School Can Start

To everybody's surprise, Slobodan Milosevic and Ibrahim Rugoba signed, on Sunday September 1, directly prior to the beginning of the school year, an agreement by which the Albanian pupils are to return to the regular schools. However, neither elementary school pupils, nor high school ones, nor students have yet entered the institutions which they had left six years ago, while the assessment of the motives and political range of the signed agreement differ in a large measure.

The actual text of the agreement as well as the manner in which the Serbian authorities chose to inform the public of it speak to the political nature of such a decision to stop the parallel educational system in Kosovo. Firstly, the public was informed of the event in an unusually pompous manner - by a press conference of the Prime Minister of Serbia, Mirko Marjanovic, and two of his Ministers - Dragoslav Mladenovic (education) and Aleksandar Tijanic (information), of which none participated in the negotiations with which the government, at least oficially, had nothing to do.

The following point of interest is that the document is officially termed a "consent", since that probably sounds less harsh than "agreement". An agreement, as we are all aware, is signed by two at least similarly equal parties. As the stand of official Belgrade always maintained that no negotiations can be entered into with the Albanians from Kosovo, since negotiations are not entered into with citizens of one's own country, and that only talks can be commenced with them, it is utterly principled that the result of the talks should be a consent. To be honest, there really weren't any talks - Milosevic signed the "consent" in Belgrade, and Rugova in Pristina, but others talked. Further, it is interesting to note how the difficulty of a formally protocol yet actually political issue was solved concerning the titling the signatories. On one side, the signatory is Slobodan Milosevic, President of the Republic of Serbia; on the other side the signatory is Dr. Ibrahim Rugoba, with no function. It is true that that seems quite ridiculous, but at least that bypassed the necessity to put down in print that the mighty President of Serbia was signing consents with the president of a party which his country does not recognize, or, even worse, with the President of the self-proclaimed "Republic of Kosovo". (The announcement of the Information Center of Kosovo however states that a consent has been signed "between President of the Republic of Kosovo, Ibrahim Rugova and the President of Serbia, Slobodan Milosevic".) Finally, it is completely obvious that both parties goal was to deprive the text of the "consent" of all political context. They had gone so far in this that the return of the Albanians to the schools was transferred into humanitarian spheres.

Regardless of the terminology, the consent was approved in all relevant places and - what is encouraging - without provocatively stressing that it is an issue of political victory of either one side or the other.

The agreement was approved even by the President of Albania, Sali Berisa, who stated that "through dialogue other even more important measures can be achieved". Positive reactions came from Washington, from the EU and foreign media.

The Pristina daily Bujku estimates that "the agreement should be respected without euphoria, since a return to our schools was a step which had to be made, just like the Albanians shouldn't have been expelled from the schools".

Of course, it would have been even better if the Albanians had really entered the schools which they had left more than half a decade ago, but those who are acquainted with the situation in Kosovo say that it was unrealistic to expect that to happen on the day the agreement was signed. By talking to VREME, some of the influential Albanians, only halfway joking, say that the police, apparently, still haven't received instructions to permit the teachers and pupils of Albanian nationalities into the school buildings. Professors, whom nobody had asked anything from the beginning, found themselves utterly dazed. The principals of the Albanian parallel schools had in their first reactions expressed disbelief "in such a thing", while Serbian principals, not in a small number, were both bitter and scared, asking themselves how such quarrels can be forgotten overnight, how to agree upon actual space, separate entrances into schools... Taking into account that the agreement is only in principle, since the actual solutions are left to the mixed committee which still needs to be formed, the indecisions are constantly multiplying. As announced in Nasa Borba, in the Secretariat of Education Science and Culture of the Province, they know nothing of the conditions under which the Albanians shall return to the schools and that they have no official information from Belgrade. Radio B92 broadcasted that the police prevented high school pupils to enter the buildings of the elementary schools in Mitrovica and Vucitrn. Dnevni Telegraf announced the claim of Agim Hisenija, the president of the Union of Education Science and Culture of Kosovo that classes shall in future have the same plans and programs which were used in the parallel schools - plans which Serbia had refused to acknowledge up till now. The state Borba has, however, on September 3 - not naming any sources - announced that "signing a consent with the president of Serbia in itself understands the acceptance of educational plans and programs and methods in accordance with the laws of Serbia". In the meantime, classes in Albanian continue to be held, just like all these years, in private houses.

Schools and the educational system in Kosovo are the battlefield of the political conflict of the Serbs and the Albanians for the last fifteen years or so. A reminder: the so-called Kosovo issue in the former Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia was introduced by the demonstrations of the Albanian students in Pristina in the spring of 1981 and for a whole decade following that event, the officially valid explanation of the Belgrade authorities was that the Albanian youth were indocrinated in irredentism, and an ideological and political classificication was demanded of the professors.

During 1990 and 1991, the authorities in Serbia adopted a number of decisions "on the rationalization of the educational network and on establishing an unique educational system in the Republic of Serbia", which, understandably, was one aspect of the reaction to the proclamation of the Constitutional Declaration of (independant) Kosovo on July 2, 1990 by 114 delegates of the Provincial Parliament of Albanian nationality. Already on July 5 of the same year, by the decision of the Serbian Parliament, the Parliament and Executive Council of Kosovo and Metohija were dissolved and "special measures" were announced. Among other things, a certain number of elementary and high schools in Kosovo were closed, as well as a number of departments and schools of the university. The Serbian Parliament had, on June 1, 1991, limited the number of pupils to be enrolled in the Albanian language high schools. The Educational Institute of Kosovo, the Book Issuing Bureau and accompanying institutions were suspended. Due to the non-acceptance of the "unique textbook", more than 18 thousand professors were fired in Albanian language schools and university. Around 250 thousand pupils in the Albanian language schools have completed the 1990/1991 school year using programs of the suspended Education Institute of Kosovo. When the authorities in Serbia conditioned the enrollment into the next grade by the passing of additional subjects in accordance with the program of the Education Institute of Serbia, Albanian schools in private houses, cellars, mosques, coffee shops... were opened, which pupils attend even today.

Milosevic's reasons for signing the agreement with Rugova are clear: one of the conditions set by Washington and their close political partners for lifting the outer wall of Yugoslavia's sanctions is to resolve the situation in Kosovo, and the first concrete demands are normalization in the field of education and freeing political prisoners. By this "consent" he loses nothing, and if the outer wall of the sanctions could be lifted until the elections, he would gain a lot.

The motives of Ibrahim Rugova are also relatively obvious - although there is a possibility that his political position could be disbalanced. Despite the furious diplomatic activity of many years, the leader of the Kosovo Albanians didn't receive support for secession (the EU has, even on the occasion of this agreement reminded that it regards Kosovo as an internal Serbian and Yugoslavian issue), the strongbox of the "Republic of Kosovo" is relatively empty, and parallel education isn't cheap. There are estimations that Rugova has reasons to fear radicalization in the ranks of his own party which could jeopardize even his power. The influential Adem Demaci, president of the Committee for the Protection of Human Rights, made a statement for Nasa Borba that the agreement is an "important point for Milosevic", and that the "real loser" was Rugova, since the debate on the status of Kosovo is finalized and the whole issue has entered the "narrow track of an autonomy as part of Serbia". He estimated not only that the situation in Kosovo would not calm down, but rather that the "disturbance will emerge" now because the Serbian nationalists "will not calm down".

Of course, there is also the question of how the Albanian extremists, already irritated by the fact that the Kosovo issue was ignored in Dayton, will react to the fact that Rugova has signed the agreement "in Cyrillic". All in all, for Kosovo, even after this agreement, the recent estimate of Mirko Tepavac still holds: "The world refuses to allow Kosovo to secede, and to allow Serbia to carry on their torture. The apparent peace in Kosovo is upheld by NATO and America, rather than by the numerous Serbian police force. It is completely clear that not a single solution can go below the stipulations of the Constitution from 1974. A "cold apartheid" has been established in Kosovo which with each passing day threatens to escalate into a "hot conflict".