(EXIT) VISAS ABOLISHED - A STEP TOWARDS DIALOGUE

AIM Prishtina, April 1, 1996

After years of frozen and extremely strained Serb- Albanian relations, finally a piece of news which raises hopes that the problem will move from the stand-still: Belgrade has abolished exit visas for Albania, introduced back in 1981 in order to control and prevent contacts between Kosovo and Albania. Abolishing of exit visas which should come into force in the end of April, may be considered as the first sign of good will of Belgrade which is aware of inevitability of serious negotiations with the Albanians. Nevertheless, although with a great symbolic significance, this gesture should not be overestimated. Abolishing of exit visas is not a great and painful concession for Belgrade. Even if in the beginning its function was to ban close contacts between Tirana and Prishtina, established during the seventies at the time of relative independence of Kosovo, the regime of exit visas in the meantime became an anachronistic and ineffective measure because the Kosovo Albanians found alternative ways for travelling to Albania (via Macedonia, roundabout via Europe). Nevertheless, the Serb police used the regulation on exit visas as a means of repressive control. During compulsory border control when going in or out of the country strictly applied in the case of ethnic Albanians, Serb police confiscated passports in which it found stamps from Macedonian border crossings with Albania or any other indirect evidence that they had visited this country. Suspicion that someone was in Albania was sufficient reason for abuse, summons to the police for informative conversations, and offencive and even criminal prosecution. Primarily those were prosecuted on criminal charges who tried to delete seals from their passports in order to conceal evidence of their visits to Albania. Constant strict passport control made communication of Kosovo with Albania difficult, but it did not prevent it.

Maintenance of the physical border with Albania nowadays resembles institing on a kind of ideological Maginot line which cannot have a rational function. Classical police control and border regime cannot limit flow of people, goods, and especially not of ideas. In the conditions when Albania and Kosovo are included in world telephone and electronic communication networks, when there is satellite television, police methods such as confiscation of Albanian books and newspapers at the border become absurd. Information, articles and books are nowadays exchanged by modems, and the old, arm-twisting methods are quite helpless and obsolete when dealing with such forms of communication.

That such arm-twisting logic is gradually being abandoned is illustrated by yet another information which refers to relativization of the border with Albania. Tourist companies in Kosovo are announcing opening of an airline between Tirana and Prishtina. Along with abolishment of exit visas, this will be a new convenience for ethnic Albanians who wish to travel to Albania on business, to visit their relatives or as tourists.

Still, one should not be hasty in assessments of these signs of relieving tensions in Serb-Albanian relations. Abolishment of acquiring a permit of the Serb police to travel does not imply that other conditions of border regime with Albania will automatically be alleviated. One should also not have illusions that the enormous gap of political and strategic interests which separates Belgrade from Prishtina and Tirana will be bridged merely by the act of abolishment of exit visas. Major problems remain where they used to be without any serious signals of detente, only the impression is created that Belgrade is now more ready for initiation of a dialogue with Prishtina and especially with Tirana. Abolishment of exit visas, namely, might not be a step taken in the direction of Prishtina as much as it is made towards Tirana. Several times during the past winter, Albanian President Sali Berisha made highly compromising statements on Kosovo, which implied a solution for it within sovereign Yugoslavia. In return, Mr. Berisha demanded that Belgrade, as the first sign of good will and reestablishment of confidence, abolish exit visas to Albania. If the recent decision of Belgrade is a response to this demand, it can mean that Belgrade welcomes moderate policy of Tirana, that is, that concerning the essential issue of the status of Kosovo, Belgrade and Tirana have reached a level of understanding higher than the one between Belgrade and Prishtina.

When speaking of Prishtina, abolishment of visas is accepted as a favourable signal, but not as a sufficient condition for beginning of serious talks. Prishtina demands abolishment of the repressive police regime installed fifteen years ago. To be more specific, Prishtina would like Belgrade to introduce actual not just symbolic measures of easing the tensions. Real gestures of good will here would be liberation of political prisoners, elimination of police repression, return to work of workers who were discharged from their posts, liberation of Albanian media, primarily radio and television, normalization of operation of Albanian schools and university... And for the time being, Belgrade and the local Serb authorities do not even wish to consider such a possibility. There are certain signs that some of the discharged workers have been returned to work and that even reimbursements have been determined for arbitrarily reached decisions between 1990 and 1992 when the Albanians were on a massive scale and illegally dismissed from their jobs. Some of those who lodged complaints at the time have been summoned to court and some even received positive decisions. Nevertheless, such reaction of the Serb courts which is probably coordinated with tactical plans of Milosevic's headquarters concerning Kosovo, is still limited in scope and majority of the Albanians look upon objectives of such policy of selective return to work with great suspicion. Namely, it is presumed that selective employment is just a method to make a split among the Albanians, that is, to make a part of the Albanians dependent on the present regime. Such expectations can clearly be discerned in the Serb regime propaganda in the past few months, which claims that a part of the Kosovo Albanians are "coming to reason" and "becoming increasingly estranged from the current separatist leadership". This is, of course, more a projection of a wish than reality. The Albanians are aware that selective offers cannot bring about any essential corrections of the current anti-Albanian system, but just certain minor "cosmetic" changes. The Serb regime is thus trying to partially improve the obscure picture on mass violations of human rights in Kosovo which have for years been determined by numerous reports and resolutions of influential world organizations (UN, OSCE, European Assembly, etc.)

But, although Belgrade cannot count on the possibility of creation of an even slightly influential new generation of pro-Yugoslav-oriented Albanians, there is, on the other hand, among the Albanian politicians an excessive fear of results of manipulations with the part of the unemployed who have no adequate alternative solution for their very difficult existential position. Such manipulations are not linked only to the clear intentions of Belgrade, but also to the still highly influential former Kosovo Titoists who have often publicized their realistic and compromising ideas on resolution of the issue of Kosovo. They are claimed to be capable to mobilize a part of the population for the disastrous formula of autonomy under the pretext that it is impossible to go beyond the solution imposed by the great powers. That is why they insist on collective return to jobs, and not gradual solution of the problem, or agree to solving of each actual case separately.

On the other hand, such a general approach to the issue of returning to work, causes much tension and discontent. The Albanians who have won litigations which determined reinbursement for the suffered damage (in some cases, it is claimed that the court determined up to 100 thousand dinars, or almost 30 thousand German marks to be paid) do not support the collectivistic approach to the problem, because they must immediately decide whether they wish to return to their jobs and force their former firms to pay them reinbursement money. Agreement to go along with the community exposes them to a specific and instant damage, and compensation for such a specific sacrifice seems to be just moral in character, with extremely uncertain prospects when and how it will end. The line between irrationality and rationality of practical decisions of live people seems to be more than tangible, like in the fairy tale about the world of perpetual darkness: if you take it, you will be sorry, if you do not, you will also be sorry!

Even the alleviated border regime which was at first welcomed with joy and even euphoria as the "beginning of the fall of the Albanian Berlin wall", turned out to be diabolical later on. Abolishing of exit visas is a good sign, but it can be interpreted also as an act which reaffirms the existing border. Because, only the regime of exit visas is abolished, but entrance visas remain in force, as well as control of border crossings. Communications across the border will be easier for the Albanians, but Kosovo still remains a part of Serbia and rump Yugoslavia. Observed from this aspect, the concession made by Belgrade is not without consequences. At the critical moment when the international community has reactivated the principle of fixed borders, and when it is claimed that Kosovo will remain in Serbia, Belgrade has actually made just one of preventive steps which should neutralize the most powerful argument of all, the one about the right of ethnic Albanians to maintain free political, cultural and economic communication with Albania as the parent country. Now Belgrade can tell the world: we have opened the doors to free communication of the Albanians. After this, Belgrade can promise the Albanians that they will not be deprived of other rights as well, except of the right to secession!

At this point, one may say that Belgrade is gradually getting ready and adapting to the possibility of a compromising solution of the Kosovo issue. Recognition of the principle of fixed borders must be compensated for by giving broader political rights to the Albanians which actually must extend if not to the full right to self-determination, at least to the one called internal self-determination. In this case, due to direct implications on stability of the region, self-determination of Kosovo Albanians must have certain external guarantees. That is exactly why the issue of Kosovo is considered by world political centres to be internationalized. And this again means that the principle of fixed borders should not be taken in the classical sense of the word. Borders are reaffirmed, but the concept that they are relative prevails.

New borders in the Balkans, although created by force and terrible ethnic wars, from the very start essentially have a certain character of indefiniteness and porousness, just as the states thus formed are not classical sovereign states, but something in between. In such configuration of relative indefiniteness and floating, Kosovo might find its place.

Shkelzen Maliqi AIM Prishtina