Y LA VIDA COTIDIANA
20. R Rémond, op cit., p 25.
Before the war, Prizren had been the headquarters of the 549th Motorized Infantry Brigade. The subordinate units of this nearly 14,000-strong brigade197 were stationed throughout southern Kosovo (Humanitarian Law Center, 2013). Its three motorized infantry battalions, and its anti- aircraft battalion were located in Gjakova, while its two artillery batteries, a howitzer battalion and 31 tanks were distributed throughout the countryside in teams near key towns and terrain (OSCE, 2003). The brigade headquarters, located directly outside of the Prizren city boundary, contained the command staff and headquarters facilities. The headquarters building also housed the brigade’s logistic unit, with maintenance and storage facilities; a security unit, and housing for an estimated 1,000 personnel on site (Humanitarian Law Center, 2013).
The headquarters’ base had been moderately damaged during the 1999 NATO bombing. Local residents interviewed that had lived in Prizren during this time, both of whom were interpreters for the German KFOR, hired in 1999 and 2000, stated,
“The bomb damage was concentrated to the motor pools, artillery [park] and the ammunition/storage buildings. However, the Serbs vandalized the headquarters buildings, barracks and living quarters before they left. They even stripped out the plumbing fixtures and electrical wire” (Interviews 35, 62).198
Despite the damage sustained by the compound during the bombing and the withdrawing Serb forces, MNB-S selected the former Yugoslav Army camp as its headquarters in June 1999. The first German KFOR contingent, the 12th Panzer Brigade, crossed the Albanian border into Kosovo on June 12, 1999; MNB-South was officially established on 13 June when the 12th Panzer Brigade entered the city and occupied Camp Prizren (McGrath, 2006:53; Interviews 35, 62, 73). In accordance with the Military Technical Agreement, (MTA) and Security Council Resolution
197According to the Center for International Law dossier against the commanding officers of the 549th. This total is likely to include JA reserves, the ‘Pristina Corps’ and the “hundreds of volunteers from various countries including Russia and Ukraine” (Center, 2013:7: also, OSCE, 2003)
198Some looting by Prizren residents may also have taken place, but due to the relatively brief time between JA withdrawal and KFOR arrival, the amount of opportunity theft was likely to be low.
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1244 (SCR 1244), the Serb forces concurrently began their withdrawal from Kosovo.
Eyewitnesses interviewed state “JA and other Serb forces vandalized and burned or destroyed personal and public property as they left199” (Independent International Comission on Kosovo, 2000:309; Interviews 35, 53, 62; also, OSCE, 2003). Photo 7.1 shows the MBR-S headquarters, “The Blue Residence” upon arrival of the German forces in June 1999.
Photo 7.1 Prizren Kaserne June 1999 “Blue Residence.” Photo: Patrick Theutone
German communication teams arrived first and secured the small, mostly undamaged radio sites just outside the city (Interview 75). Over 4,200 soldiers formed the first tranche200 of the MNB-South KFOR security mission (Bundeswehr, 2014; Global Security, 2000; Theutone, 2000), followed by an additional 4,300 a few weeks later.Military personnel were temporarily housed in a nearby hotel and in abandoned industrial buildings of the SOE Elán, a preformed concrete materials manufacturer, and of SOE Progres, a synthetic industrial fiber manufacturer (Saunik & Buzhala, 2002)201.
199These may be conflated with actions taken by Kosovo Serb civilians who followed the withdrawing JNA forces. 200Tranche is often used in NATO operations to refer to a portion of the designated troops and equipment that are deployed to support a larger multi-phase operation.
201The use of the hotel and SOEs was noted by UNHCR in its 2002 Municipality Development report, further details are absent.
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7.2.1 Administrative Procedures
The German armed forces administrative and sustainment systems are highly self-contained, requiring little support by civilian workers. These limited both the number of opportunities, and type of positions that would be available to the local population. However, civilians had not been known to have been employed on the JA base prior to the arrival of the German KFOR (Interviews 35, 62). As noted earlier regarding Camp Monteith, civilian employment would have been unlikely in the past due to the availability of conscripts, thus there would have been a fairly low expectation for local employment opportunities on the German base.
Nearly all of Camp Prizren’s administrative and sustainment functions were performed by German military personnel, including base security. This practice is typical of NATO militaries but in contrast with most international organizations (Carnahan, et al., 2006), which generally employ a substantial number of local civilians for security. For those services which the German forces did not obtain internally, administrative guidelines allowed individual departments to recruit and hire personnel from the community, and purchase directly with local businesses for supplies and services as needed (Interview 75). In addition, the German headquarters’ central logistics section coordinated for extensive common-need services such as health care and laundry; printing and publishing; vehicle maintenance and repair to local firms on behalf of the base (Interviews 35, 50, 51, 53, 62, 75).
7.2.2 Recruiting and Hiring Local Residents
While the initial German contingent of over 4,000 MNB-S soldiers included a company of military engineers, primarily builders, specifically to rehabilitate the camp, a small number of local workers were also hired. A longtime base employee provides his observations:
“The German engineers were the project managers, and the German soldiers did most of the physical labor. Between 150-200 local people were hired in the first two months for unskilled construction work and cleaning. Although recruiting was officially through posters and radio messages, the information was mostly spread by word of mouth. The primary qualification was to have some German or English language ability.
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Most people left when the construction was finished. A few people stayed on for maintenance, or to be cleaners and dining facility workers. Jobs were generally filled in the usual male and female roles: men went to construction and facilities maintenance jobs and the women worked in the kitchen as cooks and cleaners. More men than women were in the management jobs. A few women were hired later for the small souvenir shops, or as cooks and servers in the base cantinas. Men and women were paid the same rates, from 600-800 euro/month for the same positions, and probably would have had the same opportunities for any advancement202.
Most of the people that stayed were interpreters, because Prizren [Municipality] has four official languages: Albanian, Bosnian, Serbian and Turkish. Both men and women interpreters work with the military patrols and the LMTs to visit the communities and attend meetings. Interpreters also work at [Camp Prizren’s] security gates, but only the military performs base security.203 Right now (2014) there are probably less than 80 local people working on Camp Prizren” (Interview 62).
Overall, the number of local residents employed during the reconstruction phase or for daily operations was low. However, such a low number of Prizren residents employed on the German KFOR base is a frequently recommended ‘best practice,’ based on the recognition of negative externalities, (e.g. wage inflation and bubble economy), and the “brain drain” effect from local businesses and government that base employment, with its far higher salaries, can have on the local community (Anderson, et al., 2014; Carnahan, et al., 2005). Hence, the small number of residents initially employed on base – barely 200 out of a population of over 220,000, and up to another 200 employed in the additional lodging and barracks located within Prizren – clearly meant employment with KFOR is unlikely to have contributed to an unsustainable balloon economy as the result of the much higher wages.
Non-governmental and international organizations tend to rely more heavily on local labor and likewise pay higher than prevailing wages, often creating new tensions over who has access to these incomes (Ammitzboll & Tychsen, 2007; Anderson, 2000; Carnahan, et al., 2006; Sciarra, 2008). However, while the number of such organizations in Prizren was not small, between 30
202Advancement opportunities were few, generally limited to shift leaders or similar ‘first among peers” positions. 203Military controlled base access not only improves base security, but also reduces opportunity for local civilians to act as gatekeepers and hold undue influence against others. This gatekeeping had occurred for a brief time at Camp Bondsteel by Kosovo Albanian expatriates who had become US citizens and were hired by B&R as hiring supervisors (interview 78, and informal conversations with US Air Force logisticians.)
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and 40, the number of both expatriate and local hires with their higher salaries were low, typically ten or fewer (Cocozzelli, 2009; Integration, 2012), and therefore would similarly not have contributed to inflationary effects.
7.2.3 Local Purchasing
The buildings and camp grounds of the former 549th Motorized Infantry Brigade headquarters were not badly damaged by the war. Hence, when the MNB-South Task Force entered and occupied the compound, the construction materials that had been pre-placed in Macedonia and Albania, including cement, plaster and gravel, were sufficient to begin initial building repairs by the military engineers (Interview 78). Similarly, within the City of Prizren, and despite the vandalism by retreating Serb forces, there was relatively minor damage to the physical structure of the office buildings and shops (Interviews 35, 62), thus many local businesses were able to open shortly after the major fighting ceased (ibid).The local purchase of construction- related goods by KFOR was therefore necessarily limited, as it largely focused on restoring and upgrading the existing infrastructure in the camp, and other facilities it used, rather than constructing a new facility. As a result, KFOR would not have created competition for these resources and inflated their prices above the reach of the local population. Moreover, only small amounts of new and replacement items were purchased locally.
Interviews and informal conversations strongly suggest the German military forces visited Prizren’s businesses primarily to get a sense of the local economic conditions and become familiar with this civil environment, and secondarily to locate sources for future purchases or to add to the local economy. First, it was German military personnel that initiated the majority of the early business relationships in Prizren204 (Interview 35), and second, purchases tended to be limited in type and at a single location particularly if multiple options were possible. Two of the
204This is not surprising, as it is unlikely the present Kosovo Albanian community would have had economic relations with the JA base.
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business owners interviewed stated nearly all local businesses were visited individually by German KFOR officers, as theirs had been, and that the visits were believed to be specifically intended to establish a wide range of vendor relationships (Interviews 48, 57, also 35). The first vendor, the owner of a produce company, described his visit:
“A German KFOR officer visited my father’s company in summer 1999, to look at [inspect] his store and, because it was clean, he contracted for one item, potatoes, which we soon started to deliver to the camp on a regular basis.”
At that time, foodstuffs, particularly fresh produce and meats, were trucked in from Germany and other European countries, therefore the German KFOR’s choice to buy only potatoes locally was practical for three reasons. First, although potatoes are relatively inexpensive, they are bulky and heavy, which adds to their overall cost when transporting them, and if transported from one’s home country, it is also at the expense of military unique equipment and supplies. Secondly, potatoes are not highly perishable, thus local vendors could acquire sufficient quantities of this vegetable from a variety of sources with little loss to spoilage. Finally, potatoes are cooked before consuming, and variations in quality could be masked by
preparation. In the case of this vendor, the single item contract continued for almost 10 years. This company was eventually awarded the contract to provide all fresh produce for Camp Prizren in 2010 (Interview 57).
The second business, a large hardware and tool retailer, was located on the main roadway some five kilometers from Camp Prizren. It carried construction safety equipment and offered a wide selection of hand tools by German manufacturers such as Bosch and Stihl as well as lower priced, less well-known regional brands. The owner of this local hardware store described his experience:
“A German KFOR officer came to our store in the summer [of 1999] to see what we had to offer. In the beginning, KFOR bought exclusively from our company because they [Germans] buy good-quality tools and use safety equipment, such as vests and hard hats, which only our company in Prizren carried at the time (Interview 48).”
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Versions of these visits by German KFOR to buy a single type of item were stated anecdotally by several others in Prizren. For the community, such single-item contracts were a means of income when legitimate employment opportunities were still low, moreover, many small contracts may have reduced the likelihood of local firms vying for exclusive business
arrangements with the base at the expense of the community. These instances strongly suggest German KFOR leaders had an appreciation of both the positive and the negative potential economic effects that intervening military forces’ spending could have on the local community. 7.2.4 Contracting for Services
The German forces, rather than members of the community, typically initiated business relationships. More specifically, the German KFOR contracted for its common-use services,205 including laundry, printing and vehicle maintenance. Only the laundry services business was found to have opened specifically to support the German Camp, and its owner directly solicited its business.
Camp Prizren’s laundry is washed by a single laundry firm approximately four kilometers from the main gate of the Camp. According to the company owner and manager:
“This laundry was started in summer of 1999 specifically to service Camp Prizren. The German KFOR had first visited us when my family reopened the small quarry and construction materials company we had had prior to the war. We still have it, but it’s completely separate, with separate management.
“When I saw a lot of small companies opening up to sell the same materials we had, I decided to open the laundry specifically to fill this niche for KFOR, because I knew there was no competition. I went to their gate and told them (KFOR) about our business and we got this contract right away. We still have the exclusive laundry contract with Camp Prizren, and it’s our main customer. We now also offer ‘sterile laundry’ service for hospitals and clinics. The laundry employs 11 local women, and one man, who is a (distant) relative.” (Interviews 50, 51).
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A second contracted service is printing and desktop publishing, provided by a local, family owned and managed publisher with a retail print shop. The owner of the shop describes his experience:
“This print shop is the storefront for our large printing concern offsite206. The German KFOR came to us to print a large number of color programs for them and we were able to complete their order in 24 hours. Since then we have designed and printed all of Camp Prizren’s paper products, including calendars, camp publications/newspapers, diaries, gift books and special event brochures.
Our core business is textbook publishing. However, the (regular) work contracted by Camp Prizren allowed us to invest in modern equipment and continue to be
competitive with the smaller printers and [low-overhead] desktop publishers, maintaining employment for up to 15 skilled workers (Interview 53).
The third contracted service, vehicle maintenance, is best described as a partnership between KFOR and local business. Here German KFOR mechanics and technicians provide comprehensive training to locally hired employees for the servicing, maintenance and repair of the military- unique vehicles used by the German KFOR207 at Camp Prizren. KFOR also provides all oversight of these local employees and maintenance operations. Due to the Camps’ security restrictions, the vehicle maintenance operations were off-limits to visitors and its employees did not participate in research, and hence, further details of its operations are not available. However, it can be expected that the on the job training for the maintenance of a wide range of gasoline and diesel-powered vehicles directly contributes to Prizren through the establishment and employment in logistics companies, repair garages and industry using similarly fueled equipment, such as electrical generators.
As noted concerning base employment and local purchasing, the relatively small amount of spending by the German KFOR is also in keeping with UN best practices (Carnahan, et al., 2005) and prevents the formation of an unsustainable “balloon economy” created by the
206This print shop provided small retail services to the public, such as copying, invitations and promotional materials. 207Other national MNB-S contingents, such as the Swiss Company, SWISSCOY, performed their own maintenance and services.
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international community, described by Ammitzbol & Tychsen (2007). However, both Carnahan and Natsios remind that this low-level spending does little to energize the local economy at a time when it is needed most (Carnahan, et al., 2006; Natsios, 2009: 65). Nevertheless, the businesses interviewed in Prizren believed the German military purchasing system was “fair and reasonable” (Interview 48, 50, 57), and that the “purchase of one or two items from each business probably kept [vendor] corruption to a minimum” because no one company could get the advantage over another (ibid).
7.2.5 Community relations
The post-conflict academic and grey literature often states that local community leaders and elites will attempt to represent their community and ingratiate themselves with the military forces to develop and extend their personal influence and position in the community; to extract rents from international aid, or threaten to return to violence (Cheng, 2013:70; Münch, 2013; Zaalberg, 2006). These negative relationships appeared not to have occurred in the
establishment of Camp Prizren. Indeed, the local officials interviewed in Prizren, most of whom are appointed to their positions through their political parties rather than directly elected, were consistently positive in their opinion of KFOR, but indifferent to actively influencing KFOR’s leaders (Interviews 52, 56, 58, 69, 70, 71). This suggests the political leader’s party, UNMIK or other political organizations, held more influence or opportunity for personal or professional advancement than KFOR. In addition, the informal relationship between local leaders and the Liaison Monitoring Teams, who were established in late 2004 after the Kosovo-wide riots, supplied an avenue to directly reach out to KFOR at a community level that was absent in the past. This new relationship may have replaced any previous interest in attempting to influence military leaders.