Kosovo society was not shocked in 1999, 2000, 2001 and 2003. Why such a hipocrisy today?

By Enver Robelli

As soon as the war was over, the real horror began. This time, Albanians turned against each other and against ethnic minorities. In Duakgjin it started as a true civil war. People would get murdered in the middle of the day or night in villages and cities. Members of FARK group would get killed and then, as a revenge, Ramush Haradinaj’s brother would get murdered right after. The battle between the Haradinaj and Musaj clans would fill the international media’s pages for years. On November 11^th, 2000 the “Das Magazin,” a Swiss magazine quoted Sadik Musaj as saying: “I grabbed the grenade from one of those guys, pushed his riffle away, someone fired against a wall, I jumped quickly behind a car and threw the grenade away. During that explosion, Ramush Haradinaj got wounded.”

How many members remain alive from the Musaj family, whom the swiss media described as “bedroom burglars?” Mario Etzensberger, the head of the Psychiatric Clinic in Konigsfelden stated in the 1990’s about the Musaj brothers: “These criminals are fighting against the Western world. After the opening of borders they are able to see the Western Europe’s prosperity. Through their brutality they want to humiliate us.” Did anyone feel shocked during such horrors? Was anyone shocked when FARK’s members were killed in the streets and the war for power resembled to gang-wars in the infamous South American capitals?

Was anybody concerned when they judges in Hague Court complained that the witnesses suddenly withdrew in the processes of the KLA army? People were sent to Netherlands to threaten the witnesses to keep quiet. Some of them even committed suicide. The Europe Council at the time raised the alarm that witnesses were threatened, but the public opinion did  not seem to care.  Was anyone worried in Kosovo when the Hague lawyers complained that, the tribal structures of the Kosovo society made it impossible to secure the witnesses anonymity? When people ran to streets to call the name of a protected witness in public, stigmatizing them as traitors, nobody seemed to really care.

Nobody can deny Ramush Haradinaj’s merits regarding Kosovo’s freedom. Even among the Western Diplomats, many of them sympathise him, coming from a conservative culture and being able to find his way and learn the rules of the Western world, study foreign languages and furthermore, his commitment on his way. But, this is only the bright side of the moon. Haradinaj’s biography is contradictory. The Hague court has reached the conclusion that in the area led by Ramush haradinaj during the war, there were prisons and civilians have been mistreated. One of his comrades has been punished to six years in prison. As for the post-war period: Similarly to most of the KLA commanders, even Haradinaj worked in ways that cannot be tolerated by the rule of law.

After the fight at midnight in Musaj family’s yard, Haradinaj was wounded and an American helicopter rushed to evacuate him. Then, they sent him in a hospital near Landschut in Germany. The times have changed now. US planes and helicopters can only land in Kosovo if they need to arrest someone. Despite the change of times, the KLA commanders remained the same, despite the different parties they had their political careers at. They considered Kosovo as the opportunity of their lives to steal and get rich. All of them share the same problem: the international justice and the will to save the illegally-earned wealth. So, the spectacular resignations, as it happened recently with Ramush Haradinaj, should be not be taken to seriously. It is naturally the right decision, but various political calculations are hidden behind it.

Let us return in the first post-war years: Did anyone worry when a Serbian family’s car was set in flames in the middle of Prishtina, while a human being was burnt alive or even when Bulgarian was murdered only because he asked someone about the time in his language? What about when Serbian civilians were kidnapped in the street? In the summer of 1999, the “Koha Ditore” news paper as well as the “Der Spiegel” magazine described how a gang of young men heard someone speaking in Serbian in Prishtina. After chasing him, they beat him down and left him covered in blood, laughing at him. The man’s only crime? He belonged to the Serbian minority in Kosovo. “Where is the Albanian moral?” would ask the “Koha Ditore” newspaper at the time.

On November 23^rd, 2000 Xhemail Mustafa was murdered in Prishtina’s centre. The killers were never arrested. At the time, the “ministers” of the temporary government, a group of young men thirsty for revenge would kill anyone in their way, convinced that they stood above the law. Today they belong to different parties in Kosovo. In a village in Drenica, a citizen called Haki Imeri was killed. Invitations regarding a meeting of Kosovo’s National League were found in his bag. Smajl Hajdaraj, MP of Kosovo’s parliament was killed at the entrance of his own house, holding a bottle of milk that his mother had given to him for his children.

To keep the potential witnesses quiet, Kosovo’s actual President rushed to decorate them. Some of the witnesses accepted their medals and remained silent. This is the way of justice in Kosovo. At the beginning of September 2000, Rexhep Luci, an architect was murdered. He had worked for thirty years in Prishtina’s municipality, trying to fight Kosovo’s construction mafia.

For two decades, the Kosovo society has remained silent towards the crimes it has witnessed, afraid of facing the shady criminal structures. The society as well as the pre-political elites of the time laughed when the US official Dick Marty arrived in Kosovo to investigate the crimes of the KLA leaders. “We’ll play hide and seek with the US while not giving a damn about Europe,” was the slogan of many politicians then. But, their madness continues today. People are threatened if they dare to speak about the post-war murders as the KLA commanders fought for power. When they finally came to power, they were able to buy those who were ready to sell themselves cheaply, among them even a class of hungry intellectuals.

If someone dares to say that, a KLA member might have killed someone from an ethnic minority, then wait for the results. They would be declared as traitors and along with their families would be excluded from the society. Why most of the witnesses are living in Western countries, away from Kosovo? Why these countries are spending their taxpayers’ money to give these witnesses new identities? The repeated lines of the KLA commanders about the “clean war,” “holy war” and “legendary battles” proves their lack of will to clean the army’s history. The armed resistance against the Serbian regime was fair as the peaceful movement lost its contact with the people, drowning in its routine and lack of vision. Since war can never be clean, but rather bloody, suffering and painful, then there are always people who break the laws of war. They do not belong in politics, but in front of justice. Only there they can try to claim their innocence and if they fail, then bon voyage on their ride to the cell.

The collective refusal of Kosovo’s society to punish a small number of people accused of war crimes brought first the EU Council’s report on KLA’s crimes and then the report about witness threatening.

What did Kosovo expect from the International Community? For them to retreat and acknowledge our society as noble and honest and our political leaders as pure? That is not how the Western world works. This is why we ended up at the Special Court, founded only for Albanians. Kosovo did not manage to avoid it as it would mean a risky adventure of confronting its allies. Kosovo was not able to insist for the Special Court to investigate the Serbian war crimes as well. Obviously, when amateurs work they only worry about themselves, while the whole country has to suffer the consequences.

If this society was not shocked in 1999, 2000, 2001, 2003, 2004, then why should it shock now in 2019? Today, the social media war proves its hypocrisy by pretending to support the “commander.” This society has always been controlled through crimes and murders. Not only politically motivated murders, but even through tribal conflicts as that between Elshani and Kelmendi families from Peja which since 2000 counts for 23 murdered and 38 wounded.