With the fear of anarchy mounting as refugees pour back into Kosovo, the UN governor in Pristina swore in a handful of judges and prosecutors yesterday to try to fill the law enforcement vacuum.
Alongside the looting and burning of abandoned Serb and Romany homes, which the international peacekeeping troops seem powerless to stop, there have been random shootings, burglaries, and car thefts. Before NATO's intervention, law enforcement agencies - from the army to the traffic and municipal police forces - were almost entirely Serb except for a few Romanies. Now they have ceased to function.
Kfor troops are acting as surrogate police for the moment. The first 10 UN civilian police arrived earlier in the week. Although Kosovo's villages are still relatively empty, its cities have started to revive faster than expected, with shops and cafes reopening. Taxis are charging outrageous prices to exploit the lack of a bus service.
More than half the refugees have returned without waiting for the UN's repatriation programme. The UN refugee agency announced yesterday that 477,000 Albanians have returned in the last two weeks.
Serbs are leaving the territory in droves. The UN and Kfor are trying to encourage Serb professionals to stay by insisting that services reopen on an ethnically integrated basis. The judicial officials sworn in by Mr Sergio Vieira de Mello, the UN governor, yesterday included Albanians, Serbs, and a Turk. The UN Secretary-General, Mr Kofi Annan, said yesterday that more civilian police were urgently needed to help restore law and order in Kosovo, while urging the swifter deployment of NATO-led troops.
He was addressing high-level officials from 18 nations and three international organisations at a meeting aimed at energising the twin operations led by the UN and NATO to return ethnic Albanian refugees to Kosovo.
The British Foreign Secretary, Mr Robin Cook, said the UN mission was the focus of the meeting.
"Our task today is to make sure the civil side of the operation catches up with the military track, which is already in place within Kosovo," he said.
"Having won the war, what we must do today is to make sure we are now in a position to build the peace," Mr Cook said.
Referring to the civilian police officials in the UN Mission in Kosovo (UNMIK), of whom only about 40 are now in place, Mr Annan said: "We need more of them and we need them quickly, before we can fully assume our policing responsibility."
Yugoslavia's Prime Minister, Mr Momir Bulatovic, called a special meeting of parties in the federal parliament today. The meeting, three weeks after NATO halted its air war against Yugoslavia, could lead to a reshuffle of the cabinet - something that officials have been hinting at for the past few weeks.
Mr Yan Pronk, a former Dutch minister, has emerged as another contender for the post of civil administrator of Kosovo.