Our President Jahjaga gave an interview to the Washington Times in December. When Jahjaga was asked about the future of Kosovo, she said that Kosovars should overcome the past, not remain stuck in the worst parts of the past, but instead look towards the future. Her message was deliberately optimistic and inspiring, and we need a little optimism and inspiration. But I do not agree with the background of what the President said.

We don’t need less history. We need to release the past. We justify many of our social beasts with “historical circumstances.” From here comes our worship of almighty figures (alive and deceased). From here stems our belief, sometimes fake, to move “forward”, towards “Europe”, towards “the West” – to “overcome” the past, as if it were a step that can be overcome without thinking about it twice. We don’t need a simplified history where Serbia and Kosovo are walking hand in hand towards the European Union as two friends. Or a history where PDK won the war, where Ibrahim Rugova was Kosovo’s Gandhi, or where the Western world has a crush on Kosovo. These are stories that overlook the depth and diversity of contexts and people. They’re tedious.

I want a complicated history. I want a public discourse that is not dominated only by big men or unmistakable intellectuals. If we don’t respect how complex we and our collective stories are, we are condemned to live in a tyrannically simple world. At the end of the interview Jahjaga said that we are still paying the price of the past. This is true, but not in Jahajga’s sense. Our problem is not that we still harbor hatred towards Serbs. The problem is that we can become oppressive towards ourselves, with those same techniques that were once used to suppress us. This is seen in our inability to ask for responsibility for the wounds of the past and in our readiness to repeat the evil things of the past. What are license plates “Proba” but repetition of a time when Albanians of Kosovo were treated as a problem only because they existed? How is this not a repetition of the time when being Albanian meant thousands of small and daily embarrassments? I know that isn’t how it always was and how it was for all, but I am convinced that a) those people constitute a minority, and b) the “golden age” of Albanians in Yugoslavia began with the opening of the University of Pristina in 1970 and ended with the protests of the 80s. After oppression, deportation, the war and the bombing, we returned to an agreement that embodies the old relationship. The difference is that before the war we knew that relationship was a function of the occupation, but now it is being legitimized from within and is praised as a breakthrough in the talks.

This should concern us. The blessing of “Proba” by people whose duty is to care for the dignity of the Kosovars is worrying. There is no dignity when the license plates of your state need to be covered with “temporary” plates in a neighboring state. What does “temporary” mean? That we, and our state, are temporary. Things without a history are usually temporary.

The article was originally written in Albanian.  
Photo Credit: Jonny Wan

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