Ethnic cleansing in reverse - that is the phrase being used increasingly to describe the revenge attacks on Serbs in Kosovo which have so far driven an estimated 164,000 of them out of the province since the end of the war, the entry of Kfor troops and the return of most of the 800,000 Kosovar refugees driven out during it. This is rapidly removing the basis for the multi-ethnic society in whose name the war was fought and inducing a mood of deep pessimism among the proponents of humanitarian intervention who supported it. It is also rapidly changing the political parameters of the agreement that ended it.
A report by Human Rights Watch has provided a detailed account of the attacks and sharply criticised the role of the Kosovo Liberation Army in them. It says, quite correctly, that the response of the international community and its organisations deployed there, to attacks on minorities in Kosovo (which include thousands of Roma, some of whom supported Serb atrocities against ethnic Albanians) has been belated, uneven and inadequate. It condemns the delay in deploying a 2,800-strong police force and says the urgent need for it cannot be overemphasised. The criticisms stand despite the more robust approach taken by Kfor commanders towards the KLA in recent days.
The report makes valuable suggestions as to how the various international organisations in Kosovo should respond while the full police deployment is awaited - and beyond it. They include enlarging the size of that force and ensuring that minorities fleeing Kosovo have full access to asylum and human rights procedures. They must also tie reconstruction aid to strict compliance with fair and equitable distribution of resources and ensure that those guilty of war crimes do not benefit from them. In addition, they must ensure that Kfor contingents take prompt action against all murders and abductions and make preventive action a priority and deploy more effective UNHCR and OSCE rights officers and monitors. The KLA leadership must also be requested to investigate and discipline commanders and soldiers suspected of involvement in attacks on minorities.
It would be all too easy to dismiss such demands, based on a pessimistic or cynically realist acceptance that revenge attacks are inevitable or understandable after the atrocities committed by Serb forces against a much larger number of ethnic Albanians. As the hundreds of thousands of Kosovars have returned in recent weeks, including those who found temporary refuge in Ireland, there has been horrifying evidence of such atrocities. Nor is it difficult to understand the political motivation that might lead the KLA to support ethnic cleansing of Serbs in order to further demands for an independent Kosovo and consolidate their quasi-governmental and policing role - however vehemently the organisation denies such accusations.
A failure to insist on human rights all round would contradict the political basis on which the intervention against Serbia was justified. It could open the way to a further round of regional conflict in Macedonia, Albania and Montenegro. It would also undermine the longer-term, inclusive approach to the region based on the Stability Pact and the democratic values of European integration. Thus it makes sense strategically as well as ethically to insist that the human rights of Serbs in Kosovo are treated as seriously as those of the ethnic Albanians.