Inside Look

“If the situation in Kosovo continues this way, I will be able to choose between the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) or the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Serbia (MUP). When it comes to that, I won’t be in a dilemma.  I most certainly won’t join MUP”, says a young Albanian in Pristina this spring.

His limited choice seems to be the product of the post-Drenica situation in Kosovo. Essentially, the roots of that choice reach back to the almost ten-year-long period of “abnormal” life in one of Kosovo’s separate worlds - the Albanian one.

A well deliberated analytical inside glance into that separate world can be found in the newest compilation of articles, essays and interviews of the Albanian intellectual, philosopher and publicist from Kosovo, Shkelzen Maliqi’s Kosovo: Separate Worlds - Reflections and Analysis 1989-1998 (MM Society & Dukadjini, Pec, 1998).
The central point of Maliqi’s compilation is the emergence and evolution of the nationalistic movement of Kosovo’s Albanians, it’s significance, and it’s weaknesses in the battle for an independent Kosovo. While the author deals with it in all it’s complexities from an “insider’s” point of view.

In that movement, relations amongst the Albanians themselves are polarized, in Kosovo as well as with regards to the Albania headquarters. At the same time, it’s goal - Kosovo’s independence - imposes a serious evaluation of the place of the Albanians in Europe as well as their regional position in the Balkans and the Mediterranean.
The massive protests of Kosovo’s Albanians from the end of the 80s and the beginning of the 90s have been dimmed by the tumultuous production of history in the Balkans, and now by the latest developments in Kosovo. However, they are still an unforgettable crossroads for Kosovo’s Albanians in their relations toward Serbia.

In articles which were written in the midst of those developments, Maliqi clearly points out that Serbia’s uncompromising annulment of Kosovo’s autonomy has borne the idea of an independent Kosovo.

At the same time, the author deems that the demonization of Albanians in the Serbian press was crucial for the redefinition of their self-comprehension. The nucleus of the newly found Albanian identity in Kosovo has become a non-violent resistance as the modus of national battle.

Maliqi writes that the “Albanian Ghandiism came as a surprise... for Albanians as well”. However, the crucial element in comprehending the non-violent movement of Albanians in Kosovo and it’s subsequent metamorphosis is the author’s remark that the “self-comprehension of Albanians in non-violence is closely connected to the self-comprehension of Albanians as a sovereign nation”.

“For Kosovo’s Albanians”, says the author, “all roads seem to lead toward secession. That stands today, under the conditions of repression and existential insecurity. And it shall be the same under a certain democratic regime in the future.” If democracy is the will of the majority, the Albanians in Kosovo have more than clearly stated “no” to their further coexistence in Serbia.

Maliqi claims that the “quiet self-organization of the Albanian society” as an answer to it’s total de-institutionalization and loss of all rights has helped to maintain peace. However, regardless of it’s scope, states Maliqi, the Albanian self-organized society was not only incapable of becoming a substitute for the acute feeling of non-freedom of Kosovo’s Albanians, but has been left behind  as a reminder of that non-freedom, as well as a daily manifestation of resistance.

As far back as 1992, Maliqi warned that the situation of “neither war nor peace goes hand in hand with fatalistic emotions... of the inevitability of an ultimate ethnic conflict”.
With Dayton that inevitability only became a question of time. Non-violence itself, as the author points out, as the defining characteristic of the Albanian nationalistic movement in Kosovo, was a direct victim of Dayton. The borders drawn out with weapons were handed over to the Serbs in Bosnia. The Albanian non-violent “fighters” in Kosovo, who have clearly stated “that they wish to have nothing to do with either Serbia nor Serbians”, were offered an autonomy.

The exclusion of the problem of Kosovo from the Dayton negotiations gave, or so Maliqi believes, legitimacy not only to Milosevic’s policies towards Kosovo, but also to certain circles in Albanian society which had believed that only one conclusion could be drawn from developments in the Balkans: the only way to achieve freedom is through “victims and war”.

From Dayton to the first actions for which the then mysterious KLA took responsibility, only a few months elapsed. Shortly afterwards Drenica followed, and then the “inevitable ethnic conflict” became Kosovo’s devastating reality. And once again, the logic behind the previous Balkan wars was evident in Kosovo, claims Maliqi: “Milosevic provoked a widespread Albanian rebellion, and then war, in order to justify ethnic cleansing”.

Maliqi’s “inside” view is political, dictated by Kosovo’s reality. However, the compilation contains fragments which surpass strictly political themes, yet still seem to be connected in this present moment.

Maliqi states that Islam has not become the nucleus of the Albanian identity, even though the Albanian nationalistic movement found itself in an ideological vacuum. However, not because, as he says, Islam could not manage to impose itself as a nationalistic religion, or because the “religion of the Albanians is Albanianism”. But, as Maliqi claims, because the wish of the Albanians to become part of the Western world and it’s civilization has become the greatest threat to Islam.

With each new passing war day in Kosovo, that Western world is further and further away from both the Albanians and the Serbians.

Many initiatives were in the game, from both the Serbians and the Albanians in Kosovo, along with the international community. All of them are also a subject of Maliqui’s analysis. However, the clash of Kosovo’s “separate worlds” has imposed a new priority: mass salvation of lives in Kosovo. The total impotency of both the Serbs and the Albanians to help themselves is possibly the most obvious reason for a foreign assistance appeal.

Maliqi’s book offers a portrait of the Albanian “separate world” in Kosovo. That can, but does not have to be accepted.  However, his ignorance most certainly leads only to one direction - to new and costly mistakes in Kosovo, such as “KLA or MUP”.