Liljanas

It's the summer of 2017.

I remember, in the spring of 1999, when I had been declared to be <x0...dead” and then, in dreams, I had seen myself in the middle of Europe. With colleagues and colleagues from Kosovo, we were staying in Bonn, Germany. Germany's Foreign Minister, newspaper, television and friends from Europe and America, in Paris, Rome, Washington and New York, were expecting and encouraging us for a hopeless situation that had been created in the Balkan Peninsula.

I had left my homeland behind, Kosovo.

I didn't know where my family, friends, colleagues, acquaintances.

Kosovo was the focus of global opinion. Even if I wanted to escape that hell I had experienced, the feeling and feeling that everything was on fire and fear didn't make me so proud because I was where I was and my country was caught by Milosevic's army and paramilitaries. I say “Location”, because the people of this country were either killed or persecuted, either in mountains where they were fed and protected by KLA rebels.

I believe you've ever experienced the feeling of being persecuted by your country. I think any man who happens to something like that when he leaves behind memories of childhood, youth, two decades of work (in journalism), if you only once go back to that world, you don't want to, you probably have something that's not easy to explain. It's like an internal conception that doesn't knock you down but hardens you. Even more precisely, it strengthens you. One life, viewed from modern times, as residents of a conflicted peninsula that had always gone into major global fault.

There was no way to end that century. This is where World War I started, where, after the second war, “we were in” worlds ( NATO and the USSS, this was to be over again.

Of course, that world, we as Albanians, you as Serbs, and all the other peoples of the former Yugoslavia, we had difficulty responding to all those tectonic movements. For Albanians: desensed and unconscious that we were not a nation that was not so important, we wanted to be like the entire Western hemisphere, and for that we naively hoped that no barrier would stop us from reaching out for freedom.

As it would be, no one knew that. Neither did we as Albanians who, after the collapse of Tito's Yugoslavia and the violent birth of Milosevic's Yugoslavia, rejected that new regime, but not Westerners who were completely confused, even though for nearly a decade they had worked with that man, his wife, his generals, his intellectuals, his people -- in Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina. From Vukovar to Srebrenica, to Recak... (which was right in Bonn, Germany's Foreign Minister, Joschka Fischer, told me that in public it had said it was “Return point”, but beyond that, me and my colleagues convinced us that nothing comes out that will stop Kosovo's release, at any cost, at any cost.)

Going west towards joining without the iron curtain with the fall of the DDR regime and the areas of the former communist states, which were in the grey phase of the communist party, but for that, without democratic parties, right and left, all the peoples of the former Yugoslavia marked a setback. In the ruins of aggressive nationalism, which, for the sake of history and new generations that read us, <x0 was found in father and fathers in Francoska 7, then at the Memorandum of the Academy of Sciences and Arts of Serbia at RTS, in Politika...

It's an absurd situation, and today when I think about it, I don't say I could survive it again. As a child who sometimes plays himself and becomes a toy of others, I was determined, however, to continue the fight: in front of my professionalism with my reporters in Koha Ditore, who, as long as the real front of the war goes on in Kosovo, we as refugees did it from Macedonia, essays in Frankfurter Chamber Zeitung, long interviews in New Yorker, but also conversations, especially the endless conversations that I am grateful to friends today: Ismail Kadare in Paris, Bora Qosicz that world in Kiln, or Bogdan Bogadovich in Vienna, that every black that resembled Serbs, all the misfortunes that resembled Albanians, had predicted by a frightening precision.

I don't even want to talk here about the Western disk that the Kosovo war, especially Kosovo, opened up in European intellectual circles. Because of the fear of European left, from Jelcin to the stamp of Jurgen Habermas pro-evaluating NATO in Kosovo.

The Kosovo war was the last Serbian battle with Milloschevich and the first Albanian battle behind which the entire Western civilization stood.

From exciting to the delegation was the return to Kosovo, released by the Serbian regime in late June 1999. In this case, I can't tell you a scene that I'm likely to enter Kosovo, four months after the island in Europe, America and Macedonia.

That afternoon in the chaos of the streets of Pristina were NATO tanks cars, cars without signs, traffic lights that were not working, going into town to get to the apartment, with the big goods of an extant waiting for me -- my mother, sisters and wife with Andy, then my only son on the street and I noticed Fatos Lubonne.

I had met him several times across Europe, Belgrade and never in Tirana. Lubonja, who was and continues to be like one of the spirits with the clearest Albanian and Balkan intellectual discours, was much more happy that he saw a familiar face than he was fascinated with liberated Kosovo. Without asking him much, as we Albanians do, I put him in the car and left for my family at lunch. Joy, not to be called Patosti, which may have been much stronger with the family I met after several months of war dramas and ecle, narrowed down a bit because with an unexpected guest from Tirana who was for the first time in Pristina, I was saved that afternoon after Lubonne and I arranged to start with a job after lunch, newspapers, interviews.

Today, almost two decades after the war, I can only say one thing about freedom: its coming, in any form and especially in the post-war form, is much more complicated than the struggle for it.

We had an apartheid decade behind us in the middle of Europe. When I say “apartid” then I must correct it for the new generations: the Serb minority with the state camera in Belgrade suppresses the Albanian majority. The following: Two million people were commanded and led by 100,000 people. Their difference: 100,000 people spoke Serbian: another 1.9 million were Albanians. These were expelled from schools and institutions. They had no basic human right. The challenge facing the Milosevic regime was one: either you accept the Serbian state (which was then dressed in Yugoslav shell), or you will continue to stay on the street.

The Albanians were led by pacifist intellectual Ibrahim Rugova.

As a prophet, with his peaceful movement he saved Albanians from falling prey to tigers hungry for blood, Milosevic. What Rugova defined as a peaceful movement proved to be a prophecy. Because the polygons of bloody horrors were moved to Slovenia for several days, Croatia for several years and Bosnia and Herzegovina turned into the great abyss of horrors that had not been compared to camps and murders which were direct association with World War II. In this respect, I have to do a disgruntion: Germans especially prefer the comparison of Milosevic's punitive campaigns to Hitler's. Like then, even today, I've always represented the theme that “has no comparison, but there are contexts”. The timing of Nazi Germany and Miloseviqian Serbia were other. Models, structures, there were others, but the same goal: the displacement or even extinction of peoples.

The last chapter of the former Yugoslavia's destruction in Kosovo was a terrible war in which 1 million people were persecuted, thousands of civilians killed, thousands of raped women, mosque destruction, churches, schools, entire Albanian neighborhoods, but also Serbs and Roma.

The international flood into the small country of the former Yugoslavia was just as enlightening as absurd. Because every medal has two sides.

One side of this international engagement medal was the soldiers of the North Atlantic Alliance (NATO), and the other part of the UN international antidoti, of absurd proportions. To be precise with this international commitment, I must add: Albanians viewed NATO as their ally. Serbs like enemies who bombed them. The two sides were wrong. Because the only reconciliation that NATO at the time made to Kosovo, despite all human losses, Albanian and Serb civilians, killed or displaced after the war, was the price to be paid in a post-war zone.

Everything that comes next is part of each of us. Even the trials of finding himself in that free country, the successes as well as personal defeats and glory, and the professional collapses.

What I mean is this: each of us has our own personal manuscript on public daily chronicties. That of course I can say for Pristina and Kosovo. Not at all for Belgrade and Serbia.

I've never humiliated the great human dramas, including the professional decline of colleagues there. But as time does itself, when this time has to do with major state dramas, including state restructuring, then the personal aspect is almost invisible. There are only traces left in the family, the profession, the environment. It's good for a janitor if he does his job with the conscience that someone will appreciate tomorrow's work without knowing his name. Just as with an intellectual who shows the bright or dark side of the people he belongs to.

Even today, especially today, more than ever before, I can say that the Serbian regime of Milosevic and his intellectuals were about protein so many instruments of that dark period, I am grateful for one thing: the lesson that elite Pristina did not dare to convert to Belgrade. In the post-war chaos in Kosovo, we did not dare to allow it to resemble what was likely in Belgrade. Silence. Because that was approval. It was equated with co-existence. I have no secret witnesses. No private friends who know the confession “t”.

Neither today nor am I ashamed of what was published in Koha Ditore, either by me or even by my journalists. When Koha Ditore has condemned Albanian crimes against Serbs in Pristina, but even villages and towns in Kosovo, I cannot say that we have done valiantly. No. What we have done was identify the chronicties of Albanian shames that were watched by the prism of the history of bloody wars were likely among Germans in Vojvodina, Czechoslovakia, Poland, and other parts after World War II.

The size is more.

The context is different.

But the compass of the computer context remains.

Therefore, I say that I feel a sense of superiority, a sense of triumph that even today, this summer of 2017, was my childhood, was the newspaper I directed, the Albanian newspaper, and the most read in Kosovo, the one that wrote in black in white: the Albanians' <x0ccries against the innocent Serbs of Kosovo are the national shame of<1).

I mean, not to sell my mind. Not even to reason on what happened. But, just to put forth a rhetorical question: never, in first Belgrade, during and post-war, is it unlikely that the central newspaper (Politic) or the main Serbian newspapers would print black letters on the pages of Serbian crimes against Albanians. Crime these unmatchedly different than what Milosevic's regime in an orchestrated way had done to Albanians. We have marked them and published even when Serbs were lynching after the war, even when they could not speak Serbian on the streets of the capital's restaurants, even when the measures were orchestrated to destroy everything in the March 2004 protests, and even...

And today we are in a situation where in Pristina and throughout Kosovo street inscriptions are also written in Albanian, but Serbian, in restaurants it can be ordered, spoken and sung Serbian, in the public and private Serbian entity is the (official) language of the Republic of Kosovo.

Anything that goes beyond this context, including books written by Albanians for Serbian crimes, is in the context of what in my duty to journalism and the leader for more than a decade of Kosovo's main newspaper, gives me no excitement, but the calm conscience that despite the inability to change the potential of conflicting situations, however, in the subsumption of public discurs we have done to reverse the post-trauma, return to the <x0normality”

I have to admit: that world I had my doubts about all my meetings, conversations, tables, dialogues, letters and inverse essays that we exchanged with colleagues from Belgrade for Albanian-Serbian relations. I did it because I had the hope that could still be spoken and proved impossible: mutual hatred, persecution of an entire people, the cruel killing of children, elders, old age, civilians, mass graveyards... I did it even though they told us international friends to do it. We were rightly mentioned by German-French, Jewish-German, Polish-German models... And as it turns out, there are others everywhere and the <x0manders” and the Germans.

Since then, and unfortunately today, we couldn't define it with Serbian colleagues, and based on all of these exchanges on this platform it continues to be that there is still a definition of who in our case is <x0-german” and the Germans.

If the Germans are the Serbs then, the Serb crime model was like the Germans after the war, and the Albanians (but also Croats and Bosniaks) would have to be French, Jews, Poles. If Serbs accept <x0yrol” German under Milosevic's regime, then the Albanians would inevitably be “criminals” and this would not go to Serbian head of state Aleksandar Vucinqit, who speaks of the Germans as saying Belgrade should be the model of Germany for the European Union. But for that a little later.

I really need to admit that especially after reading your last letter, I thought I'd quit.

Because it's not worth it.

I don't have the time, but neither do I have the will, to put up with muffology of phrases full of insults that don't concern me. Your fantasy world might. But not with reality what I live through and we live in Kosovo and the Balkans. Because even when you get the contexts of Veton Surroi's books, even when you return to your favorite subject Ramush Haradinaj, but even when you deal with my biography in The Hague context, you do so with a hatred that made me and it keeps me feeling only pity for you.

All of these with cash registers of cash. ad hominem Attacks I can't, I don't want, I don't allow myself to answer because I've been educated and raised with understanding and respect. Besides, it wouldn't allow ethics in front of my family, my wife and my sons, my friends and especially the more than 300 associates in Klan Kosova, to respond in the same tone.

Not because I can't “I'm installing” into your biography. Not why I can't search the Internet and read all your victories and losses in the professional battle, or private defeats. After all, I continue to possess the old weapon: the Serbian language with which I am unfortunately served so little.

To be even more accurate: with Serbian, I am not served at all because young journalists, visual and internet media, new generations of Kosovo Albanians, even when there are news from Serbia for Kosovo, Reuters, AP, CNN, BBC, AFP, DPA, or even the English services of Serbian media, since Serbian is no longer binding to be taught in Kosovo by Albanians. We were the last generations that had to learn and speak this language to do something.

It was Milosevic's regime and his instruments that have done something that had never done a colonial power: to forbid the children of the colony (who tell Kosovo) from learning the language and visiting the local and official (Albanian) school.

Imagine an Algeria that wouldn't speak French today, or an India that wouldn't speak English. The colonies have gone away. Something even more epic is likely in Kosovo: Colonia has also gone to the colonial language with her Serbian language. It speaks only to the remaining members of the Serb nation in Kosovo. Beyond that, he mentioned this fact because the revered Ljiljana, it seems you still have an essential element in life, dailyity, politics, the Albanian intellectual record, and with it even the common Kosovo mortal.

Serbia and Serbian present not a single percent of the lifeless nucleus in this subterranean.

Belgrade is not followed.

Serbia is not read.

Your television is not visible.

Even more clearly said: Now 17 years in every Albanian microcosm in Kosovo does not have Serbia. That applies to me too. Not why we do not want or have this disappearance of Serbia orchestrated. But just because we have our jobs: we have a country to build and politics not so easy to observe (as journalists we are).

So I guess your reactive approach is this first misunderstanding and certainly the most tragic one when one reads your last letter especially. But also your other treatments in all this “dialog”. I put it into my fingernail “dialog”, because you haven't done anything and you don't do anything but a tall monologue with everything that's useful to you and you build your virtual construction that's so far away, oh how far, the reality that surrounds you.

And the reality is this: Kosovo is the Republic, it is an independent state that has not yet been admitted to the UN, but do not doubt that soon, within months or years, it will be admitted to the UN.

The Republic of Kosovo has an international airport named “Adem Jashari”.

The Republic of Kosovo has an international highway, which the capital, Pristina, links with Tirana to 180km. Consequently, if it took someone six hours to travel to Belgrade until after the war, and 13 hours to cross the Mothers and Nemuna, and with that another 180 kilometers to go to Tirana, then today the situation has changed dramatically.

The name of the Highway is “back Rugova”.

Two hours of driving from Pristina to Tirana.

It is no longer high when I see Fatos Lubonja or Eddie Rama on the streets of Pristina, but also half of my work and commitments are in Tirana as much as in Pristina.

The Republic of Kosovo also has an international football stadium: its name is “Adem Jashari”.

The Republic of Kosovo has a president whose name is Hashim Thaci.

“Hashim Thaci is Kosovo's George Washington”.

I didn't say it.

The Vice President of the United States, Joe Biden, said it.

The Republic of Kosovo has an incoming prime minister whose name is Ramush Haradinaj. The great Balkan knight and rescuer of his people is Ramush Haradinaj”.

I didn't say it.

Otto von Habsburg said so.

The airport, Highway, Stadium, Thaci, Haradinaj are the reality of Kosovo, Ljiljana.

And every time you talk or think about them, stop by 1999.

Even though we're in 2017.

Allow me, please, to explain: The highway, the Stadium, the airport... and many other constructions that have been made and done are evidence of Kosovo's independence, and they make me proud because my children, my journalists, our offspring will continue our path towards the firm determination to be part of Western civilization. Because they are our fathers, those whose definition has been founded since the League of Prizren.

Not by chance, I started with my stay in Germany and the dark period of 1999.

Yeah. I think Germany should be the Balkan model. Not divided but all: Serbs, Albanians, Bosniaks, Croats...

Germany's Nurnberg was The Hague of the former Yugoslavia. This is the big topic that and would have to be discussed over and over.

You have stayed at The Hague and I have stayed at The Hague.

For my stay at The Hague I have not repented and I repeat: I would do it again because it is the journalist's duty to find out and tell you what I know is for the sake of public opinion.

For your stay in The Hague I don't have anything to say because, I told you even higher, it wouldn't be in my honor to deal with what you published from there. You know, Serbian opinion knows what you've been commenting from there.

Hannah Arendt is enough for me. I have enough treatment for Eichmann and habitacy - the habit of crimes committed by him. Most Balkan intellectuals complete their confession here about Arendt every time they speak and write about the British and The Hague Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia.

No one wants to deal with the second segment of its treatment, which when it was published in New Yorker had caused much more reactions than the “size” of Eichmann. It was her accusation - so terrible as to be true - of cooperating Jewish counsel with the Nazis only to save themselves. It was an even more serious accusation that the Jews had failed (to) organize protection from the Nazis.

That's the big difference.

What Serbs sʹi do is Nazi, but so do Albanians and with them Croatians and Bosniaks.

And that gives The Hague chapter the right weight.

Therefore Ramush Haradinaj has gone to The Hague voluntarily. Therefore Haradinaj has been released because he fought for his nation's freedom. Or do you even love Naser Oriqi and Ante Gotovina?

All three of them free. If you feel compelled to know who they were, whether they were or would be? You can do it. If you are paid for this by taxpayers of the states of Kosovo, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina...

And we come to the Kosovo war. Why was the alleged Special War Crimes Court formed that was committed by the KLA?

Albanians have fought. They have been protected and if they have committed crimes they will be punished by the Special Court.

The Constitution of the Court has voted the Parliament of the Republic of Kosovo. No threats of sanctions, isolation, imprisonment.

I'd be surprised if I told you that as a publicist, a journalist, an opinionmaker, I was, I was, and I'd be for the Special Court!

Let them all go: let them prove guilt or innocence.

And let's keep building the new country.

For my way, our way, has been, is and will be, built on ideals that go beyond any liberation war.

The road is the goal.

The target is west and Europe is a common value of free nations.

See you there if you intend to come.

If we do not see each other, they will be our descendants who will speak to each other.

However, they will do so in English, and why not if there is a need in German.

Albanian, yes.