Adem Demaci - the "armed prophet" of the Albanian national movement in Kosovo (7)

Writing for Kosovo Online: Dragan Bisenic, journalist

Rejection of the Hill’s Agreement

When the crisis of the 1990s began, Demaci did not accept Rugova as a political leader.

"Mr. Rugova and I have the same goal, but the difference is that he relies much more on external factors and is not willing to sacrifice anything. He is not ready to take risks".

"I was not for the so-called G-15 from the beginning because I was not for Rugova," Adem Demaci said.

Demaci admitted that Rugova did not support him either, although he had once designated him as one of the 15 negotiators with the Serbian authorities. According to Demaci, he refused to sit in such a company, foreseeing "what happened". He now exults, saying he was right because "he is capable of working alone, just using his own head“, and that's on him. I think his trip to Belgrade was a fatal mistake.

This move surprised not only the Albanians (and the Serbs) but also the whole world, which began to exert a stronger influence on the Serbian side in terms of concessions. These are not negotiations. And what does Rugova have to say to Sloba (Slobodan Milosevic)? I don't understand that. The 'framework' by Holbrooke, that's just cultural autonomy," Demaci says.

Demaci also challenged the legitimacy of Rugova and his quartet (Bakali, Agani, Surroi, Nushi) because, according to the Kacanik Constitution, the President of the “Kosovo" had an obligation to convene the Assembly of Kosovo by April 26, at the latest, or by May 6, "and after going to Belgrade under these conditions, I now see that he has no intention of convening the Assembly at all. His party has been halved, he is almost alone, and he is supported perhaps only by one wing of the Liberal Party and the wing of the Social Democratic Party of Kaqusha Jashari". According to Demaci, Rugova is "obviously willing to accept cultural autonomy, and I am afraid that divisions (among the Albanians), bloodshed, and evil await us because Albanians cannot accept anything other than an independent and sovereign Kosovo".

Two years later, he joined the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) as the head of its political wing. In an interview with The New York Times in 1998, he refused to condemn the violence of the KLA, stating that "the path of nonviolence has led nowhere. People living under such repression have the right to resist".

What was collectively referred to as the "Kosovo Liberation Army" consisted of three main factions that were not hierarchically or operationally connected.

The first was the Drenica Group, which was dominant and influenced by Albanian "Marxist-Leninists" from Switzerland. The second consisted of people around "Prime Minister" Bujar Bukoshi and Ahmet Krasniqi (FARK), who had support not only among the Albanians, former officers of the Yugoslav People's Army, and police officers but also from ruling circles in Tirana.

Between these two groups, a fierce power struggle took place in 1998, ending with the victory of the "Marxist-Leninists", Ahmet Krasniqi's escape to Albania, and his murder in Tirana in September 1998.

Support from FARK members for Ibrahim Rugova provoked strong reactions from their opponents, as witnessed by Jakup Krasniqi, the spokesman for the KLA, who stated that he "does not recognize Rugova as the supreme commander of the KLA or the existence of the First Brigade, which divides the political movement in Kosovo".

The third faction of the KLA consisted of relatively few followers of Adem Demaci, who, after a brief role as a political leader of the KLA in the winter of 1998/99, parted ways with Hashim Thaci, Bardhyl Mahmuti, and other young "Marxist-Leninists" and continued his political activities independently. This was the reason the KLA had a relatively decentralized command structure, which persisted even after the end of the war.

Although the strongest, the Drenica Group (Hashim Thaci, Sami Lushtaku, Jakup Krasniqi, Shaban Shala, Ram Buja, and others) had rivals in other regional KLA groups, especially those led by Rustem Mustafa ("Commander Remi"), who had support in the Llap region, and Ramush Haradinaj, whose bases were in Metohija.

The dominance of the KLA removed the earlier structures of political life. Two radical political opponents of the moderate leadership of the Kosovo Albanians, Redzep Qosja and Adem Demaci, refused to recognize the unofficial Kosovo parliament.

"We do not recognize that parliament. It will not contribute to the unity of the Albanian political movement but will institutionalize its divisions," stated a press release from Qosja's Albanian Democratic Movement. Jonuz Salihaj, the spokesperson for Demaci's Parliamentary Party of Kosovo, stated, "A parliament in which half of the Kosovo parties are not present cannot make any decisions". "The Kosovo Liberation Army now decides on Kosovo," Salihaj said.

In the fall of 1998, Demaci entered a new crisis in his relationship with the KLA, for which he was the political representative. After an operation in which 13 Albanian politicians were abducted, he temporarily withdrew, citing health reasons. During this time, there was major unrest and political turmoil in Albania, as Sali Berisha lost the elections and attempted to overthrow Fatos Nano, who was then the Prime Minister.

Demaci condemned Berisha's actions but emphasized that the Kosovo Albanians had "long been working to free themselves from Serbian tutelage without counting on Albania being of great and significant help to us", even though "whoever comes to power in Albania, the people in Albania will sympathize with us". Demaci confirmed that the KLA maintained relations with politicians in Sandzak, "because we are all in the same boat", but "they didn't get involved even when the war was raging in Bosnia, which was their duty, so I don't see why they would help us now".

Demaci's temperament is described in an episode when he visited the KLA in Drenica, and afterward, their group was intercepted by Yugoslav soldiers. This story is often recounted, although it is not known how much of it is true and what is legend versus reality.

In the late Autumn of 1998, Demaci and his military advisor, Sulejman Ajeti, reportedly visited the KLA headquarters in Drenica. At dusk, they arrived in the village of Sopaj in Lapusnik, Glogovac, where they were suddenly surrounded. Their commander asked Demaci where they were going. Demaci defiantly replied, "We are on our way to the KLA, which you experience every day on your skin and dare not stop, but you stop me, a peaceful and unarmed man".

While waiting for their documents to be verified, a young soldier approached Demaci and threatened him with a machine gun, pressing its gun against his throat: "I would kill you on the spot". Demaci reportedly took a step back, tore open his shirt to reveal his chest, and retorted, "Shoot!" The soldier hesitated. At that moment, their commander returned, handed back their documents, and allowed them to continue their journey.

Demaci explained that he represented the "political and peaceful" part of the KLA, which represents the "peaceful movement of the KLA, an attempt to solve the problem through political means. This is an older movement. The KLA was created recently when it was 100% certain that the Serbian regime and our friends in the US and Europe did not intend to reward us for being peaceful all along".

He explained that they had expected "Serbia to accept us and that the Americans and Europeans would force Serbia to accept the will of the Albanians expressed in the 1991 referendum. We waited until Dayton. Now it is clear that the world does not want our freedom," Demaci said.

This division into the "peaceful" and "military wing" of the KLA stemmed from the understanding that Serbia could not be persuaded through peaceful means alone. Demaci was convinced that even the will of the Albanians could not be realized solely through military force, so "negotiations are necessary".

He specified that this meant "Kosovo - a republic," a "completely sovereign, independent state, and when that did not happen, the KLA was born".

Regarding the Hill-Milosevic agreement reached in September 1998, he commented, "Mr. Hill's project is full of indefiniteness, which shows that Kosovo must remain under Serbian sovereignty. We are offered less than we had under the 1974 Constitution. I heard that even Mr. Rugova did not accept that agreement".

This refers to the agreement reached on September 2, 1998, where Christopher Hill, then the US Ambassador to Macedonia, after separate meetings with the Government of Serbia and the leaders of the Kosovo Albanians, reported that the two sides were generally in agreement on the basic peace framework for autonomy that would postpone the final resolution of Kosovo's legal status for a temporary period of about three years.

Former Vice President of the Federal Government and Prime Minister of Serbia, Nikola Sainovic, said that Christopher Hill had had two political activities in the spring of 1998: one was the implementation of the Milosevic-Rugova agreement on education, mediated by the Vatican, and the other was the negotiations between Milosevic and Rugova on self-governance in Kosovo.

"Since Milosevic and Rugova do not talk directly, Hill conveys messages from one to the other, and thus documents on the draft of the self-governance in Kosovo and Metohija named Hill 1, Hill 2, and Hill 3 were created. He persistently worked on it and cooperated to create a concept of self-governance in Kosovo and Metohija, which, alongside the education agreement, would be a significant factor for stability. In other words, there would have been no war in 1999," Sainovic said.

Tomorrow: Albanian Napoleon without a horse