An e-mail

I love Peace

These days, I and my work colleges received one e-mail from one American who used to work with us in Kosova for almost three years. What’s make him different from others was the fact that he used to know a lot about Balkans history. Now he is far away from here, he is on Iraq and when he heard about our President Rugova’s death he send us this e-mail to offer his sincery condolences.
I want to thank him and same time I want to share that e-mail with all readers of my blogg. Thanks Gery..

Here is a paper:

"First I offer my sincerest condolences on the passing of President Rugova. If Kosova attains independence, which I think likely, that will be his great legacy. Albanians in general and Kosovars in particular had been portrayed as barbaric savages and ruthless killers. Blood feuds, the Kanun of Lek, the Kacak bands of Azem Behta and Shota and others, the lawless Drenica Valley with the Jashari's and Tahir Mejha (I am sure my spelling is wrong on some of this) and on and on. Those are the kinds of things the world heard, if they heard anything at all, and it was written by enemies of Albanians. But that is all people heard so they believed it. Not all of it. Not that Albanians had only recently climbed down from the trees and lost their tails as some Serbian Nationalist wrote but your people were perceived as bloodthirsty and uncivilized.

Then in the late 1990's Kosova came to the clear attention of the world. The media, especially television, brought your beautiful homeland into people's living rooms and they could see and hear for themselves what was happening. They saw the Trepca miners marching in peaceful protest to Prishtina. They saw Albanian villages in flames. They saw almost a million people herded onto trains or riding on tractors to refugee camps and they saw slaughtered civilians in places like Racak. They asked themselves "who are the civilized ones and who are the bloodthirsty ones?" I think that was mostly because of Ibrahim Rugova.

I know that your people have always been brave. They have fought against overwhelming odds throughout your history. I know many wanted to fight. That they were willing to die for their families and beliefs and freedom. I think that were it not for Dr. Rugova that is what would have happened. The world would have seen mayhem from both sides and not have gotten emotionally involved because of what had been said about Kosovars in the past. The Serbs would have only been defending them-selves against barbarians just as Milosevic said. That is what Milosevic wanted to happen, what he thought would happen. If he could provoke the Kosovars into full scale war he felt he could justify cleansing the land of them. But Rugova defeated him. He used passive resistance, a tactic I believe was totally foreign to the Albanian psyche, that the Serbian Nationalists were helpless against. He has been called the 'Gandhi of the Balkans' and he was as successful as Mohandas Gandhi was in India. I know the KLA (UCK) formed and resisted but by then the damage to Milosevic had been done. By then resistance was seen as justified and understandable.

Today Kosova is on the verge of probable independence. I believe that were it not for Ibrahim Rugova it wouldn't be. If Kosova does attain independence people will be thanking Bill Clinton and Wesley Clark and NATO among others. None of them had as much to do with it as Dr. Rugova. I think only one other person had as much to do with your freedom as President Rugova. Ironically that person is Slobodan Milosevic. Were it not for him and his policies I doubt it would be much different than it was 20 years ago. You have a big statue of Skanderbiu in Prishtina. I imagine you will soon have another of Dr. Rugova. I know that nobody will agree with me but I think you should have a third one (a small one) to Milosevic. It should read "Slobo! WE the People of the Democratic Republic of Kosova thank you for our Freedom and Independence." I understand he has high blood pressure. I imagine if he found out about that he would have a stroke. If you do attain independence I think it is a shame that President Dr. Ibrahim Rugova didn't live to see the fruit from the tree of freedom he planted".


Gary