Hiding behind the homeland
By Lazër STANI
The Albanian nation finds itself at one of its most difficult, most dramatic and most painful moments. More than one million Albanians from Kosovo have been expelled from their land. Serbian violence, terror and massacres against defenseless Albanians are indescribable, unimaginable to the normal human mind. Mass graves, arson, destruction, rape, and the mass killing of defenseless men, women and elderly people fill the news reports of media around the world, shaking the human conscience at the end of this century and leaving an open wound that will cause anguish for many years in the consciousness of modern civilization.
This tragic reality, in which a people was faced with the alternative of total extinction, has astonished and disoriented hundreds of millions of people around the world, who initially showed hesitation and disagreement with NATO's air campaign against Serbia. Among them were even intellectual, cultural and scientific authorities who have made their mark on the history of this century. Now, after eight weeks of bombing, I believe there are no longer any normal people who do not justify NATO's stance, even though war is never desirable, never good.
However, while for most of the world the reality of Kosovo was unclear and unbelievable, for Albanians nothing was unexpected; nothing happened without being foreseen. After Millosheviç came to power, anti-Albanianism became the dominant platform of his politics, consolidating him and his obscure regime. His strategy for eliminating and driving Albanians from their lands in Kosovo emerged as early as the beginning of the 1990s, as the first phase of a prearranged scenario for the ethnic cleansing of Kosovo—for a Kosovo without the Albanians who had historically populated it. What has happened over the past eight weeks is only the execution of the final phase of this macabre scenario, which exceeded all predictions.
Unfortunately, even at this critical moment, Albanians found themselves unprepared, uncertain, disoriented and, worse still, certain elements and structures found themselves in this darkness of occupation, which could in no way be channeled in the interests of the Albanians. It is known that a policy, good or bad, is measured by its ultimate result, by how it has served the country or how much it has harmed it. If we look in this context at Albanian politics during these nine post-dictatorship years, as well as over the last fifty years, it is not difficult to draw conclusions that are not merely damaging. First, it became clear that Albanian diplomacy had consistently been oriented toward choosing allies, choosing friends. The friends of the heart ... conclusions just as difficult. oriented toward selecting allies, friends. The cherished friends of revolutionary Albania, chosen according to ideological criteria, at times found themselves in the same ranks as the Albanians' most sworn enemies, the criminal Slobodan Millosheviç. Could this simply be a coincidence, the political naivety of a certain category of Albanian politicians? Since there are no coincidences in politics, it is difficult to believe that. It follows, then, that for a very long time Albanians have been governed and ruled by those who sold their souls and by the devil. And these sell-outs have governed and ruled the Albanians for not even ten years, [text unclear], after patriotic bombast.
During these nine years, when Albania broke away from the totalitarian regime, it found it very difficult to regain its lost balance and orient itself correctly toward its vital interests. Now, once again, after the fact, it is not difficult to uncover the links between what happened in March 1997 and what is happening two years later in Kosovo. An Albania that has been destroyed, exhausted, governed by suspect lobbies, pierced by a process of dividing the Albanians, precisely when they should have been more united and solid than ever. The policy of these lobbies, which does not spare the use of Kosovo's terrible suffering to declare [unclear], which [unclear] Albanian emigrants ... [unclear] cabinet and proclaims [unclear] geopolitician government in Tirana, which seeks to monopolize power by hiding behind differences and patriotism, is the worst service being done to Albanians at this extremely difficult time, with a very bleak outlook. If nothing else, such a policy keeps Albanians divided, sorts them into ideological camps, precisely when the fundamental problem facing Albanians is the salvation of their threatened homeland.
Then, Albanians have neither been served nor will they ever be served by a fist, by a bloodied fist. No demagogic formulation, patriotic or nationalist slogan can retouch such irresponsible, malicious positions, at a time when dozens and dozens of Albanians from Kosovo are shedding their blood for many more, at a time when the Alliance is engaged in a bombing campaign to defend the Albanian people and the values of today's civilization. There is no doubt that this is [unclear] against Millosheviç. But will the postwar period be the future Albanians deserve?