Kosova:
Official versus Public Reality
The Albanian American
Civic League Meets with the People of Kosova
by Shirley Cloyes
DioGuardi
At the urging of Congressman Henry
Hyde, the Albanian American Civic League traveled to Kosova this month in order
to report back to the Congress on conditions there, as a follow-up to the May 21st
hearing in the House International Relations Committee on the future of Kosova.
We also used this opportunity to deliver the message of the hearing to the
people of Kosova. The hearing was the culmination of the latest phase in the
Civic League’s work on behalf of Kosova, which began when Civic League
President Joe DioGuardi and Balkan Affairs Adviser Shirley Cloyes DioGuardi
discovered on a trip to Kosova in June 2002 that 70 percent of the population
was unemployed, that nothing was being done to put Mitrovice back under Kosovar
control, that the former members of the Kosova Liberation Army were being
criminalized, and that the international community was successfully blocking all
discussion of Kosova’s final status.
The June 2002 trip led to the
introduction in January 2003 of the Lantos-Hyde resolution (H.Res. 28) calling
for U.S. government support for Kosova’s independence and the May
Congressional hearing, at which Congressmen Lantos and Hyde opposed the UN and
State Department policy of “standards before status” and backed independence
now as the only way to peace and stability in Kosova and in the Balkans. This is
the message that the Civic League delivered to Kosova at the beginning of July
in a series of public meetings in Gjilan, Podujeve, Peja, Gjakova, Suhareka,
Prizren, Prishtina, and Drenice. We accomplished our goals with the help of a
student network established by the Civic League with the assistance of Faton
Bislim, a young Kosovar working on his college degree in the United States, and
with the help of Burim Thaci, the vice-president of the Veterans Association of
Kosova.
The
most important theme that emerged from the trip was the ever-widening gap
between the official version of reality in Kosova and the Albanian people’s
perception and experience, including sharply divergent views about final status.
Lutfi Haziri, the mayor of Gjilan, stated that “without independence, economic
and social problems will persist, and our clash with UNMIK will increase in the
coming months. The sooner that Kosova has independence, the better the
conditions and the prospects for peace will be.” The need for final status
resolution to bring large-scale foreign investment and jobs to Kosova was
reinforced wherever we traveled. In a meeting with the leaders of the youth
branches of the major political parties and local civic groups in Gjilan, we
asked how Kosovars were surviving with 70 percent of the population unemployed.
One student explained that the Kosovar tradition of strong solidarity among
family members, “in which parents help children and siblings help each
other,” often by working abroad, had sustained the community. Now, however, he
said that survival “was becoming very difficult as more and
more Kosovars were being forced out of Western Europe and the United States or
losing their jobs in the diaspora.”
Catholic Bishop Mark Sopi of Prizren
expressed his consternation at the seeming inability
of the international community to realize that Kosova is “their best ally in
the Balkans and that if given
independence and even a nominal amount of investment monies, it would succeed
rapidly.” He further stated that Kosova is the source of peace, not of
violence, in the region. The greatest stumbling block to progress, in his
opinion, was Serbia’s anti-Albanian propaganda campaign.
In Peja, an UCK veteran lamented what
he called the international community’s “pacification program,” in which
Kosovars were “gradually being worn down, so that they would accept the
partition of Kosova or “substantial autonomy” under Serbia. Adem Demaci
echoed this statement in Prishtina, and he praised the Civic League for
challenging this outcome. “If you were doing something different, you would be
doing the wrong thing,” he said. “Even if it does not bear fruit now, it
will step by step, because the mentality of the people is changing. With fewer
jobs everyday, the crisis is going deeper and deeper.” He said that the
international community “wants leaders who put national interests aside, but
we need leaders who put the national interests in front of everything else.
Freedom is greater than anything else the international community can offer
Kosova.”
Demaci stated that “the people are
getting angrier everyday, because they notice that Serbia is becoming an
authority again, both politically and financially. The international community
does not understand that Albanians know what is going on and oppose it.” He
objected to the fact that Serbs in Kosova are allowed to vote in Serbia’s
national elections, that 20 percent of Kosova is under the control of Serbia,
and that the international community “routinely violates UN Resolution 1244 in
the interest of Belgrade,” but invokes it in an ironclad way whenever Kosovar
Albanians try to defend the national cause.
At a meeting in the auditorium of the
National Library organized by the student association at the University of
Prishtina, association leader Gani Morina asked aloud, “Is there a democratic
world, or has it fallen asleep? The United States and NATO made Kosova know that
there was a democratic world, but this world is now being destroyed.” He cited
as evidence the paralysis of Kosova’s institutions before the United Nations,
Serbia’s efforts to “seize the land of its victims,” and the international
community’s “denial of the right to Kosova to determine its own fate.”
Foremost in public statements made by
international factors in Kosova during our visit was a push for talks between
Belgrade and Prishtina and the return of Kosovar Serbs who had fled during the
1999 war. The international community believes that a “multiethnic society”
is the goal and that achieving this requires the successful return of large
numbers of Serbs and bilateral talks, initially on “technical issues.” The
Civic League, however, found that most Kosovars (as opposed to some Kosovar
politicians) do not want the talks between
Prishtina and Belgrade to proceed without first grappling with a number of
difficult issues, beginning with bringing northern Kosova back under Albanian
control, and facilitating the
return of Albanians, not only Serbs, to their homes in Mitrovice.
In a meeting with the “Mothers of the
Disappeared” in Gjakova, chairwoman Nesrete Kumnova called for more pressure
to be placed on Serbia and on the international community to account for the
3,500 missing Albanians at war’s end, including 663 men from Gjakova. “To
enjoy its freedom,” she said, “Kosova gave a lot of its best sons and
daughters, and not enough has been done to determine their fate.” Shirley
Cloyes DioGuardi recommended that the political spotlight be placed on the
problem of the missing before talks with Belgrade ensue. With very few
exceptions, Kosovars believe that Serbia has no role whatsoever to play in final
status discussions.
Finally, there was a clear division in
the perspectives of the international community and Kosovar Albanians on the
trials and imprisonment of former members of the Kosova Liberation Army (UCK).
The international community insists that the justice system is functioning and
that the trials and verdicts are free of political bias. Whereas Kosovars are
incensed about what they view as the criminalization of UCK and a politically
tainted, and in some instances corrupt, judiciary. The Civic League delegation,
which attended the final day of the trial of Commander Remi and the Llap group,
concurs with the Kosovar perspective. Shirley Cloyes DioGuardi spoke at length
about the need to oppose the creation of a false parity between the Kosovar
Albanian victims and the perpetrators of Serbian state-sponsored terrorism. In
every city, but especially in Gllogovci and in Skenderaj, where both she and Joe
DioGuardi were made “honorary citizens of Drenice,” she called for an
international campaign to end the criminalization of the Kosova Liberation Army,
which “carried the seeds of Skanderbeg.”
The
Civic League encountered a widespread belief that the U.S. government will bring
independence to Kosova, a belief that was expressed in adulation of former
President Bill Clinton. Shirley Cloyes warned of the dangers of this belief and
discussed the difference between the Administration and the U.S. Congress.
Successive administrations failed to act in Kosova, until Clinton was finally
forced to when Western diplomatic efforts failed to stop Milosevic’s killing
machine, and UCK rose up to defend the Albanian people from persecution and
death. She explained that many State Department personnel remain
Belgrade-centered. Joe DioGuardi, as he did earlier at the May 21 Congressional
hearing, recounted the history of the relationships developed with Serb
politicians by U.S. State Department officials stationed in Belgrade as Foreign
Service officers over the past thirty years. The best example of this, he said,
is former Secretary of State Larry Eagleburger, who spent substantial time in
Belgrade, speaks Serbo-Croatian, later served with Slobodan Milosevic on the
Board of Banka Lubanska in Washington, and now is a partner in Kissinger
Associates, which is reputed to have (and may still have) client relationships
in Serbia.
Cloyes
DioGuardi urged Kosovars to take advantage of the American system of “checks
and balances” by standing behind their friends in the U.S. Congress. She said
that Congressman Lantos and Hyde
needed to hear support from Kosovars for their pro-independence stance in order
to effectively challenge an Administration policy that risks renewed conflict in
the Balkans by keeping Kosova’s final status in limbo. In addition, she said
that the Kosova Assembly had done an extremely important thing in passing the
resolution in support of the war values and the liberation movement (which was
introduced by AAK and then endorsed by all parties) and that the Assembly should
now move to pass the pending legislation in support of Kosova’s independence.
In several television and radio
interviews (TV-21, RTK, and Blue Sky Radio), Joe DioGuardi
took on the difficult task of discussing Kosova’s unqualified support for
former President Clinton. Bill Clinton’s
decision to launch air strikes against Serbia was crucial for all Albanians, but
this decision was not made, DioGuardi pointed out, without monumental pressure
from the Albanian American Civic League, backed up by the Jewish lobby and
members of Congress, such as Senator Joseph Biden. More important, DioGuardi
identified five areas in which Clinton failed Kosova and Albanians throughout
the Balkans. First, Clinton reaffirmed former President George H.W. Bush’s
“Christmas warning,” threatening U.S. military action against Serbia if its
dictator, now indicted war criminal, Slobodan Milosevic threatened Kosova.
Clinton then proceeded to do nothing when Milosevic waged war on Bosnia and
later attacked Kosova in February 1998. Second, Clinton allowed his Balkan Envoy
Richard Holbrooke to make a deal with Milosevic to keep Kosova off the agenda
and Albanians excluded from the table at the Dayton Peace Accords.
Third, DioGuardi observed, Clinton
publicly announced his opposition to General Wesley Clark’s strategy to deploy
U.S. ground troops in the war with Milosevic, before an American military
victory was secured. As a result, he needlessly extended the war and suffering
of the Albanian people. Fourth, under Clinton’s watch, the Kumanova Agreement,
which ended the war in Kosova, allowed Serbia to retrieve all of its military
equipment from Kosova and to move some 5,000 Kosovar Albanians to prisons inside
Serbia and to ignore the fate of the missing (some of whom were later discovered
to have been executed in Kosova and brought to Serbia in refrigerated trucks by
the withdrawing Serbian army at war’s end). And, fifth, Bill Clinton allowed
the United Nations and Europe (particularly France and Russia) to take the lead
in postwar Kosova, thereby denying Kosova the U.S. leadership needed to bring
independence to Kosova and peace and stability to Southeast Europe. DioGuardi
reminded Kosovars that Clinton gave up the great opportunity as president of the
United States to declare Kosova independent after the war and only voiced his
support for independence four years later, in June 2003, in an apparent effort
to gain credibility among Albanian Americans in New York.
Adem
Demaci identified the crux of the problem in the struggle for Kosova’s independence
by stating that the international community was “getting the wrong information
on Kosova, because our leaders are not providing them with the right
information.” He identified the “new war” as a “war of information.”
Shirley Cloyes and Joe DioGuardi made the same point, stressing across Kosova
that the battlefield for the future of Kosova “is no longer on the ground. The
new war will not be fought with guns and bullets, but in the press and the
parliaments of the world.” For a brief period, from 1998 to 1999, Cloyes
observed, “the major Western television networks and newspapers were focused
on Kosova and on the Albanian question, when people were suffering, dying, and
being expelled. Now, they are preeminently focused on Iraq, Afghanistan, and the
Middle East.” She argued that we need the help of all Albanians to refocus
international attention on the Balkans.
Joe DioGuardi emphasized the importance
of Kosovar leaders speaking “with one voice” about Kosova’s future. He
warned of the consequences of “party building at the expense of nation
building,” which had resulted in a dangerous fracturing of Kosova’s voice on
the international scene. He cited Ibrahim Rugova’s weak public stance that
Kosova has de facto independence and is simply waiting for international
recognition and Hashim Thaci’s erroneous call for a moratorium on final status
discussions. (Thaci, who said that he had expected the international community
to respond to his idea with a date for final status resolution, appeared, in
discussion with the Civic League delegation, to have dropped this approach.)
Without a unified voice on Kosova’s future, DioGuardi predicted that peace in
the Balkans and the resolution of the Albanian national question would remain
elusive for generations.
It
was clear to the Civic League delegation that the U.S. State Department
apparently does not to understand, or does not want to acknowledge, the widening
gap between the legitimate expectations of Kosovar Albanians and the vision of
Kosova’s future imposed by the United Nations Security Council and the
European Union. This was made very clear at the May 21 Congressional hearing on
the future of Kosova in the stark contrast between the testimony by the State
Department and that of Chairman Henry Hyde, Ranking Member Tom Lantos, and
Congressman Dana Rohrabacher, all supporting U.S. recognition of Kosova’s
independence now. Their comments at the hearing forced the State Department to
put its UN and European cards on the table for all to see. The conclusion that
the Civic League drew from listening to people all over Kosova on its recent
trip is that it has its work cut out for it, as the only registered lobby in
Washington, DC, fighting for U.S. government recognition of Kosova’s
independence now. The task is all the more difficult because of the
collaboration of some Albanian Americans with elements in the State Department
tied to Belgrade.
Shirley Cloyes DioGuardi is Balkan Affairs Adviser to the Albanian American Civic League. July 24, 2003