Marc Morgan of the Mouvement pour une Alternative Non-violente (MAN) recently visited Kosovo and shared a report with the WRI office. Below is a short extract from his report, exploring the work of human rights activist Shkëlzen Gashi, and a visit to the Museum of Independence, which among other exhibits features the work of a former Chair of WRI, Howard Clark.

Meeting with human rights activist Shkëlzen Gashi

Shkëlzen Gashi is an independent researcher and activist, who has written many articles and books on the recent history of Kosovo, including the unauthorised biography of Adem Demaçi, a key figure in Kosovo’s late 20th century history who spent 28 years in prison.

Shkëlzen Gashi has produced a remarkable book detailing the massacres committed in Kosovo in the period 1998-1999. The book documents 83 massacres committed in the period February 1998 to July 1999. Of those, 3 involved the killing of Serbian civilians.

The text, written in Albanian, Serbian and English, is interspersed with sober, harrowing photos of the graves of the victims, the locations of the massacres, and the grieving of surviving relatives. The writing, rigorously based on sources such as the records of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, is mostly sober and factual, but the witness accounts which are quoted, though restrained in tone, are deeply moving in their stark statement of recollections of events.

I will not attempt a detailed presentation of the book here, though I warmly recommend it to anyone with an interest either in Kosovo in particular, or, in general, in the historical recording of the effects of war and of its excesses. Certain key characteristics of the record which the book details, and of the reception given to the book, are worth highlighting:

• A minority of massacres (15) were committed in the period February 1998-March 1999, partly as a reprisal for attacks by the Kosovo Liberation Army, certainly in response to the emergence of the KLA.
• The massacres increased greatly both in number and in intensity immediately after the beginning of the Kosovo war. NATO’s hostilities against Serbia, and its bombing of both Serbia proper and parts of Kosovo, seem to have sent Serbian forces into a frenzy of killing and hatred.
• All restraint seems to have been lost amongst Serbian forces committing the massacres on the ground, but the knowledge and at least tacit approval of them came from the very heart of Serbian power.
• The mere fact of recording 3 massacres of Serbian civilians, at least two at the hands of Albanian groups wreaking revenge for exactions by Serbs, has caused Shkëlzen Gashi to be the butt of criticism and ostracism from many Albanian commentators and intellectuals.

Despite this hostility, Shkëlzen Gashi has continued to promote his book and the even-handed, unbiased principles on which it is based, attracting praise both from distinguished experts on Kosovo such as Professor Noel Malcolm, and from organizations and individuals seeking truth and reconciliation in Kosovo.

I have discussed the book with Shkëlzen, as well as his latest work on the theme of “the Other Serbia”. This consists of a series of volumes focusing on individuals and forces in Serbia who resisted the Milosevic regime and sought to expose that regime’s lies and manipulations. Shkëlzen has emphasised the difficulties of working as an independent specialist dedicated to letting the historical record speak for itself, and of not being swayed by the pressures, prejudices and groupthink prevalent in all societies, but particularly perhaps in the Balkans. Even at the highest level, Shkëlzen fears that commitment to the truth is far from absolute in academic and journalistic circles in Kosovo. Shkëlzen has paid tribute to Ibrahim Rogova, about whom he is writing a book, while recognizing that his long-time Adem Demaçi was inevitably led to oppose Rugova and to argue that nonviolence would never be sufficient to free Kosovo from the Serbian yoke.

“The Massacres in Kosovo 1998-1999” was published by Pristina in 2024. You can order a copy here: https://dukagjinibooks.com/en/books/1092290237

The Museum of Independence

I am very grateful to Shkëlzen Gashi for pointing out to me, the existence of the little-known Museum of Independence. This is located in the small, discrete building which served as Rugova and the LDK alternative government’s Prishtina headquarters, in the very centre of town.

The museum contains a detailed record of Kosovar Albanians’ long struggle firstly to assert their autonomy as a distinct, homogeneous community within what was Yugoslavia, and secondly to lay the ground for their long-term aim of independence.

The museum captures in a wealth of photos and accompanying texts, the key moments of the struggle against Milosevic: the Trepca miners’ strike of 1989; the reconciliation work of Anton Ceta under which hundreds of thousands of Albanian families renounced the tradition of blood feuds; the emergence of the parallel education and health systems; the institution of an alternative government and the attempts to win over the international community.

The museum contains a warm and detailed tribute to Howard Clark and his work on Civil Resistance in Kosovo. It recalls the conditions Clark set out for a Civil Resistance movement to be successful, and highlights with great honesty the areas in which the Kosovo nonviolent movement met those conditions, and the areas in which it failed to do so.

The museum does not feature in travel guides and travel blogs I have consulted, but deserves to be much better known.