This is a new frontier,'' he says. He was security chief for William Walker, the U.S. diplomat who headed the international Kosovo verification mission that tried to keep the lid on tensions before the NATO bombing began. That's where he met his business partner, Agim - Walker's personal bodyguard and a martial arts expert who had been a senior police official before the Serbs fired all ethnic Albanians from state jobs a decade ago. His customers here include bars and discos, and he says talks are under way for a contract with an Arab client. Ethnic Albanians close to Ibrahim Rugovaconfirm that Johnston's employees are protecting Rugova, considered Kosovo's president by most ethnic Albanians.
Private protection seems to make sense in Kosovo.
Ethnically driven revenge and just plain crime translates into a dozen or more murders a week among a population estimated at less than 2 million. NATO troops and foreign police face a wall of silence when they try to penetrate Kosovo society to investigate a killing or abduction. Johnston's employees are locals, and that clearly helps. Still, they are sometimes tested. Although his company is one of only a handful of Kosovo businesses headed by outsiders, Johnston says he wants to be well-established once normality returns and foreign banks and other businesses move in.