KOSOVO

Besnik Bala, AIM Prishtina

Stadiums and sports halls in Kosovo (although today they are more or less all alike) are still not only places were sports fans vent their suppressed frustration. They were always something more than that. If sport competitions in the "normal" world are entertainment, passion, business and politics in one, in Kosovo it has always been (and will remain so, at for least some time) politics.

If, in the 1980s, the fans cried EHO, for instance, as was the case in many stadiums in Kosovo, a political scandal would follow. Those who uttered the word faced the prospect of 60 days in prison, because it was allegedly identical with initials of Enver Hoxha, the former communist dictator of Albania! The former communist offici als did not heed the fact that the same cry could be heard in stadiums in London, Paris, Madrid, or even in Belgrade. But what communist repression could not do, the dictatorship of the Serbian leader, Slobodan Milosevic, achieved. By revoking Kosovo's autonomy in 1990, ethnic Albanian athletes as if by magic, found themselves out of the stadiums and sports halls, on the other side of the "barricades." For 10 years Kosovo Albanian sports teams desperately tried to join international organizations. But they were not recognized, even after the war in Kosovo. Under the U.N. administration they still belong to a country not recognized internationally and therefore not entitled to a seat of their own in international sports associations. Despite a sports scene hindered from the outside, the practice of appointing politicians to manage sports continues, together with using sport for political purposes. Thus one of its main goals is building a state. Consequently, politics is entering the very essence of sport in Kosovo. Poor financial conditions are doing their part as well, and it appears will have a major say in future relations between sport and politics.