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PARIS - Witch-hunting is an affliction that strikes post-dictatorial societies when they come of age politically. Among Kosovo Albanians it broke out as soon as the multinational force entered the province in June.
At first it consisted of attacks by ethnic Albanians on Serbs, Gypsies and Goranis, the Muslim Slavs in southern Kosovo. Some Albanians known for ties with Serbs have been killed, too. It is getting uglier by the day.
The embarrassed UN mission in Kosovo asked the ethnic Albanian leaders to take a public stance against this new form of ethnic cleansing. In mid-August a communiqué was signed by the chief of staff of the Kosovo Liberation Army, General Agim Ceku.
The KLA, it read, ''forcefully condemns these actions [and] it invites all the Kosova citizens that belong to the Serb and other minorities not involved in crimes committed against other people to stay in Kosova.''
The press agency Kosovapress displays the text on its Web site. The trouble is that with so few people in Pristina, Pec or Prizren having access to a working telephone line, let alone the Internet, this is not like posting the thing on trees. Plus, the text is in English. The equivalent Web site in Albanian has a sanitized version of the communiqué that does not do much condemning.
A forceful and very public voice of protest came from Veton Surroi, publisher of the Pristina daily Koha Ditore: ''The Europeans and Americans will point their fingers at the Albanians and accuse the victims of the greatest persecution at the end of the century for turning to persecute others in Kosovo, for allowing fascism to be repeated,'' he wrote in an editorial in his newspaper. Picked up by many newspapers from New York to Paris and even Belgrade, this mea culpa was music to the ears of partisans of a multiethnic Kosovo.
But in Kosovo, where I was at the time, it was a different tune altogether. No mea culpa there. Mr. Surroi was first pooh-poohed, then denigrated and threatened. Even the leader of a political party founded by Mr. Surroi told me privately he thought that the publisher had taken a position for political purposes and had hurt the feelings of Albanian combatants.
Then Kosovapress upped the ante and put up on its Web site in Albanian (not in English, though) an attack on Mr. Surroi and on Baton Haxhiu, the editor of Koha Ditore.
They were ''spies for Serbs,'' guilty of ''pro-Serbian vampirism,'' suffering from ''pan-Slavic nostalgia.'' Besides, were they really ''of Albanian blood''? The article suggested that Mr. Surroi had managed to remain in Pristina through the air strikes with the help of Serbian paramilitaries.
Finally, the KLA agency issued an ominous warning: ''They may be killed and it will be understandable.'' This is the primitive vocabulary of intolerance, the crass voice of xenophobia. These arguments smack of the Dark Ages, of the Gang of Four in China, Russia's Black Hundred or perhaps a variation on McCarthyism.
In my native Poland, nascent democracy was almost derailed a decade ago when Lech Walesa, the newly elected president, decided that his former advisers were not tough enough with yesterday's adversaries. He himself would ''pick up the ax'' and start ''war on the top'' against those he judged too magnanimous.
Witch-hunting is always ugly. When thousands of Kalashnikovs are in the hands of people who may hear such calls, the exercise turns from ugly to dangerous.
In mid-October, ethnic cleansing acquired a new (and international) dimension, linguistic cleansing, when a Bulgarian UN officer was killed on the main street of Pristina for speakinga Slavic language.
Last week, the UN mission in Kosovo issued an ''urgent'' warning to all its members of Slavic ethnicity to ''use alternate routes to travel to and from work, vary your routines from established patterns, avoid exposure by restricting your work to interior locations as much as possible, stay out of public venues unless [it is] essential for your work functions.''
The international community, and especially the United States, which prides itself on a privileged relationship with Kosovo Albanians' new leaders, should demand that they tell their people a simple truth: Killing others solely because of their ethnicity, language or opinions is wrong and will not be tolerated.
Hashim Thaci, the head of the provisional government and the main ethnic Albanian partner of the United States in Kosovo, should publicly and clearly condemn such acts.
He should do so in a way that reaches the most people. Not in English, not on a Web site, but in Albanian and in proclamations that are posted on the walls and trees of Pristina, Prizren and Pec.