On the eve of a historic vote on transforming the current Kosovo Security Force into a body with army-like attributes, experts say it is only the beginning of a long process.
Kosovo’s parliament will vote on Friday for the second reading of the three draft laws on the Kosovo Security Force, KSF, expanding its competences, and avoiding the need for constitutional changes required to change it into a regular army.
However, the move to give the KSF clear military attributes is still seen as a major step.
An expert on military issues and security in Kosovo, Ramadan Qehaja, said the voting of the draft laws is just the beginning of a long and difficult process of transforming the current force into an army.
“As a military expert, I see a lot of work, many tasks and many activities that must be undertaken in order to begin giving this force military attributes,” he said.
Proper planning, according to Qehaja, is the main challenge that the force will face after the likely adoption of the laws on December 14.
“It has to start from the very beginning, from the president to the last soldier in the row,” he said.
Prioritizing issues for operational readiness was another challenge that needs to be analyzed properly, he added.
“It has to do with what should we do now in order to immediately have a corpus of units and commands and so on,” Qehaja pointed out.
Another challenge for the process will be budgetary issues, according to Qehaja. Kosovo has little money to spare on state-of the-art defence equipment.
“Capacities will be completed gradually. We cannot say now what we will have in terms of armaments or armored vehicles,” he admitted.
But he suggested that planning could start now with the distribution of the armament that the current force has, followed by those that the country will receive as donations, or buy.
What needs to be kept in mind “is our military doctrine which is a defence doctrine”, he stated.
By adopting laws on merely changing the KSF’s powers, parliament bypasses the need to adopt constitutional changes required to change the KSF into a regular army – which Serbia bitterly opposes.
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