Democracy School

By Massimo Calabresi/Pristina

Hashim Thaci is on unfamiliar ground. The Albanian guerrilla leader, once the bane of Serbian forces in Kosovo's hinterlands, has arrived triumphant in Pristina and is undergoing his first rite of passage as an aspiring politician: dinner with TIME. Looking out across a table laden with the best postwar cuisine available--three platters of chicken franks, canned tuna and tomatoes--the 30-year-old rebel answers questions with a voice at once shy and calculating. Trying his best to toe the Western line, he assures us repeatedly, "We will live up to the obligations given to us." But as dinner stretches to midnight, Thaci begins to flag. Perhaps it is the endless days of negotiations with the U.S. or the months of war or just the barrage of journalists' questions about how exactly he hopes to fix this shattered land. Even the lady of the rented house, Mevlyde Kadriu, has questions: "Well, when are we going back to our jobs?" she asks boldly. Thaci shifts wearily in his seat, unloads a few oblique evasions and turns back to his demitasse of Nescafe.

As revolutionaries go, Thaci has a dream resume. Young, attractive and toting a sexy nickname, "the Snake," he is the face of the Kosovo Liberation Army. The glamour is burnished by accomplishment: Kosovar Albanians see him as the man who got them NATO military support and the right to an autonomous existence. And he has become the go-to man in postwar Kosovo. When the generals of the KFOR (Kosovo Force) peacekeeping troops and K.L.A. commanders could not arrive at an agreement to demilitarize the rebel army, they called Thaci to find a solution.

But when it comes to politics, the Snake is still a rank amateur. Kosovo is in ruins, his rebel army is edgy about its demilitarization, and political rivals on all sides are waiting for him to slip up. He'll also face political challenges at home--most notably from the elected President of Kosovo, Ibrahim Rugova, and from newspaper publisher Veton Surroi. Still, the U.S. has anointed him, at least temporarily, as its man. On a visit to Pristina last week, State Department spokesman Jamie Rubin took Thaci for a highly public cup of coffee at a well-known downtown cafe. And in a busy week last week, the U.S. and NATO began putting Thaci through what some were calling "democracy school," educating him about everything from elections (he was out kissing babies one morning) to dealing with journalists (his dinner with TIME).

Thaci started his political life in the student union of Pristina University in the late '80s, associating with a radical Marxist-Leninist group that previously had ties to Albanian dictator Enver Hoxha. After graduating with a degree in history in 1991, Thaci grew impatient with political conspiracy as a way to kick Slobodan Milosevic out of Kosovo. In June 1993 he and his compatriots turned to military action. Along with his two most trusted associates, Kadri Veseli and Fatmir Limaj, he launched one of the first armed attacks against Serbian forces. By the time Kosovo's rebellion gained traction in 1997, Thaci had survived Serbian reprisals and was at the top of the disparate guerrilla force.

His success came in no small part from his ruthlessness. Traitors, or anyone suspected of being one, were dealt with brutally, according to friends who saw Thaci's and Veseli's prisons. "They did have extremely harsh methods," says an associate. "[Suspected traitors] were viciously maltreated." Political rivals too were targets. Limaj told TIME last January that those who refused to fall into line with Thaci's plans for the K.L.A. "will be eliminated." Thaci's chief of staff denies that they have maltreated anyone.

That Thaci and his close associates were brutal as rebels may disturb some in the West, but apparently not the State Department. Or at least not Rubin and Secretary of State Madeleine Albright. Other diplomats more familiar with the region have worries about embracing a young, and possibly vengeful, leader. The U.S. has concluded that Thaci "wants to evolve" into a political figure. "We don't know if he can do it," says a senior U.S. official, "but we need him to transform himself if the K.L.A. is to go out of the military business."

The first test in that regard came last week as Thaci negotiated the K.L.A. disarmament. Agim Ceku, who commands the K.L.A.'s military forces, had talked to a standstill with Lieut. General John Reith, head of NATO forces in Albania, over the postwar role of the K.L.A. Would it be an army, a national guard or completely disbanded? NATO insisted there be no army, and the K.L.A. commander argued just as vehemently that his officers needed some kind of military role. Washington turned to Thaci to cut the compromise. In the end, the deal he got may allow the Kosovars to have a U.S. National Guard look-alike force. Thaci sold the compromise to Ceku. Thaci's reward: telephone time with Albright and President Clinton, who lavishly praised Thaci and Ceku for their "difficult act of political courage."

There will be many more. For starters, Thaci still has to deliver the K.L.A. and its weapons, which is far from a done deal. Says an officer at KFOR headquarters: "This thing could go tits up tomorrow if you get a couple of rogue K.L.A. commanders who'll say, 'Hey, we are not playing.'" And once the K.L.A. troops and their weapons have been surrendered, Thaci will need to pull off the even more difficult trick of turning the K.L.A. into a political force. While it is one thing to run a rebel army in the mountains, it will be another to oversee the rebuilding of an entire nation. K.L.A. managers, for instance, have always been dogged by charges of financial corruption. If Albanians start to feel that Western aid money is disappearing into K.L.A. pockets, Thaci may be done for. He'll also have to fight off electoral challenges from Rugova and Surroi, both of whom have better democratic credentials. But even Surroi admits that Thaci has a play to make in postwar Kosovo. "He has the ability to maneuver within his own environment. He was extremely good at it in the K.L.A.."

In the end, Thaci's greatest hurdle may be his own character. The isolated region of Kosovo where he was born, Drenica, is known for its hardheaded individualists. Those same rural traditions--"a Drenica person opens his heart to no man," says a longtime friend--have given Thaci a secretive, lone-wolf personality ill suited to democratic politics. At dinner that reserve undercut his every attempt to sound Western and humanistic. When asked what his plans were for the Serbian civilian minority that remains in Kosovo, he assured us its inclusion was important to rebuilding the province. "We're not interested in building parallel, segregated elements," he said. But when pressed repeatedly for an explanation of the retaliatory violence against the Serbs by rebel Albanians in recent days, he flashed a momentary glimpse of his old ruthlessness. "We will certainly have no mercy for those people," he said in a cool and determined voice. Then, remembering his audience, he added, "They will face the court and justice immediately." In the Balkans, just about everyone calls himself a democrat. It will be some time before we know just what kind Hashim Thaci intends to become.

--With reporting by Johanna McGeary/Pristina, Jan Stojaspal/Prizren and Dejan Anastasijevic/Vienna

With reporting by Johanna McGeary/Pristina, Jan Stojaspal/Prizren and Dejan Anastasijevic/Vienna