You Took Away My Flag:  a Musical About Kosovo was performed at the Strawdog Theatre in Chicago on June 12, 13, 19, and 20, 2009. All four performances were sold out, and there was extensive press and media coverage in this American city of three million people.

I wrote and produced the musical over the last year because I believe that the story of centuries-long efforts by Kosovar Albanians to break free of foreign domination is one that audiences around the world can relate to. It is the story of human dreams passed down from father to son and mother to daughter, the story of love threatened by war and tradition, the story of brave young men and women taking matters into their own hands when their parents counsel patience and passivity, the story of ordinary people whose aspirations to live lives taken for granted elsewhere are held hostage by great-power politics. I was moved by the story in the larger sense, and the way it played out at the individual level, as I talked to and befriended hundreds of Kosovar Albanians and a smaller number of Kosovo Serbs in the course of conducting research for my two books about Kosova: Kosovo Liberation Army: The Inside Story of an Insurgency, published in English by the University of Illinois Press and in Albanian by Koha Press in 2008, and The Road to Kosovo’s Independence: Chronicle of the Ahtisaari Plan, to be published next month by Cambridge University Press.

Audience reaction to the musical was enthusiastic. As a result, I have assembled a group of investors and a new creative team to remount it for an eight-week run in Chicago in a larger theatre, beginning in April, 2010. An independent film-making company is making a movie out of the underlying story in the musical. Discussions also are underway regarding productions in New York, Detroit, and Madison, Wisconsin, although these discussions are quite preliminary.

The extensive public, press and media interest in the subject was good for the musical, but it also reveals a serious challenge for Kosova’s future: as the conflicts of 1998, 1999, March, 2004, and February, 2008 have disappeared from the news in the U.S. and Europe, almost no one has any real understanding of how Kosova got to where it is today or what the pathways are for its future.

Public opinion is shaped much more by nationalist Serbian propaganda than by those who know and appreciate the real story. Virtually all of the print articles about the musical prompted a flurry of angry letters presenting the Serb point of view. Although most of the letter writers did not see the musical, they accused me of pro-Albanian bias, incompetence as a lawyer and law professor, of being a CIA agent, and of being a Democrat—a jumble of the usual hysteria alleging that Albanians are threats to Europe because they are drug runners and Islamic fundamentalists.

Except for my musical itself, the Albanian side of the debate was not expressed. Where were the Albanian letter writers? Why are they not as active as their Serb antagonists? Why does not the Kosova government and the Albanian-American community monitor the press and media and have a rapid-reaction squad to make sure the Albanian point of view gets expressed? Bill Clinton and George Bush both showed the necessity of such rapid reaction strategies for anyone who wants to shape public opinion or build an image for a political candidate—or a new country.

Nor is Kosova’s story adequately presented on the Web. The good news is that a Google search turned up, on the first few pages of hits, dozens of website maintained by NGOs, or other states, that present balanced facts and constructive opinion about Kosova. The Prime Minister’s site also showed up. Only two extreme Serbian sites were presented on the top three search-result pages.

Someone who looks specifically for websites sponsored by the government of Kosova finds an improved situation compared to that a year ago but it still is embarrasing. The website for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs is better than it was, now including a link to an IPAK page encouraging investors to invest in Kosova. But one looks in vain for any argument about the legality of Kosova’s independence, a subject likely to attract public attention in the months to come. Where are the actual arguments that Kosova and its friends are presenting to the International Court of Justice? Bizarrely, the page labeled “success stories” for investment in Kosova is blank. Surely at least one success could be written up and posted on this page. Aesthetically the Foreign Ministry web presence is attractive; it is entirely pedestrian in content, however.

If one goes to the English pages of the Ministry of Culture website, one finds lots of pictures of the Minister but concludes that Kosvoso has no culture—no music, no theatre, no sculpture—and no sports, because the web pages dedicated to those subjects are all blank—“under construction.”

Someone interested in investing in Kosova might be expected to consult the website of the Ministry of Trade and Industry. If he did so, he would likely go away frustrated and focus attention on another country. No information of any real use to an investor is there. Clicking on the link for information about registering a business leads to a deadend. Clicking on the tourism link produces an error message.

One need only compare these websites to those maintained by the governments of virtually every American state and many municipalities, or with similar sites maintained in English by the governments of Serbia or Albania to realize how embarrassingly lame, amateurish, and bureaucratically-oriented is Kosova’s web presence. Most people who do not know much about Kosova go to the Web to find out more. They would not come away with a good impression. The government web pages exist to promote Kosova, not only the public images of the ministers.

The only reason the KLA-led insurgency of 1998 and 1999 succeeded was that Kosova was pro-active, creative, and energetic in using all available tools—letters to the editor, media appearances, blogs, and Web postings to mold foreign public opinion. Where is this spirit and energy now, when it is needed as much as ever?

I will continue to do everything I can to get Kosova’s story out. I could use a little more help. Far more important, Kosova could use a lot more help.

More information about the musical is available at www.youtookawaymyflag.com

 

 

Mr. Perritt is Professor of Law at the Chicago-Kent College of Law. You can find more about his work in Kosovo at operationkosovo.kentlaw.edu .

"The key concept is local ownership and accountability: the Kosovo authorities will be in the driver's seat," the boss of the EU's police mission in Kosovo, Yves de Kermabon, said in August on his vision of the EU's mandate in our country. But even Kosovar children do not believe this fairy tale any more.

In May 2008, the planning team for the EU's mission to Kosovo launched the campaign "Come to Europe," a travelling roadshow intended to promote the EU. Every night on TV, we could watch children gazing at a spectacular truck turned into a stage. Six months later, EULEX arrived.

A decade after the war and a year and a half since the declaration of independence, rather than stable progress we have stability as progress. EULEX defines itself as a "crisis management operation," as if the crisis is here to stay and merely has to be managed. "(Re)solution," the traditional vocabulary of international missions, has been replaced by "management." Crisis management means prevention of an explosion of crisis, not elimination of the crisis or its causes.

In this way, we are constantly kept on the brink of an explosion. Rather than a post-conflict mission, where the priorities are development and justice, EULEX is a pre-conflict mission operating with a doctrine of regional stability and internal security. Its paradigm of stability subdues people's rights and negates justice. The corruption of high-level local politicians, the richest people in Kosovo, is tolerated by the international missions because the local politicians pay for this tolerance with obedience and submissiveness.

The paradigm of stability instead of development implies that EULEX has appointed itself as guardian of the two processes currently moving us away from EU integration: ethnically-based decentralisation (which is a euphemism for cantonisation) and neoliberal privatisation (where everything is sold, fast, even rich mines and profitable telecommunications businesses, in the midst of a financial crisis which has artificially decreased their value).

EULEX' "rule of law" mandate is in fact a licence to become "rulers of the law." About 1,900 EULEX officials and their families are immune from legal prosecution in Kosovo. EULEX is not accountable toward our institutions, over which it retains executive powers unlimited in scope and time. This is clear from the EU Council's decision of 4 February 2008, which says that EULEX shall "assume other responsibilities, independently or in support of the competent Kosovo authorities, to ensure the maintenance and promotion of the rule of law, public order and security, in consultation with the relevant Council agencies." While EULEX is said to be an interim mission that will leave soon, how "soon" is unclear: EULEX mandate has no deadline.

UNMIK in all but name

EULEX is nothing but the new First Pillar of UNMIK (the United Nations Mission in Kosovo, a pre-independence UN mission). What was before the UNMIK Police and the UNMIK Department of Justice has now turned into EULEX. The asymmetric practices of UNMIK, which both ruled over Kosovo and mediated between Kosovo and Serbia, are being continued by EULEX. The EU mission sits in UNMIK's former headquarters, the UN's white jeeps have changed their colour to EU blue, and UNMIK employees have switched to EULEX.

Meanwhile, Serbia seems to have three mid-term goals: to not recognise Kosovo's independence; to become an EU member before Kosovo; and to establish within Kosovo an autonomous Serb territorial entity, modelled closely on the one it already has in Bosnia, Republica Srpska. As an EU member, Serbia would be able to impose conditions on Kosova's EU accession. With an internal territorial entity, Serbia would be able to place conditions on Kosovo's functionality as a state.

It was in this context that EULEX announced the signing of a protocol for police co-operation with Serbia. The protocol draft refers to the infamous "Six Point Plan" of UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon (which will lead to Kosovo's ethnically-based territorial partition) and UN Resolution 1244. The protocol calls on EULEX and Serbia to exchange police information and to meet regularly. It would remove a key obstacle for EU-Serbia visa liberalisation, but it has no benefits for Kosovo.

Open wounds

Serbia has a criminal past in Kosovo and criminal plans for Kosovo. During the last war, Serbian forces killed 12,000 people, raped about 20,000 women, deported almost 1 million people from Kosovo and expelled even more from their homes. Ten years later, 1,887 people are still missing. We fear that more mass graves will be found. Today, the post-Milosevic, "democratic" Serbia finances illegal parallel structures inside Kosovo whose mission is to undermine our territorial integrity and sovereignty: Serb-funded vigilante groups prevent ethnic Albanians from crossing the main bridge in the town of Mitrovica. Serbia's desire to maintain power over Kosovo has with the protocol been legitimised by EULEX' "understanding."

We are not against the EU's presence in Kosovo, but we are against its loose mandate and destructive role. EULEX does not recognise Kosovo's independence, but has executive power over us. EULEX continues to legitimise Serbia's demands on Kosovo and encourages ethnic partition. The police protocol is merely the latest expression of EULEX' damaging role here. Overturning EULEX jeeps caused small damage compared to the harm caused by the mission.

Kosovo does not need more "stability." It needs democracy and development. We do not need more policemen, prosecutors and judges from the EU, but doctors, teachers, agricultural experts and engineers. We want the right to join the EU - not the EU's undemocratic rule over us.

 

Vetevendosje opposes the supervision of independence by the international civilian presence in Kosovo demanding full soveregnity. 

The word "change" has recently become rather popular in political campaigns, starting of course with that of U.S. President Barack Obama, who perhaps led a sort of a political rebirth of the word. It's a word used in the political context, as it can simply be understood, to make a break from the politics and policies of the past. This was the change that the U.S. believed in when they voted in Mr. Obama. 100 days into his mandate, 56% of Americans rate Obama's work thus far as excellent according to recent polls by USA Today and Gallup, which can support the point that indeed, change, has begun in the United States.