January-February 1999:
Kosova: Prospects for Peace
Breaking the Culture of Fear
Critical Resistance
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War Resisters League
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Prospects for Peace in Kosova
By Howard Clark
ost
people I spoke with in Kosova in November expect war again in the spring, if not
before. Humanitarian agencies, for instance, now prefer to use plastic as a makeshift
roof rather than invest in reconstruction.Kosova, in the south of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, used to be the only part of former-Yugoslavia with an ethnic majority of non-Slavs. When Yugoslavia broke up, 90 percent of Kosova's population of 2 million were ethnic Albanians. The province had been autonomous since 1974, enjoying almost all the powers of Yugoslavia's five republics except the right to secede. It was the poorest unit in former-Yugoslavia, with the highest birth rate and the highest levels of unemployment and illiteracy.
Its other misfortune is that, in this region of "too much history," Kosova occupies a central place in Serbian culture and tradition. It is the home of the most important sites of the Serbian Orthodox church and was the scene of the "martyrdom" of the Serbian Tsar Lazar in 1389, betrayed and then beheaded by the Ottoman Turks at the battle of Kosovo Polje. (There is no reliable historical account of the battle, but the story has been handed down and embellished and attached to every other aspect of Serbian life in Kosova.)
In the 1970s and 1980s Kosova's Albanian-dominated administration adopted policies that in the United States would be called affirmative action, introducing bilingualism into the administration (instead of just Serbo-Croatian) and reducing Serbian privilege in employment. The Serbian backlash against those policies ignited the myth of the Serbs' continuing martyrdom in Kosova. By exploiting that sentiment with an orchestrated campaign of mass rallies and television and press propaganda fabrications against Albanians, including fabricated stories of rape, Slobodan Milosevic established himself as Serbia's strongman and proceeded quite unconstitutionally to annul Kosova's autonomy in 1989-90.
When the Kosovar miners struck in protest, there was at first some optimism that working-class resistance could defend Kosova's constitutional rights. Instead, there followed a wave of dismissals. At least 70 percent of employed Albanians lost their jobs, some for participating in demonstrations, some for refusing to sign loyalty oaths, some as "economic surplus." The Albanian-language school curriculum was forbidden, a measure that Albanian teachers defied, resulting in their dismissal, withdrawal of all funds for Albanian-language education and the eviction of Albanians from the University and from all but two secondary school buildings in Kosova.
Armed
Resistance
There is a strong tradition of armed resistance among
Albanians in Kosova. Tens of thousands were slain during and after World War I
resisting Kosova's incorporation into Serbia and then into the new Slav state
of Yugoslavia, and again after World War II when it was re-incorporated into Tito's
Yugoslavia. (The Italian and German occupiers had re-unified Kosova with Albania.)
In 1990, however, Kosovars decided that armed resistance would be catastrophic,
and so they opted for a policy of nonviolent resistance.
It looked as if Serbia wanted to provoke an armed response. The police force-much expanded and consisting almost entirely of Slavs-engaged in random acts of violence, raiding villages on the pretext of searching for weapons but actually to intimidate the population by beating and humiliating Kosovars. Instead of armed resistance, they met with self-restraint, a refusal to be provoked.
Kosova Albanians organized themselves impressively during 1990-92. While conducting a host of protests, they managed to keep running their own parallel school system extending from elementary school through college, with more than 20,000 teachers and more than 300,000 students. Fired workers began to set up their own small businesses. In the face of the discrimination in the state hospitals, where most Albanian doctors had been fired and Serbian was the only language allowed, the Mother Theresa Association began a network of clinics offering free treatment. Activists from groups such as the Youth Parliament and the Council for the Defense of Human Rights traveled throughout Kosova, going to the scene of incidents and urging nonviolence and social solidarity as the answer to the repression.
Kosova Albanians held a referendum asserting their right to independence in 1991 (the year of wars for independence in the republics of Slovenia and Croatia); then, in 1992, they held clandestine elections for their own parliament and endorsing Ibrahim Rugova as their president. They also began to organize their own system of voluntary taxation, raising about 70 percent of the funds needed to run the school system. (The remaining 30 percent was covered by funds raised by a government-in-exile based in Germany).
Despite assurances from then-U.S. President George Bush and others about restoring Kosovar human rights, the wars in Croatia and then Bosnia overshadowed the situation in Kosova. The Albanian population managed to secure a measure of economic stability, mainly because the 300,000 or so Kosova Albanians living in exile were sending money home.
Armed Reprisals
But
the resistance began to stagnate somewhat, and after the massive demonstrations
for education in October 1992, Rugova and the dominant Albanian party, the Democratic
League of Kosova, decided that demonstrations brought reprisals that outweighed
the gains. Increasingly they put their faith in lobbying foreign governments.
More and more Albanians began expressing their frustration with that policy, especially
after Kosova was left out of the Dayton agreement of November 1995. Occasional
armed actions claimed by a group called the Kosova LiberationArmy, known as the
UÇK, began in 1996. Many people doubted the UÇK's existence, attributing the actions
to Serbian agents provocateurs. That remained a widespread belief until as late
as November 1997, when in the village of Llausha UÇK soldiers made a dramatic
appearance-masked and in uniform-at the mass funeral of an unarmed teacher killed
by a Serbian police bullet.
The other alternative to the "passive" policies of the Democratic League of Kosova was "active nonviolence," of which there were four strands (but no single coherent platform): First, and most distinctive, was again risking protest action and nonviolent confrontation. Second, and talked about much less, was trying to reach Serbs through dialogue. Third was talking not only about the need for Kosova's independence (or some form of U.N. protectorate), but also about narrower issues-especially education-and being prepared to discuss other forms of self-government or of transition from the present situation. Fourth was revitalizing community life among the Albanians, who were suffering not just from the Serbian occupation but the bureaucraticization of the independence movement and a lack of economic regeneration.
Education was a central question, especially because most Kosova Albanians are under 18 years old. (By the end of her childbearing years, the average mother there has more than six children.) People had improvised whatever facilities they could for carrying on the parallel schools-private homes, garages, even dentists' waiting rooms, but teaching conditions remained desperate. In one or two remote areas, teachers, parents and pupils had quietly but successfully re-occupied a handful of secondary school buildings. However, from 1996 on there were calls in the centers of population for concerted action to reclaim school premises.
International mediators had also recognized that education could be a key, and in the wake of Dayton the Italian religious community Saint Egidio brokered an agreement, signed by Milosevic and Rugova in September 1996, for the re-opening of Kosova schools. Rugova prevailed on those wanting to take direct action to wait for the implementation of the agreement
It was never implemented. A year later, in the autumn of 1997, when the Albanian students union at the parallel university declared they were going to demonstrate for their right to education, Rugova-backed by international diplomats-tried but could not dissuade them.
In fact, the students' first demonstration was a triumph, despite-and also because of-a level of police violence condemned even by the Serbian Orthodox Patriarch, his first-ever criticism of Serbian policy in Kosova. Another first was that some students from Belgrade, with encouragement from the international volunteer project the Balkan Peace Team, took up the cause of their Albanian counterparts, coming down to Prishtina, the capital, to meet the Albanians (and also Serbs at the state University of Prishtina) and observing the second demonstration.
International diplomats now wanted to be photographed with the students. Especially eager were those from the United States, dewy-eyed that the students embodied the spirit of Martin Luther King and the civil rights movement. The students and their nonviolence was the best hope for Kosova, they said, not Rugova and his demand for independence; let's talk about education instead.
Attack
and Counter-Attack
I am writing just over a year later. It seems
much longer.
After a series of gun battles last winter, the Kosova Libeation Army began to claim control over certain areas of rural Kosova. In February, when the Serbs responded with their first offensive, UÇK was still a small guerrilla band. Once the first Serbian atrocities were reported-atrocities of a type only too familiar to Balkans-watchers-everything changed. While international condemnation made Milosevic pause, the UÇK's numbers swelled. Exiles came back to join; villagers thought the UÇK could offer protection; the political prisoners' faction in Kosovar politics rallied behind it; and student leaders guessed that perhaps 2,000 students became UÇK soldiers. The UÇK began to control more territory, claiming as much as 30 percent of Kosova at its height in early summer, with perhaps 30,000 soldiers.
Then came the Serbian scorched-earth policy of burning houses, slaughtering whole families and displacing more than 300,000 people. The catastrophe that nonviolence was designed to avert was happening.
For the moment, the threat of NATO air strikes has persuaded the Serbs to withdraw under last Fall's agreement between Milosevic and U.S. Envoy Richard Holbrooke. However, NATO sees "a cycle of provocation and response," for the UÇK has moved back into the villages, again putting checkpoints on roads it pretends to control. UÇK actions are then used as an excuse to return by the Serbian security forces, setting up everything for a repeat.
A
Dearth of Nonviolence
Nonviolence, alas, appears to be a dead letter.
The West at the moment wants to strengthen Rugova and his Democratic League of
Kosova's moderate methods. However, in November, when local LDK leaders in the
town of Malisheva-the UÇK's showpiece early in the summer-urged the municipality
not to repeat the mistake and let the UÇK back, they were arrested by the UÇK.
I have heard of only one Kosovar commentator publicly criticizing UÇK for provoking
attacks against villagers it cannot protect, although there were villages that
asked UÇK to stay out and who handed in the weapons distributed by UÇK.
Those Albanians working for peace at a political level are now trying to build a negotiating platform capable of delivering a real cease-fire, a platform that has to include-and be capable of influencing-the UÇK. Apart from youth-oriented groups and media projects, most local NGOs have turned their attention to the humanitarian crisis. If the climate for Albanian-Serb dialogue remains difficult, at least now Albanians show more desire to reassure local Serbs about their future if they stay.
In Belgrade and Serbia at large, there are some dedicated people active in the antiwar movement, but they do not have the force of numbers. In Kosova itself, many of the remaining Serbs are preparing to leave, and a few are organizing themselves into armed groups. The most hopeful sign is that the Serbian Orthodox Church is determined to stay and to live in peace. The Serbian Orthodox Bishop and a Catholic monsignor drafted a peace statement, affirming that this was not a religious conflict. (Ironically, the Chief Hoxha-the head of the Albanian Muslims-who has repeatedly said that their ethnicity is more important to Albanians than their religion-declined to sign.) And the well-loved (among Albanians) Serbian Hieromonk Sava of the Decan Monastery, respected for criticizing Serbian policy and for sheltering or delivering aid to displaced Albanians, had a friendly meeting in November with the UÇK's political representative Adem Demaçi. (Demaçi, after his 1989 release from prison, repeatedly called for nonviolence and dialogue, and now as no military role but rather uses his influence to ask the UÇK to respect international conventions, not to take hostages, etc.)
At the international level, instead of NATO bombs, the inter-governmental Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe is sending in 2,000 unarmed "verifiers" whose role is to verify the implementation of the Milosevic-Holbrooke agreement. Although most pacifists will prefer this experiment to bombing, the policy of recruiting verifiers mainly from military backgrounds and training them for only four days inspires little hope that they will have much to offer in the way of creative peace-making. As in Bosnia, the threat of overwhelming military action by NATO may have bought time, but real peace is a long way away, as long the only thing on the politicians' minds is "stability."
The Balkan Peace Team, a project sponsored by (among others)
War Resisters International and the International Fellowship of Reconciliation,
works to promote Serbian-Albanian dialogue; contributions to the Balkan Peace
Team can be made by sending checks marked "BPT" to FOR, Box 271, Nyack, NY 10960.
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