Kosovo: How Myths and Truths Started a War / Edition 1

by Julie A. Mertus

Overview

Julie Mertus provides one of the first comprehensive looks at the explosive situation in Kosovo, where years of simmering tensions between Serbs and Albanians erupted in armed conflict in 1998. In a profound and detailed study of national identity and ethnic conflict, Mertus demonstrates how myths and truths can start a war. She shows how our identity as individuals and as members of groups is defined through the telling and remembering of stories. Real or imagined, these stories shape our understanding of ourselves as heroes, martyrs, conquerors, or victims. Once we see ourselves as victims, Mertus claims, we feel morally justified to become perpetrators.

Based on a series of interviews conducted in Kosovo, Serbia proper, and Macedonia, this book is one of the first extended treatments of the years leading to war in Kosovo. Mertus examines the formation of Serbian national identity, and closely scrutinizes the hostilities of the region. She shows how myth and experience inform the political ideologies of Kosovo, and explores how these competing beliefs are created and perpetuated. This sobering overview of the region provides a window into a complex struggle whose repercussions reach far into the international community.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780520218659
Publisher:	University of California Press
Publication date:	08/09/1999
Edition description:	First Edition
Pages:	400
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

Julie A. Mertus is Professor of Peace and Conflict Studies at American University. She is the coeditor of The Suitcase: Refugees' Voices from Bosnia and Croatia (California, 1997), coauthor of Open Wounds: Human Rights Abuses in Kosovo (1994), and the author of Local Action/Global Change (1999). Mertus's articles on the Kosovo crisis have appeared in major newspapers.

Read an Excerpt

Preface

The initial version of this book was completed in August 1998 and revised in the fall and winter of 1998-1999--before the NATO bombing of Kosovo in March 1999. The "hot spring" of 1999 might not have occurred if the international commuunity had heard the voices in the stories that appear in this book.

As of this writing, the international community faces a terrible quandry. Milosevic has not moved one step closer toward signing a peace agreement. The very people NATO wants to help, Kosovo Albanians and anti-Milosevic Serbs, have been placed in great danger. Many have been murdered, tortured, or disappeared, including leading human rights and humanitarian activists and independent journalists. Many more have fled the country or are in hiding.

The absence of international monitors in Kosovo has given a green light to Serb "cleansing" of Albanians. A sea of humanity is headed toward Kosovo's borders. They are nearly all Albanians. When Kosovo Albanians cross the border, Serbs force them to leavetheir passports and identity papers behind. They will probably be unable to return without proof of citizenship. If bombing ends, the ethnic cleansing will only intensify. But if bombing continues and no other action is taken, the door-to-door slaughter of Albanians in Kosovo will also continue.

This book explains how the international community created this untenable situation by failing to support the Albanians in their initial passive resistance to brutal Serbian repression. Only after the world community failed to respond to their nonviolent quest for freedom did Albanians take up arms. Although the social movement that supports this quest comprises diverse ideologies, it is united by a single drive—the quest for freedom from oppression. Even defeated, Kosovo Albanians will never give up this dream. Unless an acceptable solution is found soon, Albanian efforts to achieve autonomy or independence for Kosovo will destabilize the region for years to come.

For over ten years, Serbian authorities bru! tal

Table of Contents

Preface: Understanding Kosovo Through "Truths"
1. The 1981 Student Demonstrations
2. "Impaled with a Bottle": The Martinovic Case, 1985
3. "A Shot Against Yugoslavia: The "Paracin Massacre," 1987
4. The Poisoning of Albanian School Children, 1990
5. Step One for NGOs: The Root Cause of Conflict
Postscript, 1997: A Wall of Silence
Postscript, 1998: Kosovo in Conflict

Editorial Reviews

An essential document for understanding the crisis in Kosovo, this hard-hitting study blends political analysis, history and interviews that Ohio Northern University law professor Mertus conducted in Kosovo, Serbia proper and Macedonia between 1993 and 1998. Mertus, who completed this book just months before the NATO bombing campaign began, argues that the international community's years of inaction pushed the Kosovo Albanians away from a posture of passive resistance to Serb repression and toward militant demands for an independent state. She establishes a systematic pattern of human rights abuses perpetrated by Serb police and paramilitary forces against Kosovo Albanians since 1989, and she shows how Serb leader Slobodan Milosevic, employing state-controlled media, used Serbian claims to Kosovo (whose population is 90% ethnic Albanian) to build his power base while whipping up nationalist sentiment into fervid hatred of Kosovo Albanians. Western perceptions that Islamic fundamentalism must lie at the heart of the Kosovo Albanian movement for autonomy are off the mark, argues Mertus, because the Kosovo Albanians are both Muslim and Christian. She structures her revealing narrative around a number of polarizing events, including the 1981 Kosovo Albanian student demonstrations, which erupted into a populist revolt, and the alleged poisoning in 1990 of thousands of Kosovo Albanian schoolchildren (variously blamed on Serbs or Albanian separatists). Her study concludes with broad recommendations to humanitarian, relief and conflict-resolution groups working to rebuild shattered Kosovo. Photos. (Aug.) Copyright 1999 Cahners Business Information.

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

Mertus (law, Ohio Northern Univ.) believes that the current conflict in Kosovo has its origins in recent history and media reports that spread fear, not in the far past. She draws a sharp distinction between truth as fact (what actually happened) and the perception of truth in people's minds (what they believe happened). The latter is much stronger in coloring how groups view each other after any conflict. Like Mertus's previous book, The Suitcase: Refugee Voices from Bosnia and Croatia, this title is based largely on interviews in the region, conducted between 1993 and 1995 with individuals who were students (grade school through university) in 1981. In all cases, the readiness of one group to assume the worst about the other indicates how difficult conflict resolution in this part of the world will be. Mertus concludes with observations on the types of nongovernmental organizations working in the region and recommendations on how they should act in the shadow of such deep-seated perceptual differences. Specialized collections should consider this book.--Marcia L. Sprules, Council on Foreign Relations Lib., New York Copyright 1999 Cahners Business Information.

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