July/August 1999

Kosovo's Distinctive History
by Howard Clark

"Nonviolence is not news" complained the Belgrade antiwar group Women in Black when Kosovo began making headlines early last year. For eight years, the world's media and the world's governments took the nonviolence of the Kosovo Albanians for granted. One of the better sources of analysis on the Balkans is the Radio Free Europe web page with its archive of fortnightly reports from the regions. Look it up, and you'll find that since January 1998 it has been dominated by Kosovo. Until then, however, from the start of that web page in July 1997, there was not a single report.

Now, of course, there is saturation coverage in the print and broadcast media, and the selfsame governments who were willing to do so little in the years when there was conflict without war are now spending fortunes in a destructive bombing campaign.

Kosovo is not Bosnia

What makes Kosovo distinctive? First, it was the only area of former Yugoslavia where the majority population were not Slavs. Second, throughout this century Serbs have been trying to change the demographic balance of Kosovo. Consequently, the majority population of Kosovo have been discriminated against - frequently being denied education in their own language (and so having a high illiteracy rate) - and have been subjected to periodic schemes "encouraging" them to leave while offering Serbs or Montenegrins incentives to settle in the region. Nonetheless, by the time Kosovo's autonomy was annulled in 1989, Albanians outnumbered Serbs nine to one. Third, despite its mineral wealth, Kosovo was the poorest area of former Yugoslavia and had the highest level of unemployment. Fourth, Kosovo Albanians were often viewed as a potential "fifth column," likely to side with an invader against the rest of Yugoslavia - as indeed many of them did in the two World Wars. In short, the Kosovo Albanians have been, along with the Roma, the population least integrated into former Yugoslavia. They retain some of their old traditions, including a high birth rate (more than six children per mother) and specific patriarchal structures and customs - some relatively benign, such as the village councils of elders; others malign, such as the blood feud and, in a few remote villages, involuntary arranged marriages.

The fifth distinctive factor was the specific moment of Kosovo's historical development. From 1952 to 1966, Kosovo was terrorized by Minister of the Interior Rankovic and his secret police. During that period there were police files on virtually the entire adult male Albanian population. Tito axed Rankovic in 1966 and began to redress matters. The result was that, especially after 1974, when Kosovo gained the status of an autonomous province, there was an educational and cultural awakening among the Kosovo Albanians. This new awakening produced a new sense of identity, but also a growing demand for even greater self - determination. However, the provincial government's policies of what in the US would be called "affirmative action" brought charges that the Albanians were abusing their ethnic predominance. Without their previous inducements to stay in Kosovo, many Serbs and Montenegrins emigrated. (It should also be noted that many Kosovo Albanians were "guestworkers" in Western Europe sending money home to their families.)

Opportunist politicians allied the complaints of the Kosovo Serbs with the mythic significance of Kosovo in Serbian history and culture in order to inflame a revived Serbian nationalism. This manipulation took the form of mass "Meetings of Truth about Kosovo" throughout Serbia and a stream of media hatespeak and lies against "bestial Albanian rapists." So it was that, at the very point when the Kosovo Albanians were ready to reshape some of their old patriarchal traditions, they came to clash with a frenzy of resurgent Serbian nationalism, orchestrated by the group around the new Serbian strongman Slobodan Milosevic.

The birth of nonviolence

This impulse toward "modernity" was one of the reasons why in 1989, when their autonomy was suppressed, the Kosovo Albanians noted the response to nonviolence in other parts of Eastern Europe and opted for nonviolence as their means of struggle. It is also one explanation of why they formed a spectrum of Western - style civil society groups - women's groups, free trade unions, writers' associations, a campaign against illiteracy, even a "green" group - and why they began a remarkable campaign to remove the biggest stain on their society: the blood feud. In 1989, an estimated 14,000 men were under virtual house arrest to escape being killed as part of a blood feud. But between 1990 and 1992, some 2,000 blood feuds - almost all the blood feuds in Kosovo (most feuds involved a number of men) - were reconciled. Groups renounced feuding with public declarations at mass open - air rallies or, when these were banned, behind the walls of the large family compounds.

Nonviolent political action began with Kosovar miners in November 1988. They undertook a march of twenty - five miles each way in the first snows of winter, demonstrating their dignity and showing Serbians and the world that "we are not what you say we are." As the situation continued to deteriorate in February 1989, 1,200 miners - many of them on hunger strike - locked themselves deep down in the shafts until Milosevic promised to reinstate the provincial leaders he had just sacked (a promise he did not keep).

Throughout 1989, people began leaving the ruling Communist Party and forming new organizations. At one time, there was even discussion about a mass conversion from Islam to Catholicism to disprove Serbian allegations of Muslim fundamentalism (people decided this would be "opportunistic," although later as a symbol of their respect for all religions, the self - proclaimed Republic of Kosovo recognized Christian holidays such as Easter and Christmas). In 1990 the nonviolent character of the movement was firmly set with a petition "For Democracy, Against Violence" signed by almost the entire adult Albanian population and by demonstrations by the independent trade unions: "We are for Dialogue - What About You?"

The regime's response was ruthless. At least seventy per cent of employed Albanians, more than 120,000 people, were sacked from their jobs. Reasons included demonstrating, refusing to sign an oath of loyalty, or being "technologically surplus." Doctors and medical staff were a particular target. Albanians were purged from the police force - which was, of course, greatly expanded, and went on the rampage in villages on the pretext of searching for weapons. After every such incident, activists would travel out to the villages to document what had happened and to urge the people not to be provoked to violence but to maintain a policy of nonviolence. Some villages even renamed their soccer teams to reflect the values of the new struggle - so Endurance would play Patience.

When Belgrade decided to impose a uniform curriculum throughout the republic, including Kosovo, the Albanian teachers refused to adopt it and carried on teaching the Albanian curriculum. First they had their pay stopped. Then they were sacked, and police came and shut them and their pupils out of the schools. Eventually the Albanians regained access to most elementary school premises, but these, completely neglected by the government, were without heat, repairs to broken windows, or furniture. Secondary and higher education had to continue in private premises: garages, empty houses, people's flats. From 1991 to 1998, around 330,000 school pupils and 16,000 university and college students were educated in the Kosovo Albanian "parallel" education system, a system employing around 19,000 teachers and professors.

For a time, the campaign was orchestrated by a coordinating council of political parties, operating by consensus. To show the popular will, this Council organized a referendum on the same lines as those held in Croatia and Slovenia. Nearly ninety per cent of the Kosovar electorate voted for independence from Serbia, and then elected a president, Ibrahim Rugova, and a parliament of their own.

Many sacked workers began to form their own small businesses, countering state - organized "privatizations" which consisted of selling large enterprises for hard currency and transferring assets and industrial plant from Kosovo to other parts of Serbia. With so many doctors sacked and with Albanian forbidden as the language of treatment in state hospitals, the Mother Theresa Association was founded in 1992 (named after the leading Albanian Catholic, although without her direct involvement). The Association opened its first two clinics in 1993, with premises and funds provided by local businesspeople. By the start of the war in 1998, it had a network of ninety - one clinics.

The Mother Theresa network gradually began to attract support from international humanitarian organizations, but the education system depended almost entirely on a system of voluntary taxation. This was mainly organized by sacked workers from the finance department of the provincial government. They visited families, assessed, agreed with them about what they could contribute, and later collected it, at some risk. Several times tax collectors were caught by the police and beaten, one to death. Throughout the period of nonviolent struggle, this system raised the bulk of the money needed for the schools, while additional funds were raised from a three per cent levy raised on the income of Kosovo Albanians in the diaspora.

While Slovenia, Croatia, and then Bosnia fought wars of independence, the Kosovo Albanians were resolute in their nonviolent struggle - until they were excluded from the Dayton negotiations in November 1995. Their struggle had been based on three factors: refusal to be provoked; social solidarity and self - organization against repression; and (the Kosovars' main hope for pressure on Milosevic) seeking international support. While there were many resolutions condemning the human rights violations in Kosovo - indeed, in 1992, President George Bush even went so far as to promise that Kosovo would not become another Bosnia - the Kosovars' situation was overshadowed by the wars elsewhere. For the media and the public at large, this oversight is understandable. But for government officials with the responsibility for international security, it is scandalous. So little was done to develop a concerted peace policy over Kosovo, a situation about which there was ample warning well before the break - up of Yugoslavia.

Missed opportunity

The nonviolent struggle created an opportunity for international action on Kosovo to avert war and to address the human rights issue. Unfortunately, it did not create enough pressure. Rugova's leadership was characterized by prudence and patience - too much so. It seemed a wise decision to take a breather after the huge demonstrations for education in the fall of 1992 met with massive police violence and a spate of detentions. However, after 1992, Rugova tried to avoid nonviolent confrontation altogether. He repeatedly postponed convening the parliament, thus missing the opportunity for posing a dilemma for Belgrade: should Serbia make itself look even worse by breaking up the meeting, or should it grant the Kosovo Albanians a platform to condemn Belgrade rule? Occasionally local parents and teachers would reclaim a school building, but Rugova refused calls for concerted building reclamation actions throughout Kosovo. At the start of the 1997 - 98 university year, students advocating "active nonviolence" defied him. Their firm nonviolent discipline, in contrast with the police brutality, earned the first public condemnation of Serbian rule in Kosovo from the head of the Orthodox Church in Serbia, Patriarch Pavle.

There are three other main points of criticism of Rugova's nonviolent strategy. First, he should have developed the Kosovar parallel institutions into a fuller "constructive program," including a stronger coordination of plans for economic development. Second, he needed to make more effort to create allies among Milosevic's opponents in the former Republic of Yugoslavia. Third, the situation required more flexibility in envisaging a process of peaceful self - determination: Kosovo Albanians want independence, but most would have accepted phased improvements in education or even in Kosovo's constitutional status, as long as these did not rule out the ultimate attainment of independence.

On each of these points, there were some Kosovo Albanians trying to develop more energetic strategy. Outsiders should never underestimate the difficulties they were facing, but I remember a sense of optimism during the student demonstrations in Fall 1997. Unfortunately this debate shifted the moment war broke out in February 1998.

The Kosova Liberation Army

There had already been Kosovo Albanians, especially in the diaspora, skeptical of what could be achieved by nonviolent struggle. Their moment came with the growing frustration inside Kosovo and the release of large quantities of weapons when rioters in Albania emptied the police armories. Nevertheless, until the Serbian massacre in Drenica in February 1998, the Kosova Liberation Army did not consist of more than a couple of hundred fighters, and their record of operations was not very impressive - killing more Albanian "collaborators" than police.

The KLA at that time was strong enough to keep police out of certain rural areas at night, but not strong enough to offer any protection when the Serbian forces were deployed against villages. However, thousands began to join the KLA and, as 1998 progressed, nonviolent leaders - Rugova most reluctantly of all - had to accept that it was now a popular movement that had to be included in the spectrum represented at negotiations.

I have met a number of Kosovo Albanians bitterly critical of the KLA in private, arguing that it can provoke attack but not protect the population, and pointing to the lack of democracy shown by the KLA. (For instance, it arrested two municipal leaders for urging the population to return to nonviolence and not to accept the KLA presence.) In the cities, especially Pristina, there are many who fear the kind of Kosovo that many in the KLA would create. At the same time, both inside the KLA or working in alignment with it are a number of long - time organizers of the parallel structures and former advocates of "active nonviolence," trying to be an influence for democracy.

Moments of dialogue

Even last year, there were new initiatives for Serbian - Albanian dialogue. While many Kosovo Serbs were packing their things and getting ready to leave, some Kosovo Albanians were keener than ever to reassure them of a commitment to respect the rights of the Serbian minority in Kosovo, including protecting their sacred sites. Some Kosovo Serbs also realized that they do not have much future elsewhere in the former Republic of Yugoslavia. The Serbs with the strongest commitment to Kosovo - the leaders of the Orthodox Church - became a powerful voice for peaceful coexistence, regardless of criticisms from elsewhere. Kosovo has been one of the few areas of growth for the Serbian Orthodox Church. Father Sava of the Decan Monastery not only wrote appeals for an end to the violence, but offered the monastery's protection to all who needed it and went out into neighboring villages offering what help he could to those in need, regardless of religion. The last I heard of the Decan monks after the NATO bombing was that they had fled to Montenegro. Father Sava said he did not want to live in a Kosovo made Serbian by the means Milosevic is pursuing.

Somehow our hope now must be that the previously peace - minded people who have been forced out of Kosovo can regroup and plan to reconstruct their lives and a society where peaceful coexistence is possible. I believe that outside peace groups can play a helpful role in this transformation.

Howard Clark was coordinator of War Resisters International in London from 1991 to 1997, and was engaged in founding the Balkan Peace Team, whose work in Kosovo has been to promote Serbian - Albanian dialogue. His forthcoming book, Kosovo: Strategy and Struggle, will be published by Pluto Press.