JOINT ALBANIAN-SERBIAN BANKS IN KOSOVO?

AIM, Pristina, July 19, 1994

As of 1990 two parallel national projects and thereby correlated political systems have been developing in Kosovo. The Serbs have established distinct minority-rule administrative-police control over Kosovo which is a variant of apartheid, while the Albanians developed, wherever possible, parallel political, educational and cultural institutions through which they are attempting to anticipate Kosovo's full independence. These too projects are naturally completely incompatible and therefore lead to ever more expressed divergency, namely, to an "either or" solution. However, since at this point, due to different reasons, it does not suit either the Serbs or the Albanians to enter into an open conflict, they were compelled to opt for a form of infernal co-existence in conditions characterized by a balance of fear and postponment of the final showdown.

Due to these reasons,in spite of the parallel political projects, inthe last four years a convergent space of Serbian- Albanian economic cooperation has been created, which attained great significance and which could not be divided according to national key. Naturally this convergent field of cooperation was deficient, it contained many elements of violence, plunder and crime under state control. But even in such conditions a grey economy developed, mostly trade, which became the basis for the fast acquisition of wealth by one stata of the population and for the economic survival of the majority.

International economic sanctions against Serbia and Montenegro imposed in 1992, as well as the extremely high rate of inflation which lasted that year and the following one, had an even greater impact on the further development of parallel economies and financial flows, wherein those who were the least ethnically biased profitted most. Both in Serbia and in Kosovo, businessmen of various profiles, to the main part salesmen and middlemen, but also manufacturers of goods in short supply and heavy demmand, soon found out they they were very little interested in the "ethnical" origin of their business partners, but were lead almost exclusively by the logic of profit. At the beginning the business contacts between Albanian and Serbian businessmen took place on the sly, far from the eyes of one and the other public, including the state authorities, which wanted to prevent salesmen from Kosovo from buying goods which were in short supply on the Serbian market, before all agricultural products.

However, due to the fact that the Albanians from Kosovo preserved their foreign exchange reserves because they did not trust Serbian banks after the state plunder of foreign exchange deposits, and that in the meantime remittances from from their family members abroad who seeked asylum and economic shelter in Western Europe and the USA began flowing in, the Serbain war economy began to respect the Kosovo (as well as the Sandzak) market as an important source for securing "healthy" money. Serbia of course could not just pump out foreign exchange from the Albanians in Kosovo without certain concessions, even strategic ones. Although unwillingly, in the most critical period of hyper-inflation and shortages of goods on the market, Kosovo was relatively better supplied with the basic foodstuffs and other products (flour, milk, edible oil, soap, detergent, etc.) as compared to Belgrade and inland Serbia.

Salesmen from Kosovo had foreign exchange and to the most part paid in cash, by hand, so that no doors were closed to them on the Serbian and Montengrin private market as well as in the "social" sector. Where regulations were an obstacle a way was easily found to bribe the civil sevants. Of course wholesalers bribed high officials and managers of state firms, while retail salers bribed lower rank officials and the police. The state became corrupted from top to bottom, functioning as an alliance of the bureaucracy and the mob, while the connection between them was maintained by the police. Accordingly, as of December 1992, the Serbian regime in Kosovo, installed as a reprsentitave in the Serbian Parliament, the criminal and paid killer, Zeljko Raznjatovi- Arkan who in addition to his function of freightening the Albanians and organizing para-military units, organized the grey money market and network of state racket, wherein he had to - and this is probably not just a rumour - cooperate with the local Albanian bosses.

The Serbs from Kosovo too, who attained great privileges and charged a high price for their patriotism in the first two years of the apartheid that was introduced could no longer count upon Serbian state funds after the outbreak of the exceptionally expensive Bosnian war. During 1993 their monthly income fell to 5 to 10 DEM. This humiliating fact brought part of the Serbian patriots back to their senses, so that they began cooperating with the Albanians, primarily through the charging of rents for usurped facilities and business premises. A whole series of Serbian state enterprises that have inherited enormous facilities are surviving practically owing the the rents for premises leased by enterprising Albanians.

In political fora and among the on-call patriots on both sides this process of Serbian-Albanian economic cooperation is always accompanied by a high degree of distrust, and naturally with stinging criticims. Both sides considered it to be the selling off of national interests. Such an approach was particularly marked among the extreme Serbs from Kosovo, such as those gathered around the journal "Jedinstvo".Although "Jedinstvo" itself is surviving thanks to the Albanian newspapers ("Bujku", "Zeri" "Koha" and other papers pay enormous sums for renting premises and for printing charges and this money is deposited on the current account of the Serbian firm "Panorama", controlled by the extremists from "Jedinstvo") its agressive propaganda is directed against cooperation with Albanian salesmen, since it is considered to be a form of colaboration and betrayal of national interests.

On the other hand, the Albanian salesmen were also under constant surveillance because they traded with Serbian firms. Although almost everyone was aware that without the resourcefulness of salesmen and the diversification of the grey economy it would have been much more difficult for Kosovo to endure the extreme political and police pressures, nevertheless a demarcation line that would separate colaboration out of necessity from colaboration that changes into betrayal of national interests and is to the advantage of the enemy national project was constantly looked for in the media from Kosovo. This keeping an eye on the expansion of business was in a way a reminder that for them too the present status quo was temporary, namely,that national interests are after all above their momentary economic interests.

To the main part Albanain business circles were aware of their double mission and they generously supported and maintained the parallel political, educational, information, cultural and sports systems among the Albanians. At the end of last year, from well informed circles the fact could be obtained that for the maintenance of the parallel Albanian school system,(for which 1.5 milion DEM is required per year) 70 percent of the means were collected in Kosovo itself, mainly out of donations of Albanian businessmen, while only 30 percent came from the national fund financed by the Albanian diaspora controlled by the Kosovo Government in exile.

However, although Albanian business has great merit for the national movement, it continues to be under the magnifying glass of certian circles which measure all forms of contacts with the Serbs with a yardstick of rigidly conceived national interests.In the last few days once again the progadanda against so called " business colaborationism" has intensified in Pristina. It is connected with the news about the establishment of two joint banks in Kosovo. The first, "Gama" bank with 51% of equity capital owned by Albanian businessmen and 49% by the Belgrade Commercial Bank, while the second case concerns the opening of a branch office of the "Montenegro" Bank from Podgorica which would also include Kosovo capital.

What particularly irritaded the on-call Albanian patriots was the fact that Jusuf Zejnullahu would be at the head of "Gama" Bank (he was the president of the last communist government in Kosovo, and for a time the president of the Kosovo Government in exile but removed from that office quickly) and the manager of the other bank, i.e. the branch office of "Montenegro" Bank Remzi Koljgeci, likewise a former Communist leader from the most critical period of the supression of the autonomy in Kosovo (President of Kosovo in the period 1988-1989). The President of the independent trade unions of Kosovo, Dr. Hajrullah Gorani was the first to voice his protest against the founding of these banks. He warned the former communists leaders, that in the meantime, while they were in the shadows, "the Albanian people developed a high level of national consciousness and have come to know their way and whom to believe, so that the block of colaborationists who wish to create a national chauvinistic Serbian system that would oppose the Albanian national block would be completely ineffective."

The newspaper "Bujku" also reacted, asking, in somewhat milder form what the real background was of opening the "Montenegro" and "Gama" banks in Pristina? In this paper's commentary it is observed, with reason, that the founding of these banks is connected with the interests of those who wish to made huge profits. In changed conditions which are a result of the attempt to bring order into the Yugoslav economy (Professor Avramovic's plan), in which the financial police has very great competences, it has become much riskier to do business on the black market. Big capital is now seeking safe banks that will guarantee payment and the speedy circulation of capital.

"Bujku" quotes an unidentified Albanian businessman who said that he needed a powerful bank that could follow him in his business transactions. Nevertheless,in the concluding part of the commentary, the founders of the new banks are warned: the job taken up by the two former officials from Kosovo is quite risky and does not have the support of any Albanian political entity, including the trade unions, and is beginning to be assessed as colaborationism, although none of their individual acts are being obstructed." That which the present day Albanian leaders fear most is not the fact itself that these banks are being founded. It goes without saying that Albanian businessmen have worked with Serbian banks to date too, which is a neccesity as long as the dinar continues to be official means of payment in Kosovo.

Those who are more objective believe that these two banks will be of paramount importance and have positive effects on business transactions in Kosovo. Of course if the state of Serbia simply does not plunder them, as some circles warn, as it did the Bank of Kosovo. Albanian national leaders fear most the very idea of a joint bank which is taken, on the symbolic level, as the beginning of a new integration, namely, as an institutionalization of something which they decisively reject as a political idea: for Kosovo to remain within Serbia. The appointement of the former autonomy leaders at the head of these news banks seems like an introduction to the revival of autonomy, something international factors insist on. At the recent Congress of the leading Democratic Union of Kosovo, the national ideologists'wing has grown in strength considerably, namely, the wing of former political prisoners which formed the the nuclei of the rebellions in 1968 and 1981.

In Kosovo, like in Serbia the complex struggle is still expected between nationalcratic and isolationist conceptions of national institutions (including national banks) on the one hand and modern multi-national capitalism on the other, which advocates the opening of borders and the free circulation of capital and goods. The forthcoming stage of the gradual opening of the Kosovo issue will not only increase tensions between the Serbs and Albanians but will form a front for the internal squaring of accounts. Only then it will become clear how serious are the aspirations of big business to overcome national limits. Forecasts are not favourable for now, but business has proved to be tough. The only question is when and to what extent will it have the possibility to politically dictate its own conditions.

Shkelzen Maliqi AIM Pristina.