TV interview for Televizioni Opinion, Prizren, Kosovo

Description

In 1989 the ethnolinguistic cultural and political autonomy for Albanians in Serbia's Autonomous Province of Kosovo was liquidated. During the 1990s the situation led to the emergence of the unofficial (underground) Albanian society in the province, complete with separate schools, healthcare institutions and cultural organizations. In 1999 Serbia decided to expel all the Albanians and other Muslims from the province, leading to the Nato interventions that reversed this ethnic cleansing. The international administration for the postwar Kosovo reestablished a modicum of stability and led to the independence of Kosovo in 2008, which is questioned by Serbia and the new state's Serbian population.
In my talk I proposed that the current stalemate may be, to a degree, overcome by depoliticizing language and resigning from it as the main basis of defining, building and legitimating nations. Without that, the project of building a bilingual Kosovan nation for Kosovo, as set out in the state's constitution, cannot be successful. The price to pay for such a failure may be a renewed conflict and even war.