12

Religion and Politics among

Albanians of Southeastern Europe
Isa Blumi

Albanians inhabiting Kosovo, Macedonia, Montenegro, and Southern

Serbia face a number of individual and communal challenges today as a
result of conflicts regarding political and economic ascendancy in their
post-conflict societies. Despite being in quite distinct formal political
settings, Albanians are often caught in the difficult position of deflecting
external associations that still orient foreign interests policies toward
the region in terms of generic ethnonational, sectarian, or, at best, party
affiliations. As elsewhere in the Balkans, Albanian politicians in Kosovo
and Macedonia wishing to survive the integration of their societies
into global affairs have learned to work within these crude associations. As a result of such adjustments, the reapplication of tropes about
the realities of distinctive ethnoreligious communities in the Balkans
has created important political niches for a variety of agents of change
and/or continuity. One of the more important ones has been the commodification (or politicization) of religion, as seen in the continued use
of the Serbian Orthodox Church as a totem of political legitimacy and
the evocation of Islam as a monolith within various societies. Especially
in highly charged political environments like Kosovo, where international forces remain key players in the daily affairs of Albanians, Islam
and Catholicism have also been mobilized by stakeholders whose political opportunism seeks to shape community-building agendas and gain
leverage in domestic and international settings. In this chapter, the particularly convoluted history of the commodification of Islam in Kosovo
will be studied in the larger context of post-independence adjustments
by the major players involved. In the process of highlighting some of
the important shifts taking place among various Muslim constituencies since 1999, this chapter also suggests that these conjunctures of
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strategies and political expediency may contribute to future instabilities

in largely neglected corners of the region.

Independence and new political pathologies

The formal declaration of Kosovos political independence on 17
February 2008 has been treated as an example of a way of thinking
among domestic and foreign stakeholders that has empowered certain
agents of change to appropriate new forms of communalism. To the
more optimistic observers, Kosovos birth introduced a new phase in
the regions development, including laying the groundwork for its reintegration into larger Europe, if not politically then at least economically.
At the same time, however, others feel that Kosovos new status has cast
a shadow of uncertainty over the western Balkans long-term stability.
To skeptics, the very fact that the country still sits on some putative
ethnic fault line leaves it susceptible to violence.1
Both critics of Kosovos current trajectory and pragmatists who consider it a viable long-term solution are missing crucial aspects of not only
Kosovos but the entire regions dynamic: the diversity of local agents.
As discussed below, the regions reputation for violence is largely a product of a confusing intersection of international interests and a plethora
of competing local and regional entrepreneurs exploiting the underlying weaknesses of an ever-shifting international regime. Indeed, the
regions modern history has been infused with attempts to manage it
through a set of mutually beneficial political alliances between local
stakeholders and external interests; a rule by proxy, so to speak, has
been the preferred method of rule in the region.
Sadly, this violent process of political gamesmanship and opportunism has often been pigeonholed into a generic ethnic conflict
that simply cannot suffice as a complete explanation for what has
transpired over the last 20 years. What is largely forgotten when analysts study the region, for instance, is that because the stakes are quite
high for any number of external interests, local politics have spawned
complicated intersecting interests that do not go away because the
United Nations Security Council (UNSC) issues a resolution or the
Russians/Americans negotiate a compromise in Helsinki. Locals have
a role to play in the way in which the international community and
individual external interests first understand their interests and then
intervene in the region. Put differently, the motivations for conflict are
diverse and far too dynamic to pin down to one sociological factor or the
scattered interests of states and/or commercial interests. Each generation

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of stakeholders in the region, depending on the larger regional dynamics, orient their associations to best secure leverage and, when necessary,
protection from persecution or economic marginalization.
Where external actors most wreak havoc in the region is by
empowering a few representatives who then monopolize the lucrative
redistribution of state revenues, foreign aid, and the all-too-narrowly
distributed educational patronage provided by the outside world. But
studying these relationships without appreciating the manner in which
individuals and collectives become relevant enough for such partnerships in the first place leaves the analysis hollow. Unfortunately, the
vast majority of inhabitants are conceptually externalized from a process
that actually entails considerable interaction between putative representatives of religious or ethnic groups and outside interests. By way of
excluding the foundations to any number of local surrogates authority in order for academics and policy-makers to identify a leader
means that, in the medium and long term, new forms of political
alliance emerge under the radar screen of those attempting to manage
the affairs of the Balkans via proxies. This means that social movements, especially in rural areas, can come up and undermine rational
programs of social control from above. This has already been the case in
Yugoslavia as Serbian-dominated elements failed to successfully suppress
rural Albanians after World War Two.

Subduing Yugoslavias Albanians: The religion card

For decades in the Balkans, religion has been a tool of modern state
manipulation. Not widely known is that the Yugoslav state, which
inherited the rich cultural mosaic of the post-war Balkans, used these
homogenizing forces to help to subjugate its dangerous populations.
The central issue is the historic diversity of religious practice in southern Yugoslavia Kosovo in particular and the efforts by Belgrade
to impose a rigid and centralized universal doctrine through stateappointed officials. During the height of socialist Yugoslavia, efforts
were made to confine legitimate power within the Islamic community to a specific group of Muslim leaders (ulema) who were designated by Belgrade to represent all of Yugoslavias Muslims. This policy,
recognizing the distinct doctrinal variances practiced in the Balkans,
cynically empowered Bosnian Slav Muslims in order to disseminate a
centralized (read Slav-centric) and homogenous Islam throughout the
regions where Yugoslavias non-Slav populations Albanians, Turks, and
Roma lived. Centralizing Islam to fit a number of state goals the

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homogenization of Yugoslav linguistic and cultural identity and the

weakening of minority communities often manifested itself in longterm tensions at the institutional and the ethnonational level between
Bosnian Slav Muslims and their Albanian, Roma, and Turkish counterparts. Indeed, the antagonism that was initiated by the attempt to
create a single Islamic Community (Islamica Zajednica, IZ) run by
government-appointed ulema eventually manifested itself in the creation of a number of local institutions inside Kosovo that have left a
legacy that is little appreciated today.
The central tension lies in the ambition to control Kosovos (and
Macedonias) complicated and diverse religious life under the auspices
of a single Islamic mechanism that would report directly to Belgrade.
In line with these efforts of streamlining the religious life of the
population was a coordinated effort to dilute the non-Slav element
in Yugoslavia. Through the forced migration of non-Slav Muslims
to Turkey (upwards of 300,000 Albanians left during the 19481962
period alone) and the often violent closure of unlicenced mosques
and schools (medrese), Turkish, Albanian, and Roma Muslims faced
significant pressures to abandon their centuries-old practices.2
From an institutional standpoint, the problem for Belgrade and its
Bosnian allies based in Sarajevo was that the Islamic community was
not at all coherent. This lack of homogenization should not come as
a surprise. Islam had reached the Balkans by way of roaming spiritual
leaders (shaykhs) who proselytized in rural areas among the Christian
Albanian and Slav populations of the late medieval period. These
shaykhs were invariably attached to Sufi orders whose unorthodox
practices often bridged doctrinal gaps between Christianity and Islam
by adapting local beliefs into reformulated theology. For this reason,
Kosovo was until the 19981999 war a unique place to study the diversity of human spirituality that existed in the early modern world, since
most of these Sufi orders still practiced in the original village mosques in
which they had been established in the 15th, 16th and 17th centuries.3
The practices of these Sufi orders were uniquely local and reflected a
spiritual tolerance that acknowledged and often engaged local Christian
customs in a complicated fusion of cultural practices that was largely
condemned by the Serb, Greek, and Sunni Islamic institutions of the late
19th century. By the end of World War Two, thanks to the often brutal
homogenization of the national territories of Balkan states, it was only
in Macedonia and Kosovo that these unorthodox practices remained,
confounding Yugoslavias efforts to better control doctrinal content and
the day-to-day experiences of peasant communities.

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In Titos Yugoslavia, the creation of the IZ aimed to maintain the

responsibility of training Yugoslavias religious leaders who would then
control the religious, doctrinal, and cultural content of all Muslim institutions in the country. The creation of this organization was specifically
meant to erase the diversity present inside the country with respect to
worship outside sanctioned institutions. The first act of the Islamic community of Yugoslavia, in fact, was to assert complete and unchallenged
control over religious practice by banning all unsanctioned Muslim
institutions.
In 1952, for example, it prohibited the work of Sufi orders in the
country, which included the aggressive policy of closing down unregistered mosques. It is instructive that it was the non-Slav and nonSunni (Orthodox) communities that were targeted for this persecution.4
As Sarajevo increased its oppression of, in particular, Albanian Sufi traditions, the notion of what was a proper religious life dovetailed
into that of what was a proper gauge of ones political loyalty to the
Yugoslav state.5 What that meant in respect to Kosovo was a concerted effort to indoctrinate Albanian Muslims by the IZ. The first goal
of this campaign was to draw Albanian Muslims away from independent and highly localized Sufi tekkes, either by closing them down
or by convincing Albanians of their moral bankruptcy. In addition to
the physical removal of these sites, IZ-trained imams (spiritual leaders) fed urban Albanians a daily appetite of a religious doctrine that
stressed unity among Muslims and a dissolution of ethnic loyalties
that would translate into a spirit of brotherhood. Among those interviewed in Kosovo during research, who grew up attending the mosques
of the Alexander Rankovic period, at least those operating under the
guidance of an IZ-approved (read Belgrade-approved) imam, the underlying message was clear. Without exception, the Bosnian imams who
were sent to Kosovo and Macedonia in the 1950s (later, Albanians
trained in Sarajevo would take their place with the creation of the
Islamic community of Kosovo based in Prishtina) all preached a doctrine of unity behind Islam that specifically targeted Catholic (but
not Orthodox) Christians as the primary enemies of not only Muslims
but the Yugoslav nation as a whole. In order to address this contradiction between policy and reality, many efforts were made to eradicate
the Catholic community that still lived in the region. One tactic was
encouraging animosity between the majority Albanian Muslim population and the Catholic Albanian community. That this method of
indoctrination was the same in Prizren, Gjakova, and Peja throughout the 1950s and early 1960s suggests that Sarajevo was formulating

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and enacting a strategy to change the loyalties of Albanian Muslims

en masse.
It is interesting to note that this strategy was largely successful in
communities where the Sarajevo Islamic community had institutional
control, namely in the urban areas. Throughout the Tito era, however, rural Kosovar Albanian Muslims resisted the centralizing efforts of
Sarajevo and Sufi orders subsequently thrived. In the urban areas, on the
other hand, police control and strict enforcement of licenses helped to
shut down unsanctioned mosques and medreses. In response to this persecution from Sarajevo, the orders that survived in rural Kosovo became
increasingly active in addressing the centralizing efforts of Sarajevo,
eventually attracting many adherents from the urban areas as well.6
Informants suggest that there were secret organizations that mobilized
communities to help to finance and protect many of these lodges over
the decades. The very fact that these communities were able to survive
through the Rankovic period (i.e., until 1966) suggests a great deal of
collaboration between the institutions and their constituents. This level
of rural community activism also reflects the central role that these Sufi
orders played in the daily lives of most of Kosovos Albanians, a role
Belgrade had long been desperate to eliminate.
With the shifts of political power in Yugoslavia during the last constitutional phase in 1974, these underground networks surfaced as the
association of Sufi (Dervish) orders (Bashksia e Rradhve Dervishe
Islame Alijje, BRDIA) which was headed by Shaykh Xhemali Shehu
of the Rufai tekke based in Prizren. While immediately vilified by the
Islamic leaders based in Sarajevo, the BRDIA quickly became a cultural
force in Kosovos public life as locals flocked to these Albanian institutions. BRDIAs publication, Buletin HU, an invaluable source for the
organizations many efforts to untangle the disastrous and largely divisive practices of the previous 25 years, helped to spread the message to
tens of thousands of readers in urban Kosovo. By 1984, 126 Sufi lodges
throughout Kosovo joined the BRDIA, representing 50,000 dervishes,
which in 1998, according to a Serb sociologist based in Prishtina until
1999, reached a membership of 100,000.7 These numbers give us a sense
of the vastness of this phenomenon and the richness of pre 19981999
Kosovar Islamic life. Because of this popularity, among the orders that
operated in Kosovo until the mid-1990s the Rufai, Kaderi, Halveti, Sadi,
Bektashi, Nakshibendi, Sinani, Mevlevi, and Shazili all were deemed
unIslamic by Sarajevo.8
Again, the influence of these orders on local rural communities was
strong and thus feared by Belgrade and its surrogate institutions in

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Sarajevo. Importantly, this influence was also seen as a threat by the

now Kosovo-based wing of Sarajevos formal apparatus, the Bashksia
Islamike e Kosovs (BIK), which was created in the 1960s. In an
attempt to localize the institutional hostility to folk Muslim practices,
throughout the 1970s and 1980s, members of the BIK openly accused
local Sufi shaykhs of stealing the faithful away from Sunni orthodox mosques and aggressively stigmatized the tekkes in the mainstream
press as venues of mysticism and primitivism.9
The source of the fear was the Sufi orders organizing role in rural
Kosovar society. Sufi shaykhs traditionally played the roles of intermediaries in rural communities whenever a dispute arose. Their central
spiritual role extended, in other words, to a sociopolitical one that was
deemed essential for the functioning of rural Kosovar society, largely isolated from the rest of Yugoslavia. This role posed a long-term threat to
Belgrades attempts to assert more control over rural Kosovo, resulting
in a parallel system that even Rugovas Democratic League of Kosovo
(Lidhja Demokratike e Kosovs, LDK) in the 1990s failed to eliminate.
Here lies the crux of Kosovos long history of local governance and
self-reliance. It did not reside in the artificial and largely cosmetic structures claimed by the LDK but in the spiritual networks maintained by
the Sufi orders. It was these Sufi structures that maintained Kosovos
rural autonomy and they would have been the backbone of any selfsufficient, tight-knit community in the post 1998/1999 era if allowed to
survive.10
It was for the noted influence of Sufi shaykhs and their tekkes on rural
society that the war of 19981999 took on the anti-Islamic undertones that it did. It should be instructive that it was not the LDK that
was so systematically destroyed by the Miloevic regime. Rather, it was
the Sufi orders that had for centuries constituted the foundation for
Kosovar-Albanian society that was specifically targeted. At the height
of the 19981999 Serb sweep of Kosovo, it was the Sufi orders, their
centuries-old mosques, medreses, and even the shaykhs themselves who
were eliminated. It was clear that Miloevic, eelj, and the Serbian
nationalist elite were keen on forever eliminating the Sufi communities from Kosovo as it was they who had helped to maintain rural
Kosovar society resistance to Belgrade hegemony. At the very beginning
of the offensive in July 1998, for example, Belgrades primary targets
were the leaders of the Sufi orders. Shaykh Mujedin, an important leader
of the Dervish community and shaykh of the Halveti tekke in Rahovac,
was murdered by Serb police while praying. Mujedins death marked the
beginning of the end of the Sufis 600- year history in Kosovo, and like

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so much else of the Albanian heritage, the post-war realities have all but
assured that they will never come back.11
It is at this point that we begin to see the parallels in Yugoslavia
with neighboring socialist regimes of the post-war era. Kristen Ghodsees
work on Bulgarias Pomoks charts a similar trajectory of state-led hostility toward Muslims.12 In neighboring Albania, the especially violent
persecution of northern Gegs in the second half of the 20th century
led to a selective empowerment of southern Bektashi and Orthodox
Christians at the expense of Catholics and Sunni Muslims. Ultimately,
the campaign to secure power in the hands of a small class of allies to
Enver Hoxha led to the complete exclusion of religion from cultural
life in Albania. In this respect, state exploitation of religious bodies,
as in Yugoslavia, Bulgaria, Albania, and the Soviet Union, translated
into selective persecution of religious groups while others serving the
underlying interests of the state continued to expand institutional domination. This pattern seems to have continued after the collapse of these
socialist regimes.13
The religious establishment of Kosovo since 1999, for example,
is largely distorted by the physical elimination of much of rural
Kosovos historical spiritual base. That this spiritual tradition was far
more tolerant of cultural diversity and shared many notions of intersectarian cohabitation than the Islam as propagated by the Saudibased humanitarian agencies dominating Kosovos spiritual life today
creates a clear fissure in Kosovar society that for a vast majority,
in the context of the global war on Islamic terror, means that
they vilify and exclude people choosing a religious solution to their
very real, day-to-day material needs. In the devastation brought on
rural Kosovo, little has been done by the international community
to address these spiritual voids resulting in long-term problems for
the region as wealthy patrons, often surrogates of the United States
themselves, are outsourced to take care of the material needs of
Albanian poor.
Ironically, Rexhep Boja, the rebellious mufti of the BIK until being
removed in 2004 by a more pliant Naim Ternava, could have filled this
void.14 The problem was that, under the leadership of Boja, representing
the last remnants of a once strong, rural-based spiritual infrastructure,
the BIK itself had little of the material resources needed to help rebuild a
religious and educational infrastructure. Since the imposition of Ternava
as mufti, however, the theological/doctrinal battle with Saudi-backed
Salafists has ended and the BIK seems to be especially well-equipped to
undermine what is left of Kosovos Sufi traditions. This is a result of an

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alliance forged with the Saudi-based aid agencies, themselves more than
suitably equipped.
What has changed over the last half decade, where before these Saudi
groups were very public in their operations, is a circumspect approach
(after considerable exposure by some academics). Instructively, the efficiency in which this now flurry of locally-run programs has gone
about filling in a void in rural Kosovo not directly linked to the political machines created since 1999 hints at a sophisticated and global
agenda, something akin to a multinational cooperation seeking a dominant market share. The interesting thing is that the actual market
is not Kosovos society as a whole but a constituency forced out onto
the margins of Kosovo life. This largely unemployed and impoverished
majority is demonstrating the tell-tale signs of alienation as they are
exposed to economic adjustments that have crushed their capacities to
be self-sustainable and the political shenanigans of the emergent US-,
European Union-backed elite. At the same time, the campaign, especially targeting people at the theological level, seems to be consciously
trying to complete the task started by the Tito regime in the 1950s, with
Rankovic operating as the key operative.
The present monopolization of aid to desperately poor and devastated rural communities, many of which no longer have adult male
members, is paying long-term dividends to a confusing conjuncture of
interests. It should be noted that, in many ways, Saudi organizations
permitted to operate in Kosovo by the international community without much supervision have displayed the same institutional intolerance
toward Kosovos religious traditions as Belgrades Zajednica in the 1945
1991 period. That the last of Kosovos religious heterogeneous heritage
is literally being bulldozed by an organization that has similar hegemonic ambitions as its Yugoslav counterparts should prove to be a sorry
indictment of the international community, and Europes strategic miscalculations and virulent anti-Muslim sentiments. This serves as the
roots for the continued political chaos in Kosovo as a whole.

The root causes of failure

As manifested today on the fringes among so-called Wahhabi
groups and secular big tent movements like Albin Kurtis SelfDetermination that was until recently a viable alternative in rural
Kosovo to the major parties that are mostly regionally based, scores
of locals want nothing to do with the cronyism that has devastated
their lives. Rather, they seek representatives who articulate their

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alienation and frustration in variable terms that prove flexible and

adaptive, depending on their ever-changing local context. Revealingly,
the international community, and their Kosovar surrogates, have vilified
both kinds of what are grassroots affiliations the more visible SelfDetermination and the increasingly vilified, and thus underground
Wahhabis. The result of such narrowly defined boundaries for political activism in the larger national context manifested itself in new ways
in the recent elections in Kosovo held in December 2010.15
While Kurtis long opposition to the political order seems to have
moderated with his decision to formally participate in the December
2010 parliamentary elections, at the other end of Kosovos very specific
socioeconomic issues facing rural communities is the opportunistic vilification of those who associate with local religious charities with links to
the larger Salafist world. Ironically, in such a political environment that
rewards political loyalty, there is a real possibility of these Wahhabis
gaining from the subsequent chaos following Decembers elections as
their primary rival in rural Kosovo Kurtis Self-Determinism which
had until now remained out of party politics participates in the political party-dominated system. As such, the gravitation towards Prishtina
by rural Kosovos main champion promises to intensify the impression
that the Salafists are the only group not tainted by formal political
mechanisms.
What is important to conclude from this process of the possible further disentanglement of rural Kosovo from Prishtina is not so much a
statement of concern or a warning thus refusing to allow for current
Islamophobia to dictate how we interpret the viability of these local
dynamics over the fact fundamentalists/salafists have established a
quiet role among Kosovos politically, socially, and economically disaffected. Rather, it is to contrast the evolution of Kosovos overall political
culture which has marginalized many of Kosovos rural poor by crude
forms of political opportunism among cultural or economic elite by way
of exploiting the current hysteria over Islam to position themselves in a
larger regional, European, and US context.16
I predict that the primary reason for any future turmoil in Kosovo
will have its root causes in an analytical disconnect between the deep
politics that the Americans, Serbia, Israel, and other European interests play, one that legitimizes a classic rule-by-proxy regime and some
quite different sets of interests found in the neglected villages of Kosovo.
Revealingly, at its heart, this disconnect is not even acknowledged as
the local is lost at the formal, documentary level of those institutions implementing policies.17 As I argue throughout, those not directly

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represented by the political clans co-opted by the international regime

are today victims, leading to unmeasured suffering that will be the ultimate cause for the periodic outbreaks of large-scale violence in Kosovo
as many become attracted to radical ideas that seemingly address their
frustrations.
To fully appreciate how this has evolved from a time when the international community had the complete support of Kosovos population
in the summer of 1999, the rest of this chapter highlights the diversity of actors involved in the day-to-day operations of even such a
large (and expensive) undertaking as intervention in Kosovos recent
conflicts. Ultimately what emerges from reading a deeper and more
complex local intersection of actors is that, as much as one tier of
the international apparatus may assume a certain local passivity (and
actively seek compliant local partners to serve that role of representative intermediaries), other elements within the assorted international
interests especially large development/construction companies, energy
and communications consortium and the various intelligence agencies
like Mossad, CIA (with Saudi assistance), M16, or the Serbian BIA are
investing considerable resources into undermining local stability while
redefining the direction of the crisis always looming on the horizon.
Take the actual post-conflict period as an example of these contradictory forces creating far less stability than advertised. After 78
days of less than effective military action against Serbian forces, a
series of agreements were negotiated between Belgrade, its allies, and
NATO forces (Albanians were left out). Among the improvements
offered to Albanians were the promise of immediate security, economic
development, and a scheme to permit them to live in Kosovo to enjoy
substantial autonomy within the confines of the successor states
of Yugoslavia, Serbia, and Montenegro. Questions of status would be
decided at a later, undetermined date.18 There was a gaping hole left in
the post-conflict Balkans as a result of this equivocation. The wording of
UN Security Council (UNSC) resolution 1244, for example, suggests that
the previously mentioned discordance among participant states resulted
in a purposefully vague document that left the door open for Serbian
troops at one point to return to perform functions in accordance to
annex 2.19 The post-conflict trajectory of the Kosovo issues, in other
words, has not been certain. As a result, contingencies on the ground
had a great deal to say about the future status of the region and,
as claimed here, these contingencies often forced the various interests
within the international community to change course.

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The indeterminate nature of the cessation of hostilities immediately

raised concerns among many inside Kosovos new military/political elite
that something was not right with the agreement. This was only highlighted with the arrival and initial implementation of the UN mandated
regime.20 Since June 1999 a number of incongruent and often conflicting agencies from the international community adopted measures
that would not concede local participation under a provisional selfgoverning framework that had already existed since the war, namely
the provisional government of Kosova. In place of cooperating with this
entity that had secured considerable support from the mostly displaced
Kosovar population who saw the Kosova Liberation Army (KLA-UK in
Albanian) as heroes, the new international regime aimed to ensure that
locals did not dictate the terms of governance. What happened almost
immediately was an attempt to adjust to these local contingencies; the
UN Interim Administration Mission in Kosovo (UNMIK) began to invest
its energies into channeling domestic activism through Prishtina by way
of local proxy.21
A resurfacing of the Miloevic-era Kosovar Albanian elite (around
the personality of Ibrahim Rugova) led many of the former members
of the guerrilla army to go underground. For those who were from, at
the very least, a strategic perspective inclined to distrust the machinations of temporary NATO allies, enough was enough when Rugova
and his LDK party were propped up as the key partner for the UNMIK
regime. Actions among these quickly marginalized participants in the
war needed to be taken to ensure that the entire war effort was not subsumed by the UNMIK bureaucracy, collaboration from Rugova, and a
pliant population. This began more than three years of proactive moves
by various, often competing factions to create facts on the ground.
This included Saudi-based charities, which I have studied in great detail
elsewhere.22
Ironically, the well-documented resulting chaos, conveniently
amplified by the media to vilify Albanians, ultimately forced the international community to modify its stopgap measures and follow through
with earlier promises to provide a transitional administration while
establishing and overseeing the development of provisional democratic
self-governing institutions.23 That was largely due to local initiative,
be it in Dukagjin under Ramush Haradinaj, or various elements operating out of Drenica, who made sure, in often brutal ways, that future
ambiguities about who lived where did not exist. As much as the vilification of ethnic cleansing in reverse carried the day in the international

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community, the fact remained that locals had changed the terms of
engagement.
By selecting pliable Albanians who were meant to serve as both
representative of the Albanians and co-opted to the point where
they were invested in their relationship with UNMIK, key players in
the international community created a social ontology that forced its
adopted communal leaders, first Rugova, then Haradinaj, and until
recently Hashim Thai, to perform a definitional shift within Kosovos
circles of power. Through the establishment of certain bureaucracies,
first Kouchner and then later the US embassy established the firm
ground for engaging the locals in what was assumed to be a controlled and manageable relationship. The problem has been, however,
that these proxies are incapable of representing Kosovars; they only
retain authority over certain constituent groups, often within limited geographic areas. That said, the early attempt by UNMIK and
participating outside interests to lay down the rules by which local
allies could function proves important to the last decade of Kosovos
history. As we will see with all those wishing to secure the legitimacy granted by the international community, these quite diverse
leaders would have to publicly distance themselves from the defiant acts ultimately threatening international influence in the region
and accept institutional guidelines as set forth by outside stakeholders. One of the primary targets for this formal exclusion was the
grassroots operations led by Muslim charities and Albin Kurtis SelfDetermination.
This angle to the Kosovo story is crucial because the regions problems are neither simply the result of Serbs hating Albanians nor
the consequence of the fact that the country sits on the fault line
between East and West. Such cultural determinism/essentialism
long associated with the Balkans masks a more complex society in
which access to lucrative businesses, political legitimacy, and protection from persecution all determined by outside actors proves to be
the primary animating factor in how domestic factions operate. Put differently, the nature of the struggle for political hegemony sought by
the prevailing external power be they the Ottomans, Serbian/Yugoslav
state in the past or the United States or EU today has long shaped
the seemingly parochial struggles for power among the regions inhabitants.24 It is a mistake, in other words, to disaggregate the two. What
is needed is to put Kosovo into a regional, and since the 1990s, global
context where factors as diverse as the political economy of energy (natural gas pipelines), mining riches, influence-peddling, and something

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akin to disaster capitalism shape the decisions made about Kosovo in

Washington DC, Brussels, Moscow, and Belgrade.25
As already hinted, the anointed local surrogates, as in more easily
identified neo-colonial settings elsewhere in the Third World, have used
their new influence and access to relatively large sums of money to
reward their own while punishing those associated with rivals.26 The
persistent local rivalries, long exposing Kosovo to foreign manipulation,
means that the most cost-effective method of maintaining some form
of order over Kosovos heterogeneous regions has been supporting
one local faction against another. This is something that several key
elements in the international community learned fairly quickly. Much
of Kosovos recent political history, therefore, is complicated by the fact
that state power was levied via local proxy.
As highlighted throughout, those who reign supreme in Prishtina
today at the time of writing, a collapsed coalition between the PDK
and LDK enjoy neither the trust nor the support of crucial segments of
Kosovos society. In order to appreciate how this may affect Kosovos stability, however, requires an ability to track all of the changing faces on
party lists, as well as a deeper look into the underlying consequences of
temporary alliances, concessions, and break-ups. In these ever-shifting
conditions, Kosovar Albanians have long been plagued by factionalism
that compromised any hope of presenting a unified Albanian set of
demands to the world.
The resulting struggle for political power via the voting booth has
succeeded in pitting the ex-commanders of the KLA against each other
with the wrongly assumed moderate LDK as the major beneficiary.
As the EU/United States and even Serbia pit factions against each other,
otherwise effective leaders are forced to dodge the label of war criminal or mafia warlord while desperately angling to become legitimate
partners. This cynical game, started by UNMIK immediately after the
war and now commandeered by the US embassy on one side and
the EU on the other, has left a legacy of opportunism and extreme
partisanship.27
Not only do such conditions determine the nature of interparty
relations but they also shape the kind of politician who rises to the
top. The deep-politics at play in the western Balkans since the end
of the Ottoman Empire are being exploited by what can be seen
as ethnic entrepreneurs: those who sell their cooperation with foreign agents/states on the assumption that their ethnic affiliation gives
them some leverage over the ethnic politics presumably influencing life in Kosovo. By securing the resources invested in the pursuit

300 Religion and Politics among Albanians of Southeastern Europe

of stability the power to coerce as well as reward political loyalty

with jobs and lucrative contracts these agents of local, rather than
national, interests have gained considerable power. As a consequence,
competing local elements actually have shaped the way in which an
ethnically divided Kosovo is ruled under international supervision.
Thanks to their secured legitimacy as partners of the US embassy or
some European country, the ethnic entrepreneurs of the western Balkans
have used their incumbent leverage to actually induce far more violence
and economic imbalance because of the cronyism that they practice
once in power. Ironically, almost all analyses of UNMIKs work in Kosovo
have resorted to identifying this continuing ethnic violence, most
recently experienced in July of 2010 in Mitrovica, as the exemplary
consequence of a failed intervention.28
Explanations for why the UN and increasingly Europes rule-of-law
mission in Kosovo (EULEX) have failed invariably lead to crude stereotypes about not only the generic Albanian and Serb but increasingly the
Muslim as external to the rest of the population.29 UN employees, often
hired for their bureaucratic competency, have adopted a classic hostility
toward the subjects whom they expect to rescue from themselves.
The result is an approach to engaging the locals that normalizes their
behavior and produces a kind of neo-colonial practice that depends on
sweeping generalizations of how Kosovo operates.
The incipient innuendo that has ultimately questioned the rationale
for intervening in Kosovo but, curiously, implies no objection to the
manner in which the intervention was pursued operates through the
same borderline racist insinuations found in imbalanced relationships
of power often accompanying international interventions. The majority of commentators on Kosovo today evoke the generic Albanian as
nothing less than a Muslim fanatic, drug-runner, or CIA puppet.30 These
assertions of collective guilt mirror those in other contexts, especially
Afghanistan, Yemen, and Pakistan, whose inhabitants mere proximity
to identified militants is grounds for affiliation.
As has happened elsewhere, approaching the inhabitants of Kosovo
in this manner was bound to fail. As the generic space is militarized
and thus somewhat inaccessible to the outsider, the operating logic
of such international interventions has gravitated toward using pliable
local allies. Again, failures in Iraq and Afghanistan, far better studied in
the context of mismanagement, demonstrate that empowering a local
henchman does not mean that he can provide stability. In fact, he
represents a very narrow constituency. As already explained, Kosovo
is a deeply divided set of often very distinct subregions, despite its

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geographically small area, and it is virtually impossible for anyone to

effectively claim authority over these disparate groups.
Here lies the tragic failure of such large-scale interventions: the selfinterested allocation of resources by international bodies to useful
proxies who are by and large unwilling to share their wealth in an
equitable manner leaves the vast majority of the people in Kosovo in
poverty. This eventually leads many on the margins of the patronage
system to set up through the proxy constituent groups to seek sustenance in any way they possibly can. Most opt for migration, either
to Prishtina, a city which has doubled in size since 1999, or outside
Kosovo. Others seek alternative political orientations. At one moment,
a movement led by Albin Kurti offered a chance for cross-regional
mobilization. This phenomenon that ultimately was treated with considerable hostility, not only by the local political elite but also by the
international community, would share the fate of the other major alternative resources for Kosovos politically misrepresented religious groups.
The hostility to Kurtis Kosovo Action Network and then Vetvendosje!
in particular exposed the international communitys hand once and for
all. To them, the manner by which politically active (but non-affiliated)
rural youth and university students advocated for change demanded
immediate harsh responses from the police.31 That such formal coercive power could turn into a tool of selective political advantage has also
become a greater possibility in the context of self-affiliated Muslims and
their small-scale operations scattered as autonomous zones of influence
throughout Kosovo. While some periodic outbursts to enter into the
political fray by men linked to Mufti Ternava and his Saudi-trained ally
Shefqet Krasniqi occurred since 2005, for the most part the approach
within this political action group is to actually avoid public scrutiny;
more is to be gained by allowing the system to collapse than to become
a public participant.32
Instead of actually allowing for an open debate between equal citizens
in Kosovo, those political actors linked to the international agencies
seeking stability monopolize the resources allocated to local communities via a system of patronage. As a consequence, the politically
connected balance their role as guardians of stability with the distribution of rewards to their allies within and beyond Kosovo. The
relative success of such local stakeholders in maintaining peace does
not, however, necessarily mean that they represent the interests of their
people. Considering, for example, the factions that persist within
Kosovos Albanian political environment, the managed stability that
so many highlight today as a Kosovar success proves shallow at best.

302 Religion and Politics among Albanians of Southeastern Europe

After all, the partisan politics at play in Kosovo translate into a highly
unbalanced distribution of state contracts, control over coercive mechanisms of the state, and arbitrary use of the legal system that undermines
any real stability largely under the surface laid out by a discourse of
inter- as opposed to intra-ethnic rivalry. It is in this context of creating the conditions for conflict in Kosovo that will ultimately result in
continued failure for the new country in the future. The end result is a
sharpened divide where many Kosovar Albanians, like their neighbors
in Macedonia and Albania over the course of their crisis in the early
2000s, split into secular and religious factions.
The difference with past efforts to homogenize the region through the
control of formal religious infrastructure is that Saudi-backed factions,
often mobilized through local agencies, will shift the center of power
away from the region. In other words, a future Kosovar identity will not
be one that is easily controlled by political forces based in Prishtina or
Belgrade. The central theme of Wahhabi doctrine is the universalistic
claim of faith, one that does not recognize the local and emphasizes
only the global reach of its doctrine that is oriented to institutions in
Medina and Riyadh. That the center of this doctrine of universal Islam
is Saudi Arabia means that, in ten years time when war breaks out somewhere in the Islamic world, local Albanian loyalties will be challenged.
Militancy may become manifest in Kosovo in much the same way that
the Talibans world vision was created out of the ashes of an Afghan
society that was resurrected by Saudi money in the refugee camps of
Pakistan. As much as the devastating wars in post-Soviet Afghanistan
have been fought between those who have practiced an impure Islam
(the Northern Alliance) and those who have practiced the Wahhabi doctrine, the same is likely to happen in the Balkans. What I observe in
Kosovo today is the potential foundation of a new Lebanon or, worse
still, the creation of a powerful rural-based Taliban-like self-identifying
group that will not tolerate religious or doctrinal difference.
Such a possible well of resentment has been manifested in numerous forums, by various personalities discreetly linked to Saudi Arabia.
A letter written by a student of the Institute for Islamic Education in
Prishtina, for example, proved crucial to initiating a public campaign
against the position taken by the then-grand mufti of Kosovo, Rexhep
Boja, who complained loudly about the power that Saudi agencies were
gaining. Bojas well-known position vis--vis completely alien doctrines
of practice introduced in the period immediately after the war initiated
a uniform reaction from the likes of Armend Podvorica, the aforementioned student, reflecting a sensitivity to domestic, counterspiritual

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opposition to the growing influence of Saudi-based organizations.

By responding to Bojas criticism, very much in the tone that Sufis had
used in the 1970s against Belgrades efforts to impose doctrinal uniformity, Podvorica revealed the underlying Wahhabi intolerance towards,
in particular, Kosovos Islamic heritage that also had the capacity to
mobilize people into action against efforts to shift loyalties away from
Kosovo itself to a foreign locale.
Revealingly, in Podvoricas words, Kosovars never learned the true
Islam. Instead they inherited the bastardized form from Turkey which
has nothing to do with religion. Podvorica goes on to challenge
Rexhep Bojas stated concerns with extremism by qualifying the acts of
these Muslims (interestingly implying that Boja is not one) who are
running schools and are well respected in Arabia. That they follow
the authentic path was a crude attempt to assuage any concerns that
readers of the daily Koha Ditore that published the letter may have had
about the legitimacy of Wahhabi doctrine. As Podvoricas pious Arab
Muslims were rhetorically distinguished from what he is clearly identifying as Bojas bastardized Islamic tradition, Podvorica exhibits a
tell-tale sign of doctrinal rigidity that fails to accommodate the interpretations of other Muslims, let alone talk to them. This rigidity will
spell disaster for Kosovo in the future.33
Podvoricas letter perfectly highlights the underlying fissures that were
occurring in Kosovos back roads by 2003. Podvorica crudely demarcated
a border which separated the faithful and the true followers from those
who are not. This method of differentiation could quickly translate into
uglier kinds of exchange. Indeed, there have already been a number of
incidents where Wahhabi-trained Albanians have disrupted community
meetings by attacking everyone who did not subscribe to their doctrine.
This rhetorical method of confrontation used by Podvorica and his colleagues is well known in Arab city slums where Wahhabi organizations
have been trying to take over neighborhoods from other Muslim groups
by accusing opponents of betraying Islam. It has happened in Pakistan,
Tajikistan, Nigeria, and any number of Arab city neighborhoods, and it
will happen in Kosovo if nothing is done to give rural peoples alternative
sources of political voice.
There have time and again been vociferous challenges from many
Albanians within both established Muslim institutions and the emphatically secular political parties to the attacks being levied by Salafi groups
on Americans, who are seen by Albanians as their saviors. These open
debates point out that there is plenty of suspicion about the motivations of faith-based charity groups in general and open attacks on Arab

304 Religion and Politics among Albanians of Southeastern Europe

Muhajjadin groups in particular have been noted. The result has been
several years of quiet community-building, with an occasional outburst
of rhetoric that animates anti-Salafist sentiments. In other words, the
replacement of Saudi-based groups with locals, while they are easily
identifiable by their long beards and simple dress codes, has made any
open hostility towards Arab imperialism and Wahhabism a direct
attack on Kosovar Albanians, not Bosnians or Saudis.
Despite the concerns and increasing sensitivity to Islamic fundamentalism after 11 September 2001, Saudi influences continue to increase
their presence in rural areas, often with the complaisant approval of
the international community which has less and less money to offer.
The key, again, is the economic assistance that Saudi-funded organizations can provide to generally forgotten villages far off the main roads
and well beyond the interests of international organizations. As Saudifunded orphanages and primary schools address the serious shortage
of rural education and social services, a captured audience has been
assured for its underlying proselytizing message that directly contradicts
the very rhetoric of tolerance promoted by UNMIK. The children who
benefit from the economic assistance that no other European or international organization is willing to give leads to their dependence on such
organizations in all aspects of their cultural, social, and economic lives.
This dependency has rendered them vulnerable to the long-term strategies of Salafi/Wahhabi organizations based in Saudi Arabia and may well
result in their future hostility toward their fellow Kosovars, the rest of
Europe, and the West in general.
Interestingly, Kosovos trajectory followed a different path from that
of Albania, despite the apparent potential for similar developments in
that economically depressed country since 1990. On the basis of outdated demographic data, Albanians in Albania are widely considered to
be Muslims and part of the Islamic world. As we have moved further
from 1990, this proves to be misleading on a number of fronts. In addition to unreliable and often manipulated data, we have to take into
account the dramatic impact that 50 years of brutal communist repression had on the practice of religion inside Albania. In contrast to the
defunct state of Islamic institutions in Albania, there is a clear growth of
Orthodox Christian, American evangelical and to a lesser extent Roman
Catholic Church activities in the country. The trend is definitely one
that suggests that Albania is quickly becoming a Christian country
if it was not one before. This is best exhibited in the public hostility
towards Islamic institutions in Albania today as the world shifts into
visceral Islamophobia led by Western corporate media. As the war on

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terror plays itself out in Albania, it is quite acceptable today among

non-Muslims and Southern Albanians in particular to claim that its 500year relationship with Islam is a by-product of foreign invasion (i.e.,
Ottoman) and should be abandoned. This sentiment is articulated by
Albanian academics with links to the old communist regime and the
famous author Ismail Kadare in particular. Indeed, since 1997, the ruling Socialist and Democratic parties have been particularly eager to
stress Albanias non-Islamic identity.
Concerns over this hostility towards a generic Islam are compounded
by the fact that hundreds of thousands of nominally Albanian Muslim
men have migrated to other parts of Europe in search of work. The
two most dramatic examples are the more than 400,000 and 500,000
Albanians who have migrated to Italy and Greece, respectively. Among
those in Greece, many have elected to change their Muslim names to
Greek ones in order to avoid discrimination. This mass shift in the composition of the population in Albania and even their religious identity
inevitably has changed how people pass on their faith and traditions
to their children. Such fluid conditions thus make it impossible for, in
particular, the various Sufi orders that traditionally were based in the
southern regions of the country to survive as their base of support disappears. As reported by the grand mufti of Albania, Shaykh Hafiz Sabri Koi
(himself of the Tijani Sufi order) in a January 2000 interview, most of
the Sufi orders (tekkes) in Albania Shukriyya, Qadiri, Melani, Shadhili,
Helveti, Tijani, and Naqshebandi have more or less disappeared due to
a lack of funds and followers. Moreover, he noted that the more mainstream Sunni Muslim and Bektashi communities, while having a broader
base of faithful to rely on, are not faring much better.34
What has produced this slow demise of local Islam in Albania again
points to the legacy of the communist regime. Between 1967 and 1990,
the practice of Islam was completely banned when the dictator Enver
Hoxha declared Albania as the worlds only officially atheist state. As a
result, knowledge about the practice of Islam was all but lost as the countrys religious leaders were murdered or imprisoned by the regime.35 The
consequences of this was glaringly evident when religious services, first
in the northern city of Shkodr on 16 November 1990, then in Tirana on
23 November, were reinstated. As I witnessed personally, proper Islamic
practices among those attending the services were virtually unknown to
the youth, and only a few elderly could actually recall the formalities of
their faith.
This void proved to be an opportunity for many foreign organizations
seeking to spread their particular brand of Islam. Representatives from

306 Religion and Politics among Albanians of Southeastern Europe

Iran, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey rushed to help impoverished Albania.

Armed with assistance packages and often unstated, long-term intentions of redirecting young Albanians to Islam, the current president, Sali
Berisha, openly welcomed them, hoping for an economic windfall from
the wealthy oil-producing countries on the Arabian Peninsula and Iran.
The results from this virtual invasion of Muslim (and Christian) charities
were immediate. According to a study conducted in the two universities of Tirana in 1994, three-quarters of the students who were asked
stated that they believed in God while only a quarter of the professors
who were instructing them claimed to be believers.36 This rebirth of
faith may have reflected a rebirth in religious institutions and a surge
of attendance at religious-based schools that followed the 1990 opening
of the country to foreign donors. Indeed, missionary groups have provided educational services as viable alternatives to the bankrupt state
educational system. A consequence of this, however, is that a rigid
orthodoxy is being imposed on Albanians who traditionally practiced
unorthodox but tolerant types of Islam. What is being taught in the
madrasas and seminaries of Albania today, according to a number of
observers, is a fundamentalist theology more in line with the Taliban
of Afghanistan than with Islam as it has been practiced for centuries in
the Balkans. Schools, therefore, may prove to be an important barometer
of the future of Islam in the Albanian-speaking world. Interestingly, as
a consequence of the perception that Albanians are in need of religious
reintegration, the region has been a point of intense rivalry between
competing Islamic traditions.
The best example of this may again be found in Albania with the
emergence of a Turkish charity group that has monopolized the education of Albanian Muslims since the early 1990s. A self-made maverick
named Fethullah Glen (b. 1938) and his vast economic, pedagogical,
and spiritual empire has been very successful in exporting his Turkish
type of Islam. In Albania, Glens secular private schools, known by
the name of Mehmet Akif, have emerged throughout the country since
1991, serving as an effective counterweight to more radical Arab organizations coming to Albania at the time. From the very beginning,
generous scholarship programs to poor families, a world-class Englishlanguage education, and promises of a university education in Turkey
have attracted thousands to these schools. While the message of these
schools is strongly religious, students confirm that Glens message is
decidedly more liberal than that of his more orthodox rivals from the
Arab world. Throughout Glens writings and pronouncements, Arab
literalism (better known as Wahhabism or Salifism) is not the Islam of

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307

the modern era and is openly condemned in his schools. This contrast
with Wahhabi values is clearly playing an important role in how Islam is
reintegrated into the lives of Albanians in Albania and has more or less
rendered Arab-funded schools marginal. As a result of this failure to have
an impact on Albania, Arab charities have redirected their money and
attention to Kosovo, especially after 1999, leaving Albania to Fethullah
Glen and the Christians.

Conclusion
Unfortunately, none of the stakeholders overseeing this process fully
appreciates the multiplicity of sources of conflict. The predicament
stems in large part from the fact that policy-makers and their advisers are married to a set of analytical models that emphasize ethnicity
as a source of conflict. Long overshadowed by the fixation on ethnic
conflict and the securing of ethnic minority rights that assure that
only certain stakeholders retain leverage over the many whom they
represent Kosovo has actually become more profoundly undermined
by a quiet violence of poverty and social marginalization that accompanies this version of development cronyism.37 Indeed, the international
community and its local surrogates bend over backwards to placate a
political class that exploits this rigid sociological understanding of the
Balkans; and the irony is that the social instability caused by corruption and subsequent economic depression will result in making those
who promise solutions in threatening extreme ways more politically
acceptable. Likewise, the violence continuously perpetrated to relight
the flame of ethnic conflict among international agencies leaves the
entire Kosovo project hostage to political opportunism. The end result is
a corrupted relationship of power between political actors who market
themselves as useful agents to outside interests, which are conflicted
in their own right by a stated interest in sustaining regional stability, while also pursuing exploitative economic interests that eventually
reward financially the corrupted political elite and abet instability in the
region.
Not only has Kosovos rural economy been destroyed by both war
and post-conflict disaster capitalism, but power has shifted into the
hands of a pliant class of political actors whose fundamental role today
has been to manage the hollow gesture of political independence and
assure that Kosovo remains subordinate to the political and economic
whims of outside powers. Given the green light by powerful external
actors which include the US, NATO, the EU, and to an extent the UNSC,

308 Religion and Politics among Albanians of Southeastern Europe

a newly minted coalition government linking former political rivals

initiated a process aiming to resolve the western Balkans most cumbersome and destabilizing conflict by way of decentralization. This has
only sharpened the power of ethnic entrepreneurs who are to manage
ethnically divided municipalities.
From the massive poverty, lingering issues of social injustice to the
tell-tale signs of greater wealth polarization distancing the privileged few
in Kosovos mismanaged capital Prishtina from the rest of the country,
Kosovos stability is far from assured by creating up to 38 ethnic-majority
homelands akin to South Africas apartheid system. Indeed, this select
group of the political elite, expected to legitimize this process only
recently sanctioned by the principal external actors, will help to implement structural divisions in the larger western Balkans that threaten to
initiate a period of conflict frighteningly similar to those witnessed in
the 1990s.
The primary function in the calculus of power for these ethnic
entrepreneurs who have been able to win the support of the international community is to manage people who may actually have quite
different sets of interests. The constant struggle to gain access to political power (and hence control of the purse strings that allow patriarchs
to reward loyalists) distorts domestic realities in Kosovo. The fact that
the international community actually arbitrates this process by dictating
when elections take place, and have maintained a veto on any political
order arising from elections, means that the struggle for local ascendancy is mediated by the combined interests of the US, the EU, and the
UN in securing Kosovos political and economic subordination. The end
result is a highly unrepresentative political class in Kosovo (within all
of the so-called ethnic groups) that services the demands of external
interests. Often these external interests, represented by political bodies
like UNMIK, EULEX, and the US embassy, are clearly linked to exploitative capitalist interests that desire access to Kosovos mineral wealth and
potential for debt-driven development via the expensive infrastructure projects that are now taking place all over the region. They are also
pushing for the partition of Kosovo today, the foundations of which
were laid with a program of reform that took the form of decentralization. The complex linkage between development capitalism, regional
power politics, and the shifting political fortunes of locals expected
to subdue the local population directly affected by this redrawing of
the Balkans boundaries constitutes a failure in the international postconflict regime. This policy that was ostensibly enacted to pacify the

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region has been corrupted from the start by a mixture of corporate greed
and failed social science models.
The international system of intervening in post-disaster contexts
today not only proves corrupted but actually creates the political and
economic conditions for more violent conflict in subsequent years. And
one only needs to look at sub-Saharan Africa to ascertain that this type
of strategic intervention with its glaring asymmetries and calculated
misjudgments is nothing new. Again, as argued throughout, the foundation of this failure is the fact that ethnicity serves to underwrite all
analysis of the Balkans, leaving all formulas for intervention to ultimately lead back to creating an unrepresentative, highly exploitative
socioeconomic order that only rewards those who resort to violence.
In the end, as long as certain elements of the international community remain fixated on largely discredited models of analysis when
interacting with the non-west, interventions like those in Kosovo will
engender more violence, not curtail it. Put differently, the political class
in which the international community appears to have invested considerable social capital and trust to oversee the successful resolution
of Kosovos crisis is the same constituent group most likely to instigate another round of brutality in southeastern Europe in the coming
years.
It is more than a decade since the nature of international intervention reoriented the domestic political life of Kosovo toward ethnic constituencies. It will require considerable unpacking, but it is
utterly vital that analysts recognize that peoples economic suffering
and general sense of social alienation transcend regional and, indeed,
religious/ethnic divides. The strongest associations people have made
beyond the parochial niches of their villages have not been political
parties but rather movements that spoke to their specifically contextualized problems. Kurtis brief moment of possibility had captured a
cross-current of support from the impoverished and the marginal. But
so have religious organizations, especially those that provide a gateway
for those otherwise cut off from the limited, and violently guarded,
channels of success inside Kosovo today. The more visceral and still
unfounded blanket discrimination of Salafist groups becomes part of a
general political discourse in Kosovar politics, coupled with Kurtis going
mainstream, will mean that a disoriented and largely unrepresented
rural population will literally have nowhere else to turn but associations
that have very different long-term objectives from their potential clients
who have been abandoned by the larger world.

310 Religion and Politics among Albanians of Southeastern Europe

Notes
1. As seen as recently as early September 2010, flare-ups of lingering conflicts
over economic and political control of the mineral-rich north Mitrovica
continue to threaten a post-Yugoslavia Kosovo project, Radio Free Europe,
Injuries Reported after Massive Brawl between Kosovo Serbs, dated
6 September 2010.
2. On Yugoslavias forced migration policy, see Isa Blumi, Whatever Happened to the Albanians? Some Clues to a 20th Century European Mystery
in Ohliger, Schonwalder, Triadafilopoulos (eds.) European Encounters, 1945
2000: Migrants, Migration and European Societies since 1945 (London: Ashcroft,
2003): 231268.
3. On how these Sufi orders have persisted until 1998 in Kosovo to play a leading spiritual role in the daily lives of Kosovars, see Haki Kasumi, Bashksit
fetare n Kosov 19451980 (Pristin: Instituti I Historis se Kosovs, 1988),
p. 65.
4. Fejzulah Hadzibajric, Tesavuf, tarikat i tekije na podrucju Starjesinstva IZ
BiH danas, Glasnik vrhovnog islamskog starjesinstva u SFRJ, XLII/3 (1979),
pp. 271277, see in particular p. 273 and Glasnik Vrhovnog Islamskog
Starjesinstva (1952), p. 199.
5. Glasnik Vrhovnog Islamskog Starjesinstva (1962), 186.
6. This process has been observed by Alexandre Popovic, The contemporary
situation of the Muslim mystic orders in Yugoslavia, in Ernest Gellner (ed.),
Islamic Dilemmas: Reformers, Nationalists and Industrialization: The Southern
Shore of the Mediterranean (Berlin: Mouton, 1985), p. 247.
7. Buletin HU 1984, 12 and Sladjana Djuric, Osveta i Kazna. Socioloko istraivanje
krvne osvete na Kosovu i Metohiji (Ni: Prosveta, 1998), p. 107.
8. Buletin HU (1978) vol. 2, pg. 6
9. See Sharifi Ahmetis article in Glasnik Vrhovnog Islamskog Starjesinstva, 1979,
pp. 283287.
10. See Buletin HU 1978 (4), 12.
11. See Amnesty International, A Human Rights Crisis in Kosovo Province. Document Series B: Tragic Events Continue, No. 3 Orahovac, July-August 1998. EUR
70/58/98, pages 46.
12. Kristen Ghodsee, Muslim Lives In Eastern Europe: Gender, Ethnicity, & the Transformation of Islam In Postsocialist Bulgaria (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University
Press, 2010), pp. 109129.
13. I elaborate on this point in Isa Blumi, Negotiating Globalization: The Challenges of International Intervention through the Eyes of Albanian Muslims,
18502003. UCLA Center for European and Eurasian Studies, Occasional Lecture Series, Paper 2 (2003). http://repositories.edlib.org/international/cees/
ols/2.
14. In what I consider a coup by the community to help shut out a growing
attempt by Kosovos traditional distaste for political Islam in the form of
Sunni orthodoxy, Boja has remained on the sidelines of Kosovos spiritual
life ever since. He has been sent to exile by being appointed ambassador to
Saudi Arabia, a locale where he will certainly be under wraps.
15. The elections proved to be a failure for those hoping to solidify political gains. Questions of irregularities have exposed the United States and

Isa Blumi

16.

17.
18.
19.
20.

21.

22.
23.

24.

25.
26.

311

its attempts to push through the compliant government of Hashim Thai.

Revealingly, this support continued despite serious questions about the
legitimacy of the Thai mandate, outcries of vote-rigging and intimidation
that ultimately forced the United States to concede Kosovos political system was unrepresentative and corrupt but were in themselves not grounds
for Washington dropping its support of Thais government. See Robert
Marquand, Kosovo Election Results Delayed by Irregularities, The Christian
Science Monitor (13 December 2010).
A debate rages between the Kosovar Rexhep Qosja and a number of
prominent Albanians, including Ismail Kadare, over Albanias place in
the world, Egin Ceka, Die Debatte zwischen Ismail Kadare und Rexhep
Qosja um die nationale Identitt der Albaner, Sdosteuropa. Zeitschrift fr
Gegenwartsforschung 54 (2006), pp. 451460. To the latter group, the only
way for Albanians to be recognized as Western is for them to abandon the
religion that Turks imposed on them, an argument Qosja finds antithetical to all that modern Europe is supposed to stand for, Artan Puto, Fryma
romantike dhe nacionaliste n debatin pr identitetin shqiptar, Perpjekja
23 (2006), pp. 1333.
Iain King and Whit Mason, Peace at Any Price: How the World Failed Kosovo
(Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 2006), p. 243.
Dick Leurdijk and Dick Zandee, Kosovo: From Crisis to Crisis (Aldershot:
Ashgate, 2001), pp. 101148.
UNSC R1244, Article 15.
At the time when the UNSC mandated a role for UNMIK, there were no provisions set aside for locals to participate in the administration of the region.
See Main Tasks in <www.un.org/peace/kosovo/pages/kosovo12.htm> (last
consulted 21 June 2010).
All Albanian political parties, and economic and social organizations had
to be registered with Prishtina or face persecution. For elaboration, see Isa
Blumi, A Story of Mitigated Ambitions: Kosovas Torturous Path to its
Postwar Future, Alternatives: Turkish Journal of International Relations 1 (2002)
no. 4, pp. 3052.
Blumi, Negotiating Globalization: The Challenges of International Intervention through the Eyes of Albanian Muslims, 18502003.
UNSC, Report of the Secretary-General pursuant to paragraph 10 of Security Council Resolution 1244 (1999), Security Council doc. S/1999/672 of
12 June.
Kosovo has long been ruled through decentralized despotisms, a term
first developed by Mamdani to explain how sub-Saharan Africas colonial
legacy shapes current political realities. Mahmood Mamdani, Citizen and Subject: Contemporary Africa and the Legacy of Late Colonialism (Princeton, N.J.:
Princeton University Press, 1996).
See report written in 1998. <http://www.iacenter.org/folder04/kosovo_
mines.htm> (last accessed 8 September 2010).
The evidence of corruption in Kosovo abounds. The scale is, per capita,
unprecedented in the world. According to reports immediately after Kosovos
independence in 2008, while it is by far the poorest country in Europe,
and poorer per capita than North Korea or Papua New Guinea, more
than $53 billion has been spent on it that is, 160 times the average

312 Religion and Politics among Albanians of Southeastern Europe

27.
28.

29.

30.

31.

32.

33.
34.

35.

yearly per capita aid for all developing countries combined. Walter
Mayr, The Slow Birth of a Nation, Spiegel Online, <http://www.spiegel.
de/international/world/0,1518,549441,00.html> (last accessed 7 September
2010). This money initially went into schemes that enriched energy companies (mentioned later) but these have now mutated into billion-dollar
road projects with Bechtel, <http://www.kosovomotorway.com/>, and endless reports from not entirely disinterested agencies, such as the US Agency
for International Development, that selectively expose the countrys ills
<pdf.usaid.gov/pdf_docs/PNACU939.pdf> (last accessed 8 September 2010).
ICG, Kosovo after Haradinaj, ICG Europe Report No. 163, (2005).
Isa Blumi, Ethnic Borders to a Democratic Society in Kosova: The UNs
Identity Card, in: Florian Bieber and Zidas Daskalovski (eds.), Kosovo: Understanding the Past, Looking Ahead (London: Frank Cass, 2003), pp. 318356.
In an effort to play a role in the state-building process initiated when key
governments decided to permit Kosovos independence, the EU created its
largest ever security-related operation, EULEX, in February 2008. At the same
time, an International Civilian Office created to supervise independence
has also suffered from a confused period of implementation as conflicted
views of how to deal with the primary local stakeholders undermine a
cohesive policy. For an early critique of the performances of these Europeanled operations, see ICG, Kosovos Fragile Transition, Europe Report No. 196,
(25 September 2008).
A particularly aggressive anti-Kosovar outfit produces elaborate studies
that link the CIA and the larger US imperial project with Kosovo, www.
globalresearch.ca.
The movement Vetvendosje! (self-determination), which has increasingly
adopted tactics of sabotage, issues a weekly report that is distributed both on
paper and online at www.vetvendosje.org. Running on a serious of cleaver
puns deriding the international community, the movement has attracted
college students and large numbers from the rural population, many of
whom feel neglected by the big national parties based in Prishtina.
Shefqet Krasniqi, imam of Central Mosque in Prishtina and close associate
of Mufti Ternava, is perhaps the most notorious. He engaged in a public
debate with imam Sabri Bajgora over the veiling issue and the need to declare
Kosovo an Islamic state. More recently he has appeared in a PDK-party paper,
Epoke e Re, Fundi i Bots, 12 February 2010, to raise yet again a voice of
religious antagonism against other moderate Muslims and Kosovos growing Catholic population. The question is when such rhetoric becomes an
extension of party political strategy.
Armend Podvorica, Besimi i denj nuk sht ekstremizm, Koha Ditore
(7 January 2003), p. 11.
For more, see Olsi Jazexhi, Arroganca pan-ortodokse e Peshkopit
Janullatos, SOT, 19 May 2007, http://groups.yahoo.com/group/albmuslimnews/message/5092 (last accessed 12 January 2011).
As much as the world considers Ismail Kadare a lifelong opponent of communist tyranny, it is often forgotten that he was the chief ideologue of the Enver
Hoxha regime. He even participated in the public campaigns against religion
during the 1970s, a theme that he has refashioned to focus on Islam as the
foreign invader of Albania today. See Ismail Kadare, Realizimi socialist-arti i

Isa Blumi

313

madh i revlucionit, Zri i Popullit, 13 January 1974 for his past attacks and
his more recent anti-Muslim rants, Identiteti Evropian i Shqiptarv (Tirana:
2006).
36. Adem Tomo, Attitudes towards religion and the religious motivations of students and intellectuals. Appearing in the first volume of Social-pedagogical
reflections, published by a group of authors in Tetova Macedonia, 1996,
pp. 1522
37. Revisiting any of the social indicators of Kosovo since 2000 reveals just
how impoverished the country is. More importantly, the disparity in wealth
is growing in a classic example of neo-colonial economy. At play is the
fact that the primary source of income for this still rural society has
been undermined by regional trade agreements imposed on Kosovo by the
international community Serbia alone exports upwards of !600 million
annually to Kosovo, underselling local farmers. Indeed, going to Kosovos
shops one only finds imported goods. Most weekly markets that used to
filled regional cities and towns no longer exist. Kosovos more than 75%
unemployment rate is but one level of the countrys poverty. It is this
local economic infrastructure that has been devastated along with the introduction of the international community that will leave its longest legacy.
See Augustin Palokaj, Kosovo mulls trade retaliation against Serbia. <www.
waz.euobserver.com/887/30741.> (last accessed 9 September 2010); Ekrem
Krasniqi, The Poverty of Independence in Kosovo, ETH Zurich, dated 14 April
2010. <http://www.isn.ethz.ch/isn/Current-Affairs/Security-Watch/Detail/?
lng=en&id=114977> (last accessed 9 September 2010) and World Bank,
Kosovo Poverty Assessment Report, http://web.worldbank.org/WBSITE/
EXTERNAL/COUNTRIES/ECAEXT/KOSOVOEXTN/0,,contentMDK:21761678
menuPK:297788pagePK:64027988piPK:64027986theSitePK:297770,
00.html(last accessed 8 September 2010).