A Lesson in History

Early one morning, the S. family had to leave their village in Kosovo. The mother had dressed the children well, so that they wouldn’t be cold, and prepared some food for the journey. A group of armed men stopped them in a nearby settlement and separated them, detaining the father and two sons and ordering the rest to keep going. They did keep going and spent some time far away from their home, school, friends, and relatives. Only after the war had ended did they return to their home. It was a few years later that they found out that all three of the men had been killed and their bodies hidden in a mass grave. The mother and two sons from the S. family are currently living in their home village again, in difficult conditions, lacking employment or regular income.

What happened to the S. family?

The Crisis between 1980 and 1998

The 1974 Constitution of the Socialist Federative Republic of Yugoslavia granted the Autonomous Province of Kosovo greater autonomy. A section of the Serbian public objected, claiming that the new constitution gave the province too much power. At the beginning of the 1980s, Albanians asked for Kosovo to be recognized as a constituent Republic of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (SFRY), while Serbs intensified their calls for the province’s autonomy to be reduced. In March 1989, amendments to the Constitution of Serbia stripped the province of its autonomy. The situation in Kosovo deteriorated.

In June 1990, the Serbian Assembly declared that special circumstances had arisen in Kosovo aimed at upending the constitutional order. A few days later, Kosovo Albanian MPs declared Kosovo to be an independent Republic. The Serbian Assembly then dissolved the Kosovo Assembly. This officially dissolved Assembly compiled a Draft Constitution, which is then accepted by a majority of Albanians in a local referendum. In September 1990, the new Constitution of Serbia diminished Kosovo’s autonomy even further.

A period of discrimination and repression against the Albanian population in Kosovo ensued. Albanian radio and television was limited, and newspapers were closed down. Albanian employees in public enterprises were laid off en masse, including school teachers. Students were unable to attend classes taught in the Albanian language. A number of professors at the University of Prishtina were dismissed. An informal school system then developed in Kosovo, and classes were held in private homes. Albanians boycotted the elections for the National Assembly of Serbia in 1992, instead holding their own. Thus, a “parallel system” was created, with a shadow government that provided services to Kosovo Albanians. A declaration on the rights of national minorities adopted by the Serbian Assembly in 1992 laid the blame for the human rights situation on the Albanians.

As the crisis developed, steps were taken to resolve it. In September 1996, an agreement on the normalization of the education system and the return of Albanian teachers and students to schools was signed. In March 1998, an agreement to reopen schools and universities was signed, allowing both Serbian and Albanian students to use the premises. These agreements were not enforced.

Armed Conflict 1998-1999

The crisis in Kosovo escalated into an armed conflict between the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (FRY), as it was called at the time, and Serbia on one side, and the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) on the other. The conflict lasted from 1998 until the end of the NATO intervention in June 1999. The two sides held differing views on the resolution of the crisis: the FRY/Serbian authorities insist that any solution for Kosovo must respect territorial integrity, sovereignty, and FRY/Serbia’s internationally recognized borders. The Kosovo Albanian representatives wanted a referendum held, which would ultimately lead to Kosovo’s independence.

During 1998 and early 1999, diplomatic efforts were made to solve the armed conflict by peaceful means. The Contact Group, consisting of representatives from the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Italy, the United States, and Russia, took part in the negotiations. The Contact Group rejected the idea of an independent Kosovo, and insisted that the province be given greater autonomy. The best chance to solve the crisis came in the form of the agreements of October 1998, which entailed deploying a civilian mission, a reduction in military and police personnel in Kosovo, and their disarmament. However, these agreements were not binding for the KLA, as it was not a signatory, so the number of incidents continued to rise. The situation deteriorated, and the FRY/Serbia once again employed disproportionate force.

In February 1999, the Rambouillet negotiations commenced. The two sides stick to their positions on a possible solution: maintaining territorial integrity vs. independence. The failure of diplomatic efforts to solve the Kosovo conflict is the consequence of a combination of reasons – not least the intractability of both sides, and the way the negotiations were led.

NATO Intervention

The threat of NATO intervention was present throughout 1998. After negotiations collapsed, on March 24th 1999, air strikes commenced, lasting until June 10^th 1999. The stated aim of the intervention was to prevent a humanitarian catastrophe in Kosovo. NATO aircraft struck targets across FRY, causing damage and destruction to a large number of targets. In addition to military facilities, civilian facilities were also hit.

Diplomatic efforts to end the crisis continued, with the key interlocutors being representatives from Finland and Russia. In early June 1999, FRY/Serbian officials accepted a peace proposal. The Military Technical Agreement between the International Security Force (KFOR) and the FRY/Serbia was signed on June 9^th 1999. The Agreement calls for the deployment of international security forces in Kosovo and a gradual withdrawal of FRY/Serbian troops.

On June 10^th 1999, the United Nations Security Council adopted Resolution 1244, which provided for the withdrawal of armed forces, the demilitarization of the KLA, and the creation of a safe environment for the return of refugees and displaced persons. The Resolution authorized the formation of an international civilian mission with the purpose of establishing a temporary administration for Kosovo.

Along with FRY/Serbia’s military and police personnel, two hundred thousand Serbs and other non-Albanians left Kosovo^[1].

Epilogue

During the armed conflict in Kosovo in 1998 and 1999, 13,535 people were killed: 10,812 Albanians, 2,197 Serbs, and 526 members of other ethnic communities. Civilians were the biggest casualties, with 10,111 killed or disappeared; in the period between March 20^th and June 14^th 1999 alone, 7,431 civilians were killed.

As a result of NATO air strikes, 754 people lost their lives: 454 civilians, (219 Albanians, 207 Serbs and Montenegrins, 14 Roma, and 14 members of other ethnic communities) and 300 members of the armed forces (274 members of the FRY/Serbian armed forces, and 26 KLA members)^[2].

The International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) has ruled that units of the Yugoslav Army and police committed war crimes, crimes against humanity, and violated the laws and customs of war during the internal conflict in Kosovo. The Tribunal has ruled beyond reasonable doubt that persons in the highest echelons of politics, the military and police took part in a joint criminal enterprise with the goal of changing the ethnic balance in Kosovo and ensuring Serbian control. This state criminal plan was carried out by means of murder, deportation, forced resettlement, and banishment^[3].

The ICTY has also ruled that certain members of the KLA were responsible for violating the laws and customs of war, by subjecting imprisoned civilians in camps at Lapušnik and Babušnica to cruel treatment, leading to the deaths of two people, and by killing nine people. It was also determined that KLA members interrogated and molested two Serbs in April 1998, that a KLA soldier raped a woman in the KLA headquarters in Rznić in the summer of 1998, and that KLA members murdered seven people whose remains were found in the vicinity of the Radonjić Lake^[4]. In processing KLA crimes, the ICTY faced imprecise evidence, an inability to verify evidence, and marked difficulties in obtaining statements from a large number of witnesses. Many witnesses refused to testify before the Tribunal out of fear. The Tribunal stated that there was an impression that the trial had taken place in an atmosphere in which witnesses did not feel safe.

Towards an objective curriculum

The overview of the events in Kosovo described above is one of the possible ways in which the armed conflict from 1998 to 1999 could be taught. It is simultaneously short and comprehensive. The situation faced by Kosovo and Serbia today is the result of multiple, complex, interdependent, and asynchronous influences and causes, which is why such an overview is only a framework that cannot be understood outside of a wider social, political, and historical context. As such, it is by its nature scant and incomplete, and unable to fully explain everything. However, it is also perhaps the only possible overview in a post-conflict situation where there is a frozen conflict characterized by opposing narratives about the past, and a huge interethnic divide between communities, such as the one between Serbian and Albanian communities. Such an approach has the potential to open up space for dialogue and mutual understanding, as it approaches an extremely complex problem from the viewpoint of pure facts, free from appraisal and explanations. It is precisely the fact that it is incomplete that allows for questions to be asked, independent research to be conducted, and conversations to be started, which is the essence of historíe as knowledge gained through listening and inquiring.

At the same time, this overview of the events in Kosovo is more comprehensive than the history being taught in both countries’ schools, which deviates from the facts and approaches the topic superficially and with political motives. In this regard, there are more similarities than differences between them.

The Instrumentalization of Youth

The key similarity between the two education programs is the way they instrumentalize young people: The teaching of history is used to propagate and ingrain a desirable narrative about past events and their effects on the present. For young people in Kosovo, history is supposed to show the genesis, evolution, and success of the struggle for independence, and all events are perceived exclusively from that point of view, even when they had little or nothing to do with it^[5].

Thus, the 1974 Constitution is not mentioned in light of the autonomy it offered, but as the result of protests in the late 1960s, which called for, among other things, Kosovo to be granted the status of a Republic. Likewise, the demonstrations of the early 1980s are placed in the context of the struggle for independence rather than the struggle for social justice and political equality.

The political aspirations of the time are also misrepresented, omitting the fact that the future of Kosovo used was previously seen by Kosovar politicians within a Yugoslav framework, and that the idea of living together in a wider state was only given up in late 1991, when it became clear that this framework no longer formally existed.

On the other hand, Serbian textbooks^[6] aim to show how the dissolution of Yugoslavia and the loss of Kosovo were historically determined by events beyond Serbia’s control, and in which it had no allies to rely on. The 1974 Constitution allowed Kosovo more independence than was justified and “undermined Yugoslavia”^[7]. This was already evident a few years later, when Albanians put their “nationalist and separatist ambitions”^[8] in public view at the 1981 demonstrations. Serbia’s quixotic efforts to preserve the common state were insufficient to stand up to internal and external enemies. In spite of this, however, Serbia defied ultimatums and obstinately awaited international military intervention.

Both curricula neglect to mention efforts on both sides to resolve the crisis peacefully, as well as the agreements concluded as part of those efforts. Compromises accepted during those talks, which sometimes necessitated that political positions were changed, are a special taboo.

The most obvious similarity, however, lies in the way victims of the war are portrayed, where both curricula choose to only list their own victims, while exaggerating their suffering, and failing to cite sources. Textbooks from Kosovo do not recognize KLA victims, nor the criminal proceedings before the ICTY; Serbian textbooks do not contain a single sentence about mass crimes, deportations, or hiding the bodies of Kosovo Albanians in secret mass graves, and, unexpectedly, fail to mention crimes against Serbs and other non-Albanians committed by the KLA.

The most surprising decision by the Serbian authorities is to have textbooks completely omit the armed conflict from 1998 to 1999, as well as the period of crisis, discrimination, and repression against Albanians that preceded and led to the armed conflict. Young people in Serbia learn that Albanians in Kosovo strove toward separatism, and in the end, with the help of the international community and by means of bombing that caused enormous human losses and destruction, finally got their way.

On the other hand, textbooks from Kosovo contain an apotheosis of the military struggle for independence, ignoring the position that was dominant before the war - that of non-violent opposition to repression. The military conflict is accordingly very prominent, and used as an opportunity to legitimize the KLA as a party to the conflict that led to the final outcome, and not as a party whose demilitarization was a component of post-war agreements.

History as a National Programme

There are several long-term consequences of this approach to teaching history, which are difficult to rectify. The most obvious is the inability of the communities involved to reach out to one another due to these conflicting teachings about the past. A self-victimizing narrative that refuses to recognize the suffering of others will fail to see the importance of dialogue with them, and will base its arguments on the culpability and crimes of the other side. Furthermore, perceiving events as having been imposed from outside serves to maintain the conviction that the current solution is unnatural and temporary, and that, if the political conditions should change, it too can be overturned. This makes it impossible for a political solution to a conflict to become a societal solution, thereby freezing the potential for conflict.

Insisting on militarism fails to uphold dialogue and negotiations as methods of conflict resolution, which makes it more likely that future participants in public and political life in both countries will reach for violent solutions, instead of dialogue and compromise.

A less obvious consequence is that treating young people as a formless mass to be molded as desired and necessary, in addition to being ethically wrong, could be counterproductive. Young people do not live in isolation (anymore); they have contact with members of other communities, and the freedom and desire to seek out information, which is ever more available, on their own.

By teaching history as a national programme rather than learning about past events based on reliable evidence could deepen mistrust in the education system among young people, given that they are witnessing one reality while being taught another at school. And while some young people will inevitably accept the imposed narrative and continue down the path of simplification and stereotyping, many others may take an opportunistic approach and treat education as just one of the necessary steps in growing up, and not as one that is supposed to equip them with knowledge and skills, develop their critical thinking, and empower them to become active in the protection of human rights, democracy, and the rule of law^[9].

A different history lesson on the armed conflict in Kosovo from 1998 to 1999 is one based on alternative ways of teaching young people about the recent past that continues to shape their present. A fact-based approach to teaching is the foundation of history as an academic discipline, so this could be an opportunity for history teaching to regain its original direction in both countries. This is especially true because Serbia and Kosovo are fortunate enough to have an abundance of resources to rely on when preparing history curricula: Over 3,000 pages of ICTY verdicts, which have been determined to be accurate beyond reasonable doubt, provide a reliable and credible source of information; evidence presented to the court provides a direct insight into documents relevant for expanding lessons and deepening knowledge, especially as these documents would otherwise be unavailable to researchers. Victim testimonies help put a human face on certain historical facts and events that took place a long time ago, greatly increasing a society’s capacity for solidarity, understanding, and acceptance.

In this way, we could start expecting even more from our education – to teach us to respect diversity and equality, making us more accessible to one another, and making dialogue with other communities commonplace, and not just a formal demand as part of international processes that the countries are involved in, or toward which they strive.

Translated by Nemanja Georgijević