[NYC-L] Good article by Augustin Palokaj

[Valon Xharra]

This article appeared today on Koha Ditore.

Cheers,
Valoni


Augustin Palokaj: Five years ruined in two days (Koha Ditore)
Koha Ditore runs a commentary by its correspondent from Brussels, Augustin 
Palokaj, who writes:

I have never imagined like this the fifth anniversary of the NATO 
intervention in Kosovo, the day that many Kosovar Albanians, including the 
witnesses that testified against Slobodan Milosevic at The Hague, have 
considered to be the happiest day of their lives. I’ve always had problems 
explaining to my European colleagues that someone can consider as his 
happiest day the day, when bombs started falling on their heads. I was only 
conveying the words of the victims who said ‘it is better to die from NATO 
bombs, which we have waited for so anxiously, because they will bring an end 
to Milosevic’s rule in Kosovo, than to die from the hands of Serbian 
forces’, words like these, which were perceived as a proof of the horror 
that Kosovo Albanians experienced under Milosevic’s regime. At that time, we 
used to send messages with other Albanian colleagues from NATO that the 
latter would intervene and come out victorious, that Milosevic would be 
defeated and over a million Albanian refugees would return to their homes. 
All this happened.

Now five years later I find myself entering the NATO Headquarters in 
Brussels due to the extraordinary situation in Kosovo, due to the 
extraordinary sessions of the NATO Council for Kosovo. I see faces that 
remind me of 1999 and the night that we spent in NATO waiting for even the 
smallest bit of information on what was happening in Kosovo and counting 
every single target that NATO planes were hitting in Serbia and Kosovo. I 
see Jamie Shea and his associates, now maybe forgotten by Kosovars, who are 
still working for NATO. But I notice a big difference. There is a lack of 
clarity on who is the victim in Kosovo now. In fact, even though they don’t 
like to blame one side or the other, the biggest disappointment falls with 
the Albanian side, because Serbs are now a minority and if the latter are 
expelled from Kosovo this would undoubtedly present a failure of NATO and 
the principles for which NATO intervened five years ago. All this outburst 
of violence caught NATO by surprise, because it was planning troop 
reductions in Kosovo and bigger commitment in Afghanistan, Iraq and the 
Middle East, and now they have to send additional troops to Kosovo.

For five years, NATO also became part of the rhetoric of Kosovar leaders, EU 
and UN leaders, who said that major progress was achieved in Kosovo. There 
was really an impression that major progress was achieved, but everything 
that was built in five years proved to be so fragile that it could be ruined 
in two days. Now my colleagues compare Kosovo with Palestine, Congo, Sierra 
Leone and sometimes with Afghanistan from the Taliban era, but not with 
Europe. Palestine is the first thing that comes to mind when you see young 
Albanians under the smoke of teargas, with scarves around their faces, 
throwing stones at the police, while from Serb enclaves someone shoots at 
them with sniper fire. They remind of Congo and Sierra Leone when they hear 
that after the drowning of Albanian children in Mitrovica, Albanians 
launched a mass punishing expedition against Serbs in other parts of Kosovo 
by burning down their houses, and according to some reports, by burning even 
some people inside those houses. Some journalists compare the burning of 
Serb churches with the destruction of Buddha statues in Afghanistan during 
the Taliban regime. Bearing in mind that after this, Serbs burned mosques in 
Belgrade and Nis, although we don’t know the connection between those 
mosques and Kosovo Albanians, and then radical Muslims in Bosnia burned a 
Serb church. European electronic media, including the BBC, started without 
hesitation talking about a conflict between Muslims and Christians in Kosovo 
and the Balkans.

Whether we Albanians like it or not, this is the way this is perceived by 
ordinary Europeans, who are no longer impressed by the saying that we 
Albanians had Mother Teresa and Gjergj Kastrioti – Skënderbeu.

NATO, the European Union and especially the United Nations have committed 
many mistakes, but I wouldn’t like to write about that now, because I fear 
that when they read the criticism against them, my fellow Albanians in 
Kosovo would think that the vandal acts of Albanians would have to be 
justified.

Kosovars shouldn’t even criticize Belgrade because the regime there hasn’t 
been secretive about what it wants. Regardless of who was in power in 
Belgrade, they almost always had the mission of proving that the NATO 
intervention against them was unjust and unreasonable, that by helping 
Albanians NATO is responsible for the ethnic cleansing of Serbs, that only 
Serbs and their forces can maintain peace in Kosovo, that only the Serbian 
police and army can secure the protection of Serbs and their houses and 
churches in Kosovo and that Albanians and Serbs cannot live together and 
therefore Kosovo should be divided. What happened recently has served their 
constant claims.

The hope that the consequences of ruining of the entire system in Kosovo 
becomes smaller after the statement made by Kosovo Prime Minister Bajram 
Rexhepi, who said that the government would set up a special fund for the 
reconstruction of Serb churches, and this will help to prove that the Kosovo 
institutions don’t share the opinion of vandals and hooligans and that they 
consider Serb churches to belong to Kosovo. But this is going to be easier 
than the expectations of the international community that the organizers or 
initiators of these acts should be publicly and legally punished. It will be 
now much more difficult for Kosovars to show their political, institutional 
and intellectual maturity, to prove the maturity that is expected from those 
who say they want a state. Even the international community is confused and 
doesn’t know what to say at this point, because for them what happened in 
Kosovo is identical with the position of Albanians who spent years in 
building their houses and then Serb soldiers would destroy them in one day.

Honesty from all sides is required to emerge from this crisis. International 
politicians must speak their minds about Kosovar leaders, what they really 
think. NATO shouldn’t endanger its credibility by trying to convince us that 
such a strong alliance is incapable of unblocking the road that links from 
Prishtina to Skopje and that local Serbs can block it whenever they feel 
like it. NATO should finally take control over northern Mitrovica, where 
Serb paramilitaries roam freely, and not try to convince us that this is not 
true. A Croatian journalist wrote yesterday that a bearded man with an AK47 
entered a bus in northern Mitrovica and started legitimizing people.

The European Union should finally make it clear whether it is serious when 
in the conclusions of the minister meetings it demands the dismantling of 
parallel structures in Kosovo, because while Belgrade finances parallel 
structures the EU is providing financial assistance to Belgrade.

Kosovar media should focus on the responsibility of Kosovars and not become 
part of the patriotic comfort according to which Serbs and the international 
community are to blame for everything. Western media only describe the 
actions of Albanians, while they criticize the international community. What 
the media in Kosovo should not do is act like Serbian media do. The 
headlines in Serbian media yesterday and the day before that read ‘Kosovo in 
blood – Serbia rises’, ‘A blood to the heart for Serbia’, ‘The pogrom of 
Serbs in Kosovo directed by Americans’, and not a single word about Albanian 
victims, on the contrary, there are quotes from the statement allegedly made 
by UNMIK Police spokesman Derek Chappell or the misinterpretation of 
statements – that Serbs have nothing to do with the drowning of the 
children.

Consolation comes from professional headlines in Koha Ditore and Zëri that 
report about victims on both sides, that criticize their own side, and this 
gives hope that we don’t learn only from the Serb regime and their media.

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