August 10, 1999Champion of Free Kosova Now Urges Moderation
By STEVEN ERLANGER
PRISHTINË, Kosova -- Adem Demaçi, often called the Nelson Mandela of Kosova, has found some of the same serenity and moderation, urging his fellow Albanians to use their sudden gift of freedom to build a civilized society here.
Demaçi has spent more than 29 of his 64 years in Yugoslav jails for his fervent belief in independence for Kosova. He was the "political representative" of the Kosova Liberation Army and in effect its spokesman until March 3, when he quit in fury over its willingness, under intense pressure from Washington, to accept something less than independence in negotiations in Rambouillet, France.
But asked whether he expected to see an independent Kosova in his lifetime, Demaçi, a tiny, natty man with thick glasses, gave the sort of answer American diplomats had despaired of ever hearing him utter.
"I must say that no one country in the world is truly independent," he said, with a bemused look. "Even the United States, in a way, is not fully independent."
Over time, he said -- "and I am always an optimist" -- reconciliation between Serbs and Albanians is both possible and necessary, and will lead to a real state in a modern Europe of shared sovereignty.
As Kosova's Albanians work to better their poor lives with international help and create real institutions, the Serbs, "who are in confusion now, will be released from their myths and illusions" about the impossibility of a Serbian nation without Kosova, he said.
"Both peoples," he said, "will make a reconciliation, and they will both earn the right to enter Europe -- not just geographically, but morally, in our behaviour."
NATO's bombing war, which forced the Serbs to pull out of Kosova but kept the province under Yugoslav's sovereignty, has not been a complete victory, Demaçi said. But he said it provided extraordinary opportunities under the umbrella of NATO force and United Nations administration.
"We have the unique chance in our history, with our European friends, to build a state," he said.
The Albanians, "after 2,000 years of slavery," from the Romans through the Turks to the Serbs, "are now breathing freely," he said, "able to decide their lives for themselves." With the aid of the United Nations, they now have a chance to build "real institutions of civil society, all to world standards -- a non-ideological school system, a non-ideological media, a non-ideological finance and health system -- and no more follow some Balkan standard or Communist standard."
It could take 10 years, he said.
But the United Nations must not fail in its obligation to engage with Albanian society and politics and "understand our history, at least from 1945 until now," Demaçi said. The United Nations administrators and NATO soldiers must avoid turning into a new colonial ruler or allowing the Kosova Liberation Army to become an opposition, he said. And the Albanians must not squander this extraordinary chance, "paid for with such blood."
Demaçi, asked if so much tragedy was necessary, smiled distantly, looking off toward the deep red sunset bleeding behind the trees.
"It was impossible to change this situation without tragedy and bloodshed," he said and added, using the Albanian name for Kosova, "I always wanted to die for Kosova, and I think maybe this war was my last chance."
Demaçi, a novelist turned radical politician who is hated by the Serbs for his early and unyielding commitment to Kosova's freedom, spent the entire war in Prishtina, walking the streets and going to the market. His wife left Kosova in late March, a few days after NATO's bombing began, when a human rights lawyer, Bajram Kelmendi, and his two sons were found dead after their arrest by the police.
But Demaçi stayed, tended by his 70-year-old sister, and had a number of run-ins with the police, with two arrests.
At one point, after being arrested, a Serbian soldier accused him, as a representative of the Kosova Liberation Army, of skinning the Serb's brother alive. "You have the gun, I don't," Demaçi said quietly. "Go ahead and shoot me." Yet other Serbian soldiers and policemen were polite to him, he said.
"I was not happy when I saw ordinary Serbs going from here," he said. "We were never in danger from the Serbs as Serbs. But all Serb regimes from 1878 until now manipulated the people here, and every state has mechanisms to force people to do terrible things. A bad regime has so many instruments. I'm very sad about their leaving, but I also find that a great number of Serbs here were involved in crimes and looting."
But Demaçi is a firm advocate of a democratic, multi-ethnic Kosova, whatever the current problems and fears. "I don't accept freedom only for Albanians," he said. "We are not angels. But we must choose another way, which is not revenge, and understand that all these miseries and tragedies were done by the Serbian regime, not by every Serb."
Is a moderate Albanian politics possible now? "We have no other way," he said. "Albanians know that only a moderate politics able to guarantee freedom for Serbs and all others here is acceptable. Otherwise, Albanians themselves will not be free."
Demaçi, always mysterious about his age, said at first that he was "39 and holding." Pressed, he said that his real birth date was July 26, 1935, but that his documents gave the date as Feb. 26, 1936. "I was a weak baby and my father refused to register me," he said. "But six months later, my mother told him: 'You better register him. This one is not going to die.'"
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