yugoslavias implosion

glorious victories of the Serbian army from Kumanovo to the breach
of the Thessaloniki front were crossed out.” 370
STALEMATE
The Albanians opted for the strategy of nonviolent resistance,
which facilitated the annexation of Kosovo at the same time that it
neutralized the ambitions of the Serbian war strategists. Albanian
Gandhism came as a surprise not only to Serbs, but also to Albanians,
who traditionally did not uphold values such as nonviolence or
patience. Until 1989 and the Kosovo annexation, the prevailing sentiment
among Kosovo Albanaians was a desire for revenge. However,
in 1990, a transformation occurred. According to Shkelzen Maliqi,
a well-known Kosovo philosopher, art critic, and political analyst,
the concept of nonviolence was formulated spontaneously and
adopted as the most pragmatic and most efficient response to Serbian
aggression. The impulse to turn away from the temptations of war
and revenge also came in part from outside: the wave of democratic
changes that brought down Communism raised the hope that the
solution to the Kosovo problem and the Albanian national question
lay in a peaceful transition to democracy. 371
The Albanian nonviolent movement functioned until the signing
of the Dayton Accords at the end of 1995, which did not address
the issue of Kosovo (because Milošević strongly opposed to doing
so) and which thereby stoked the frustration of Albanians. By that
time, some Albanians had begun to question the effectiveness of
Ibrahim Rugova’s policy of nonconfrontation and to urge resolution
of the Albanian question through more active methods. The
1997 mass demonstrations in Serbia over the 1996 falsification of local
poll results by the Milošević regime revealed the depth of the political
crisis in Serbia. However, the Serbian opposition (which was no
370 Milan St . Protić, Mi i Oni (Us and them), Hrišćanska misao, Belgrade, 1996, p . 159 .
371 Shkëlzen Maliqi, Kosova:Separate Worlds (Pristine, 1998) .
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