Pre-Election Scene of Kosovo: A View from Tirana

AIM Tirana, September 24, 2000

A simple public opinion poll published by Albanian dailies but without giving it much attention was sufficient to understand that Tirana and Pristina are on different wavelengths or that they even have different views of the political developments in Kosovo. Both the people in Albania and in Kosovo will vote for local authorities in October. And both in Albania and in Kosovo internal political rivalries have reached their climax.

One can without hesitation say that neither Albania in Kosovo, nor Kosovo in Albania are pre-election trump cards any more. Voices that stressed great influence of Albania on Kosovo have died down, and chronicles from Kosovo have mostly moved from front pages of the press in Tirana.

According to the latest polls carried out in Kosovo and published in Tirana, 44.6 per cent of the population prefer Democratic League of Ibrahim Rugova, 15.8 per cent are in favour of Thaci's Democratic Party and 4.1 per cent support the Alliance for the Future of Kosovo of Ramush Hajradinaj. To a normal citizen of Albania this sounds absurd.

Tirana has a completely different point of view of the affairs in Kosovo, just as Pristina looks upon matters in Albania quite differently than Tirana. According to the logic of Tirana, Rugova is the man who has led Kosovo to catastrophe with his philosophy of peaceful resistance. He is the man who has destroyed the nerve for resistance in the Kosovars and moreover, who did not know how to take a dignified stand in the most difficult moment of their history during NATO bombing. The scene of his meeting with Milosevic, his whim not to cooperate with other political forces at the height of the bombing campaign, almost inimical stand towards Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) before and after the war led many in Tirana to believe that after that he would not have any political future.

The interpretation coming from Albania, however, is very simplified. The policy of peaceful resistance has failed and this failure to a great extent bears the name of Rugova. Rugova has done much to make the problem of Kosovo an international issue, but notwithstanding, Kosovo was left out of Dayton accords and could have definitely remained out of everything if it had not been for the appearance of KLA.

From the other point of view, the Albanians find it difficult to forgive Rugova for his exaggerated engagement in Albanian internal developments in the period between 1991 and 1995. His appearance side by side with president Berisha at a series of rallies held during these years and his direct involvement in the campaign for the referendum concerning the rejected 1994 constitution additionally questioned his credibility in Albania.

However, analysts in Tirana continue to note that Rugova still has not given a satisfactory explanation of his meeting with Milosevic, he has never specified whether he was really a hostage or not, but especially that he has never justified his refusal to visit Albania, the land where more than 500 thousand Kosovar refugees were wholeheartedly welcomed by the local population. The Albanians who welcomed Kosovar refugees feel hurt by the fact that the leader from Kosovo visited Macedonia but not Albania.

This simple logic is not interpreted in this way in Kosovo. Polls speak just the opposite and there are big chances that the elections will confirm their forecasts. Why does Rugova still enjoy broad public support and why not KLA?

It is no exaggeration to say that the attitude towards KLA and political forces that have developed from it are the main cause of a growing political split between Tirana and Pristina. Should one attempt to calmly and objectively analyse the rise of Rugova one would have to list tens of details which refer more to poor administration organised by KLA and its guerilla behavior than to political success of former president.

Among the listed details is, for example, the fact that peasants from Drenica, Decani or other villages have swarmed into Pristina; that music has changed in cafes – instead of Michael Jackson they are playing songs on Adem Jashari; that commanders of KLA have sold their shops and that a part of them are openly engaged in smuggling. To all that one could add a type of uneasiness because those who call themselves victors have come to the city with their sharply put question: where have you, citizens of Pristina, been during the war?

The Albanian public was often surprised because of the question how can an active political force be judged as negative because its mistakes are indeed the result of its activities. Or moreover, how can mistakes of such a force become a bonus for an invisible man who very little or not at all appears in public and who has above all proved that he has hardly any political ambitions to rule a country.

Analysts in Tirana have underlined that the main reason of the broad support to Rugova should be sought in the fact that a large part of the population of Kosovo was unprepared for armed resistance. It was paralysed by fear of the shadow of Yugoslav army and by the influence of constant violence done by the Serbs. Only such logic can explain the fact that the resistance of KLA had little effect on Pristina in 1998 and nothing in that city had stirred up before the day NATO bombing began. It is no secret either that all that armed activity was treated with humour and that there were few who believed in what later became the main factor of the intervention in Kosovo.

One should also bear in mind that a large part of the population grew up in Tito's Yugoslavia and that it was hard for them to believe that Kosovo could be led by a man who had not at least completed regular Yugoslav school and who did not keep in a drawer a diploma of a Yugoslav university. One must not forget either that the feeling of belonging to Yugoslavia was also strong in other republics of the former federation, even in republics with expressed nationalism, such as Croatia and Slovenia.

These are the complexes that turned the people against the appearance of KLA which explain the fact that a very small number of city population got involved in the war. After the war, however, faced with the zeal of the victors, most of the civic population felt unprotected. This is a psychological, not physical protection. And almost all of them found refuge in Rugova's philosophy and to the question: “Where have you been while we were fighting the war?”, they answered: “In Rugova's peaceful resistance”.

This is more or less the opinion which prevails in Tirana concerning political developments in Kosovo. After all, this analysis reminds of the surprise of the Kosovars in 1997, who being uninformed about internal developments in Albania, saw no reason why the Albanians should be opposed to the rule of president Sali Berisha and vote for his rivals, former communists. Although it may be difficult it is realistic to say that the way of thinking in Pristina and Tirana differ much more than believed so far.

This was the reason that seems to have made Tirana more indifferent to political developments in Kosovo and that at the same time devalued all the messages coming from there. This also made people believe that Albanian influence on Kosovo elections and vice versa will be quite insignificant and that it will be impossible to successfully use the card of Kosovo in the campaign for local elections in Albania. And vice versa.

AIM Tirana

Blendi FEVZIU