Kosovo President Ibrahim Rugova Dies at 61
Kosovo Leader Ibrahim Rugova Dies
PRISTINA, Serbia and Montenegro - Kosovo President Ibrahim Rugova, icon of the ethnic Albanian drive to win independence from Serbia, died on Saturday, a source close to his office said.
Rugova, 61, was diagnosed with lung cancer in Sept. 2005 and had been undergoing treatment at his residence in Pristina.
His death comes just days before the United Nations is due to launch negotiations to decide whether Kosovo’s majority ethnic Albanians win the outright independence they want.
Ibrahim Rugova was the only head of state I’ve ever met. Well, I didn’t exactly meet him as much as I just ran across him at the Pristina headquarters of the Democratic League of Kosovo. It was 1995, and I was working for Mercy Corps, and being the idealistic and naive relief worker I was at the time, I thought I’d try to get an audience with the leader of Albanian political aspirations in Kosovo. I’ve long-since forgotten why, but it seemed a good idea at the time.
Getting to his office wasn’t exactly like trying to get an audience with the US President or the Pope. In 1995, you could pretty much walk into the LDK offices and say “hi” without anyone stopping you. The day that I went there, I saw Rugova emerge from his office, surrounded by a cadre of LDK types. all of whom were chatterring frantically in Albanian. As they brushed past me, it became clear that I wasn’t going to have an opportunity to meet, much less speak with Rugova, so I went on my way. Just try doing that at the White House….
Rugova over the years became the face of the nonviolent strain of Kosovo’s political aspirations. LDK never advocated armed, violent resistance, and his shadow government worked hard within the international community to represent Kosovo’s majority-Albanian community. Though his popularity with those he represented waxed and waned over the years, he managed to carve a niche for himself as the face of the collective Albanian desire for independence from the brutal and repressive Serbian government, which ruled Kosovo as the Serbian birthright they felt it to be. To call Kosovo a police state under Serbian rule would have an understatement. Yet Rugova persisted in his quest. Though he did not live to see his dream realized, Kosovo today is a much freer and safer place for the Albanian community. The province may not officially be free of Serbia, but since the 1999 war, they have achieved a de facto independence that they could only have dreamed of during my time there.
Legally part of Serbia, Kosovo has been run by the United Nations since 1999, when NATO bombing drove out Serb forces accused of atrocities against separatist rebels.
Rugova has no clear successor in his faction-ridden Democratic League of Kosovo and no plans for his replacement at the helm of the Kosovo negotiating team have been announced.
The Sorbonne-educated literature professor was the architect of a decade of passive resistance to Serb domination from 1989, when former Yugoslav strongman Slobodan Milosevic stripped the province of its autonomy.
Most Americans have never heard of Ibrahim Rugova, and could probably care less about him or his accomplishments. After all, it’s not like he was Gandhi, who managed to use his philosophy of nonviolent resistance to secure the freedom of the Indian subcontinent from British rule. No, Rugova’s accomplishments were on a much smaller scale, but Kosovo’s Albanians nonetheless owe him a huge debt of gratitude. Because of the dedication of Ibrahim Rugova and his LDK party, the plight of Kosovo’s Albanian community was kept before the international community. Without that dedication, the 1999 war that finally rid Kosovo’s Albanians of their Serbian oppressors might never have taken place.
Though I have written extensively about my time in Kosovo, I can’t begin to do justice to what Ibrahim Rugova did to achieve the dream of peace and independence for Kosovo’s Albanians. Perhaps someday, when Kosovo is an independent democracy, people there will look back and recognize the debt of gratitude they owe Rugova for his years of hard work on their behalf. It would be a fitting tribute to a man who dedicated his life to his people.