the process by which the Kosovo Protection Corps (KPC) came into being and was later dissolved, after a period of ten years of international peace-building in Kosovo from 1999 to 2009. It was the establishment of the KPC that prepared the ground on which Kosovo society - which took action to protect its own survival as a people during the war - could transform itself successfully into a democratic and rather non-violent post-war civil society. Absorbing large numbers of ex-guerillas into the non-state civilian KPC was meant to significantly reduce the risk of civil unrest for the nascent post-war society in Kosovo. The proper understanding of this civilian function of demobilisation and absorption is needed if one is to comprehend, and draw on thorough conclusions, the set-up of today’s civil society in Kosovo. Although the KPC was politically seen as the demobilised successor organisation to the former Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) - and therefore as an army in waiting - it was officially established as a civil protection actor tasked with humanitarian disaster relief and emergency response. In order to weaken its army-in-waiting potential, the international community (through the 2007 Ahtisaari proposal) pushed the Kosovo government after its declaration of Kosovo’s independence to demobilise the KPC despite its status as a non-state civilian actor, and to resettle most of its members through a special socio-economic reintegration programme, implemented in cooperation with civil society-based organisations and local entrepreneurs.
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Notes
J. Narten (2009) ‘Assessing Kosovo’s Postwar Democratisation: Between External Imposition and Local Self-Government’, Taiwan Journal of Democracy, 5(1), pp. 129–30.
A. Devic (2006) ‘Transnationalisation of Civil Society in Kosovo: International and Local Limits of Peace and Multiculturalism’, Ethnopolitics, 5(3), pp. 257–62.
J. Narten (2009) ‘Dilemmas of Promoting ‘Local Ownership’: The Case of Postwar Kosovo’, in R. Paris and T. Sisk (eds) The Dilemmas of Statebuilding: Confronting the Contradictions of Postwar Peace Operations (London/New York: Routledge), pp. 257–60.
UN Mission in Kosovo (UNMIK) (1999) On the Establishment of the Kosovo Protection Corps, Doc. No. UNMIK/REG/1999/8, 20 September 1999, section 1.
Ibid., Art. 1.1; also see UNMIK (2001) A Constitutional Framework for Kosovo, Doc. No. UNMIK/REG/2001/9, 15 May 2001; and A. Heinemann-Grüder and W. Paes (2001) Wag the Dog: The Mobilisation and Demobilisation of the Kosovo Liberation Army, BICC brief 20, (Bonn: Bonn International Center for Conversion/Friedrich Naumann Stiftung), p. 22.
KFOR Statement of Principles (1999) The Kosovo Protection Corps: Commander of Kosovo Force’s Statement of Principles, 20 September 1999, available at http://www.iom.ipko.org (accessed on 10 December 2005); and South Eastern and Eastern Europe Clearinghouse for the Control of Small Arms and Light Weapons (SEESAC) (2006) SALW Survey of Kosovo, August. However, several reports indicated that the KLA/KPC continued to dispose off clandestine weapon stocks; see ibid., p. 20. Also see T. Ripley (2000) ‘The UÇK’s Arsenal’, Jane’s Intelligence Review, November, p. 22; S. Vaknin (2000) ‘KLA: The Army of Liberation’, Central Europe Review, 7 June, text also available at http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Forum/6297/pp56.html (accessed on 15 January 2009); A. Khakee and N. Florquin (2003) Kosovo and the Gun: A Baseline Assessment of Small Arms and Light Weapons in Kosovo, UNDP special report, June, p. 14; D. Pozhidaev and R. Andzhelich (2005) Beating Swords into Plowshares: Reintegration of Former Combatants in Kosovo (Pristina: Center for Political and Social Research), p. 57; and E. Petersen (2005) The Kosovo Protection Corps: In Search of a Future: Field Notes (Groningen: Centre for European Security Studies), p. 3.
Z. Kusovac (1999) ‘Interview with General Agim Çeku’, Jane’s Defence Weekly, 20 October; as quoted in Heinemann-Grüder and Paes (2001), op. cit. p. 22.
General Çeku quoted in Pozhidaev and Andzhelich (2005), op. cit., p. 73; also see B. Kouchner (2004) Les guerriers de la paix: Du Kosovo a Iraq (Paris: Bernard Grasset).
See International Organisation for Migration (2004) IOM Kosovo Protection Corps Training Program (Pristina: IOM); also see Petersen (2005), op. cit., p. 4.
UNDP and PISG (2006) Kosovo Internal Security Sector Review 2006 (Pristina: ISSR), available at http://www.kosovo.undp.org/repository/docs/ISSR_report_eng_ver2.pdf (accessed on 15 January 2009), p. XVIII.
See J. Narten (2008) ‘Post-Conflict Peacebuilding and Local Ownership: Dynamics of External-Local Interaction in Kosovo under United Nations Administration’, Journal of Intervention and Statebuilding, 2(3), pp. 381–5.
See Kosovo Assembly (2008a) Kosovo Declaration of Independence, Signed by the President of the Assembly of Kosova, Jakup Krasniqi, Pristina, 17 February, Art. 1–4 and 12.
See Kosovo Assembly (2008b) Constitution of the Republic of Kosovo, as Entered into Force on 15 June 2008, Pristina, Art. 126.
See Kosovo Assembly (2008c) On Dissolution of the Kosovo Protection Corps, Law No. 03/L-083, 13 June, Art. 1 and 3–10.
See Kosovo Assembly (2008d) On Service in the Kosovo Security Force, Law No. 03/L-0823, 13 June, Art. 1, 2 and 5.1–2.
See Kosovo Protection Corps (2009) The KPC Resettlement Programme, outline available at http://www.tmk-ks.org/(accessed on 15 January 2009); J. Narten (2010) ‘The Kosovo Protection Corps Resettlement Programme’, in Institute for Peace Research and Security Policy Hamburg et al., MultiPart Final Thematic and Case-Study Report of Work Package 4a: Multi-Stakeholder Security Partnerships in Post-Conflict Reconstruction, available at http://www.multi-part.eu/(accessed on 25 December 2010).
See US State Department (2008) ‘NATO Will Help Train New Kosovo Security Force’, available at http://www.america.gov/(accessed on 16 June 2008).
See IOM (2000) op. cit.; IOM (2002) IOM Programme on Reintegration of Former Combatants through the Information Counseling & Referral Service (ICRS) and Reintegration Fund (RF). A Background Paper (Pristina: IOM); UNDP (2008) KPC Resettlement Programme Manager, UNDP vacancy notice closed at 21 December 2008, available at http://www.kosovo.undp.org/(accessed on 15 January 2009).
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Narten, J. (2013). The Paradox of Demobilising a Civil Protection Actor: Build-Up and Stand-Down of the KPC in Kosovo. In: Bojicic-Dzelilovic, V., Ker-Lindsay, J., Kostovicova, D. (eds) Civil Society and Transitions in the Western Balkans. New Perspectives on South-East Europe Series. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137296252_12
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137296252_12
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