Worlds Apart In Kosovo -
With Their Own Institutions, Albanians Ignore Ruling Serbs
Background: Kosovo - SERBIA AND KOSOVO, a brief history

Worlds Apart In Kosovo
With Their Own Institutions, Albanians Ignore Ruling Serbs

By R. Jeffrey Smith
Washington Post Foreign Service
Sunday, March 22, 1998; Page A21

PRISTINA, Yugoslavia -- Five days a week, Arieta travels six hours to and from her
family's apartment in a village near here to attend one of the hundreds of illegal schools
that provide the only education for most of the youths in the Yugoslav region of Kosovo.
     To reach their classroom, Arieta, 18, and her friends pass through a creaky gate and
walk up chipped concrete stairs into a donated building at the city's edge. The room is
small and spare, with long wooden benches and wobbly, slanted tables for writing. The
sole illumination is whatever natural light filters through a cracked window. Scant heat from
a small wood stove near the door reaches the 21 students, so they do not take off their
coats.
     Arieta is one of an estimated 1.8 million ethnic Albanians who live in Kosovo, a province
of Serbia, which is the dominant republic of Yugoslavia. There are only about 200,000
Serbians, but they have long insisted that they administer the province. Her teacher is
ethnic Albanian, as are her classmates. None has attended a legal, government-run
school or shared a class with a single Serbian. They cannot speak Serbo-Croatian and
have no Serbian friends.
     They all say they want Kosovo to become independent of Serbia which many Western
officials fear could provoke a new Balkan war. More than 80 people were slain earlier this
month by Serbian forces in a crackdown on pro-independence ethnic Albanian guerrillas.
     Arieta's illegal high school is but one of many signs that Kosovo, a mountainous,
landlocked entity smaller than Connecticut, is a land of two governments, one Serbian and
the other ethnic Albanian -- a circumstance that reflects and exacerbates the social and
cultural gap between the two groups. Western countries proposed two weeks ago to ease
tensions here by forging a "civil society," but the effort seems doomed. Ideals such as
tolerance, friendship and patience are in short supply -- especially among young people.
     The Serbian government is the official and legal one, but it appears to consist in large
measure of a ubiquitous police force and intelligence service that closely watches ethnic
Albanians and tries to repress their independence aspirations.
     The ethnic Albanian state within a state, which some say is the real government here, is
a broad-ranging enterprise that employs tax collectors and finances rudimentary schools,
health clinics, science academies, sports leagues and a welfare system. Today, it will even
stage the second election for its parliament and president, using its own lists of ethnic
Albanian voters.
     Ethnicity affects more than Kosovo's governance. It also determines where people
socialize, what information they receive and whether they feel safe enough to venture
outside at night. Serbians, for example, routinely get their information from Serbian TV and
Belgrade daily newspapers, while ethnic Albanians get their news from a powerful ethnic
grapevine, from TV programming beamed each day from Tirana, the nearby capital of
Albania, or from Albanian-language newspapers.
     "If you don't use public transport, in which you can meet people of the other ethnic
group, you can think there are only Serbians or Albanians living here . . . because you
don't meet any other people or you meet them just casually," said the Rev. Sava Janjic,
secretary to the bishop of the Serbian Orthodox Diocese of Raska-Prizren.
     Even such routine decisions as whether to have children and immunize them are
politically and ethnically charged, because many ethnic Albanians believe family planning
is a Serbian plot and that Serbian vaccines cause sterility, according to a report by
UNICEF, the U.N. children's health and education organization.
     The first challenge in bridging the social and cultural divide will be overcoming
stereotypes or racial slurs that thrive in such social isolation. In scores of interviews, for
example, Serbians described Albanians as uncivilized and ill-educated and Albanians
described Serbians as untrustworthy brutes.
     The gap is partly encouraged by religious differences -- most Albanians are Muslim and
the Serbians are Orthodox Christians -- partly by language differences, and partly by a
long history of squabbles for control of Kosovo's mineral wealth and fertile land. Albanian
nationalism, in particular, increased after 1974, when Kosovo was declared an
autonomous province of Yugoslavia under largely ethnic Albanian control. Albanians and
Serbians began to be taught using their own languages at shared facilities.
     But any spirit of accommodation evaporated in 1989, when Serbian President
Slobodan Milosevic, who is now president of Yugoslavia, evoked Serbian nationalism while
canceling Kosovo's autonomous political status. The following year, he purged the
government work force in Kosovo of more than 140,000 ethnic Albanians, including many
professionals. Today, it is not unusual to find an Albanian bank auditor or industrial
manager behind the wheel of a taxi.
     All government-funded education in the Albanian language ceased, and schools
jettisoned their Albanian written curriculum in favor of texts drafted in Belgrade. The
decision provoked a mass exodus of ethnic Albanians; at the University of Pristina the
enrollment of Albanians dropped from more than 20,000 to about a hundred.
     Fired Albanian faculty helped establish a university in private homes and basements,
and Albanian political leaders formed the rest of their shadow government to express their
uniform rejection of Serbian dominion. Educational standards declined, but ethnic loyalty
and political discipline were more important considerations.
     Nexhmije, 31, a dental technician who graduated last year from the parallel university,
reflects the feelings of many Albanians in saying, "I feel very proud" of the clinic she works
at in a converted garage, even though it lacks any reference materials and is frequently
short of supplies. "I will be back someday" in the official university, which is now "occupied"
by Serbians, she said.
     Although subject to harassment, the Albanian system has been tolerated by Belgrade,
possibly because stopping it would have incited much greater unrest and because it
relieves the Serbian government of a substantial financial burden. The republic's annual
budget for all Kosovo expenses besides security is now just $2.5 million, or less than
1 percent of its budget, according to a spokesman.
     The shadow Albanian-led government, in contrast, collects and spends an estimated
$27 million annually within the province, with roughly $19 million devoted to education and
$4.2 million spent on health clinics. Most of the funds are collected by men such as Ali
Galica, 53, a fired government economist who said he knocks on the doors of dozens of
apartments in Pristina each afternoon to ask for 5 percent of each family's estimated net
income. Monthly bills are also sent to Albanians living outside Kosovo, including many
families in the United States.
     The separatist posture comes at a distinct price. The unofficial parliament has never
met regularly because they fear a police crackdown. The budget of the unofficial, privately
funded government receives little public scrutiny and has reportedly been subject to
abuses. The ethnic Albanian population has no influence on decisions in Belgrade,
because they boycott all federal Yugoslav elections.
     Veljko Odalovic, the Serbian government's chief administrator in Kosovo, said he
knows "we are facing a very great problem." Could Kosovo become a long-term
battleground such as Northern Ireland?
     "Even worse," he replied.

Background: Kosovo

Kosovo is an impoverished landlocked province of Serbia, the largest and most powerful
of Yugoslavia's two remaining republics. Ethnic Albanians outnumber Serbs in the
province 9 to 1 and have been pressing for greater autonomy, if not outright
independence. Serbs, however, claim the region as the cradle of their civilization and vow
it will remain part of Serbia.

POPULATION: 2 million

ETHNIC ALBANIANS: 1.8 million
Language:        Albanian
Religion:           Islam
Ethnic Origin:   Descendants of the Dardanians, an Illyrian tribe that populated the country
                         in ancient times. Conquered by the Romans 167 B.C.
                         In the 6th century invading Slavic tribes begin to push the Illyrians south to
                         what is now Albania; many return to the Kosovo area in the 14th century
                         with the Ottomans. Albanians become a majority in Kosovo only in the
                         1950s due to a high birth rate and departure of Serbs.

ETHNIC SERBS: 200,000
Language:        Serbo-Croatian
Religion:           Orthodox
Ethnic Origin:   Slavic tribes from farther east gain control of the region at the close of the
                         6th century.

NEIGHBORING NATIONS

Kosovo borders on Albania -- a highly homogenous nation, whose population is
97% Albanian -- and Macedonia, which has a 21% minority of Albanians.

SERBIA AND KOSOVO, a brief history:

After the split of the Church of Rome in 395, the Slavs fall under influence of Byzantine
Empire and adopt the Orthodox religion.
1100s: The Slavs establish the first united Serb state.
1389:   Ottomans defeat Serbs in Battle of Kosovo Polje, and Ottoman Empire rules
            Serbia for more than 400 years. Most Serbs, however, never give up their
            Orthodox religion, but many migrate north, and the center of Serb culture shifts to
            what is now central Yugoslavia.
1878:   Serbia regains independence.
1945:   Tito and the Communists found Yugoslavia with a federal system under which
            Serbia becomes one of six republics; Kosovo and Vojdvodina in the north, are
            given self-rule.
1974:   New Yugoslav constitution grants Kosovo autonomy.
1981:   Kosovo Albanians demand a separate republic within Yugoslavia
1989:   Slobodan Milosevic, a Communist who favors the expansion of Serbia's borders,
            strips Vojvodina and Kosovo of self-rule. Albanian language and cultural institutions
            are suppressed.
1990:   Serbia dissolves Kosovo's government and Albanian political institutions.
1991:   Following a secret referendum held in Kosovo, separatists proclaim the Republic of
            Kosovo, which is recognized by neighboring Albania.
1992:   Kosovo Albanians elect a provincial assembly and a president.
            Serbia declares the referendum and the elections illegal.
1996:   The clandestine Albanian separatist movement Kosovo Liberation Army emerges,
            claiming responsibility for a series of bombings.
1997:   September student demonstrations crushed by Serb police.
1998:   Ethnic Albanians protest peacefully for autonomy, and between Feb. 28 and
            March 1 at least 25 Albanians and four Serb policemen are killed during the Serb
            crackdown. On March 20, Serbian Interior Ministry forces kill at least 20 Kosovo
            Albanians in an operation using tanks and helicopters against separatist villages.
            The United States scraps an offer to ease sanctions against Belgrade.

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