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Abstract
In this essay I explore the ways in which the internal Albanian politics of memory in Kosovo rely on a longer, lived history of militant self-organisation than the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) war period alone. On the basis of recent ethnographic research, I argue that the memory of prewar militant activism is symbolically codified, ritually formalized, and put on the public stage in Kosovo today. Not only has this process effectively rehabilitated and consolidated the personal, social, and political status of specific former activists, it also has produced a hegemonic morality against which the actions of those in power are judged internally. On the one hand, this process reproduces shared cultural references which idealise ethno-national solidarity, unity and pride and which have served militant mobilisation already before the 1990s. On the other, it provides the arguments through which rival representatives of the former militant underground groups (known as Ilegalja) compete both socially and politically still today. Although this process demarcates some lines of social and political friction within society, it also suggests that international efforts to introduce an identity which breaks with Kosovo's past and some of its associated values, face a local system of signification that is historically even deeper entrenched than is usually assumed.
Keywords:
Acknowledgements
The research presented was funded by the Thyssen Foundation as part of an ongoing research project (2009–2013) called Ilegalja: The Social and Translocal Organisation of Resistance in Kosovo during the 1980s, hosted by Free University Berlin, Osteuropa Institut. I am enormously grateful for all support received from the Foundation and, in particular, to Holm Sundhaussen and Georgia Kretsi (died in 2009) for creating the original project.
I would like to acknowledge my research respondents, many taking time from high political office and other important business to patiently answer my many questions and share their memories and perspectives. I owe special gratitude to Mehmet and Haxhere Hajrizi; the family of Afrim Zhitia; Mustafë, Bajrush, and Emrush Xhemaili and their family; Gani and Hasime Syla; Hydajet Hyseni and other respondents of the Association of Former Political Prisoners; Muhamet and Ibrahim Kelmendi; Azem Syla and staff; Gafurr Elshani; Ilaz Kadolli; Shaban Muja; Gani Koci; Basri Musmurati; and many unnamed others. Daut Dauti, Shukrie Gashi, Elife Krasniqi, Linda Gusia and family, Nita Luci, Valon Murati, Mehmet Prishtina, Alfred Heta, and many other friends and colleagues in and from Kosovo provided important inspiration. Critical feedback to presentations received from the participants of, firstly, the NTNU workshop, Memory and Identity in Southeastern Europe in Trondheim, 20 August 2010; secondly, several staff seminars at the University of Roehampton; and thirdly, the Berliner Forschungscolloquium Südosteuropa’s “Kosovo Tag,” 29 June 2012, helped to shape my ideas. Last but not least I would like to thank Sabrina Ramet and, particularly, Justin Elliott, as well as Stephan Hensell, Garry Marvin, Isabel Ströhle, and the anonymous reviewers for their constructive feedback and suggestions on earlier versions of this article. The responsibility for any errors rests entirely with me. All translations from the Albanian sources cited are my own.
Notes
This article was originally published with errors. This version has been amended. Please see Corrigendum (http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00905992.2013.863513
1. E.g. Di Lellio and Schwandner-Sievers Citation2006a, 2006b; Kostovicova Citation2008; Krasniqi Citation2007; Lemay-Hébert Citation2009; Luci Citation2011, 173; Richmond 2009; Schwandner-Sievers Citation2010, Citation2013; Ströhle Citation2010; Visoka Citation2011.
2. If not indicated otherwise, the findings presented are based on ethnographic observations and interviews conducted in March and November 2011 in Kosovo.
3. Colloquial Albanian, from Turkish/Arab emanet, something someone entrusts to someone else (cf. Çabej Citation1976, 37–38).
4. Etymologically related to bindem (to obey), besoj (to trust, to believe, to have faith in), be/beja (the oath), and Latin fides (trust, faith) (cf. Çabej Citation1976, 204–206); found translated as “honor of the house,” “the given word,” “security guarantee,” “truce,” and “oath of alliance”; to have besa, or a person called besnik, as being faithful, trustworthy, etc. (Schwandner-Sievers 1999, 144).
5. Prishtina, 21 November 2011, interview transcript no. 137.
6. Prishtina, 15 March 2011, interview transcript no. 107; cf. Kecmezi-Basha 2003, 113.
7. The term dëshmore in Albanian is a calque translation of “martyr,” both relating to the concept of witnessing.
8. See e.g. Çeku Citation2004, 14–28; Kecmezi-Basha 1998; Krasniqi Citation2006, 17–18; Hajrizi Citation2008, 19–27.
9. See e.g. Bajrami Citation2003, 99; Hajrizi Citation2008, 24–25, 32–34; Halimi Citation1995, 21; Keçmezi-Basha Citation2009, 39–40; Lalaj Citation2000, 29–50.
10. Uprava državne bezbednosti/Управа државне безбедности; the Yugoslav state security directorate, i.e. secret police, here used to include Odeljenje za zaštitu naroda/Одељење за заштиту нaрода, the preceding organization existing between 1944 and 1946.
11. This Ilegalja activist and writer is sometimes referred to as the Nelson Mandela of Kosovo for spending 28 years in prison for his beliefs. He later served as spokesperson for the KLA, assisted then by the current leader of Vetëvendosje!, Albin Kurti, until he fell out with the KLA's GHQ, including Jakup Krasniqi, on 1 March 1999 (Gashi Citation2010b, 146–147; 159, 166).
12. Ilegalja's activists of the 1960s, ’70s, and ’80s glorified neighboring Albania's dictator, Enver Hoxha, and are therefore commonly referred to as “Enverists” in the wider literature. However, what on the surface to outsiders seems to indicate a radical left-wing political identification with the Albanian communist totalitarianism of the time has been interpreted as a symbolic transfiguration indicating, at its core, continuing ethno-nationalist aspirations: achieving the status of a republic within Yugoslavia as a first step toward secession and unification with the glorified motherland, Albania (Hajrizi Citation2008, 170–171; Keçmezi-Basha Citation2003, 1, 66–67, 103, 297 etc.; 2009, 33–35; cf. Kraja Citation2003, 152–153). In line with Enver Hoxha's favorite epithet for traitors, both of the nation and of true Marxist-Leninism (Hoxha Citation1982, 499–542), the activists, in turn, called those Albanians “Titoists” who “considered the Kosova problem to be distinct from the destiny of the broader Albanian community” (Schwartz Citation2009, 51).
13. The OMLK emerged from the Grupi Revolucionar, founded in 1969 on the first anniversary of the 1968 demonstrations (alternatively, it was founded in 1972; cf. Keçmezi-Basha Citation2003, 101, 102). It became, arguably, the largest organization and the most prolific disseminator of revolutionary propaganda materials.
14. The PKMLSHJ was founded either in 1975 (Keçmezi-Basha Citation2003, 169) or 1978 (Bota Sot, May 14, 2011) by Abullah Prapashtica, then an “inspector of State Security of the FRY” (see more below). The third group was the FKB (United Red Front), led by Ibrahim Kelmendi. After further mergers conducted in Istanbul and various name changes this movement became known as the LPRK (Popular Movement for the Republic of Kosovo). In 1993, it split into the LPK (People's Movement of Kosovo) and LKÇK (National Liberation Movement of Kosovo), which from late 1998 onward operated jointly again to provide the political and military structures underpinning the KLA. After the end of the war, in 1999, the LPK split into two political parties, the majority of its members absorbed by the successful PDK (Democratic Party of Kosovo), under then prime minister and former political leader of the KLA Hashim Thaçi, and a remaining wing of the LPK, which rejoined the PDK as coalition partner in 2007.
15. While individual family histories and private memories can provide important insights, the dissemination of Illegalja's ideas beyond interpersonal connections can best be traced in literature from the 1970s. After Prishtina University begun to offer education in Albanian from 1969, Ilegalja developed an underground literature which soon spread across Kosovo and abroad.
16. See, for example, the essays by Carl K. Savich available at www.serbianna.com.
17. Noel Malcolm, arguably the most prominent recent historian of Kosovo, yet knowledgeable in Albanian, disputes the possibility of the existence of a significant cross-regional resistance network of Albanian nationalism in Kosovo (1998, 322).
18. In the official Albanian press of Yugoslav Kosovo, the latter was fiercely denounced as reactionary and allegedly “abusing” the League's name (Mrijaj and Kapinova 2003).
19. Kelmendi Citation2001; Kraja Citation2003; Schwandner-Sievers Citationforthcoming; Schwartz Citation2009; Ströhle Citationforthcoming.
20. Best known is the assassination of the brothers Jusuf and Bardhosh Gërvalla of the LNÇKVSHJ (National Liberation Movement of Kosovo and the other Albanian Regions of Yugoslavia) and Kadri Zeka of the OMLK on 17 January 1982, in Heilbronn, Germany, when they met to combine the forces of their two clandestine organizations. The systematically targeted liquidations of members of the opposition to Tito's Yugoslav regime on German territory has only just begun to come to light, mainly in the cases of Croat victims of the Yugoslav secret services (see Wasserman Citation2010; cf. also Kraja Citation2003, 163).
21. See Note 14.
22. E.g.: “Hashim Thaçi and the KLA are not the same thing. The KLA was a liberation army of ordinary people, fighting to protect their homes and families, led by Adem Jashari” (Vetëvendosje! Newsletter, December 24, 2010); also see this article, titled ‘Martyrs don't negotiate’ (Vetëvendosje! Gazetë Javore, March 7, 2011, 2); for a more detailed analysis, see Schwandner-Sievers (Citation2013).
23. A well-known rhapsodist (singer of epic song) during the 1980s, now a singer of muzika popullore; co-founder and co-director of the folklore ensemble Drenica together with early LPK/KLA fighter and Adem Jashari's brother and co-martyr, Hamez Jashari. The ensemble performed between 1985 and 1990.
24. At the time of the last revisions of this paper, rumors in Prishtina suggested that the statue will return with a book instead of a gun in Pajaziti's hands, a prospect causing discontent among several ex-militant respondents.
25. For the dates of both the old national Albanian Flag Day (28 November) and Kosovo's new Independence Day (17 February), the two nowadays symbolically competing National Days in Kosovo, Albanian newspapers routinely report in these cited terms of the country's top politicians visiting important places and monuments that symbolise a liberation fight through the centuries (Bota Sot, November 28, 2010).