Dossier on Kosovo

The Way to War Paved

AIM Belgrade, 5 March, 1998

Propagandist war bugles are sounding around Serbia again, irrestistably reminding of the beginning of the dissolution of the country in 1991. While the regime and the opposition leaders are competing in giving "patriotic" statements about "defence of Kosovo - the sacred Serb land - against Albanian terrorists and separatists", the most powerful media which has the biggest audience, state television, is taking out from its holdings the old films dating back about fifteen years ago which show mass forcible emigrations of the Serbs from Kosovo, devoting the most popular one-hour programs to them.

The current president of Yugoslavia, Slobodan Milosevic, whose movement from the Republican throne by no means implies that he has lost his position of the unquestioned Serb leader whose word is sacred concerning everything, is trying again, on the case of Kosovo, according to the several times already tested recipe, to convince the Serbs that national sanctuaries are more important for them than life itself. Milosevic, however, is not as powerful as he used to be ten years ago when he was inaugurated in Kosovo itself by the local Serbs. He has lost wars and political battles behind him, poverty-stricken people who are barely surviving, rebellious Montenegro, unstable Voivodina, and Kosovo in flames. Connoisseurs of Milosevic, of his person and his deeds, claim that at this moment he is forced to make certain concessions to the Albanians, but that the price may be too high. It is difficult to say at this moment whether Serbia is actually getting ready for the battle of Kosovo, but the latest brutal interventions of Serbian police, especially those in Pristina, against peaceful demonstrations of Kosovo Albanians, reminded Belgraders of their own last year's brutal confrontatin with the pillar of the Serbian regime: "If they are fighting terrorists, guerrilla warriors, it's their job. But why are they killing or beating up peaceful citizens, women, children", a woman from Belgrade expressed her feelings on a local television.

The latest developments in Kosovo have with no doubt shaken up the lethargic public opinion of Serbia, which has not reacted for years or even considered the repression of the Serbian regime against the Albanians in Kosovo to be normal, paying no attention even to violation of human rights.

The drama of Kosovo for which nobody nowadays has a true solution, was the stumbling block even for the Titoist regime. In his vision of the future of second Yugoslavia, Tito promised the republic to the Albanians in order to persuade them to join his partisans. The plan about the federation with Albania proved a failure, and Kosovo was pacified by military and police forces. Located on the area of 10,908 square kilometres with about one million and 956 thousand inhabitants, Kosovo was always considered to be the most important secondary issue of Serbia, while the Albanian population was treated as a marginal social group. Since 1991 the Albanians have boycotted the population census, so the exact data actually do not exist, but according to the evaluations of the Bureau of Statistics, the Albanians participate with 81.6 per cent in the total number of inhabitants of Kosovo, and the Serbs with 9.9 per cent. Regardless of modernization and development, in former Yugoslavia, Kosovo was considered to be the least developed region, despite millions of dollars which flowed into it in the form of aid from either the former federation or the World Bank. Money was used for construction of fancy buildings and not invested into modern industries. In the beginning of the eighties, the average annual income per capita in SFRY was 2,635 dollars, and in Kosovo 795 dollars. A worker in Serbia earned 235 dollars, and in Kosovo 180 dollars a month. Unemployment in Kosovo was twice as high as in Serbia. Backwardness of Kosovo is linked by the analysts, among other, to the birth rate boom: between the end of the Second World War and 1980, the number of inhabitants in Kosovo increased from 716,000 to 1,500,000.

The state offered the young people in Kosovo, especcially the Albanians, the possibility of university education, but gave them no jobs or opportunities. Shut in the ghetto partly by the linguistic, partly by repressive and partly by ethnic barriers, young Albanians fomented their first rebellion in 1968. This was the first signal of national awakening and wish for ethnic recognition. They shouted: "We want our republic", "We want our Constitution", "We want our university", "Down with the colonial policy to Kosovo", "Long live the liberation movement of Kosovo", "Long live Albania". The demonstrations were brutally put down, and it was impossible to learn the number of the arrested. Three years later, Kosovo got its constitutional law, and the autonomy passed into the jurisdiction of the provincial administration. The new 1974 Constitution made Kosovo and Voivodina "constituent elements of the federation", but they remained in Serbia. For the present Serbian-Albanian conflicts, this could be the crucial year: the Serbs felt threatened because the Republic was divided into three parts, and the Albanians discontented because they won neither their own republic nor the status of a nation.

Post-Titoist Yugoslavia began its life with increasing tensions between the Serbs and the Albanians. The Serbs increasingly mention that they are threatened in Kosovo, and the Albanians, between 1981 and 1986, pursue a combined political struggle (demonstrations and political pressure) for the republic of Kosovo. By using populism, the Albanian bureaucratic and intellectual elite strives for full power over Kosovo and the Albanians. This is the period of mass emigration of the Serbs and the Montenegrins from Kosovo - in just two years about 10 thousand families left.

Thanks to circumstances, but primarily to growing nationalism and revival of the myth of the Serb nationalistic intelligentsia about "all the Serbs living in a single state", on the political scene of Serbia, Milosevic appears as a messiah who will save the Serbs. He uses Kosovo for his breakthrough, where at that moment, the Albanian nationalism was at a standstill and the Serb was growing, with the help of which Milosevic introduces order in his own party ranks. Unprecedented repression begins against the Albanians, from arrests to sacking from jobs and the university. The Albanians become homogeneous, and in 1989, assisted by tanks and the police, Milosevic abolishes the autonomy of the Province, and the entire Serbia grandiosely celebrates in Gazimestan the 600th anniversary of the battle of Kosovo. Protests of the Albanians never cease, and in 1990 Kosovo is on the verge of a civil war, and the Albanians on the verge of becoming second-rate citizens.

The Albanians respond to the terrible repression by several-year lasting non-violent protest, they become fully homogeneous, they interrupt every contact with the remaining local Serbs who are deployed at key posts in the authorities. They silently organize a referendum on independence, elect leader Ibrahim Rugova for their president. They use the several-year lasting isolation to create the parallel schooling system, parallel health services and administrative agencies. With, but most frequently with no immediate cause, the Serbian regime literally does with the Albanians whatever it pleases: citizens are arrested as terrorists, houses are searched, property snatched away, double taxes collected. Kosovo Albanians, despite poverty, pay taxes both to the state of Serbia and to the parallel authorities in Kosovo.

Milosevic would not even dream of talking to them or negotiating with them. The "big leader" solves everything by means of the police and repression, keeping Kosovo far from the eyes of the world and of Serbia. He does not communicate even with the Serbs from Kosovo any more, who increasingly also feel that their confidence in the Serbian regime has been betrayed. Milosevic signs the agreement on schooling with Rugova just to pacify the world.

After several years of advocating peaceful struggle against the state and the regime they do not recognize, forces appear on the Albanian political scene which want the republic immediately and now. The Kosovo tangle is tightened, and the peaceful students' demonstrations of Kosovo Albanians are preceded by the appearance of the Liberation Army of Kosovo, considerably well equipped and organized for guerrilla struggle. It is assumed that its centre is in Glogovac and the surropunding completely ethnically-cleansed 100 Albanian villages. The war in Kosovo has just begun, the remaining Serbs are organiziong night watches around their homes, people are killed, and each party mourns separately only its own dead. Instead of negotiations, Milosevic is repeating that Kosovo is the problem of Serbia, at the same time sending strong police forces to Kosovo, the victims of which are, apart from the Liberation Army, innocent civilians, women, and even children.

It is obvious that Rugova is not faring well in Kosovo any more. The initiative is gradually taken over by certain younger Kosovo Albanians who have felt very well the ten-year long "special treatment" by the Serbian regime. The Serbs and the Albanians have never been further away ones from the others. They are starting the battle not for coexistence but for territory. Political bureaucracies on the one and the other side see their chances or benefit in the possible further straining of relations, aware of the fact that in Kosovo one party must always be the loser. There is almost no resistance on either side to the insane headlong rushing into war. In Serbia only civic groups and independent media which are on the margins by power call to reason and protest against unprecedented violence against Kosovo Albanians and violation of human rights. The award for tolerance of the daily Nasa borba to Kosovo Albanian students, who did not even come to receive it, certainly belongs in this echo of reason, as well as the street protest against beating up of the students in Kosovo, and warnings to the world to get involved in the problem of Kosovo. It is obvious that this frail resistance does not reach the minds of the main protagionists. Unfortunately, neither on the Albanian nor on the Serbian side, nowadays, do they like having anybody spoil their framed images about the others. Obviously the time for reason in Kosovo has expired.

Branka Kaljevic

(AIM)