Mala Krusa is a small village in Kosovo with a painful history. On March 25, 1999, the day after the NATO bombing of Yugoslavia began, a special police unit entered the village, separated and killed the men and boys, dumped them in mass graves, and forced the women and children out of the village. Agron Limani, a resident of the Mala Krusa village, lives in a house adjacent one of the mass graves that was recently exhumed and in which his brother, father, and uncles were buried. Limani commented, “We cannot talk about reconciliation while graves are still open. Let’s first shed light on the crimes, find our people and put justice in place” [1].
This year marks the 11th anniversary of Kosovo’s declared independence from Serbia as well as the the 21st anniversary of the end of the Kosovo War. Kosovo’s history of conflict is as long as it is bloody. The collapse of Eastern-European Communist regimes in the 1980s sparked conflict throughout Europe, but the most violent and dramatic of these collapses occurred in former Yugoslavia. Regions that were previously a part of Yugoslavia, including Kosovo, desired independence. Serbia, however, considered Kosovo an inseparable part of the Serbian motherland, even though 90 percent of Kosovo’s population was ethnically Albanian. The tension between the two nation states escalated into what is largely considered the bloodiest and most tragic event in Europe since World War II. An estimated 10,800 Kosovar Albanians and 2,200 Serbians were either killed or went missing over the two-year war [5]. While the war ended in June 1999, almost 20 years ago, the disaster the conflict caused has profoundly affected U.S. and European relations with the region. As we know well in the United States, wars are much harder to finish than to start.
Since its independence, Kosovo has continued to experience hardships both internationally and domestically. The United Nations Development Programme (U.N.D.P.) stated that Kosovo’s most salient domestic issues are unemployment, corruption, and poverty. Seventy-eight percent of Kosovars that the U.N.D.P. polled think that “bribery, nepotism, and political affiliation are the main criteria for employment” [2]. The nation-state has experienced significant brain-drain, with scores of the younger generations leaving for the promises of fair employment in Great Britain or Germany. As of January 2019, 103 of 193 UN member states (about 53 percent) have recognized Kosovo as an independent state. Among those who recognize it are the United States, and among those who do not, Russia and Serbia.
In January 2019, Kosovo’s Prime Minister Ramush Haradinaj, a Kosovo Albanian who served as an officer in the Kosovo Liberation Army, met with two fellow former fighters who are preparing to be questioned by prosecutors for a special war crimes court held in the Hague [4]. The two men fought in what Prime Minister Haradinaj called a “clean and sacred” war. The trials, called the Kosovo Specialist Chambers, are tasked with the responsibility of confronting the most painful period in Kosovo’s modern history by trying war crimes that potentially occurred from 1998-99.
The main purpose of these trials is to establish a truth and reconciliation commission, which is an international, unbiased committee tasked with uncovering wrongdoings caused by a government or non-state actors in order to resolve painful long-standing conflicts. These commissions often aim to discover and punish the perpetrators and determine the victims who deserve reparations. We can see the success of truth and reconciliation commissions in countries like Rwanda following the 1994 genocide and in Chile to investigate the deaths and disappearances under Augusto Pinochet’s rule. Kosovo President Hashim Thaci announced the establishment of a truth and reconciliation commission in 2017, but very little has been reported until now.
The establishment of the truth and reconciliation commission has its controversies; some are unsure if Kosovo Serbs will be allowed to participate in the investigations. Other politicians in Kosovo believe that President Thaci announced a truth commission because it is politically favorable rather than to genuinely uncover and rectify previous injustices and war crimes. Although leaders of the former Yugoslavian countries Macedonia, Montenegro, and Serbia had voiced their initial support for such a commission, there have been major setbacks in signing an official declaration for the establishment of the truth and reconciliation commission [6].
Despite these setbacks, the fact-finding commission is expected to be established in 2021 and end in 2025. The commission would be an incredibly ambitious endeavor, but one that 94 percent of all Kosovo citizens, both ethnic Albanians and Serbs, support [7]. As President Thaci declared, a truth commission would allow genuine growth in Kosovo both domestically and internationally by allowing the nation to no longer “remain a hostage to its past” [3].
[2]http://rs.n1info.com/English/NEWS/a401086/UNDP-report-highlights-biggest-problems-in-Kosovo.html
[5]https://www.rferl.org/a/kosovo-truth-commission-thaci-conflict-serbs-albanians/28307654.html
[6]http://www.balkaninsight.com/en/article/west-balkans-states-not-singing-recom-declaration-07-09-2018
[7] http://www.undp.org/content/dam/kosovo/docs/TJ/English-Web_965257.pdf