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1.1 A Communist Construction of Eternal Ethnic Hatreds

The weak state structure inherited from Titoist communism facilitated the dissemination of Serbian nationalism in Kosovo (Ignatieff 2003: 85). Like in Bosnia (Malesevic 2006: 225), the collapse of communist state structures after Tito’s death—intertwined with the rise of modern ideology and technology and with changes in the geopolitical situation—created a ‘status vacuum’ that favored the implementation of a mass extermination plan.

The lack of complete modernization gave “rise to frustration and ‘scapegoating’ of other ethnic groups” (Flere 1991: 183). After 1981, some of Tito’s overshadowed followers tried to recast themselves as populist leaders (Roux 1992: 362-3). Throughout the 1990s, the state-organized genocides and expulsions in former Yugoslavia aimed to destroy the power of other state centers. Political leaders manipulated the feeling of Serbian nationhood to consolidate their power (Shaw 2003: 242, 190). During his rule, Milosevic reinvigorated the ‘common public culture’ of the Serbs by creating a unified anti-Albanian front among the constituents of ‘greater Serbia’.

Milosevic employed a wide range of methods to further his nationalist goals: the suppression of Albanian riots, the Serbianization of the media and of the judiciary, and increased propaganda through hate speech. Among the population, feelings of insecurity generated by economic instability were replaced with an evasive certainty through the projection of hatred on the ‘threatening’ ethnic group (Malesevic 2006: 181). Milosevic fuelled Serbian nationalism through his new policies that eschewed Tito’s commitment to multiethnic ruling (Kofos and Veremis 1998: 133).

The Albanians were in a stalemate. The ‘Ministry of Information’-style of communication stifled political participation and abated civil responsibility. It fostered “a reactionary ‘power blame’ in the public mind” incapacitated by the state’s ostensibly monolithic power (Todd 2002: 177). International actors (Kouchner 2000: 52) took that benumbed state of the Serb collective consciousness for granted in the post-war period: The ethnic Albanian majority in Kosovo suffered for 10 years under the brutal subjugation of the Milosevic regime before the NATO bombing campaign earlier this year.

Now a sinister reminder of that oppression is re-emerging in a new form as the remaining minorities—particularly, the Serbs—find themselves the victims of the severest forms of discrimination and reprisals, including murder. Human nature dictates this response among some Albanians, revenge being a direct antidote to the poison that has infected this war-ravaged region. During the 1980s, Serbian nationalists devised a powerful “victimization technique” to denigrate their enemy: Serb intellectuals, political figures, and journalists anathematized ‘nationalist’ rape as a threat to the Serb community (Bracewell 2000: 563, 565).

The idea of ‘genocidal rape’ would be exploited and used “an effective weapon of war” (Seifert in Mertus 2000: 8) by all sides throughout the 1999 conflict (Kennedy-Pipe and Stanley in Booth 2003: 74-5). In 1999, the rape of ethnic Albanian women became a central concern and one of the main reasons given by the British government to justify NATO’s intervention (Kennedy-Pipe and Stanley in Booth 2003: 79)[1]. From a national and cultural perspective, rape did burden the women with new economic roles: bearing the stigma of rape, they were shunned or rejected by their husbands with no chances of remarriage (O’Neill 2002: 26). But according to locals, this type of war crime did not amount to the gravest breach of women’s human rights (Mertus 2000: 50).

Returning to Milosevic, the myth of Albanian barbarism found its counterpoint in a powerful symbol of national identity used to demonize his opponents: Serbian valor and victimhood. In June 1989, Milosevic and several Serbian Orthodox bishops gathered in Kosovo to commemorate the 600^th anniversary of the battle of Kosovo Polje. According to a Serb legend, Lazar gained the kingdom of heaven because he sacrificed his life to preserve Christianity against the Turkish invaders (Petrov in Columbus 1999: 105). Interpreting this historical episode as the materialization of Christian hatred against Muslims, Milosevic drew a parallel between fourteenth century Ottomans and contemporary Albanians (Ramet 1996: 358). Through this rhetoric, Milosevic pitted the Serbs against two groups seen as eternal enemies: the Albanians and the Slavic Muslims (Mertus 1999: 185).

He underlined the acute sense of bereavement symbolic of Serbian identity. Historically, the Serbs systematically lost all the territories they had won, first Slovenia, then Croatia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, and finally Macedonia and Kosovo. Their empire had foundered due to great historical turmoil: massacred by the Turks in the nineteenth century, by the Austro-Hungarians during World War I, decimated by the Germans during World War II and later by the Croat Ustashas, the Serbs nevertheless found enough determination to respond in an equally brutal manner to their opponents (Becker 2000: 29). Not only did Milosevic lash out on non-Serbs in Kosovo, but he also galvanized the Serbs against the West during the NATO bombing campaign. Milosevic convinced the Serbs that President Clinton had been responsible for heinous crimes and that he wanted to overshadow Serbian authority.

As the population ingurgitated these myths fed by the communist media, they strengthened their lines to defy the Western ‘monopoly.’ In 1999, the Serbs acclaimed the members of the former Yugoslav army as heroes fighting for a great victory against NATO (Judah and Ciric in Judah 2000b: 328). Even after the end of hostilities, many Serbs did not blame Milosevic for starting four wars and killing 300,000 people, but for not having won them (Malazogu in Bieber and Daskalovski 2003: 135).

Milosevic metamorphosed the ‘liquid capital of fear’ (Bauman 2005: 69-70) into political profit by exploiting the Malthusian fears of the Serbs. At the anniversary of the battle of Kosovo Polje, Milosevic proffered gargantuan dimensions to the national victimization of the Serbs and injected a feeling of discontent for the Titoist government that had seemingly discarded the ‘Albanian question’. Throughout his rule, he infallibly utilized the hysteria created around actors seen as invaders—whether Albanians, other Kosovar minorities, or NATO forces—to implement his genocidal plans. His legacy—a Serbian identity that could only define itself by oppressing others—was to be recycled by the KLA and, subsequently, by the international interim administration.

1.2 The Albanian Saga: A Culture of Fear?

During the four hundred years of Ottoman ruling, Muslims enjoyed special privileges and a high political status. Many Christians converted to Islam because they became exempt from taxes. The close identification of Serbs with the Orthodox religion stemmed from the Ottoman period in which the church had managed to preserve the Serb identity. But the creation of nation-state inverted the relation of domination between Muslims and Christians and the agrarian reform of August 1945 eradicated the domination of Muslim landlords (Donia and Fine 2004:166).

Collective identities based on the Christian faith prevailed nevertheless up to modern times and became fused with other symbols to form national identity. Muslims, on the contrary, were often rejected as inferior; they were a ghost of the past obstructing the process of modernization and decolonization (Clayer 2005: 19). The clash between nationalisms during the nineteenth and early twentieth century systematized four negative stereotypes used by Serbs to categorize Albanians: the former were strangers[2], vengeful invaders, savages, and boasters (Roux 1992: 425-7).

Their identity became antagonistic to that of Christians, who symbolized progress, truthfulness, and virtue. On the other hand, national identity did not encompass the tradition of Islam for Albanians and Turks (Clayer 2005: 25). A Christian family entering Albania from Kosovo during the 1999 war. Photo: © Gary Fabiano For the inhabitants of the territory of former Yugoslavia, ‘Muslim’ translates into Slavs converted from Christianity to Islam during the Ottoman period; it does not encapsulate an empirical aspect of active practice of the Muslim faith. Kosovar Albanians, mostly of Islamic faith, “identify themselves as Albanian rather than Muslim” (Mertus 2000: 19)

In consequence, Islam does not play a significant role in defining the Albanian national identities. During the 1999 war and in its aftermath, each side of the conflict constantly reinforced their unique bipolar identity: as the Serbs emphasized their culture to downplay that of the ‘barbarian’ Albanians, the latter defined themselves as ‘peaceful’ in opposition to their ‘aggressive’ opponents (Mertus 1999: 232). From an Albanian point of view, the Serbs have always been “occupiers and colonizers” (Kuci 2005: 333).

1.2.1 YPA vs. KLA: Same but Different

Serbs interpreted the decline of their population from 27.9% in 1953 to 10% in 1987 and the growth of the Kosovar Albanian community as a tactic of intimidation. By the early 1970s, Kosovo witnessed the highest infant mortality rate, the highest illiteracy rate, and the highest percentage of rural population in Yugloslavia (Malcolm 1996: 202). The sense of deprivation became evident to Albanians with the rise of the new elite.[3] The establishment of the University of Pristina in 1970 (www.pr.ac.yu) created a local elite that mobilized a growing Albanian population repulsed by its dwindling status after the 1974 Constitution.

The relative deprivation perceived by the educated strata in conjunction with the dire economic conditions of the period impelled certain parts of the population to radicalize (Ragaru 2001: 8). Serb counterattacks that ravaged entire villages and resulted in mass murders only reinforced this trend. Kiro Gligorov, the President of Macedonia from 1991 to 1999, rightly affirmed that the more Milosevic “tried to use force to repress the Albanians, the more he would radicalize them” (Clark 2001: 108).

One episode remains particularly prominent in this respect: between February and March 1989, several strikes that broke out produced 31 deaths. In consequence, the federal army was deployed in Kosovo for a fourth time after World War II[4]. The large-scale human rights abuses of the Serbian army[5]—brute force, denial of freedom of association and of expression, as well as the repression of educational institutions (Donia and Fine 1994: 184)—inflamed the Albanian community, but failed to produce any impact on an international level.

The situation of the Albanians did not improve when Ibrahim Rugova was elected President of Kosovo in 1992. Rugova pursued a three-fold policy: non-violent tactics, the ‘internationalization’ of the problem—seeking external support and transforming Kosovo into a UN protectorate—and boycotts of elections and censuses of the Serbian government (Malcolm 1998: 348).

The leader of the right-wing Democratic League of Kosovo (LDK) advocated pacifism in respect to the Serbs mainly for economic reasons. Kosovo was a poor region. Albanians could not defend themselves. Their armament had been confiscated by the Serbs, who were eagerly looking for a pretext to invade the province (Judah 2000a: 61). Due to the overwhelming Serbian military presence in Kosovo in the early 1990s, Rugova shunned violent attacks on the part of the Serbs. From his perspective, the Albanians believed it was ‘better to do nothing and stay alive than to be massacred’ (quoted in Kostovicova in Judah 2000a: 61). Rugova encouraged segregation from the Serbs by building parallel institutions for Albanians during the early 1990s. These included a democratic government, a separate educational system, a health care system, and distinct methods of tax collection (Reitan 2000: 74). Within the Albanian ethnic community, some Kosovars accused Ibrahim Rugova and his party’s approach of passivity and lack of cooperation with the masses (ibid 78). The Albanian diaspora even accused him of secretly supporting the Serbs. For these members of the party, independence required sacrifices.

They considered that the language of force could be the only solution for the liberation from Serbian oppression (Judah 2000b: 318). Because of these internal divisions, Albanians became an easy target for the Yugoslav People’s Army (YPA) consisting mainly of Serb and Montenegrin combatants (Donia and Fine 1994: 209-10). Enlivened by the communist party’s nationalist visions, the paramilitary leaders of the YPA promoted an image of professional, technologically competent and dispassionate manliness against the brutality and ill-discipline of rival paramilitary units as a means of staking their own claims to authority and patriotic legitimacy in the military context (Kolovic in Bracewell 2000: 580). It is with this image of ferocity and technical perfection that the Albanians had to compete to save what remained of their national heritage. Between 1998 and 1999, over 1 million internally displaced persons sought refuge in foreign countries (Eytan et al 2006: 58).

The Serb troops destroyed their identity documents in order to facilitate their permanent expulsion (Daalder and O’Hanlon 2000: 112). Like the state-ordered cultural suppression, the IDP identity was “a form of de-ethnicization” (Duffield 2001: 215). But Albanians were not ready to give up easily. The relative freedom of thought and association between 1974 and 1989 consolidated a sense of national unity: as Kosovar Albanians strived for substantial autonomy within previous regional borders, they became more aware of their common history and culture (Guzina in Bieber and Daskalovski 2003: 37).

A symbol of a nation not yet materialized, the martyrdom of Adem Jashari and the massacre of his entire family brought notoriety and increased support for the Kosovo Liberation Army (di Lellio and Schwandner-Sievers 2006: 518). Although invested as komandant legjendar (legendary commander) after his death (ibid 515), Jashari had used tactics that were a far cry from Rugova’s lenient policies to persuade the Serbs to capitulate. In addition, the KLA initially received funding from “drug trafficking, money laundering, and migrant smuggling” (Ron 2003: 99). Yet even some of the most ardent followers of Rugova acquiesced to KLA’s terrorist acts. Rather than condemning the terrorist tactics of the KLA, Adem Demaci, the Chairman of the Council for the Defense of Human Rights and Freedoms of the People of Kosovo and a nominee for the Nobel Prize for Peace in 1993, affirmed decisively: “the path of non-violence has gotten us nowhere …

The Kosovo Liberation Army is fighting for our freedom” (quoted in Caplan 1998: 752). KLA soldiers waiting to be deployed. Photo: © Gary Fabiano In the ‘praetorian society’[6] of former Yugoslavia, the demilitarization of the Albanian population and the instauration of a martial regime in Kosovo increased the level of violence in the long run. Communist leaders used the Serbian military as a tool to preserve the national identity of Serbians through territorial supremacy. However, neither Milosevic nor any of his adepts could foreshadow the interplay between the aggrieved Albanians, most notably the KLA, and the Serbian forces.

Fighting for the dream of a unified nation, both KLA and YPA discarded all similarities, and highlighted the differences between Kosovar Albanians and Kosovar Serbs. Rather than allowing for diverse worldviews to coexist harmoniously, nationalist ideology split the image of the local community into two antagonistic factions that could only—paradoxically—be conceived through a single bipolar identity[7]. Once embedded in local cultures, praetorianism outlived the expansion of political opportunities accorded by UNMIK.

[1] More exactly, the British Foreign Secretary suggested that displaced women were systematically raped in am army camp near the Albanian border (Kennedy-Pipe and Stanley in Booth 2003: 79). [2] Albanians differentiated themselves from Serbs along linguistic and religious lines: through their Albanian language, different from Slavic idioms, and through their Muslim heritage (Roux 1992: 425-6) [3] According to McAdam (1982: 43, 51), deprivation in itself is a necessary, but not sufficient condition for mass upheavals. Social movements can only occur when there is a perceived sense of deprivation. [4] It has previously been deployed there in 1945, 1968, and 1981 (Donia and Fine 1994: 184). [5] The methods that the Serbian army used against Albanians—repression, burning down Albanian communities—had been sketched by Vaso Cubrilovic, a Bosnian who had participated in the killing of the Archduke Franz Ferdinand, in 1937 and between 1941 and 1944. These ideas resurfaced among Bosnian Serb intellectuals during the 1992 war in Bosnia (Judah 2000b: 150). [6] Samuel Huntington has coined this term relating to societies in transition: “The democratization of government in a society in which violence is a key part of government also means the democratization of violence. […] Conceivably, the conservative elements may retreat gracefully before the demands of the emerging groups, thereby permitting processes of peaceful change to develop. If they do not, the decline in the role of the military in society and government may well be accompanied by an increase in the role of violence.” (Huntington 1968: 231) [7] Mamdani develops this idea further in his analysis of the genocide in Rwanda (1996: 3-36).