Introduction

1. The announcement of new negotiations, including direct talks, for 120 days is a ploy to paralyze people in Kosova in an endless atmosphere of ‘waiting’. It is likely that this 120 days will be extended once again, and that these new negotiations will result in new concessions. They have made up these 120 days to pretend that they are doing something, but in order to ask people to do nothing, i.e. to wait.

2. The elections planned for institutions without sovereignty are in vain. They are also being planned in order to channel frustration into the pre-election campaign, and not against the political process. This is because they want to control frustration and use it just before an international conference on Kosova in order to force more concessions.

3. The Negotiation team will have no new mandate or duty in the next 120 days except to justify the negotiations and to justify any solution as a step towards independence. In the same way, they justified the acceptance of the Rambouillet Agreement in 1999, by promising that it offered a ‘referendum’ after three years. But in reality this document is the source of many of Kosova’s problems today because:

I. It trampled upon the oath of the KLA solders and the referendum of 1991

II. It degraded the liberation war into an armed conflict

III. Accepted the territorial integrity and sovereignty of Yugoslavia 

IV. Categorized the Albanians in Kosova as a national community, the same as Serbs who were at the most 8% of the population

V. It certified the absence of state security for Kosova 

VI. Treated Kosova as a part of Serbia – it should send 20 deputies to Serbia

VII. Did not mention the KLA anywhere. It was considered as groups and other formations 

VIII. Agreed to the disarmament of the KLA

IX. Defactorized completely the representatives of Kosova so that they were never consulted about the Kumanova Agreement or Resolution 1244 

X. Gave strong authority to municipalities which made Kosova’s territorial integrity brittle and made possible autonomy inside autonomy

XI. Made impossible the independence of Kosova’s economy, resources and control of its borders 

XII. Made impossible the right of Parliament to change the constitution

XIII. And from this time, every document about Kosova is based on the Rambouillet Agreement. 

4. The Kosova negotiators have regularly lied to the people so why should things change now?

5. The first man who signed Rambouillet was Veton Surroi, and now he is leading us towards new negotiations. He is a man of agreements, and this new agreement will be somewhere between the Ahtisaari Package and Serbia’s position of ‘more than autonomy, and less than independence’ which means only autonomy.

6. In the new negotiations, the politicians of Belgrade will profit, and they will be joined in this profit by the local internationals (UNMIK’s bureaucrats) and the international locals (the bureaucrats of non-governmental organizations). They will give funds to ensure that the people of Kosova do nothing, but observe them. It is not in vain that they have worked hard to create a civil society that is a network of these NGOs, the media and ‘intellectuals’ who a priori denounce any kind of resistance and ‘violence’ of protestors. They declare that ‘life and security, law and order are above all’ – this is because their lives are good and they want to maintain them, whilst the people live in difficult and without security. 

Alternatives

1. While they were trying to approve a new Resolution for Kosova in the Security Council, international factors argued that there were only 2 options for Kosova: a resolution, or partition, the latter which would lead to a new war. This meant that there was only one solution: The Resolution.

They reduced our alternatives into the possibilities they wanted to display, and in order to embed in the minds of the people the idea that there is only one right solution. When they realized that Russia would not compromise, they conceptually proposed a return to the past – negotiations with Serbia, but in reality they were proposing a continuing of the process, to negotiate for status, which in the end will not even be supervised independence, but a form of federation with Serbia. Once again, they are using the threat of an alternative of partition, to serve as a threat for those with a dilemma about the continuation of negotiations.

Partition 

1. Everyone is now writing about partition. All those analysts who wrote that independence was about to come, are now writing that partition is about to come. They were wrong then and they are wrong now, firstly because they do not understand that Kosova is already partitioned, and that negotiations will not unite it, and second, if Kosova is legally one entity then it cannot be divided through negotiations.

2. Only if Kosova became close to independence, would Serbia support partition in order to prevent losing everything. Now it can win much more through legal processes, rather than by means of a massive intervention in Kosova.

3. At this time, Serbia wants partition only in the meaning of internal division. In this way, she can blackmail the independence of Kosova by creating a Serb enclave in a federation of Serb municipalities according to the Ahtisaari Plan. The International Community will accept this as long as it fits with their paradigm for regional stability: the internal division of Kosova must not be reflected in western Macedonia and the Valley of Presheva.

4. Although Kosova politicians say they will not accept partition (before they used to say there won’t be partition!), they took our pulse when they accepted the changes to the border at Debëllde. These politicians will make an agreement with Serbia, including all types of partition of Kosova. It suits Serbia to have a peaceful partition of Kosova, in which they control 30% of the territory, and the future International Civilian Mission (ICM) the remaining 70%. 

5. In this manner, Kosova will be constituted of two parts, one Serbia and the other in a sort of federation with Serbia, under the ICM. The Albanian part of Kosova, will be similar to the Republika Srpska of Bosnia, and thus there will be an Albanian Republic in Serbia (which obviously will not be called that). Serbia will then try to equalize the issue of Republika Srpska with this Albanian Republic in Serbia, by arguing after a few years that if the Albanians seek independence or unity with Albania, then Republika Srpska should have the same right. But it is unlikely that this exchange will take place. This will establish the dynamic that for many years, Albanians will demand that the international mission not leave, because that will mean their complete and final partition from the north and east of Kosova.

6. And how long will Kosova remain divided under the ICM? Until Serbia and Kosova enter the EU together in a decade or so, or longer if we bear in mind the example of Cyprus. The EU is not the solution or the replacement for the solution of conflicts given an ethnic character. Instead it has two other goals: 

a. To leave us on purpose crippled so that we call for their help and for their governance. For example, they will not allow us our own army, so that we have to rely on theirs to protect us from Serbia; or they advance and privilege those who can be easily corrupted, in order to create the impression that there are no honorable people from Kosova who can govern.

b. Second, the ICM wants to create a pro-European elite, not a pro-American elite. It wants Serbia because it is anti-American, and it is disillusioned with those east European states that turn their heads more to the US, than the EU. They want to reinforce the unity of their foreign policy from the time when Rumsfeld could divide them along the lines of ‘old’ and ‘new’ Europe. 

War

1. Without doubt, war is always one of the alternatives, but I do not believe that is such now in Kosova. Russia, at the suggestion of Serbia certainly,  has refused the drafts of the new resolution favorable to Serbia, knowing that Albanians have had their fill of waiting. This tells us that Serbia has a plan for how to respond to an Albanian explosion. Western hesitation proves two things not so different linked with this. First, they are aware that Serbia has a plan. And second, that only Serbia does actually have a plan. It is not difficult to predict what this plan is based on the model of the rebellion of Serbs in Croatia and Bosnia in the 1990s when they declared autonomy and independence by blocking roads and installing military government, which is far easier in Kosova. Serbia will not accept that it has intervened in Kosova, as Milosevic did not accept that he had intervened in Bosnia, saying that local Serbs were dissatisfied as they were discriminated against and endangered. Naturally Serbia will send them additional arms, and officers and strategic plans, although you will not see this on television. KFOR will put itself between Albanians and Serbs, and the eventual Albanian attack will be used by Serbia as a reason to build walls around the enclaves as they are now building walls around the monasteries of Deçan and Peja. The Palestinianization of Kosova will be smoothed over and the conflict will be perpetuated. This scenario is also possible in the case of a declaration of independence by the government of Kosova without preparing the defense of Kosova’s borders and her territorial integrity. There will be no time to reactivate the KLA. Serbia is not intending a war like the time of Milosevic, but the organization of Serbs, and if she does have to intervene, all will occur in the form of a blitzkrieg of several days, like that of the Israelis in 1967 or the Turks in 1974. For this reason, Serbia’s investment in her army is dedicated mainly to infantry and the necessary arms. 

2. UNMIK has not sat on its hands for the last 8 years. The part of the KPC that it could not control it has weakened. The commanders and well known members have been sent to prison, and when they came out they have abandoned the KPC and entered politics. This is just the continuation of Rambouillet when having signed up to the end of the liberation army, its former leaders became civilian officials in the Provisional Government before forming their own political parties. Then they gave up their arms, and entered politics. Now they give up their uniforms, and enter politics. These 8 years have served to disperse and to dry up the revolutionary potential for uprising in Kosova. Not only in Kosova has politics been the court, and the courts political. Even the Hague Tribunal while not being independent, compensated for this by ‘impartiality’: equally indicting politicians and soldiers from all sides of the war in former Yugoslavia. In two ways, this struck the KLA severely: first, in the process against Fatmir Limaj, due to his weak defense and portrayal of the KLA as an organization with a weak structure; and second, in the process against Ramush Haradinaj they claimed that the KLA was criminal. The core of a new state of Kosova would have been considered precisely the KLA, but after they disarmed the KLA, they have slowly but surely degraded its image from a liberation army into a disorganized groups of criminals. Thus, according to them, since there was no war and liberation army but a conflict and armed rebellion, there will be no independent and sovereign state, but a federation with Serbia and even with a municipal Serb federation inside Kosova. The Serb formula ‘autonomy inside autonomy’ can be transformed maximally only into a ‘federation inside a federation’.

3. All the work of illegal movements throughout the XX century in Kosova culminated in the KLA. And what did the Albanian delegation do at Rambouillet? They threw a bucket of water into this liberation fire. They accepted their disarmament and thus their gradual expiration. Our martyrs gave their lives in order to continue the war, but Hashim Thaçi stopped the war in order to save his life. Its not accidental that Hashim Thaçi in Peja a month ago said that had nothing against ‘supervised independence’ and that he was in fact frightened of full independence! He was right and knew exactly what he was talking about: He fears full independence because he fears for himself. In general, the ICM lengthens the life of these Kosova politicians, whereas independence ends it. Because in that case they would not have an international supervisor over the people to defend them from the people. 

4. The origin is criminal, said Freud. The Negotiation Group was formed so there would be no traitors. If they are all traitors, then no one is a traitor. They will collapse not because they have failed, but because they have had success. They will make an agreement with Serbia. Negotiations with Serbia are taking us to Serbia. This is why Lëvizja VETËVENDOSJE! from the start, with its name and idea, with strategy and action, pointed to the principle and not the outcome, pointed toward the method and not the result. Thus its concept is strong – a concept of right. It marks the opposite approach to that of official politics. No negotiations (with Serbia) but self-determination (of the people of Kosova). Above all, it is not possible to achieve the necessary result – however much it is wanted – with a mistaken method. The issue of Kosova is not so complicated. With the method pursued in dealing with it they are complicating it. It is not a

Gordian knot, but it can be transformed into one.

An explosion of violence (for federation)? 

1. Currently we are moving into a very painful phase: The International

Community in Kosova is working to reduce the expectations of the people of Kosova. UNMIK (and not just them) are not worried about the quality of the definition of status. Since we have been declared a unique case, now no principles or criteria exist for us. The problem is viewed in terms of the possibility of managing the eventual explosion of the situation. There is no concern for the contents of future status, but for controlling dissatisfaction!

In its intention to control everything, UNMIK will try to destroy the anti-colonial and anti-imperial spirit that Lëvizja VETËVENDOSJE! is building.

They know that our movement has struck them where it was necessary, problematizing the political system and not ethnic differences that are simply fed by the political system. In its war against us, UNMIK will not hesitate to make plans for new ethnic and religious conflicts. UNMIK without doubt is interested in Albanians and Serbs hating each other in order that they do not hate UNMIK and so that it has work here forever. If Serbia profits from a violent conflict between Serbs and Albanians in Kosova because it can fortify enclaves, which is in Ahtisaari’s Plan as well, UNMIK will profit because it can continue its life here for at least another decade. There is another reason why a violent conflict inside Kosova is necessary for UNMIK and Serbia. A new agreement between the

Negotiation Team of Kosova and Serbia for a federation of Kosova with Serbia, will not be easy to sign due to public opinion in Kosova. If there is a chaotic explosion, as on 17th and 18th March 2004, without political leadership and organization, then acceptance of a federation will be much easier. It will be easier in an emergency situation, at some point after 120 days, to have negotiators locked in an international conference like Dayton or Rambouillet. The united federal institutions will not be much since Serbia does not want Kosova inside Serbia, as much as Serbia wants to be inside Kosova. Serbia wants to be very practically and concretely inside Kosova, whilst Kosova is just formally part of Serbia and formally in Serbia.

What should we do? 

1. No one brings you freedom. You have to win it yourself. For the sake of the past (those who were killed and disappeared in our country) and for the sake of the future (those who will be endangered if we continue to stay silent), we must confront and not stop.

2. Now under the Bush Administration, the US is not as much ‘for’ the independence of Kosova (despite their declarations) as much as Serbia and Russia are ‘against’ independence. 

3. We should not have to wait anymore. The weeks, months and years until independence are just weeks, months and years extending the mandate of the Kosova negotiators and their governance. They do not worry about our collective loss, but about their individual profit. If we are silent this autumn, the ICM will be installed in the spring. If we are silent in the spring, autonomy under Serbia called a federation with Serbia will wait for us in the autumn of 2008. Since the ICM will be established without independence for Kosova, it will try to compensate for this with what it has a lot of: money and donations. The obligation of the ICM will be politically criminal. It will make preparations for the culmination of the denial of the will of the people of Kosova in a new agreement with Serbia which only as such will pass the Security Council of the UN. In the first half of this year, the issue of Kosova was in the UN Security Council, but they removed it throwing it back to the Contact Group. It is clear: the UN security Council wants to tell itself a success story and seeks prior reconciliation between Kosova and Serbia (and Russia); and second, the UN Security Council does not want to deal with an issue that is not urgent: everyone was remaining quiet in Kosova, except VETËVENDOSJE!.

4. Independence cannot be achieved in a completely dependent manner as they pretend in Kosova. Montenegro did not seek recognition but organized a referendum. Only after the referendum, did they declare independence and seek recognition. The referendum makes concrete collective freedom. And if our Assembly were to declare independence, this should take place after a referendum, because then the decision is legitimate and all-powerful, not just from the politicians but from all the people. 

5. The ‘Will of the people’ must be seen and work. Politics deals with works.

The US, even if it were completely on our side, would never demonstrate for us. Our will is ours. It must be expressed in strikes and boycotts, in demonstrations and protests, in the disobedience of citizens. Then we will be a people because we will become a people. In opposition and in confrontation with the regime that is denying the will of the people.

6. We are not strong, but when you are not strong, you have only one option: to become strong! Politics without strength remains a tragic opinion. Strength in politics can be an army, economy or the organized mass of the people. The third is most important. Only that secures the endurance of the former two (when they exist). 

7. The organized mass of the people usually is peaceful. Not only in manifestation, but also in demonstrations and protests. Not only when they are content with the situation, but also when they are angry and try to change it. In addition, in the situation in which Kosova is entrapped, as street politics is necessary, so is its peaceful nature.

Why nonviolence? 

1. With nonviolence should be understood strikes, boycotts, civil disobedience, protests and demonstrations. The International Centre for Nonviolent Conflict explains that the majority of those who use nonviolence do not have nonviolence as their goal. They are not motivated by a desire for peace or to be nonviolent. They want to fight for their rights and interests, but they have chosen other means than arms and bombs – because they have evaluated that violence will not be useful or because they do not have arms in their disposition.

2. We have no arms, nor enough military experience. In the last 15 years, as little as 1% of the population and those for less than one year have experience of armed confrontation. 70% of the population are under 30 years of age. They do not know what an army is. But what do we have? We have many people. And we have many young people. This all we need to start. If Serbia has experience with war, Kosova has experience with peaceful resistance.

3. Kosova has a chance in a war with Serbia only if Albania and Albanians in the Balkans come to help Albanians from Kosova in a final confrontation – Albanians against Serbia. If they impose war on us, then there is no other option but to fight. But, it will be painful and a great loss of people and territories if just the Albanians of Kosova fight. Important international factors will not be too concerned if a new war explodes in Kosova while it remains controlled by having obedient commanders and confined within the borders of Kosova. 

4. Between the waiting which is enfeebling us toward a collective agony, and the war for which we are not prepared, is the road of demonstrations.

Their form should be as in the years of 1988, 1989 and 1990. When the institutions are divided from the people, then the people must join each other in the street. The people must block nonviolently the institutions of this government and regime that has lied and stolen. Social misery, economic stagnation and political disillusionment are becoming the same.

Demonstrations of all the people are the right method and the optimal method. Those demonstrations must openly say no to negotiations with Serbia and to be against the Negotiation Group of Kosova. Those demonstrations should be for self-determination of the people of Kosova, and for civil rights and freedoms, for well-being and equality. Those demonstrations should articulate the current separation between the people and the regime, and to demand to inverse the relationship between them: not the people to exist for the sake of the government, but the government to exist for the sake of the people. Each demonstration which is not categorical will degenerate into a carnival. Popular demonstrations should be against those that are responsible for the situation in which we are and for the freedom that we should have.

Self-determination is this freedom. But it is more than that. Self-determination is also a right and universal value.

Self-determination

1. External self-determination that means self-determination until secession is a norm according to the documents of the UN. The Declaration on Granting Independence to colonial countries and peoples, as a Resolution of the General Assembly, 1514 (XV), dated 14th December 1960, speaks of ‘the passionate yearning for freedom in all dependent peoples and the decisive role of such peoples in the attainment of their independence’; it states that ‘the process of liberation is irresistible and irreversible’; it states that ‘the increasing conflicts resulting from the denial of or impediments in the way of the freedom of such peoples, which constitute a serious threat to world peace’; and it states that, ‘Inadequacy of political, economic, social or educational preparedness should never serve as a pretext for delaying independence.’ Etc. Etc. Opposing Serbia in our country, we take and we give an example from all and for all of those peoples which are not free. While opposing the UN mission in Kosova, the UN is defended in all the world.

2. The opposite of self-determination of the people of Kosova are precisely these negotiations that are being made with Serbia over the fate of Kosova. They are negotiations between unequals: Serbia is a state with real government; Kosova is considered just a province, with a fictive government. They are negotiations without reciprocity: they are made just for the territory of Kosova, not also for that of Serbia. They are negotiations to rehabilitate Serbia: Yet Kosova has to fulfill standards and conditions for negotiations and not Serbia! They equalize crime and genocide (the state of Serbia) with the victims (the people of Kosova) and likewise aggression with liberation war. They are deceptive: Kosova does not lack status, but the people of Kosova lack freedom. And they are damaging: they mean readiness for compromise and with their beginning they marked the end of independence and sovereignty as a possibility.

3. However, even external self-determination remains a formal freedom if there is not also internal self-determination that means the choice by the people of their political system, for the government and the manner of government. Hurst Hannum wrote ‘the internal aspect of self-determination can be seen as fundamental for two things: political democracy and economic development.’ The second requires our control over our natural resources (which is denied us by the KTA) which is also codified in Resolution 1803 (XVII) of the General Assembly. The UN declared, ‘the right of peoples and nations for permanent sovereignty over their natural riches and resources.’

4. The realization of these two aspects of self-determination represent the enduring foundation for development and progress.

After Self-Determination

1. Demonstrations for radical change in the current course of politics must not be just massive, but long term if necessary. And as long-term as is necessary. Those demonstrations should demand the final deadline of UNMIK in Kosova in accordance with a referendum for the people of Kosova, as an exercise of the right to self-determination, as a concrete political act of collective freedom, and inauguration of democracy that opens the road for the rule of the majority. Meanwhile, a constitution of Kosova should be written, and preparations to make the KPC into an army and KPS into a policeforce. NATO will stay and should stay in Kosova, but in agreement with Kosova (“Status of Forces Agreement’ – SOFA as in the case of Albania and Macedonia), and not as KFOR is here now on the basis of the Agreement of Kumanova (9 June 1999) made with the criminal Yugoslav army which Serbia inherited. Each mission and international presence in a free Kosova should be here in agreement with us. Kosova needs international help and advice, but not international rule.

Not a ruling UN mission in Kosova, but a diplomatic mission of Kosova in the UN. Not a tutor mission from the EU in Kosova, but a mission of Kosova as a member in the EU. These two, only self-determination makes possible. The future mission of the EU will be violent if it is not in accordance with the will of the people and without asking them, whereas the entrance of Kosova into the EU would not be violent or a limitation on its sovereignty. As Hurst Hannum wrote: ‘adherence in an agreement is not a limitation of sovereignty; rather it is precisely a sovereign act.’ Self-determination of the people confirms the will and interests of the people.

2. After self-determination of the people of Kosova, new and free elections must be held for a true government in a sovereign Kosova. Only then can we have elections that are truly free and democratic and political pluralism with parties with serious ideology instead of these insipid parties that tease each other. These parties that we have now, and new parties, will continue but with new leadership. The current leaders are of the ‘status quo’ of this situation that suits them. The movement of Kosova in the direction of a new compromise with Serbia, or in the direction of the independence of Kosova will cause earthquakes inside the parties. It will impose other leaders born in the death-rattle of the political backstage and improvisation. Parties that do not change will disappear.

Conclusion

1. War and bloodshed will occur in Kosova in two cases. First, if the people remain silent and wait too long, on which occasion the realization of decentralization in the terrain will bring people before a fait acompli when they will have to react extremely in the form of a saltomortale (in which case it will be too late). And second, if the impatience of the people will result in a violent explosion or armed conflict that remains confined, and controlled from outside and short in time. Bearing in mind the current situation Lëvizja VETËVENDOSJE! thinks that we should not wait and see but also that work should be organized and nonviolent, against the regime and not against other ethnicities. The independence that comes from self-determination of the people is the destination of the road of freedom and independence that unites a divided Kosova. Independence that comes from a formal declaration made by the Assembly of Kosova, will only provoke the declaration of independence by the enclaves, an independence that will be much more real than that of the government of Kosova. In the manifestation of the its will in demonstrations, the people should prove this will but also transform it into strength that changes the situation directly in accordance with that will.

2. The people of Kosova are not suffering from narcolepsy nor are they a flock of sheep. The people of Kosova wait and endure but not because they are ill, tired or weak, but mainly because they are deceived. And, the people of Kosova have been deceived precisely because they are good, because they easily believe others. The belief of the people makes possible also the lies of others. Thus, the action of the people is lacking because of the inflation of its belief in its liars.

3. Enough has been made of the over-valuation of the international diplomats and international missions. Enough has been made of the under-valuation of ourselves. When we respect ourselves, then we can win the respect of others. Recognition of the other cannot be more important than oneself. Recognition of the other can follow the being of ourselves and not precede it. Even less should we live for the sake of recognition of others or waiting for it. In the start of the 1990s, LDK disdained the fact of the brutal reality under slavery and sought international recognition. At the end of the 1990s, the politics of the KLA joined with the LDK. They threw away the facts for recognition. In order to be accepted internationally, they signed the surrender of arms at Rambouillet. They were recognized by international factor on the condition that they should not exist!

4. The time is now, and not later. Later could be too late, irreversibly late.

Desired things do not happen (by themselves). Needed things happen when they are considered necessary and when you become determined to achieve them. Others later will say that they were inevitable.