The Silence in Pristina

Although the Coordinating Committee of Kosovo's ethnic Albanian parties rallies between two and five thousand ethnic Albanians every day for protest walks in the Pristina city center, the crowd has been reduced to teenagers and the elderly in the last few weeks. Middle-aged ethnic Albanians appear to be absent-minded lately.
Ibrahim Rugova's political adversaries have gone quiet too, although he now stands alone on Kosovo's political front. The New Democratic Alliance of Kosovo, led by Redzep Cosja and Hidayet Hisseni, hasn't been very successful in winning wide popular support. "They rely on their ties with the original Democratic Alliance of Kosovo (DSK), but it is unlikely that anyone will take them seriously", a local observer said.

"I think that they are just trying to become a political wing of the UCK. Both Cosja and Hisseni are leftists and the UCK appears to have a lot of former Marxists and Leninists", he said.

Cosja's new party has been very quiet lately, unlike Rugova's DSK. The DSK warns that police have been "terrorizing the population of villages near Djakovica and Decani and asked the international community to stop the aggression by all means available. Fehmi Agani, the coordinator of Rugova's negotiating team, said they would not talk to a Serbian delegation headed by Ratko Markovic because they feel that this delegation is trying to "cover up what the police and the army are doing".
"Everyone is telling us to go to war, but I don't see that anyone has done anything to prepare us", a young ethnic Albanian said. In spite of what happened in Drenica last March, cafes and clubs are full of ethnic Albanian youth every evening. The main hobby of Pristina's dwellers these days is to count foreign reporters. As news coming in from remote villages are scarce and unreliable, the situation is judged by the number of foreign reporters having fun in Pristina's elite restaurants and casinos.
The number of foreign reporters is growing but most of them are in a bad mood. There is no more prey from daily photo-safari trips around Kosovo. It is a terrible thing to say, but not even funerals are as spectacular and interesting for the media as they used to be. The most notable thing about the funeral of nine ethnic Albanians killed last Thursday was the short speech delivered by Zekerijah Cana, an ethnic Albanian academician. "Take guns into your hands", he told his compatriots as they buried their friends and relatives.