The Transitional Period in Kosovo

"I feel that this is a transitional period," said Milan Jocic, who holds a managerial post in the Kosovo water works. He believes that Serbia will not be able to continue with "this situation, of keeping Kosovo like a colony, for long," and that "it will all depend on the situation in the country." Jocic respects ethnic Albanians and says they are "correct, serious, honest and reliable business partners," but he cannot imagine ethnic Albanians holding posts in state bodies.

While he is talking, Jocic's two children are playing on the cannons in front of the Pristina Museum. They see two ethnic Albanian children in a nearby house, and try to play together, but don't succeed, since they don't have a common language.

Serbs and ethnic Albanians do not live together, but they do have a common problem - Kosovo - where they live alongside each other. Apart from geography, former ethnic Albanian politician Azem Vlasi, says there is something else that links them - neither side wishes to die.

A tacit agreement exists on this. There, are however, many other problems which cannot be solved. There is a growing body of opinion that Kosovo has been put aside and is waiting for the Yugoslav crisis to be resolved, and since it all started in Kosovo, this is where it must end.

While the problem of Kosovo is being put off for later, many processes have taken place, processes which it will be difficult, and even impossible to reverse. As far as the Serbs are concerned, this is the departure of the population. In spite of the presence of a state governed by law and embodied in a great number of policemen with automatic rifles and bullet-proof vests, the problem of emigration has not been solved.

Another line of thinking holds that ethnic Albanians can be incorporated into the political system painlessly. The great numbers of the ethnic Albanian population are a fundamental problem. A solution is sought by insisting that all ethnic Albanians who settled in Kosovo during World War Two, and their descendants, move out. Serbian Renewal Movement (SPO) Kosovo branch secretary Radoman Spalevic is very insistent about this. This, too, was the path followed by the current Serbian authorities and it has turned out that the drawing up of lists of names of WW2 settlers, has not yielded any results. Milorad Jevric, a Serbian Radical Party (SRS) deputy, says that a cohabitation between the two nations is possible only in spheres of joint interest - in the economy.

SRS regional committee president Ranko Babic thinks that the incorporation of ethnic Albanians in the system is already underway, because "they are well off, and such people do not follow a radical policy". Babic criticizes state-sponsored projects for the return of Serbs and calls them a "smoke screen". He urges a just tax system, without discrimination, with rates which would be lower than those demanded by the so-called Kosovo Republic, as this would be an additional link with the state of Serbia. "This money could be used more efficiently for the building of flats for colonists", said Babic.

Opposition representatives believe that a solution to the problem lies "in the true democratization of Serbia", something which ethnic Albanians would respond to favorably. "I, too, wouldn't accept a state led by an incompetent president, a firm with an incompetent director", said SPO spokesman Marko Brudar. Brudar believes that his party's program has the solution for Kosovo -Serbia as one electoral unit.

Between the opposition which offers Serbia - as one electoral unit and the authorities which have set down autonomy for Kosovo in the Constitution, the people chose the ruling party once again. Addressing voters in Kosovo, SPO leader Vuk Draskovic, warned Kosovo Serbs that "all those who were harking on about police brutality, police administration and the persecution of ethnic Albanians from Kosovo, were working against Serbia's interests. Such patriots were just urging war and turning the whole world against Serbia. They, more than anyone else, were preparing the ground for the secession of Kosovo." Vuk promised Kosovo Serbs good wages ("Russians in Siberia have five times higher salaries than those in Moscow", and ethnic Albanians a democratic state and separate national rights, "such as enjoyed by national minorities in France, the US, Great Britain, Russia..."

Vuk, however, made two mistakes.

Only a small number of Serbs in Kosovo urge the expulsion of ethnic Albanians, and it is practically impossible to find an ethnic Albanian who would be loyal to Serbia, no matter how democratic it might be, if it were to guarantee only "special rights such as enjoyed by minorities in France"...

"It is impossible for ethnic Albanians to accept Serbian authority", said Ismaill Rexhepi, member of the Democratic Party of Kosovo (DSK) presidency, the strongest party rallying ethnic Albanians. "Everything can be done by force, but if this force is used, then it will be just naked force", said Rexhepi. In explaining his party's stand, Rexhepi says that the 1974 Constitution recognized Kosovo as a constituent part of the Federal Socialist Republic of Yugoslavia, only as a starting point, an acquired right, and that it was "impossible to abandon acquired rights". Azem Vlasi believes that the status enjoyed by ethnic Albanians under the 1974 Constitution, can only be a middling solution, but one with firm guarantees, "and then only as a transitional phase and in order to decrease tensions". Vlasi believes that in order for some modus vivendi to be found for Kosovo, ethnic Albanians would have to abandon the ideal of national unity (with Albania and ethnic Albanians in Macedonia), and Serbs the ideal of a unitarian Serbia.

DSK president and uncontested ethnic Albanian leader, Ibrahim Rugova, has a few proposals: Kosovo Republic, a neutral Kosovo, emancipated both with regard to Albania and Serbia, with "pliable" borders with the motherland and finally, after touring some Western European countries, Rugova has come up with the idea of a confederation. This proposal has cropped up in context with resolving the problems of the former Yugoslavia. "If Bosnia is divided along ethnic lines, then this will apply to others. What holds for Croats, Serbs and Muslims, applies to ethnic Albanians in Kosovo, with various confederal possibilities. We insisted on the first option, i.e. a neutral and independent Kosovo. It remains to be seen how matters will develop further", said Rugova.

The Serbian leadership has avoided the subject of Kosovo. Asked about the possibility of meeting with ethnic Albanian leaders, Kosovo District chief Milos Simovic said: "We cannot enter a dialogue on the secession of Kosovo. Rugova is not a collocutor, since his party is not registered in Serbia, but in the former Socialist Yugoslavia. He also says that he is not a Serbian citizen, and is publicly opposed to the lifting of sanctions."

There are rumors in Pristina that a meeting between Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic and Rugova could be set up soon, perhaps "in late March". There are speculations that Milosevic is working on finding a collocutor who is more pliable than the charismatic ethnic Albanian leader.

Eleven ethnic Albanians were charged in late February with being members of the Kosovo Republic defence ministry. According to the investigation, the ministry was preparing an army of 40,000 troops. This is the third arraignment brought against ethnic Albanians which claims that they are organizing armed resistance, and the first accusation against Rugova and DSK vice-president Anton Kollai, who is currently on the run. Another accusation which has not been made before, is that the DSK ordered the setting up of the ministry of defence.

The latest arrests have raised tensions a little. The situation, however, remains much as it has been so far. It seems that the Serbian authorities prefer this situation. As a rule, whenever the Serbian authorities were quiet, it was due to a lack of ideas, and was never a political tactical manoeuver. Regardless of what step it chooses to take, Serbia will have to offer something, even if it means a very small participation in authority. The Serbs in Kosovo have been promised a lot. They have received little, only a strong and omnipresent police force.

"The police are our only security," says Vladimir Kitic from Kosovo Polje while he sits in the yard of his old house facing the 14th century Monastery of Gracanica. "This is Serbian land", says Kitic, who fears that the authorities will "give way." "They mustn't yield," says Kitic, and adds "there mustn't be war". Kitic hopes that things will be better, but does not know what the improvements could bring. He started building a house in Kragujevac (Serbia), but stopped after the first floor was finished. He has no more money, and is waiting for better days. His wife Milanka is afraid of war, because their two sons would then have to fight, and she is not sure that they will inherit the land.

All fears and dilemmas can be summed up as: "ours and theirs". Kitic is sincere, something rare in contacts with people in Kosovo. When insincerity takes over, then slogans are spouted: "There is no force on earth which will make me leave" - said a man who has built a "summer cottage" in Vrnjacka Banja (a spa in Central Serbia), even though Mount Sara is three times closer. The average ethnic Albanian will not even answer if the question, especially a political one, is asked in the Serbian language. As far as he is concerned, this is the language spoken by a possible provocateur. But, this is the language they speak in the street, cafes and shops. As Rexhepi says, "hatred is a thing of the past with ethnic Albanians".

"Both ethnic Albanians and Serbs have understood that they cannot force their will on one another", says Rexhepi. He fears however, that if this situation lasts, then the DSK leadership will undergo changes, including the whole ethnic Albanian bloc. "For the time being, the DSK can curb extremists, but it remains to be seen for how long".

At the May 24, 1992 elections, the DSK won 76% votes and became the leading party of the ethnic Albanian national movement. The political bog in Kosovo, is, however, sapping the DSK's vitality and inviolable position.

The last issue of "Forum", a magazine edited by independent political activist and Nobel Peace Award nominee Adem Demaqi, criticized the DSK: "The DSK is involved in all sorts of things except in political organizing. Its political organism is petrified, and based on cliches, so that all criticism is regarded as destructive." This criticism was carried by "Koh," a paper which has started coming out again, and is backed by Veton Surroi. The introduction to the article in the "Forum" was written ahead of the DSK congress scheduled for late March.

Surroi resigned from the post of president of the Parliamentary Party, which he founded. Surroi says that his political ideas will surface in "Koh", and that the current ethnic Albanian political trends are not amateurish, but conventional and bound up in tradition. "Ethnic Albanian politics had their golden moments when they departed from stereotypes", said Surroi. "It is not a matter of avoiding conflicts, but of entering the fray and raising the issue to the level of cooperation.

There are clashes in the ethnic Albanian political bloc, but observers who do not know the Albanian language, cannot perceive their scope. But, no matter how much relations between political forces in the ethnic Albanian and Serbian blocs may have changed, Serbian and ethnic Albanian interests will find a common ground.

Reports from the field confirm Vlasi's claims that Serbs and ethnic Albanians have one thing in common - neither side wishes to die. This, however, was common to Serbs and other nations in the former Yugoslavia. The often repeated remark that "Kosovo is next", has an ominous sound to it.

Clans

The quarrel is one only Kosovo Serbs can understand, since it concerns Serb old-timers and newcomers, i.e., those who settled in Kosovo after World War One. Those who can read between the lines of this quarrel, say that it can best be followed in the correspondence between Kosovo District chief Milos Simovic and President of the Pristina municipal government Dusan Simic.

Newcomer Simovic wrote Simic a letter, saying that the city government should be dissolved, and that the competency of the various secretaries and directors should be looked into, since they hadn't done anything to improve the situation in many fields, firms or departments of importance for the citizens of Pristina. The city authorities have been accused of conducting "a separatist policy," of "obstruction" and "petty politics".

The municipal authorities (Simic) replied heatedly that Simovic's lack of critical distance allowed him to hold the following posts at the same time: to be a university professor, a member of the Fund for the Development of Serbia, a member of various executive boards - from the "Trepca" mine complex to various banks, and finally to hold the post of District chief. Simovic is criticized of being a "weekend politician" - i.e., of living in Kosovo five days a week and then leaving for Belgrade on Friday.

To observers this could look like a clash between the municipal and district authorities, but to the inhabitants of Kosovo it means a lot more. This is a clash between newcomers embodied by the regional authorities and the old-timers who are in charge of municipal affairs. Both sides agree that the matter concerns a classic power battle between clans. They differ on who has done more for the Serbian cause, and who has a greater and undeserved share of the power. After the departure and dismissal of ethnic Albanians, it proved that there were not enough Serbs, and that there was not enough power to satisfy them all.

We asked a 17-year-old youth: "Are you a newcomer or an old-timer?" "I've been here since 1830," said the beardless you