KOSOVO: AN AUTONOMOUS PROVINCE TRYING TO BREAK AWAY
The drive from Skopje, Macedonia to Kosovo's capital of Pristina takes 90 minutes in a rented car. At the border, however, the Serb police, guarding their formerly autonomous province from foreign eyes, decide to scan through my briefcase, taking eight inches of material for review in their office. They ask whom I am going to visit and receive, in return, the name of a Serb scientist in Pristina which I had thoughtfully secured in Macedonia for this very occasion. The nervous driver instructed me to say that he speaks no English. (A week before, an American reporter from National Review had been interrogated at gun point for six hours and advised to leave the country because "war would start in Kosovo in three days.") They let me pass.
The road is good and the scene is a bit like a pastoral Amish territory with horse-drawn wagons and neat brick homes with well-tended gardens. But under the red roofs, the ethnic Albanians have changed their traditional greeting to one used, formerly, in dread times: "Is your family complete?"
At the home of a former dean of the Medical School turned human rights activist, Alush Gashi, one begins to understand the Orwellian quality of Kosovo life. In the next apartment is one of his former students who, though respecting him, dares not say more than "good day." Communication has broken down between the 2,000,000 Albanians and the 200,000 Serbs. Childhood friendships cannot be maintained in the face of pressures from both sides. As in the highly analogous case with Palestinians and Israelis, the Albanians are constantly searched for guns and the Serbs are openly armed. Passive Albanian resistance is the result.
Under the regime of Marshall Tito, who died in 1980, the Albanians had ruled Kosovo in splendid autonomy, as a formal part of Serbia. But upon his death they had mounted demonstrations aimed at being promoted to a full-fledged "Republic" of Yugoslavia. Since republics had rights to secede, and little else that autonomous provinces did not, the Serbs considered these demonstrations as a sign that Tito had gone too far in letting fester Albanian notions of independence-and subsequent joining with the bordering state of Albania.
By 1989, immediately before the breakup of Yugoslavia, the Serbian parliament had secured the acquiescence of other Yugoslav republics in revoking the autonomy of Kosovo. It was this throwing down of the gauntlet that had led to the present "irreconcilable differences."
The Albanians felt that Kosovo had become a prison for the last three years. But Gashi thought that the Serbs, who must understand that Kosovo was "lost forever" to them might accept U.N. control as better than having Kosovo go eventually to Albania. The Serbs had been warned by President George Bush that the U.S. would respond to Serb-created violence in Kosovo with U.S. military action against Serbia. In theory at least, they had an interest in avoiding escalation.
Blood Feuds Ended
In the morning, Anton Cheta explained how he had persuaded his fellow Albanians to give up 1,000 longstanding blood-feuds, like those of the Hatfields and the McCoys, in moving ceremonies that sometimes involved 500,000 Albanians in a gigantic kind of religious revival and national catharsis. Eventually the Serbs ordered an end to these public meetings. (There remained 500 armed wound issues, 100 deaths and 600 to 700 conflicts involving things like real estate. But, in total, 4,000 families have resolved their problems.)
These highly ritualized feuds had even included procedures in which an aroused family would give its word of honor not to take retribution for a season so that the threatened family could, in safety, take in the harvest to avoid starvation in the coming winter. But, if revenge was not taken in the end, the head of family involved was despised and ridiculed for his cowardice. Cheta had persuaded the Albanians that the outside world would not respect Albanians, or give them independence, if these feuds continued. "Give up your revenge for Kosovo" was the slogan that did it!
Cheta, a historian, said the Illyrians thought of themselves as hard-workers, warriors, with a high cultural level in arts and sciences, and as people who were good in trade. The Serbs now hated the Albanians because they were so heavily indoctrinated with propaganda since 1981, including terrible pictures of maimed Serbs on television.
The Grand Hotel In Pristina
When I asked to change $50 into Yugoslav dinars (1,200,000 were required), the hotel clerk gasped, saying that he was not sure they could put so much together and that this was three months of his salary. The hotel was becoming infamous as a sometime home for the most notorious war-criminal in the Bosnian war, Zeljko Raznjatovic, a.k.a Commander Arkan.
In the lobby lounged some of Commander Arkan's men, with telltale crew cuts, looking like an unkempt football team. Looking at any of them too long was dangerous (I remembered duels being fought in Stendhal's "The Red and the Black" over the ancient slur of "apostrophization" and here were the same primitive attitudes at work.)
A TV reporter in Belgrade had admitted, after leaving Yugoslavia, to being forced to announce during the last election that Albanians were violating Serb women in Pristina. By prearrangement Arkan had announced that he would protect Serbs there and had, accordingly, been elected the representative of Kosovo in the Serbian Parliament. (The Albanians could have stopped this, since they are 90% of the population, but they were boycotting the election.)
Reading excellent papers from Radio Free Europe's researchers, Patrick Moore and Louis Zanga, made the situation clear. Resilient Albanians had developed a shadow government, and infrastructure of their own, as an answer to Serb repression. The Albanians had been dismissed from the police, from university positions (perhaps 6,000 teachers and professors) and 400,000 pupils and students had boycotted classes. The indigenous Albanian media has been virtually shut down.
But under the leadership of Dr. Ibrahim Rugova, the Albanian leadership had remained committed to nonviolence and the Albanians had shown themselves to be masters of clandestine organization containing many incidents that might have gotten out of hand.
Council For Defense of Human Rights and Freedoms
After stopping for tea, at a tea house being harassed by Serb authorities for repairs (or, really, a bribe), Dr. Gashi and I visited his Council for Defense of Human Rights and Freedoms. Set up in late 1989, the Council had a photo album that documented the wounds of Albanians who had been called in by the police and then beaten-traumatized flesh, raw buttocks and bruises.
The authorities sometimes insist that the Albanian produce an allegedly owned gun and, after being called back for a second or third beating, the Albanian may secretly buy a gun just to have something to turn in. Sometimes he is then beaten again for the name of the person to whom he repaired to buy the gun!
The coarseness of the Serb right wing was seen in a campaign flier (for a man who was also the head of the Serbian Red Cross in Pristina) which had drawings of Serbs expelling Albanians in historical times.
The Albanians also have a Kosovo Information Center which, by FAX, on a budget of $10,000 a year, sends information world wide on the latest indignities collected from volunteers on every street in the country
Serb Editor of "Jedinstvo" Pristina
Malovic Dragan, the editor of the local newspaper, blamed the problems in Kosovo "entirely" on separatism encouraged by "a mistake of the Tito regime" which had never tried to stop it. Albanian pressures to force Serbs out had taken the form of rape, physical violence, defacing houses and graveyards and placing factories where Serbs lived. In the end, 400,000 Serbs had left in what he felt was ethnic cleansing of Serbs by Albanians. (Most commentaries suggest that Serbs left Kosovo to find a better life, leaving an impoverished area.)
He claimed that 100,000 Albanians had moved in from Albania from 1941-85 and insisted that it had been possible for such movements to take place even while Albania, from the Western point of view, had been locked up tighter than any Soviet bloc state from the late Forties to the mid Eighties.
Was is possible for Serbs and Albanians to live together peacefully? "Serbia gave its chance through elections to Parliament but the Albanians refused to participate." This, he said, was a mistake since they would have had "one-third of the Serbian parliament." Dragan felt that the Albanians were "pushing themselves out" by not obeying the laws. A member of Milosevic's Socialist Party, he denied that the still more conservative Radical Party wanted to expel the Albanians, and he said Arkan was not strong enough to do it since he had only five members of the Parliament.
The Albanians, he thought, saw an 'historic chance" to escape from Serbia but, in the light of Serb history, they were wrong. Interestingly, this Serb, who did not speak English, did not believe in a non-aligned press and believed that the American press "followed American interests." He offered to trade an article in his newspaper for an article he would write in FAS's journal. He said the sanctions were ruining lives and our economy and that the U.S. press should show children dying in Serb hospitals.
A Serb Policeman
In the hotel lobby, in what turned out to be a kind of focus group discussion with friends of the editor, a cleancut Serb policeman gave his emphatic denunciation of Rugova-"secretly violent and only pretending to be a pacifist"-but admitted that there had been no Albanian violence in the last few years. And it was hard to know what to say when he swore that "If they can prove they have less rights, I am ready to give my life for their struggle." This man spoke with such exaggerated emphasis and projected sincerity as to remind one that in ancient centuries without law legal disputes were settled by expostulation.
It was evident that the Serbs' information flow was so meager as to debase the currency of their political thought. In particular, they cannot image the hard currency of credibility of a free Western press and, accordingly, cannot understand why their assertions are not accepted or, indeed, why they may not be true. Their arguments, therefore, quickly degenerate to earnest reminders that the Serbs stood with America in two world wars and sincere queries as to why this does not continue. They have little or no conception, or do not want to know, what they are doing in Bosnia.
A University Rector Says "They all quit."
The Serb University rector, who was once chief of its communist section, examines visitors with the gaze of an inquisitor and provides information that is scarcely credible: the university had only Albanian professors before; he did not keep records of how many professors were Albanian now; about 400 had left of their own accord, none had been fired and some had come back; and the local Albanians were being funded by foreign Albanians who were making their money in drug and weapons trade. He said that a "nomadic tribal feeling was deep in them" and that they had the "homogeneous group behavior of a herd and no individual behavior was allowed." (The Rector was trained as a biologist.) Evidently, he said, "everything that isn't Albanian is alien to them".
It reminded me of a comment by a Yugoslav reporter that certain Yugoslav officials, perhaps through their training as communist bureaucrats, had gotten so used to having whatever they said accepted that they had lost sight of what was credible to their listener and what was not. After this, it was hard for me to accept his account of the Albanian rape of nuns, and of the damage done to 1,000 churches, and that 60% of the Albanians had come from Albania through open borders during World War II while 300,000 Serbs were expelled. He accused the U.S. of genocide against Serbs because the sanctions depleted the hospitals of medical supplies.
Albanian Medical Doctors Without Hospitals
Next stop was a meeting with a dozen Albanian medical doctors who had been ejected from their jobs at the university and at the hospitals where they had worked. They told me that there were 17 Albanian professors left on the faculty ("We could have predicted which ones would be left as they are collaborationists.") and that some of those fired had been beaten in front of their students and dragged out of their lecture halls and, even, from their operating rooms. They had applied in the courts for three years for return of their positions with no answer.
They categorically rejected the notion that there had been mass resignations and said that any who could get their jobs back would take them. They described the emotional scene when, on the day of their firing, they were torn from their patients and had to advise them to stay behind with Serb doctors. Now, with the departure to Belgrade of some Serb specialists brought in to fill the gap, they found Serbs sometimes calling on them quietly for advice in difficult cases. (Apparently, the Serbs had always preferred Albanian doctors much as, in the West, Jewish doctors were often preferred even by their persecutors.)
Meanwhile, however, they had no facilities and the university had refused even to give them the records of their students. The medical school, with 2,000 students, was operating in a decentralized way in 18 different locations with even heavier emphasis on book learning since they could not do practical work. They worried about the fact that the Albanians were not being vaccinated against polio, of which they had recently found 20 cases. (Books say that each case can mean danger to 1,000 others.) Delegations sent back to the campus to urge cooperation had been forcibly ejected by the police and told "We can speak to you only through bullets."
As far as discrimination against Serbs was concerned, they said that, in fact, they had quotas to accept one Serb for every three Albanians which, considering the 10%-90% population breakdown in Kosovo, was reverse discrimination. And it had been possible to get a medical degree without speaking Albanian.
Dr. Ibrahim Rugova Tries To Hold It All Together
Rugova, whom I had first met at a meeting at President Jimmy Carter's Center in Atlanta had recently returned from a successful meeting with the Pope. A French-speaking literary scholar with a degree from the Sorbonne, he has a mild and gentle manner. He said they were under classic occupation, constantly in danger of a provocation and with no promises of help.
Kosovo could promise, he said, through a referendum not to join with Albania and would give guarantees to protect the necessary monuments. In time, even the Serbian conscience could change.
Would most Albanians be happy, now, just to have the autonomy back they had before? He said "No, because we were then part of a wider Yugoslav Federation with a right of veto at the federal level." So now you would be left alone with the Serbs? "Yes, that is the problem." His party does not accept any solution that leaves Kosovo inside Serbia because, even if the government changes in Belgrade, it will take time for Serbian attitudes to change.
He did not believe Serbia was headed for civil war and thought 60 to 70% of the Serbs were for domination of Albanians. Asked if he were a pacifist, he said a "reasonable pacifist, not a naive one" working hard to save lives, to save the nation and to raise consciousness. They had studied Martin Luther King and Ghandi. They needed humanitarian aid badly and, so far, none was forthcoming. The Albanian Macedonians helped but they faced heavy problems. Asked if it was true that the Albanian parallel society was a tactic forced on Albanians by some extremists, he said "Not at all; spiritually, Albanians are free."
Albanians At The University Protected
A brief meeting was held at the university where I had asked to speak to one of the Albanians left at the university. But the assistant dean of the law school in question was not, obviously, to be left alone with me. At the meeting, chaired by his superior, he said not a word. And my one question to the assistant dean: "Did the Albanians quit or were they fired?" was provided with a long friendly non-answer by the dean.
The Real Yugoslav
The interpreter chosen by the university was a metaphor for the Yugoslav dilemma. One quarter Albanian and three-quarters Montenegron, he was the only person met in Kosovo who spoke to both sides. A lawyer by profession, he spoke perfect English as a result of a few years in Mount Kisco where, at one time, he was an assistant golf pro helping Senator Dole! Equally implausible, his name was "Yugoslav. "
Unemployed because of the breakup of the country and unable to visit such other areas of his former work as Slovenia and Croatia, he does odd-jobs of translation in a world which has, for him, "imploded."
A Lengthy Lunch With Rugova
Over lunch, I asked Rugova whether any consideration had been given to paying the Serbs "rent"-or what used to be called "tribute"-for the use of Serbian land. This, I suggested, would conform to logic (the Serbs wanted to own the land but not, on the whole, to use it); to psychology (confirming the Serbs' ownership each year and satisfying their desire to dominate); and to diplomacy (a long lease could put off the problem for a hundred years). Rugova said "This is what we did in the 12th century."
The Albanians' situation was similar, it seemed, to that of the Jewish refusenik scientists defended by FAS when, in the mid-Seventies, they were blacklisted from their jobs for the temerity of asking to leave the Soviet Union. (Conceivably, FAS should reinvigorate its adoption campaign, but how?)
In a long and intimate discussion of possibilities, FAS was warmly received and a basis was laid for helping ensure a peaceful solution to the Kosovo problem if one could be found.
Each morning, for those who need to be in Belgrade for the day or longer, a bus leaves at 5 a.m. for a four hour trip to the capital, returning that evening. The driver, who resembled the late Peter Sellers, drove with great elan, using one or no hands at times as he changed his coat, lit cigarettes and swatted flies while two front row passengers giggled nervously. It was like a scene from the satire, "The Great Bus," as we hurdled along past red-tiled roofs with white stucco as the foggy morning and mountain passes turned into flat land and a bright Belgrade morning.
VREME: The Serbian Time Magazine Over dinner at the elegant Correspondents Club, the foreign editor of liberal Vreme magazine, Dusan Reljic, discussed the Yugoslav situation. He said the Albanian doctors could set up medical installations if they would apply for permits, but they did not recognize Serb law and so would not do so. Milosevic was a "modern post-communist leader" and communism had been, in Yugoslavia, "pure opportunism."
While the leader of the Radical Party, Seselj, had become a Frankenstein monster for Milosevic, there were efforts to cut him down to size by claiming that he was not "pure Serb" and, indeed, he did have many Catholics in his family and, hence, might be partially Croat. Thus was ethnic McCarthyism devouring its own.
The sanctions had destroyed the middle class and helped Milosevic; as a first step, there should be a lifting of sanctions on information and cultural projects to let the truth in. He was for recreating the former Yugoslavia's confederation by permitting multiple citizenship and taxing people where they lived. (This splendid dinner cost $30 for two, very inexpensive for the visitor but about a week's salary for the editor.)
Over lunch, the London Times correspondent Dessa Trevisan called the Serbs a "peasant society," without a middle class, which "actually believed" in the myths it had created. Worse, it was now becoming a society of war profiteers which might not be able to make rational judgments even if television were accurate. She was "absolutely sure" that the Serbs could not hold on to Kosovo which would, at least, have to become a republic. As for Bosnia, they will "bully the weak so long as they can but a few air strikes would be enough to change their minds." But she also said they "don't care if they provoke another war" and that "orthodox fundamentalism was more dangerous (in Serbia and Russia) than Islamic fundamentalism was in the rest of the world."
The Secretary General of the progressive European Movement in Serbia, Dusan Janjic, said it was "really hard work" to establish relations between Albanians and Serbs in Kosovo. The movement felt that the Albanians should have "autonomy" first and meant by that they should have the right to "self-organization" and "self-administration" there.
The Yugoslav Government
Serbia (with 9,000,000 population) is currently combined with Montenegro (500,000 population) to maintain the two-republic semblance of a confederated Yugoslavia. And this Yugoslavia maintains the federal government overseeing the "republic" governments of Serbia and Montenegro. We interviewed Dr. Svetozar Stojanovic, Chief Adviser to the federal President Dobrica Cosic.
Stojanovic, fluent in English and a summer professor at the University of Kansas, provided a lucid briefing in professorial style. He said Macedonia would not be a problem because Serbia had accepted, since 1945, that Macedonians do exist as a separate nation. After the European Community and Greece recognize it, Yugoslavia would also.
They were unhappy that the Macedonian constitution did not mention Serbs (apparently because the Macedonians did not know quite how to make an acceptable reference). Also, Serb schools and monuments, including military grave sites from World War I, were not being maintained very well. But all this was described in a quiet dispassionate way and put forward as problems easily solved.
On Kosovo, he said it had "autonomy very much plus" and, indeed, no law could be passed in the Serbian parliament without the assent of a majority of the Kosovo delegation (i.e., the province had a veto over the republic in which it was embedded). When, therefore, Kosovo demonstrated for the right to become a republic, it could only gain two things: a) 30 delegates in the Yugoslav Parliament rather than the 20 it had formerly had and b) the right to secede. And since the demonstrations at that time said: "Kosova Republic," it was generally assumed that secession was the goal.
With the decision by the Serbian parliament to withdraw the autonomy, the Kosovo leadership, which had matured and was disciplined and against violence, had a problem: it wanted more than it had before but had less. A stalemate resulted.
Mihailo Markovic
At his home, Mihailo Markovic, former dissident under Tito and former Vice President of Serbian President Markovic's Socialist Party, explained how Tito had held together the various republics and provinces. After his death in 1980, when the international banks stopped infusions of cash, the republics had to agree on a stabilization program but, without Tito, they could not agree. Thus began the breakup.
Markovic, who had struggled for an "open-minded" Marxism under Tito, and who has been a professor at the University of Pennsylvania since 1972, did not believe that Macedonia would be drawn into a Kosovo war because, for one thing, Serbia had no legitimate claim on them. Anyway, he felt, the Albanians were not crazy enough for a "mass uprising" in Kosovo. As for Arkan, he said there had been talk of arresting him.
Markovic, who has a masterful grasp of the history of the region, said that Tito had wanted a Balkan Federation of Yugoslavia, Bulgaria and Albania; but Stalin had been angry not to have been consulted and prevented it. This was unfortunate because, had it occurred, Kosovo would have gone with Albania. As it was, Tito actively wanted to give Kosovo away but could not do it, telling the leaders of Albania that the Serbs would not understand. Making Kosovo an autonomous province was Tito's way of going as far as he could.
Now, he felt, the Albanians just would not recognize the laws and were boycotting the schools and refusing to participate in the elections lest they recognize the state. Asked why the Serbs were so unsympathetic to the Albanians, he said that it sprang from the fact that Albanians had been brought by Turks in 1389 to hold down the Serbs. He agreed to stay in touch with FAS on human rights questions.
However, so strong is the pull of Serb nationalism that even Markovic, like other editors of the dissident journal Praxis, had signed in the mid-Eighties an infamous document generated by the Serbian Academy of Sciences that accused the Albanians of "genocide." Markovic, who has been accused of playing a "prominent role in the lifting of Kosovo's autonomy" (Branka Magas, The Destruction of Yugoslavia, Verso 1993), told FAS that he was not a senior adviser to Milosevic.
The Political Opposition: Vuk Draskovic
The weakness of the political opposition in Belgrade is evident in a meeting with its main leader, Vuk Draskovic. A sweet man, of considerable courage, with the appearance of an Old Testament prophet, he is not, however, up to Milosevic in political smarts. And he is as nationalist as any of the Serbs in his attitudes toward Albanians and Serb sovereignty. (Indeed, to support Albanian separatism in Belgrade politics is to commit political suicide.)
Draskovic is trying to re-establish a new confederation of Yugoslavia under the formula 4 + 2 (I. e., the four republics that left joining with the two who remained.) His Serbian Renewal Movement wanted a renewal of democratic institutions and Christian traditions as a foundation for modern Serbia as a family. He said that Serbia had been a champion of democracy in all Europe during the period of King Peter the First.
Draskovic said that the TV has left 90% of Serbs believing that only Serbs are being attacked; TV had become a call for revenge. Only Belgrade sees CNN and BBC and only intellectuals stay up to see the news in Serbo-Croatian on BBC at midnight. He has told Senator Biden, Chairman of the Subcommittee on Europe, that Greece should be persuaded to permit TV coverage from Greece throughout Serbia. (But FAS pointed out that TV coverage from Greece would not carry far enough to cover Serbia and that Greece would never agree). On Kosovo, he said it was a "communist name" and that "old Serbia" was the real name because Serbia had been created there. Four hundred year ago it contained 2,000 Serbian monasteries and churches. But after the Turkish occupation, the Albanians started to expel Serbs. Nonetheless, in 1941, there were 50% Serbs. During World War II, 200,000 Albanians came in and 300,000 Serbs were expelled and 40,000 killed by Albanian fascists.
He said his movement stood for civil and national rights for Albanians and others and that "We need a democratic Serbia so that Albanians will accept Serbia as their own motherland." He said that the Albanians had told him that they wanted their own republic and he had said "Okay, I have nothing against the possibility of an Albanian Republic" but that this could only happen if the U.N. orders all minorities to form separate states. He felt they had refused to vote in the elections because "a strong Serbia would doom their chances for secession."
A Minister Of Education Tries To Mediate
Dr. Ivan Ivic, former Minister of Education for the Federal Government, had spent many months trying to mediate between the Albanians in Kosovo interested in education and the Minister of Education of the Serbian Republic in which Kosovo finds itself.
A completely sincere and dedicated man, Ivic explained, and documented, the trials and tribulations of his effort. The Kosovo population differed from the Serbs not only in culture, religion, and language but also in historical background, so there had always been conflict and now there was an explosion of nationalistic feeling.
Almost all of the political parties in Kosovo wanted independence, including not only Rugova's Democratic League but also the Agricultural Party (representing peasants) and the Democratic Forum. And a group around Cocga with an extreme point of view wanted a greater Albania and did not exclude war. Rugova, by contrast, wanted a neutral, friendly, state equi-distant from Albania and Serbia and achieved using pacific methods.
In effect, there had been two separate school systems in Kosovo with the Serbs going to their own schools. When the Serbs adopted a new constitution revoking Kosovo's autonomy, the Albanian educational council lost all powers and, while there were still two systems of education, one for Serbs and one for Albanians, the Albanians were obliged to learn Serb and their programs had to be approved by the Serbian Ministry of Education. The Albanians teachers refused and those who did not quit were forced to leave because they would not agree.
In the university, the professors were dismissed without any legal reason. In 1991, the Serbian Parliament adopted a special law ("Law on Special Conditions") under which a professor was fired for leaving his classes for two hours to see a demonstration. The law is not now being applied but has not been annulled. (Another observer noted that the Serb authorities decided to try to prevent war and succession by repression and they purged the entire government of Kosovo. The Rector Popovic was typical of the new governing elite of Kosovo, all imposed by the "center" and all Milosevic's men. They have many privileges, high salaries and apartment suites in Belgrade as well as in Pristina. There is some conflict between them and the local Serbs who consider them interlopers).
Ivic acknowledged that few Serbs knew what was happening in Kosovo and that he, himself, had not known until he became Minister in July 1992. He agreed with the Albanians on what was happening but did not agree with them on a new state because he thought it an impossible achievement and a cause of war.
But in his mediation efforts, the Albanians had really wanted only the buildings without any controls on them. And, for Ivic, it meant they were trying to fight for independence through the education system. The absence of their students showed they were being repressed and helped them in their struggle for independence.