Moderate Albanians fear their own kind
The middle-aged Albanian was lying on the pavement outside the bank he ran in the main street, bleeding heavily from gunshot wounds.
From their headquarters little more than 100 metres away, American peacekeepers raced to help. He was taken by helicopter to a military hospital, but died on the way.
Though his killer or killers quickly disappeared, Danush Januzi's circumstances suggest he was not a victim of Serb anger, but of something which moderate Kosovan Albanians fear is the new danger facing the territory. A struggle for power and money is pitting Albanian leaders against each other in the vacuum left by Serb officials who withdrew last summer.
'Mr Januzi had been the manager of the bank long before the international community arrived in Kosovo,' said Gilles Dubuc, the foreign official who was appointed as Vitina's mayor by the United Nations mission in Kosovo.
'The local political party replaced him, but he stayed in his job. When I got here in early November, I was confronted with two individuals fighting over it. I decided to give Mr Januzi his job back,' Mr Dubuc said. Asked which party the other man belonged to, he said: 'The PPDK.' The PPDK, the Kosovo Democratic Progressive Party, is the new incarnation of the Kosovo Liberation Army, whose guerilla forces fought for independence against the Serbs.
The problem facing Mr Dubuc when he took up his duties several months after the Serbs' withdrawal has been repeated in scores of town halls across Kosovo.
The KLA used its power and wartime popularity to appoint local mayors and other officials, in part to present the UN, which has a mandate to run Kosovo, with a fait accompli.
Some new UN administrators accepted the KLA appointees as advisers. Others found replacements. Mr Dubuc chose a compromise. He dismissed Daut Shemali, a KLA man who became a local hero after spending two years as a political prisoner under the Serbs, but allowed him to stay temporarily in the office he occupied.
Meanwhile, Mr Dubuc began negotiations with other parties in Vitina to share out town hall departments.
The position of bank manager was a much-coveted post. But if jealousy over this access to power and cash was one possible motive for Januzi's death, there was another.
'Everyone who collaborated with the Serbs ought to be killed. Presumably that's why he died,' said Bedre Peposhi, a history teacher.
Another teacher, Aca Nikolic, a Serb, said: 'He stayed in Kosovo throughout the war. He was the best Albanian in Vitina.'
