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NEWS & LETTERS, December 2001Column: Our Life and Times by Kevin A. Barry and Mary Holmes
Growing Balkan unity?
In November, Kosova's first democratic election since the end of Serbian rule
resulted in another victory for moderate Albanian leader Ibrahim Rugova, whose
Democratic League of Kosova (LDK) received 46% of the vote, compared with 26%
for the Democratic Party of Kosova (PDK), which was based in the main wing of
the former Kosova Liberation Army (KLA) led by Hashim Thaci. The day after the
elections, Rugova annoyed the UN officials running the country with a call for
an independent Kosova.More remarkable than the vote count was the prominent place of women in the
Albanian slates. The PDK ran the women's rights leader Flora Brovina, who had
been imprisoned for 18 months in Serbia in 1999-2000, as its presidential
candidate. Brovina said her goal was to "humanize politics in Kosova."
While the LDK ran Rugova at the top of its list, it gave a prominent place to
another woman, Nekibe Kelmendi, a judge whose husband and two sons were murdered
in front of her by Serbian police in March 1999. The neighboring country of Macedonia seemed also to turn away from ethnic
polarization in November. From February to August, members of the Albanian
minority had engaged in low-level guerrilla warfare to demand equal rights,
before laying down their arms to international peacekeepers in September. After
two months of threats and delaying tactics, the Macedonian parliament finally
performed its part of the peace agreement by passing a series of measures
recognizing the Albanian language and culture as an official part of the nation.
They also granted a form of amnesty to many of the former guerrillas and a
degree of local autonomy. Enacting these laws is only the first step;
implementation is more difficult. During these same weeks, former Serbian dictator Slobodan Milosevic learned
that his indictment before the International War Crimes Tribunal in The Hague
has been expanded to include charges of genocide and crimes against humanity in
Bosnia, Kosova, and Croatia. |
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