A Voice For the Voiceless

MISSION

The Advocacy Project seeks to help community-based advocates produce, disseminate and use information, and so become more effective advocates for human rights and social justice

Background on Kosovo

For the last twelve years, civil society in Kosovo has been struggling to make its voice heard. First, under Serbian rule, then during war and exiles, and most recently during the last year of U.N. administration. These pages look at the struggle through the eyes of several prominent Kosovar activists. 

Pro-West graffiti outside the National Theater in Prishtina, Kosovo.

The story of modern Kosovo began in 1389, when the kingdom of Serbia was defeated at Kosovo Polje by the Ottoman Turks. That defeat gave Kosovo a mythical place in Serbia's history.

By the 1970s, most of Kosovo's inhabitants were ethnic Albanian, and Kosovo was given the status of an autonomous province under the 1974 constitution of Yugoslavia. This made Kosovo a tempting target for Serbia's manipulative President Slobodan Milosevic in the late 1980s, as he was seeking to enflame Serbian nationalism. In 1989, Milosevic revoked Kosovo's autonomy and dissolved the constitution.

The Albanians responded with non-violent resistance. In a valiant reassertion of their autonomy, they set up their own form of government, known as the "parallel society."

By 1997 young Kosovars were tiring of this form of passive, non-violent opposition to Serbia. Students took to the streets to demand a restoration of their education rights. A shadowy new guerrilla organization, the Kosova Liberation Army (KLA), emerged.

Serbia attempted to suppress the KLA with violent attacks on the civilian population. The international community tried to stop the bloodshed at the Rambouillet (Paris) conference but failed to resolve the crisis. Serbian forces then stepped up their campaign in Kosovo, finally triggering a massive aerial campaign by the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) on March 24, 1999. 

Protecting Prizren.

After weeks of bombardment, Serbian forces finally withdrew from Kosovo on June 10, 1999, making way for an international peace mission. This mission comprised a NATO force (KFOR) and a large U.N. civilian mission (UNMIK) that was to administer Kosovo until a long-term solution could be found for the province.

Kosovo's parallel society had been battered but not broken by this violent sequence of events. During the 1999 war, some of its member associations provided humanitarian assistance to displaced Kosovars. Others were forced into exile, where they regrouped and resumed working in the refugee camps of Macedonia and Albania.

They returned after the war to devastation, death, and despair. An estimated 10,000 Kosovars were missing or dead. Mass graves littered the country. Landmines and unexploded NATO cluster bombs continued to take lives. Adding to the anguish, hundreds of Kosovars had been snatched by the retreating Serbian forces and now languished in Serbia jails. 

At this critical moment, when they should have been forging a partnership in Kosovo, the international community and civil society began to draw apart. For the United Nations and NATO, the immediate priorities were to provide emergency assistance and protect Kosovo's minorities, particularly Serbs and Roma.

But this caused them to ignore Kosovo's experienced civil society. Instead of drawing on the veterans of the parallel society, Western governments turned to their own nongovernmental organizations (NGOs). Foreign relief workers poured into Kosovo. To the extent that educated Kosovars were used in the relief operation, it was as drivers, guards and interpreters.

The United Nations set about dismantling what remained of the parallel administrative structure, on grounds that was "politicized." It seemed that Kosovo would have to be rebuilt from zero.

By October 2000, on the eve of Kosovo's first municipal elections, the international push to jumpstart reconstruction had run into grave difficulties. The economy was a shell, the U.N.'s attempt to develop political parties and common political goals for the province had stalled, and minorities were still being attacked.

Meanwhile, many Kosovar civic groups had lost their drive. Some new initiatives-like the Internet Project Kosovo (IPKO)-had flourished. Over 600 local NGOs had been created. But this did not automatically mean a strong, vibrant civil society: most of these NGOs will probably disappear once donor funds dry up.

Much of this could have been predicted. But looking back over 16 months of peace-building, many will feel that the international community has failed to take advantage of its major asset-local civil society.