Page 412 - Kosovo Metohija Heritage

Boško i. Bojović
the region became an international protectorate that was proclaimed an independent state, which has already been recognized by many countries. Today, the remainder of the remaining Serbian population, as an ethnic minority of some 10 percent, lives in the enclaves under the more or less efficient protection of the international forces, KFOR and UNMiK. Nuns and priests in the monasteries live like in camps—protected with high walls and dense barbed wire fences. it is less known that these armed forces often care more about their own security than about the security of the civilian Serbian population. it suffices to see the for- tified KFOR camps throughout Kosovo and Metohija, as though in a wartime situation, to be convinced of that. Similar scenes can hardly be seen in Bosnia, the country in which three ethno-confessional communities waged a fierce war for four years, despite the prolonged presence of the international forces in that country. The daily routine of Kosovo and Metohija includes ethnic apartheid and vio- lence, the facts for which NaTO and its members have assumed full political, legal and historical responsibility.
ethno-confessional conflicts will always exist in the world. They are most often the result of a difference in de- mographic growth and change in the ethnic composition of the population.28 Nowhere else in this century can one find such violence, apartheid and the expulsion of a people from its homes, fields and graveyards; nowhere else are human rights violated to such an extent on the grounds of ethnic origin, nowhere else is cultural, spiritual and his- torical legacy destroyed and negated to such an extent, no- where else is aggressive nationalism so cynically trium- phant, not to mention the responsibility of the most pow- erful military alliance in history. if all this is the announce- ment of the new millennium, then hardly anyone should rejoice in it.
However, the international community and its only mil- itary alliance cannot bear the sole responsibility for the consequences of the politics that brought Kosovo and Me- tohija into a situation without precedent in modern euro- pean and world history. This region was an integral part of Serbia for almost 90 years, of which more than half a cen- tury under the communist regime and its democratic suc- cessors. The fact that UNMiK restituted to the monastery of Dečani (like to some other monasteries) 700 hectares of
28 S. P. Huntington, “The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order,” Foreign Affairs, 1993 ; id., “The West: Unique, not Universal,” Foreign Affairs, Nov/Dec. 1996 (USA), pp. 28–46. Hun- tington has been inspired by the work of F. Braudel, Grammaire des civilisations, Paris 1987. in the Balkan wars during 1990s Huntington saw the best proof for his theories. To avoid conflicts of that kind, he warned of the danger of imperilling borders between great civiliza- tion systems. On albanians, identity, and minorities on Kosovo, cf. G. Duijzings, Religion and the Politics of Identity in Kosovo, London 2000, pp. 211–243; id., “Religion and the politics of ’albanianism’. Naim Frashëri’s Bektashi writings,” in: Stephanie Schwandner-Siev- ers & B. j. Fischer (eds.), Albanian Identities: Myths, Narratives and Politics, London 2002, pp. 60–69.
its land, which was nationalized by the communist re- gime—but was not restituted by Serbia—provides ample evidence of the character of the Milošević regime. The late and inconsistent transition carried out by DOS (Demo- cratic opposition of Serbia) is quite another story. it suf- fices to remind ourselves that Serbia is the only european country which has not yet carried out restitution. Howev- er, it is still carrying out the privatization of the property appropriated by the communist regime. Consequently, this is the state which still cares more about the preservation of the “achievements of the revolution” than about the pro- tection of private property which, in addition to the pro- tection of the security of its population, has always been the most important purpose and function of the state as the most developed form of human community. The fact that the relatively greatest changes in the ethnic composi- tion of the population, whose security was not efficiently protected, took place just within that 50-year period, and that the major part of private property has remained ap- propriated, provides the best evidence of the nature of the state that is still one of the most isolated in europe.
With the accession to integration processes, eU insti- tutions and free market and other competition, this kind of “privatization” and seizure by the partocratic oligarchy would be curbed or stopped. This is not in the interest of the privileged state over which a monopoly is still held by the one-time “new class” and its consistently self enriching profiteers. The upper class (the middle one vanished a long time ago), which at one time passed over the accelerated albanization of Kosovo in silence, caring only about its own interests, fought subsequently over power by using populist demagoguery, so that the subsequent deception was in the sign of Serbia’s continued self-isolation. Had the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia more seriously approached euro-atlantic institutions from 2000 onward and had it joined NaTO,29 Kosovo and Montenegro would have hard- ly become independent. it is quite another thing that this did not suit everyone in the so-called international com- munity, so that there was not too much encouragement in that direction. Therefore, it was necessary to have a reso- lute strategy. it is well known that after the fall of the Berlin Wall the strongest, if not the only, guarantee of one’s terri- torial and state integrity was just that—NaTO member- ship. With the independence of Montenegro, the disinte- gration of Yugoslavia was completed. The separation of Ko- sovo encroached upon the matter of Serbia’s territorial in-
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it is a little-known fact that in the 1950s Yugoslavia was practi- cally a NaTO member, since it was in a military alliance with Turkey and Greece which were NaTO members. at that time however, this was the way to strengthen the power of Tito’s “New Class.” agree- ment on Military aid between the USa and Yugoslavia, which is signed in Belgrade in October 1951 and lasted until 1957 when Yugo- slavia ended it, and during that period the help worth 15 billion dol- lars was delivered and it was worth then five to six times more than nowadays (P. Simić, Tito and NATO Rise and Fall of the Second Yu- goslavia, Belgrade, pp. 75, 81–91).