PRISTINA, KOSOVO -- She purses her lips in a "tsk-tsk" when asked difficult questions. Questions about her life, about the husband who beats her, the father who denies her an inheritance and a place to live.
e hënë, mars 10, 2008
Taiwan and Kosovo; We like a strong euro
Taiwan and Kosovo
The Taiwanese government was one of the first to congratulate Kosovo on its recent declaration of independence. As a country that cherishes democracy and freedom, Taiwan is delighted that Kosovars will now enjoy the fruits of independence.
An American – university – in Kosovo
Pristina, Kosovo - A few years ago, Chris Hall was a state senator from midcoast Maine. He had quit a job as a steel and mining executive, deciding "never again" to do the weekly commute from Portland to New York. But a defeat in 2004 opened the door for Mr. Hall to become the first president of one of the more unusual colleges in Europe: the American University in Kosovo.
EU urges U.N. to step up Kosovo-Serbia security
The European Union urged the U.N. mission in Kosovo on Monday to step up security along the border with Serbia amid fears of a partition of Serb-dominated north Kosovo from the rest of the newly-created country.
The Independence of Kosovo is the vindication of a people
Besnik Sinani
The declaration of independence of Kosovo was a cause of collective celebration for Albanians and non Albanians alike who saw it as an act of justice and pursue of freedom. For many of us, however, it had also a personal significance, related to what Kosovo had meant to each of us as individuals. To me, it was a vindication of the Kosovars I had known since when in my earliest memories, Kosovo was perceived as a land of pain.
In his book Ra ky mort dhe u pame, Albanian novelist, Ismail Kadare, points at how the massive forced exodus of Kosovar Albanians from Kosovo was also the chance for Albanians to meet with each other in that day of tremendous human sorrow. Divided by borders and ideologies, Albanians on both sides of the border, had been denied a common shared existence as a people who share together their sense of belonging, identity, and a common historical imagination. The event of expulsion of Kosovars from their houses brought Albanians face to face with each other.
For me, however, that day arrived earlier, in the early 1990s, when three young Kosovar Albanians in their twenties, knocked at the door of our apartment in Tirana. In Kosovo, people had become suspicious of the number of Kosovar conscripts in the army of the Yugoslav Federation who would return home dead in sealed coffins. The families were occasionally told that they had died accidentally. Albanians decided to open the coffins only to see that their sons had been cold bloodedly murdered in the most despicable, inhumane manner. The three young Kosovars, who came that day in Tirana, had fled Kosovo upon receiving a conscription notice from the Army of Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. They had gone to Macedonia, from where had crossed the border in Dibra, and over there someone had given them my father’s address. Meeting with them and listening to their story, was my first human contact with the ongoing tragedy in Kosovo.
It is difficult now to put events in exact time frame, but sometime later, I remember meeting an acquaintance of the family in the streets of Tirana. By his side, there was a teenage girl whose abnormal behavior made everyone uncomfortable, till when we were told that the girl was actually from Kosovo. She was one of the many victims of the poisoning of Kosovar high school students from the regime of Milosevic, who suffered from brain damage.
As the first pictures from the massacres in Decan and elsewhere in Kosovo, at the beginning of the conflict, were smuggled out side the country, the world was becoming slowly aware of the crimes being perpetrated inside Kosovo. I remember when some of those pictures were exhibited at the National Museum in Tirana. Everyone I met at the exhibition had it written in their faces a sense of horror and disbelief. I can point exactly at the newsstand in Queens, New York, when I picked a copy of the New York Times which had in its front page, pictures of massacred Kosovars, among them a child and a pregnant woman. I remember feeling this mix of nausea and desire to cry.
At the time of the bombing campaign against Serb troops by NATO airplanes, a friend of mine called me from Fort Dix, New Jersey, the military base turned into a refugee camp for those who had fled the war in Kosovo. I remember the story of a man whose bus on the way to Macedonia had been stopped by cetniks, people who identified themselves as Bosnian Serbs, and who in their distorted mind told their victims that they had come to Kosovo to continue the killing of Muslims as in Bosnia. They forced their victims to start digging their own graves. They had survived only because the cetnicks had been urgently called to report for some other ‘assignment.’ I remember an old man with a kidney condition who had asked his son to leave him behind, but whose son had carried him for two weeks in his shoulders, hiding in forests. Two times the old man had attempted to kill himself with a knife because the absence of a doctor and a catheter was causing him unsupportable pain. And every time, members of the family were able to prevent him.
To me these experiences were part of a process of demystification. I had grown up hearing about the brave, warrior like Kosovars, with long mustaches, rifle in their hand, fighting with a red flag by their side. As many other nations, we had fed a heroic image that occupied our knowledge of the Albanians beyond the border, that excluded any notion of common people, with daily concerns and aspirations. The people that I met reflected greatness and flaws like every other people in the world. And that is why they deserved to demand the rights aspired to by all the people in the world.
As we follow the debates prior and after the declaration of independence, it is important that Albanians and those who believe in their right for self-determination make their case in support for independence in terms of international law, and historical arguments. As Professor Noel Malcolm wrote recently, even the Serbs, when they occupied the Albanian vilayet of Kosovo from the Ottoman Empire, considered it a colony. Therefore, we can justly proclaim that the liberation of Kosovo was an act of de-colonization. However, beyond any theoretical legal articulation, or historical argumentation about battles and wars, kings and knights long gone by, we celebrate the independence of Kosovo in the name of the people of Kosovo, those who died and those who live, and in the name of their God-given right to live in dignity as free people. In echo of the memory of the horrors that countless Kosovars suffered, we should determinately state: never again.
e premte, shkurt 29, 2008
e enjte, shkurt 28, 2008
Serb Police Deserting Kosovo Force
KUSCE, Kosovo (AP) — Dozens of Serb officers have deserted the Kosovo police force since the new state declared independence, snubbing ethnic Albanian leaders and shattering the only institution in which real cooperation existed between the ethnic groups.
Blast damages U.N. cars in Kosovo Serb stronghold
MITROVICA, Kosovo: An explosion in the Serb stronghold of north Mitrovica in Kosovo on Thursday damaged two U.N. vehicles in a compound housing the police and U.N. court, police said.
Serb president wants Kosovo and EU keys
Serbia will not give up its claim on breakaway province Kosovo or its bid to become a member of the European Union, Serbian President Boris Tadic said in an interview published Thursday.
The Politics of Religion in Kosova
-Besnik Sinani
One can hardly read any news on Kosova these days without being told time and time again that Kosova is the heartland of Serb spiritual heritage, the location of Serb medieval monasteries. Despite this being a relatively late Serbian claim, appearing in the 1800s with the advent of Serb nationalism, it is striking how churches of a universalistic religion like Christianity, are constantly referred to as signposts of nationalism. The Orthodox Church in Kosova has maintained the same role that the former communist leader and butcher of the Balkans, Slobodan Milosevic, had assigned to the Church when he was arousing the flames of the future Balkan wars of the 1990s. This is the worst case scenario of mingling religion and politics.The Serbs, however, are not the only ones who are politicizing religion in Kosova. A controversial Catholic cathedral is currently being built in Pristina. This project had from its beginning the extraordinary support of the late Kosovar President, Ibrahim Rugova, whose office was decorated with the pictures of him with the Pope and the picture of Mother Teresa. Catholicism, the religion of less than 10% of the Albanian population of Kosova, is being marketed politically in attempts to show a perceived cultural shift of Muslim Kosovars towards the West mediated by Catholicism. This process of political marketing of Catholicism was referred to, recently, by a high functionary of the Catholic Church in Kosova, Dom Dode Gjergji, as “cultural baptism.”
This political marketing of Catholicism necessarily requires downplaying the presence of Islam in Kosova. Following debates among devout Kosovars in internet forums, it is common to notice the dissatisfaction with the leaders of the Kosovar Muslim Community, for not reacting more aggressively in response to this “cultural baptism.” There has been at least one known attempt from a political party, the Party of Justice, to politically monopolize Muslim dissatisfaction Following Albanian Muslim forums, however, one is left to believe that in the last elections, the Party of Justice was unsuccessful in attracting large sections of devout voters. One of the main reactions to the current climate of politics of religion in Kosova among many Muslims has been the embrace of forms of piety that detach from the main debates of the society. It is associated with the ideas of Salafism, a wide spread Muslim movement that attracts large funding from the Middle East. Contrary to a common held view, most forms of the Salafism are apolitical. However, these are forms of visible piety and clash with the attempts of the political and cultural establishment of Kosova to shove visible signs of Muslim piety under the rug, fearing loss of much needed Western support.
Ironically, Kosovar society aims at building a pluralistic, democratic, secular new state. The promotion of religious identities as political identities creates the conditions for what French supporters of laicite would call the Balkanization of the society.
If current conditions persist, institutions of Orthodox Christianity that play the tunes of Serb nationalism will be seen as a Trojan horse inside Kosova. The fact is that today Kosova is an independent state recognized by the major Western powers. This new political entity is home to Serbs who will have to think of building a normal life in this newly created state. The Orthodox Church will have to negotiate its position in new Kosova in order to serve the best interests of its flock. It will have to negotiate with the government and other institutions of Kosova and therefore, de facto, recognize those institutions. Albanians on the other hand, cannot afford an antagonistic Orthodox Church in their new country, and therefore they will have to accommodate it as one of the religious communities of the Kosovar state. They will have to guaranty its safety and prosperity.
Embracing Catholicism as a political identity to serve as a European political ID card undermines the values of governance, and secularism that are the hallmark of European models. It also undermines the social cohesion of a newly created country. Ironically, the current American administration, as well as that of President Clinton, has emphasized the Muslimness of the Kosovars in attempts to show that America’s wars in the Middle East are not a war against Islam. I believe in the freedom of individuals to choose forms of piety of their liking, and in the obligation of governments to guaranty that freedom However, I think that current forms of Muslim piety, such as Salafis, that promote detachment from the cultural, political, and social life of the society will effect negatively both the society and the interests of the Muslim community in Kosova.
It is, therefore, in everyone’s interest to see that the government of Kosova creates a climate of freedom of religious expression while refraining from political manipulation of religions. It is the best bet in seeing a celebration of diversity of spiritual traditions, rather than political fragmentations of the kind that have enflamed Balkan history.
e mërkurë, shkurt 27, 2008
One step forward – three steps back
The announcement of the Declaration of Independence and recognition by the US, France, and the United Kingdom is a step forward. Kosova for the first time has been recognized as an independent state from these significant states of the world.
However the Declaration of independence has turned Kosova three steps back
Një hap para – tre hapa mbrapa
Shpallja e Deklaratës së Pavarësisë dhe njohja që pasoi nga ShBA-të, Franca, Britania e Madhe etj. është një hap para. Kosova për herë të parë u njoh si vend i mëvetshëm nga këto shtete të rëndësishme të botës.
Megjithatë deklarata e pavarësisë e ktheu Kosovën edhe tre hapa mbrapa.
Russia's Medvedev warns Kosovo's independence could set Europe ablaze
Medvedev said recognition of Kosovo's declaration Feb. 17, spearheaded by the United States, has "put Europe in a very difficult situation."
"The United States is far away and is not facing any risks, but Europe could go ablaze," he said in a campaign speech in the Volga River city of Nizhny Novgorod. "It's enough to put a match to set everything ablaze."
Category: CURRENT EVENTS
It appears that First Deputy Prim Minister Medvedev has an appreciation of history, and the consequences of political actions devolving into violence.
Unfortunately at this time, the foreign policy makers here in the US have little or no understanding of history.
If they had, they never, ever would have backed the independence of Kosovo from Serbia.(MR)
Kosovo warns Serbia as riots continue
Kosovo told Serbia on Tuesday it would not yield one inch of its territory, and a violent protest by ethnic Serbs in Bosnia against Kosovo's secession highlighted continued volatility in the Balkan region.
Kosovo won't be part of Serbia again-US State Dept
The people in the West have no idea what Pandora's Box they have opened by supporting the independence of Kosovo.
Posted Feb 26, 2008 09:05 AM PSTThey also have no clue about the history of the region, which is going to come back to haunt them, unfortunately.
Category: CURRENT EVENTS
Kosovo will never be part of Serbia again, the U.S. State Department said on Monday, but said Washington would keep working on the issue with Belgrade and its ally Russia, which both oppose independence.(MR)
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