The Americans refer to them as "buttheads." The British call them "wizards".
In an age where information is power, these NATO technical specialists -- hunched over banks of computer screens in a former army barracks in northern Macedonia -- think of themselves as front-line soldiers in the thick of the action.
Drawn from all service ranks and 14 NATO countries, their mission is to keep an eagle eye on the volatile Serbian province of Kosovo, where ethnic Albanian separatists have been battling Serbian security forces all year.
Known as the Kosovo Verification Coordination Center (KVCC), the hastily assembled high-tech operation gathers, collates, and disseminates information collected in around-the-clock aerial and ground inspections.
The information comes from remotely piloted vehicles flying low and slow over Kosovo, or from manned surveillance aircraft soaring more than 50,000 feet above the troubled province. It also comes from the more than 2,000 troops, deployed by the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), who make their rounds in four-wheel drive vehicles painted day-glo orange.
The KVCC's mission is to ensure compliance with a United Nations resolution that demands an end to hostilities in Kosovo, where more than 1,500 people have been killed since 1 January.
An offensive by state security forces that drove a quarter of a million ethnic Albanian civilians from their homes in Kosovo earlier this year was halted only after NATO threatened air strikes against Yugoslavia. The strikes were averted in October when Belgrade struck a last-minute deal with US special envoy Richard Holbrooke to withdraw army and police units from Kosovo.
Holbrooke's agreement also provided for the intrusive inspection measures now being coordinated by the KVCC and enable the international community to ensure state compliance and monitor separatist guerilla activities.
"Our job is to verify that people are where they are meant to be and are not where they are not meant to be," explained British Brigadier David Montgomery, who commands the KVCC operation. "We've got a monopoly in the region on high quality, high speed communications. Nobody has what we have."
If all goes according to plan, a US-led mediation effort will produce an interim, three-year settlement for Kosovo before a much-feared fighting season begins again around March.
Copyright© 1998 Reuters Limited.
