The PPK was co-founded by Veton Surroi, the English-speaking, US-
educated, son of a Yugoslav diplomat and editor of Koha Ditore, the
Albanian language daily. The Albanians are not a devout lot, but
even Islam had its political manifestations in Kosovo.
The 1981 demonstrations gave rise to the Popular Movement for Kosovo
(LPK). Apparently, it gave rise to the KLA, probably in 1993,
possibly in Pristina. Whatever the circumstances, the KLA
congregated in Decani, the region surrounding Pristina. Two years
after the Golgovac attack - it tackled a Serb border patrol (April)
and a Serb Police Station (August) in 1995. Light weapons and a
crude bomb were used. The Serbs were not impressed - but they were
provoked into an escalating series of ever more hideous massacres of
Albanian villagers (the turning point might have been the slaughter
by the Serbs of the Jashari clan in Prekaz). Machiavellian analysts
ascribe to the KLA a devilish plot to provoke the Serbs into the
ethnic cleansing that finally introduced the West to tortured
Kosovo. The author of this article, aware of the Balkan's lack of
propensity for long term planning and predilection for self-
defeating vengeance - believes that, to the KLA, it was all a
serendipitous turn of events. Whatever the case may be, the KLA
became sufficiently self-assured and popular to advertise itself on
the BBC as responsible for some of the clashes - a rite of passage
common to all self-respecting freedom fighters.
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