The Chronicle of higher education
From the issue dated August 6, 1999Kosovo Albanians Supplant Serbs as New Order Reigns at U. of Pristina
On the looted campus, dispossession and anxiety assail a different ethnic groupBy THERESA AGOVINO
Pristina, YugoslaviaTwo paintings are gone. A desk is missing. And many books have been taken, although, to Kadri Metai's surprise, some volumes are still on their shelves, almost as he left them.
As the philosophy professor sits in his old office at the University of Pristina, eight years after he and all other ethnic Albanians on the faculty were summarily fired by Serbian authorities, he finds taking stock of the room's contents not a difficult task. Taking stock of his emotions, however, is another matter.
"We are glad to be back," he says. "But we have all suffered so much, I am not sure I know how to be happy."
With the United Nations now in charge in Kosovo, ethnic-Albanian academics are reclaiming their offices at the university. The institution had been an Albanian-language university until 1991, when Serbian authorities, as part of a drive to tighten control of Kosovo, fired all ethnic Albanians on the faculty, banned the use of the Albanian language at the university, and turned it into a Serbian institution.
In the years that followed, two parallel universities operated here: the University of Pristina and a shadow institution, an underground Albanian-language university, for which professors lectured in makeshift classrooms scattered across the city. Some 16,000 students were enrolled in classes offered by the underground university.
For Mr. Metai and his colleagues, the prospect of teaching in an actual classroom again is exciting. And their students are anxious to attend lectures at the university after years of classes in storefronts, garages, and basements.
"We are going to feel like students, real students," says Erlind Kadriu, who is studying medicine. "It will be great."
While the ethnic Albanians eagerly await the start of the new academic year, Serbian professors and students here are filled with anxiety. They have no idea what will become of the university as they have known it for the past eight years.
Serbs have been fleeing Kosovo en masse since early June, when Yugoslav military and security forces were ordered to leave as part of a deal to end the NATO bombing of Yugoslavia. The bombing was undertaken to halt the brutal repression by Serb forces of ethnic-Albanian civilians in Kosovo, but it triggered an escalation of Serbia's ethnic-cleansing campaign, leaving thousands dead and hundreds of villages destroyed. A half million ethnic Albanians fled Kosovo for refugee camps in Albania, Macedonia, and other countries.
As the refugees flooded back into Kosovo, there were some violent reprisals against Serbs. Two weeks ago, 14 Serbian farmers were killed in what appeared to be a mass execution. Earlier, three Serbs at the University of Pristina -- a professor and two staff members -- were found murdered in a basement washroom on the campus.
The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees estimates that 71,000 of Kosovo's 194,000 Serbian residents have left in the past two months. One Serbian professor says that only 10 per cent of the university's 300 Serbian professors and 5,400 Serbian students are still in Kosovo.
"Will there be any Serbs left in September?" asks Zoran Andelkovic, who is the Yugoslav government's top representative here. He questions whether there will be a need for a Serbian-language university.
Most of the Serbian professors and students who remain in Kosovo hope that two of the University of Pristina's six main buildings will be designated for their use.
Ultimately, decisions about who controls the university and how its facilities are used will be made by the United Nations Civil Administration in Kosovo, which has not yet announced any plans for the institution. However, a source within the United Nations mission here who requested anonymity said the prevailing view was that there should be just one university, and that it should be bilingual.
An Austrian academic working to assist the University of Pristina agrees. "It would seem that if the U.N. allowed two universities, it would go against the principle of having people live together," says Wolfgang Benedek, a professor of international law at Graz University and an official of the World University Service, a relief organization. Mr. Benedek recently was in Kosovo as part of a fact-finding mission for the service, which has offered to help the United Nations find a rector for the university.
The Austrian government is providing half a million dollars in aid to help the university open the new year on schedule, and Graz is helping to administer the funds.
Ahmet Geca, who served as vice-rector of the shadow university, favors the one-institution approach, although his reasons for doing so are not quite in sync with the United Nations' belief that the university should serve as a unifying force. "If the Serbs get their own buildings," he says, "they will just use them for propaganda against us."
But Mr. Geca worries about how difficult it will now be for ethnic-Albanian professors and students to share facilities with their Serbian counterparts. He says resentment of the Serbian academics runs deep. "The Serbian professors didn't raise their voices in concern for our intellectuals," he says.
An agreement reached in 1997 to return some of the university's buildings to the ethnic Albanians was never fully carried out. Only two of the four buildings that were slated to be turned over ever changed hands. Mr. Andelkovic, the Yugoslav official, says he believes the terms of that agreement are still valid. Mr. Geca says ethnic Albanians should have the use of all of the university's buildings.
It is not clear how many ethnic-Albanian academics were killed by Serbian police and paramilitary forces. Five ethnic-Albanian professors are confirmed dead, but Mr. Geca says that, since the bombing ended, he has been able to account for only about 500 of the underground university's 1,500 full and part-time faculty members.
One of the dead professors is Haidiu Berisha, of the Technical Faculty, who was killed in March along with 24 members of his family. His death was doubly hard for Fevzi Berisha, who lost both a colleague and a cousin. But he says he is willing to try to work with Serbs.
With some of his colleagues, Mr. Berisha, a mathematics professor, is conducting an equipment inventory in the Technical Faculty building, which was returned to the ethnic Albanians last year but subsequently looted. All the computers are gone. Doors, desks, and chairs are broken. Evidence suggests that Serb forces used the building as a headquarters: Empty liquor bottles, dirty coffee cups, and half-eaten tins of meat litter the floor.
"We used to work with them," he says of the Serbian academics. "They were welcome here last year, but they never came because they feel guilty about the last 10 years. I just don't know how I will react when I see them."
Likewise, Hamdi Daci, an English professor, says Serbs are welcome in the Faculty of Philology building -- although it doesn't look that way. In June, a statue of Vuk Karadic, a Serbian writer, that stood in front of the building was torn down. It now lies on the ground.
Mr. Daci doesn't miss the statue, which he says Serbs erected several years ago just to irritate ethnic Albanians. "It was so ugly, so huge, so stupid," he says.
But he does think he may someday regret not reaching out to his Serbian colleagues, because he knows what it feels like when your co-workers do nothing as you are pushed out the door.
"Somewhere down the line, I think I will think that I -- we -- should have done something so they would have sstayed," says Mr. Daci. "But after all that has happened, you can't now expect from us anything other than silence, at least for a while."
The ethnic-Albanian students seem much less inclined to compromise. "I would build them a university with my own hands so I don't have to go to school with them," says Learta Gunga, a law student, whose home here was looted by Serbs. "I don't ever want to have to hear Serbian again."
The Serbian symbol, a cross with a Cyrillic "S" in each quadrant, was spray-painted on the wall of the apartment Ms. Gunga shares with her mother, Drita, a history professor. The Serbs, says the mother, "destroyed my daughter's childhood, and filled her with such hate. That is what I resent most."
Many ethnic-Albanian students want nothing to do with their Serbian counterparts, and while they disapprove of the revenge killings, they say the Serbs should have a taste of their own medicine.
"Let them go to school in basements like we did; let them suffer like we did," says Baton Kelmendi. "Why should they have special buildings?"
During the ethnic-cleansing campaign, Mr. Kelmendi, his father, and an uncle were taken off a refugee-filled bus by Serbian troops. They were forced to lie on the ground, guns to their necks, for two hours, while money was collected from the other passengers to secure their release.
"So, when I see these Serbian students," says Mr. Kelmendi, "how am I supposed to know it wasn't their father, uncle, or brother who held that gun to my neck?"
Serbian students seem no more anxious to share the university's facilities than do their ethnic-Albanian counterparts.
"After all that has happened, it just does not seem possible," says Milan Dopudja. "Separate universities are the best solution.
"If we are mixed," he adds, the Serbs "will be swallowed."
Mr. Dopudja says he is angry with Serbs who have fled Kosovo, even though he understands their fear. He, too, is contemplating leaving for Serbia and starting his education over.
"The Serbs' leaving is like dominoes," he says. "You can't reverse it."
The Serbian professors who remain here hope that some of their Serbian colleagues will return so that they might offer some sort of program for Serbian students.
"I am sad that my colleagues left, but I am also angry -- it puts so much pressure on the rest of us," says Gojko Savic, a biology professor. He says he stayed because he has worked hard to earn the comfortable home where he and his wife live. Tensions in Kosovo led them to send their three children to stay with relatives in Serbia.
The Serbian professors reside in a development of semidetached homes with small balconies. The complex was built for them by the Yugoslav government, but it is now guarded by NATO soldiers. The professors rarely venture out.
Vojislav Trajvovic, a professor of medicine, was going to his post at the university hospital daily until mid-July, when his ethnic-Albanian colleagues told him they feared for his safety. He says he was never threatened at the hospital, but the situation was uncomfortable.
"We are afraid to speak Serbian," he says. "I speak Albanian out on the street, but they know I'm a Serb. I'm worried about the extremists."
The Serbian professors now spend their days reading, watching television, and chatting with one another.
"We are like hostages in a ghetto," says Bozo Radovic, a professor of agriculture. "We are afraid to leave. They will kill us."
Mr. Radovic says he isn't surprised that the ethnic-Albanian academics are not concerned about his plight, given the animosity between the two groups.
"I don't want to work with them, and they don't want to work with me," he says. "I don't think well of them, and they don't think well of me. What would be the point of working together?"
Mr. Radovic says higher education for Serbs in Kosovo is doomed, because there will not be enough students or professors.
"This," he says, "is an embarrassing time to be a Serb."--------------------------------------------------------
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