STUDENTS - A NEW POLITICAL FORCE

AIM Pristina, 29 October, 1997

The ethnic Albanian students have entered the whirlpool of social, political and diplomatic developments in Kosovo with a bang. Superficially it seems that this has happened in just a few weeks. However, social and political conditions for their political launching were gradually ripening for several years, and germs of their engagement in this sense have been evident continuously during the past year, and even longer.

This will be a significant element in the assessment of the profile of the current leadership of the students' organization, its forces and potentials, at least in the foreseeable future. They have already dazzled all Albanian politicians in the assessment of political disposition of Kosovo Albanians, but they still have to prove their skill in the diplomatic field in which they have no experience whatsoever. Setting significant, and yet limited objectives for their protest, they have managed to impose themselves to their diplomatic interlocutors. For a year and a half, they have manifested courage and resoluteness to persist in their demands and not to take great risk in doing it.

It is a paradox that their strength and potentials, as well as possible consequences of students' attempts to churn up the stale political quagmire of Kosovo was first recognized by foreign, primarily American diplomats. Prominent exponents of the Kosovo Albanian political structure still cannot pull themselves together from the developments in the past month and a half and overcome their deep confusion. This is obvious from the way they manoeuvred and hesitated with offering verbal support to the students which was labelled by one of the students' leaders political fashion among Albanian politicians.

By the manner in which the official Serbian media reported about the students' or rather Albanian demonstrations on 1 October, the impression is that the Serbian authorities were also surprised with the massive of protest. They described the Kosovo protest movement of several ten thousand of the Albanians in the cities of Kosovo as protest manifestations of Albanian separatist groups. According to the fact that all information resembled each other, it seemed as if they had been distributed beforehand. But it is believed that the Serbian authorities have other motives to conceal the Kosovo reality. They would still like to think that everything is all right in Kosovo and that an increasing number of the Albanians is accepting rapprochement or even loyalty to Serbia.

However, the events went in their course and in comparison with the situation in the past five years, the students' wave has already brought significant political novelties. For the world and for Belgrade, massive participation in the first protest showed (once again) that the smouldering fire in Kosovo cannot be extinguished by long maintenance of forced peace or situation without war. If this and the next protest are taken as an indicator in this sense, and they should not be disregarded because they are not at all just another ordinary manifestation intended to draw attention of foreign media and international diplomacy as some people believe, the consequences are clear, at least when the attutude towards the issue of Kosovo is concerned.

The students' protest brings most significant changes into the political spectre of the Kosovo Albanian movement. It is exceptionally significant that after several years the monopoly of political and media control has finally been broken. At the moment three political trends are marking the Albanian movement in Kosovo, out of which the students' protest is politically the most powerful and the most interesting. This is approximately the image which can be created about the political spectre which is trying to create its objectives in the public political struggle and remain within the framework of legality or rather semi-legality. If it were possible to know at least the approximate force of parts of the Albanian movement which are acting underground, this rough classification could have been quite different.

As the most significant part of the movement, the students' political front has been in the past few weeks the main framework around which new Albanian approaches to attaining the proclaimed political objectives are crystallizing. This is, therefore, not a new approach to the Kosovo issue and the solution for Kosovo, nor a dilemma for or against armed confrontation with Serbia. Everybody is aware that an armed conflict with Serbia is unacceptable or too risky. But, there are big differences when it comes to assessments of the space in which various forms of nonviolent resistance can be developed, which are somewhere in between an armed confrontation and the former situation of passive expectations. This political difference accompanies the Albanian movement almost ever since it was founded. On the one hand there are those who think that it is necessary to continue like in the past five or six years, because there is no space for other forms of activities, and on the other there are those who believe that this space is not so narrow and that with just a small risk, it can not only be used, but even significantly broadened.

These dilemmas have never been more topical than now. The students have intensified it with their wave of protests or better still, the massiveness of the Albanian support to the students' action has done it. The events have confirmed students' evaluations that with the current Albanian politicians it is impossible for them to achive any of their goals. That is why they have made a great breakthrough in relation to their initial conceptions. They proclaimed themselves to be a non-political organization, and reduced their demands to non-poolitical ambitions: accomplishment of the fundamental right to education in mother tongue on all levels and in normal conditions, meaning in school and university buildings they were thrown out of more than six years ago. They also proclaimed their portest strictly and only students'. However, they counted on the support of the people, regardless of the opposition of some parts of the Albanian political exponents to any form of public demonstrations.

Separation of the students from the politicians and "disassoiation" from politics was it seems considerably supported from abroad. Due to dangerous uncertainties, diplomacy could not permit the students' protest to develop completely uncontrolled. But, what could be given in return for harnessing it? The compromise seems to have been found in the following solution: support for non-political demands, that is, for the return of the Albanian pupils and students to school and university buildings. This coincides with the approach of the international community in seeking a resolution for the issue of Kosovo step by step. This support may acquire a demonstrative character. Indeed, a visit of a large number of diplomats and representatives of non-governmental organizations is expected on the day of the students' protest scheduled for Wednesday, 29 October, the purpose of which will be supervision of the announced protests of the Albanian students. Without mediation from abroad, highly substantial talks between representatives of the Independent Union of Albanian students and representatives of a few students' organizations of Belgrade University would have probably never happened either. Belgrade students promised that by Wednesday they would send their observers' delegation. Just a few weeks ago, such talks were unconceivable, moreover Serbian observers in Albanian demonstrations.

At the moment, it can only be guessed what will come out of this complex "game" with quite a few foreign protagonists who have double or even manifold intentions. The Kosovo Albanian public, and the politicians are closely watching how the representatives of the students will cope with the situation. They are concerned because of their lack of experience in "performances" of this kind. Many Kosovo Albanian politicians are still not aware that they have excluded themselves from the game, so they are trying to continue with the old quarrelsome approach to the situation and relations within the Albanian movement. Probably that is the reason why on several occasions they were warned by some foreign diplomats not to get involved in the current students' campaign of public protests and their diplomatic and other contacts.

This role is not pleasant to the politicians, but they were the ones who publicly and repeatedly demanded increased engagement of the international community concerning the problem of Kosovo. A public discussion about how that increased engagement of the international community in Kosovo came about and how the politicians found themselves out of the game has already begun and according to its beginning, one could tell that it will not be gentle at all. At least so far, everybody agrees that the engagement is positive, but they also agree in the concern that this might bring reduction of the problem of Kosovo to the question of education. Representatives of students consider this concern justified. But, they say that they wish to resolve problems the young ethnic Albanian population is directly faced with, and that other questions should be opened by the Albanian parties.

AIM Pristina

Fehim REXHEPI