Dimic: What Kurti is doing is genocide, but it won't succeed, Serbs in Kosovo know how to survive

The Serbian population, which is indigenous to Kosovo, knows how to endure a lot and how to preserve itself. These people are deeply rooted in Kosovo and Metohija, and that's why they survive despite the harsh conditions they live in," said Ljubodrag Dimic, a member of the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts and a historian, in a new episode of the podcast "Context.

The Wisdom Possessed by Serbs in Kosovo, Dimic emphasized, is the Greatest Barrier to Extremist Albanian Attacks

“What Albin Kurti is doing to Serbs in Kosovo is genocide. But that genocide will not yield results, just as the one in the First World War did not, nor the one in the Second World War, nor the wars of the 1990s over the Yugoslav legacy. In Kosovo, there is a population that has known for centuries how to adapt, endure, and wait for its time. But this time will not be one of revenge, when it comes to these people, but merely an attempt to breathe and live freely again,” Dimic stressed.

He believes that in a few years, the Serbian population in Kosovo, however small it is now, will increase in number and many will return to their ancestral lands, where their roots are.

“It is difficult to uproot roots. The Serbian people know how to survive, how to restrain themselves, how to stay silent. And this shows great wisdom. Great wisdom of a people. And we should learn from that wisdom. Because the entire Serbian territory today is under pressure from great powers, from which you can either perish or survive and wait for another time, with a different distribution of power, where you will find your point of support in the East or the West. Maybe in Asia, as China and India emerge as great giants present in Europe, with whom we have excellent relations,” added Dimic.

He reminded that Albanians in Kosovo, as a minority, did not want to accept either the Serbian or the Yugoslav state.

“They did not want to accept that state even when it had a socialist form. Permanent Albanian tensions in Kosovo began in the 1960s. The attempts of both the Yugoslav state and Serbia to open up space for Albanians to affirm themselves on the Yugoslav level were unsuccessful. The Albanian elite created generations that lived in a ghetto, that did not want to participate in the Yugoslav reality, that did not want to take part in the social processes of which they were a part. And then this appeared as a tumor, which not only corroded the Yugoslav state but also the people themselves. Because what will the Albanians do if there are no more Serbs? They will turn against each other. Rama will turn against Kurti. Those in Janina and Epirus will turn against each other,” stated the academic.

For Kosovo, he warned, the criminalization of society is characteristic.

“Facts show that Albanians spent 900 million marks on the process of Kosovo’s independence in the mid-1980s. Half of that money came from drug sales. From the fact that the Albanian mafia became the controller of heroin trafficking in Europe. How much that sum is now, I do not have that information, but I am sure of the figure I mentioned. The other half of the money came from the three percent levy on every employed Albanian in Western Europe. That means coercion, blackmail. Europe was silent, and the population was in a way forced. And that Albanian world in Europe was not engaged in professorship but physical, manual labor. They lived on the lower scale of economic life in Europe. And they had to give,” pointed out Dimic.

Nevertheless, he believes that Serbian-Albanian relations can improve.

“I am optimistic about improving Serbian-Albanian relations because I know several Albanians, with whom I am friends, who generally think like any normal person when it comes to the relationship between the two nations, two neighbors, who can be friends. However, the dominant line still accepts extreme politics, which does not abandon the idea of a Greater Albania, living in romantic notions. Romanticism among Albanians lags at least 100 years behind romanticism in Europe. This process will still have to continue and will cost the Albanian people and the Albanian state greatly. This will have a great price for that people, for whom I have great respect,” concluded Dimic.

You can watch the entire conversation between “Context” editor Milos Garic and academic Ljubodrag Dimic in the video clip.