Jovo Bakić is a Serbian sociologist, author and associate professor at the University of Belgrade’s Faculty of Philosophy. He is one of the most known academics who joined the Student List and belongs to the far left ideological spectrum of the civic list, with a career of belonging to minor “workers” parties and movements. I’m republishing a portion of an interview he gave to a newspaper in Podgorica Vijesti. Full interview in Montenegrin/Serbian is here [Title here is mine].

• On a personal note, I don’t expect the newly crowned governing conglomerate of students, academics, some far right, some liberal and some conservatives, to be supportive of recognising Kosovo, but it is discouraging that even the most liberal MPs from the Student List continue to use the Milošević–Vučić discourse of negotiating with “Kosovo Albanians”. On September 9, 2010, the UN General Assembly adopted Resolution 64/298, which acknowledged the International Court of Justice’s (ICJ) advisory opinion on Kosovo’s declaration of independence and welcomed the European Union’s readiness to facilitate dialogue between Belgrade and Prishtina. Since then, the dialogue has been between Republic of Kosovo and Serbia, represented by their respective elected institutions and leaders, rather than between “Serbia and Kosovo Albanians”.

Interview with prof. Bakic:

In your first appearance after the election victory, you said that Serbia’s new government would not impose sanctions on Russia. You are among those who have quite often praised Serbia’s foreign policy in recent years. Unlike many others, you did not criticise Vučić for “sitting on several chairs,” and you have said that this foreign policy was the only good thing about his rule. Where does that leave the EU question now—will the new government revive that process, which has effectively ground to a halt and exists only formally?

It will certainly be revived. The essential difference from the policies of that man whose name I do not wish to mention is that he conducted Serbia’s foreign policy exclusively in his own personal interest, whereas I believe it must be conducted in the national interest…

What matters to me is that we protect our interests in relation to the Russian Federation. Our substantial energy interests tied to the Russian Federation. This is, admittedly, a legacy of the [Vojislav] Koštunica–[Boris] Tadić regime, because they were the ones who handed over the Petroleum Industry of Serbia to the Russian Federation for next to nothing. But we now have a significantly lower fuel price. The fact that this is not reflected in the price people pay at petrol stations is another matter, but the state pays significantly less for energy supplies than countries in the region.

I believe that anyone who experienced sanctions in Serbia in the 1990s—and I did—cannot support sanctions against any country. Because those sanctions only strengthen the authoritarian regime—it is usually authoritarian regimes we are talking about—while in fact doing nothing to strengthen the opposition that might overthrow that regime… Serbia cannot do any harm to the enormous Russian Federation by imposing sanctions. But symbolically, it does cause harm, perhaps even more to Serbia itself than to Russia. I personally oppose sanctions, and we also have that position in our programme as the Student List.

As far as the EU is concerned, Chapters 23 and 24 [concerning the rule of law—author’s note]—I believe Serbia will meet the requirements of those chapters very quickly, and that was the main stumbling block for the former regime. It will very quickly become clear how different this new government—or rather, the people elected to serve the people of Serbia—is from those who ruled over the people of Serbia, and how close this is to some of the values the EU holds. The problem will arise over Kosovo [Bakic uses nationalist term “Kosovo and Metohija”], because although the EU is forcing us to recognise the independence of Kosovo, we cannot meet that demand.

Why?

Our Constitution says otherwise, and we have committed ourselves to the people of Serbia to respect the Constitution from its first letter to its last… We offer an agreement to the Albanians of Kosovo and Metohija for the benefit of all citizens living there, but if that entails international recognition, that will not happen.

What would such an agreement entail?

It could entail making life easier for all citizens there. Naturally, we are primarily concerned with the Serbs, but Albanians from Kosovo could also enjoy certain benefits if we reach such an agreement. But that in no way means international recognition. And that is the line we cannot cross.

I am almost certain that we will meet the requirements of all these other chapters very quickly, but Chapter 35, as it is formulated and even more so as it is often interpreted, may not be possible to fulfil. However, if the EU says, “Here, decide for yourselves, by referendum,” we will organise debates lasting at least six months to a year. In free mass media, everyone will have the right to say what they think and put forward arguments as to why Serbia could or could not become an EU member, and then the matter would be decided in a referendum. Whatever the people want, that is what will happen.

Yesterday, I wrote an editorial for Albanian-language media titled “The First Step on a Long Road.” I tried to examine what Kosovo’s proposed changes to the Law on the Specialist Chambers might achieve: a 15-year sentencing ceiling following widely accepted legal principles of lex severior dhe lex mitior, sentences served in Kosovo, and further legal remedies transferred to the Supreme Court in Prishtina after appeals. I also warned that the Chambers would hardly accept all of these changes without a fight.

My central argument was that legislation was a good first step, channelling widespread public grievances in Kosovo into the parliamentary process, but that the bill alone would accomplish little. Making it work would require a strategic approach based on a parliamentary consensus. Succeeding in reforming a Special Court and protecting the liberation war from unjust claims of “joint criminal enterprise”, requires a wider strategy: negotiations (and an agreement) with the European Union, cooperation across party lines, more resources for the defense teams of Thaçi et al. and far bigger and sustained diplomatic engagement with Washington DC and other Quint capitals. Parliament’s vote would merely begin that process.

I ended my piece, published in the early afternoon, by expressing considerable doubt that Kurti could provide the leadership such cooperation demanded.

Lo and behold, even this cautious assessment, it turns out, assumed too much. By evening, the amendments remained stranded between their first and second readings.

Now that we’re Monday-morning quarterbacking, we can say the dispute was all too predictable. Kurti had delayed approval of the law until the very last moment, when the vote became entangled with the election of Kosovo’s next president: Kurti’s party insisted on electing the president first; the PDK and AAK demanded that Parliament pass the law first. Their leaders met, failed to agree, and the final vote never came. Despite what MPs claim in public, not even the popular cause of justice for the founders of the KLA could bridge the divide between the parties.

Outside Parliament, frustration escalated into clashes. Protestors ringed the Parliament requesting the second reading of the law. Some protesters threw fireworks; by late evening, police used incredulous quantity of tear gas and used water cannons. Nasty scenes of policemen beating war veterans made rounds across digital and social media.

Thus, a day that had begun with some signs of cooperation and a parliamentary consensus, ended with a violent confrontation in the streets.

By then, my yesterday’s analysis was, for all practical purposes, null and void. I had been considering how Kosovo might negotiate with Brussels and overcome resistance in The Hague. I’ve imagined how Prishtina could discuss with Paris and Berlin for Kosovo’s membership to the Council of Europe. We had not even managed to get past negotiations in our own Parliament.

So much for the first step.

What now?

Barring a miracle, Kosovo will fail to elect a president. But, as Nathan Coley’s artwork declares, I fear “There Will Be No Miracles Here.” The law will not pass either, any time soon. Kosovo is heading towards new snap elections, likely in mid-November, its fourth parliamentary election in less than two years.

• Post Scriptum

Back in 2014, I was working on PDK’s electoral campaign. Our motto was “The New Mission”: EU membership for Kosovo, following the first “mission of freedom” and the second “mission of independence”. A window of opportunity existed for our young republic to close important chapters of the past and open exciting new ones for the future. Dialogue between Prishtina and Belgrade was producing tangible results. Kosovo was respected for its constructive role in the Berlin Process and regional cooperation, and its diplomatic reach was expanding.

More than a decade later, most of the leaders of the ancien régime who achieved recognition for Kosovo and pursued dialogue with Serbia are either jailed in The Hague or protesting in the streets against the jailers in The Hague. The past five years have been devoid of any success. As Kosovo’s current leadership devotes still more time to populist electoral tactics, without a strategy for governing, the cost keeps rising.

Kosovo spent almost three years under EU sanctions. The US government indefinitely suspended its planned Strategic Dialogue with Kosovo. Kurti failed miserably in his attempt to secure Council of Europe membership, with Berlin and Paris blocking the path. With the rise of the far right - and the far left - in Europe, and a global polycrisis draining attention from the Balkans, we have more to lose with every passing day.

It is astonishing how Albin Kurti, the principal figure in Kosovo’s political landscape, keeps failing to read the room. His utter lack of focus on governance and desire for dialogue inside and diplomacy outside Kosovo, combined with the shenanigans of the Special Court, is dragging all of us deeper into a hole.

I am not sure how we’ll climb out.

Kosovo is in turmoil. Not the “usual” constitutional and parliamentary turmoil we have experienced over the last few years of repetitive elections and repetitive failures to elect a Speaker, a President or Deputy Speakers (in each instance, the Constitutional Court had to weigh in).

Nor the other “usual” turmoil caused by the Prishtina government that has overseen half a decade of Kosovo’s self-isolation (and the self-immolation of its diplomacy): having its Strategic Dialogue suspended by the US government, enduring nearly three years of punishing EU sanctions or utterly failing to convince its closest allies of the merits of Kosovo’s accession to the Council of Europe.

The latest crisis, which has engulfed not only the self-centered political spectrum but also large swaths of the population - inside Kosovo and the diaspora - stems from the verdict of the Specialist Chambers in the case of Thaçi et al., which imposed harsh prison sentences totaling 81 years on the 4 co-founders of the armed liberation movement, based on a dubious categorization of the guerrilla resistance as a “joint criminal enterprise”.

Two weeks after the sentences were handed down in The Hague, the reactions in Kosovo are not abating. If anything, the frustration may grow more forceful. Perhaps (or probably) even erupt into violence against parliament and the government.

Following the preliminary verdict (the full judgment of 2,089 pages, rivaling in length the ICTY’s genocide verdict against Mladić, remains unavailable to the public), Western Embassies and the EU called for patience, calm and focus on the appeals process.

However, many of those angered by the verdict no longer care what diplomats have to say. They remember the promise that this court would “clear the clouds” hanging over Kosovo and the KLA after bizarre accusations of organ harvesting, accusations that enabled the creation of a chimera of a court, which instead became laser-focused on a building a narrative that is a carbon copy of Russian and Serbian propaganda. And in any case, Kurti’s government has successfully chipped away, piece by piece, decision by decision, at the credibility and influence of Western embassies in Kosovo - especially the American one.

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Some of the strongest supporters of close ties with the US and the EU came from the former establishment parties - the ancien régime, as Kosovo’s Robespierrean leader, Albin Kurti, calls them. His party apparatchiks miss no opportunity to declare, with barely concealed schadenfreude, “We told you so.” Not only supporters of former President Thaçi, but also a number of international observers and local civil society leaders, feel betrayed by diplomats washing their hands of the promises they once made.

But the rhetorical flourishes of the presiding judge, Charles Smith III, failed to bring closure to a process that has lasted six years, conducted under procedures that have left alarming gaps in judicial accountability and transparency. The respected Bar Human Rights Committee of England and Wales laid bare an alarming culture of secrecy: confidential diplomatic briefings attended jointly by the court’s President and chief prosecutor discussing the case Thaçi et al, material communicated to judges without the defence having an opportunity to address it, dastardly lack of scrutiny for evidence supplied by Belgrade regime and unresolved questions about its provenance, and sweeping presidential powers over judicial (and Appeals) panel assignments shielded from meaningful challenge or appeal by the very people whose liberty hangs in the balance.

What are the events unfolding - as we speak - driving the dynamics and reactions?

• Firstly, Kosovo’s Kuvend approved with a unanimous vote (without the votes of Serbian community) a Declaration that mirrors the one approved last week by the Parliament of Albania: Kosovo’s Assembly rejected the finding of a common criminal purpose as unacceptable, called for coordinated legal and diplomatic action to defend the legitimacy of the liberation struggle, and pledged to uphold both justice for victims and the defendants’ right to a fair trial.

• Secondly, PDK has proposed legislation to curtail the powers of the Specialist Chambers once the appeals process in Thaçi et al. concludes. The draft would restrict the court’s jurisdiction to organ-trafficking allegations and directly connected crimes, transfer other cases and subsequent judicial review to Kosovo’s courts after pending appeals conclude, and introduce independent international monitoring. It would also immediately cap prison sentences at 15 years, require that they be served in Kosovo, and allow presidential pardons.

• Thirdly, and perhaps most importantly, people are gathering to protest in Prishtina’s main squares every night under the motto “Not in my name”, with other protests unfolding across Kosovo and its diaspora, from Australia to Austria. Behind them is the civic movement “Liria ka emër” (Freedom Has a Name), founded by an eclectic mix of figures: Burbuqe Berisha, the late award-winning theatre director; Lyrical Son, a Prishtina-born hip-hop artist; Visar Kryeziu, a celebrated photographer of Associated Press; Ismail Tasholli, a philosophy student in Graz writing a PhD thesis on technology and philosophy; Eliza Hoxha, a former pop singer, architect and contemporary artist; Hoxha is the only one affiliated with PDK as a former MP, but the crowds appear to draw from a broader cross-section of society.

I have attended most of the protests with my wife. The nightly gatherings follow a certain formula: they begin at 20:00 with a recitation of the old KLA soldier’s oath. Banners depicting the four KLA leaders sentenced in The Hague hang on the large stage. The opening speech highlights the key demands: passage of the proposed law and additional funding for the appeals process.

Then come the speakers, an equally eclectic bunch: war veterans, children of KLA soldiers killed in the war, famous pop singers and other public figures. One night it was Yll Limani, probably Kosovo’s most famous homegrown pop singer, with millions of followers on social media. Ledri Vula, one of Kosovo’s best-known hip-hop artists, has also taken part. Another night, the main speaker was Leart Ajvazaj, a highly accomplished Kosovar mathematician and machine learning engineer with degrees in pure mathematics from Yale and Cambridge, now leading frontier AI research. Opera singers, folk musicians, journalists, former political prisoners from Yugoslav times and footballers have also spoken - or sung.

Many attendees are war veterans, but most seem to belong to Gen Z. Young people who perhaps became involved after seeing TikTok statements supporting the protests by global stars such as Dua Lipa or Rita Ora.

The tension is palpable. And one thing is for certain, no political party will be able to control the emotions - or actions - if some resolution is not channeled through institutional means.

What might these means be? A rational course would be for the governing regime and the opposition to agree on passing the law and allocating a budget that covers not only legal fees but also lobbying efforts to better explain Kosovars’ central objections and grievances concerning the KSC’s procedures, the verdict and the legally incestuous relationship among its chambers, which operate in a closed environment without external checks and balances or even basic monitoring.

I strongly doubt Kurti will ever agree to this sequence of steps.

To begin with, the polarization of recent years has deepened distrust between the parties. Kurti insists on electing a president first. As it happens - and to make the storm perfect - the Constitutional Court has issued a new judgment in the case of the “missing President”: if MPs fail to elect a president by 6 October, the country will face its fourth national election in two years, most likely on Sunday, 15 November 2026. Kurti appears to be using the opposition’s demand for passage of the bill as leverage to secure a president of his choosing. PDK leader Hamza has publicly committed to voting for a president, but only after the law is passed. Gulf is wide and tainted by the the electoral considerations.

But even if Parliament approves the law, I expect the KSC’s own Constitutional Chamber to block its central provisions: having already in the past rejected changes to its mandate and insisted that it continues until the EU Council orders its completion, the court has left Kosovo’s elected representatives confronting an institution they established but whose future rests exclusively in Brussels, the capital of its principal paymaster.

So, what remains to be done?

Perhaps it is wishful thinking to expect the court’s sponsors - especially Washington DC - to signal that an institution hellbent on rewriting Kosovo’s history (whether by design or through a shocking lack of awareness) cannot become an endless instrument of punishment for the leaders of a people who were victims of war. To insist that the appeals process be independent not only of the “influence” of protesters in Prishtina (as fear-mongers at the KSC claim) but also of the prejudices displayed by the court’s own leadership. To reach an agreement that honors the rights of victims, regardless of nationality or political affiliation, respects the legal process and ensures that Kosovo’s history and the fate of its liberation leaders are not beholden to bureaucrats more concerned with keeping their tabs open in The Hague’s restaurants than with representing “the people of Kosovo”, as their mandate demands.

Other agreements could follow: advancing Kosovo’s application to the Council of Europe, so that both the accused and alleged victims can ultimately seek redress before the European Court of Human Rights, as a final legal remedy.

All this would require coordination, trust and, above all, attention from key allies - a commodity currently in short supply.

Kosovo handed over a portion of its sovereignty to the custodians - the watchers - of justice, if you will allow me a banal reference to Alan Moore’s famous graphic novel.

Alas, I fear there will be no one to watch the watchers.

Fighting for liberation from oppressive regimes is never a clean affair.

In France, immediately after the end of World War II, more than 9,000 people were executed during the épuration sauvage, a violent purge by the Resistance of suspected collaborators that involved extrajudicial killings, torture, public humiliation - and the shaving of women’s heads who were then paraded in “walks of shame” for their role in the so-called collaboration horizontale (sex with Germans). Historians have documented many cases driven by rumor, personal vendettas, local rivalries, theft, or banal political score-settling.

In more modern times, Nelson Mandela’s African National Congress, one of the most celebrated – and admired – liberation movements in the contemporary history of the world, was found to have committed gross violations of human rights during its struggle against apartheid, including torture, arbitrary detention and executions of suspected collaborators and dissidents. South Africa’s own Truth and Reconciliation Commission found that the ANC’s military wing sec routinely used torture in its exile camps between 1979 and 1989, and that many detainees were sentenced to death and executed without adequate due process.

East Timor’s FRETILIN and its armed wing FALINTIL, another globally respected liberation movement that fought a brutal occupation, were likewise found by the country’s own Truth and Reconciliation Commission to have committed serious violations of the laws of war. These included torture, unlawful detention, the killing of civilians - massacres even - of entire villages accused of collaborating with Indonesian forces, and executions of political and internal opponents.

The judicial and reconciliation bodies established in the aftermath of liberation in both South Africa and East Timor nevertheless were careful to stress that these abuses, serious as they were, represented only a small fraction of the violations committed during years of oppression and occupation by South Africa’s white-minority regime, respectively the Indonesian army.

Both Nelson Mandela, whose ANC also used violence to liberate the country from the machinery of apartheid, and José Ramos-Horta, a senior leader and international spokesman for the East Timorese guerrilla movement, later each won Nobel Peace Prizes in recognition of the results of their long, brutal, walks to freedom. Heck, even Yasser Arafat, who led a movement that had used cruel terrorism and killed entirely innocent people, including women and children, received the Nobel Peace Prize.

Hashim Thaçi, the political leader of Kosovo’s liberation movement, was also co-nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize, first by the Republican and Democratic co-chairs of both the Albanian and Serbian caucuses in the U.S. Congress, and separately by the Socialists & Democrats group in the European Parliament, for his own role in post-war reconciliation efforts with Serbia.

Joe Biden, then Vice President of the United States, even called Thaçi the “George Washington of Kosovo” back in 2010, for his role both in liberating Kosovo and in building one of the most dynamic democracies in this troubled part of Europe. Former Secretary General of NATO, Lord Robertson called Thaçi a “formidable leader” while the late and much beloved Secretary Madeleine Albright wrote once that she “trusted Thaçi’s vision – a vision that Kosovo was lacking”.

But fast-forward a few decades from the moment former President Bill Clinton expressed his “admiration for the leadership” of Hashim Thaçi during the chaotic first months after the war in Kosovo, and our liberation movement would suffer one of the most damaging blows to its reputation from a hybrid court formally established by Kosovo, but based in The Hague and staffed entirely by international judges and prosecutors.

I won’t revisit the history of this court: the pressure Kosovo was put under to establish it on the basis of a bizarre organ-harvesting report written by a Swiss senator with a historic record of speaking against Kosovo’s independence, following a request in the Council of Europe led by Konstantin Kosachev, a Russian MP who is now under EU sanctions. The dubious decision of Special Prosecutor Jack Smith to announce the indictment while Thaçi was in Austrian Airlines flight to Washington DC to meet President Trump in the White House, for a peace deal with Serbia is also a well known fact.

But this court did hand harsh sentences this week to the political leader of the KLA and former President of Kosovo Hashim Thaçi, and to three co-defendants, Kadri Veseli, Jakup Krasniqi and Rexhep Selimi, who all played crucial roles in Kosovo’s liberation and in leading the democratic institutions built after the war.

Most Kosovars were stunned not only by the severity of the first-instance sentences (which were harsher than those imposed on Serbian leaders and generals in the ICTY’s Milutinović et al. case of crimes against humanity in Kosovo war) but even more by the narrative articulated by the presiding judge that underpinned the verdict.

The international judges completely brushed aside the thrust of testimony from former NATO Supreme Allied Commander Wesley Clark and very senior American, British and UN diplomats, all of whom portrayed Thaçi as a political rather than a military leader and the KLA as a fragmented guerrilla movement with limited central control.

Yet the Chamber found that the defendants (and many other KLA commanders explicitly mentioned) were a “joint criminal enterprise” with a “common criminal purpose” of targeting perceived opponents of the KLA, while acquitting them of crimes against humanity.

In the immediate aftermath of the shocking verdicts, many friendly embassies pointed out that the Presiding Judge had “emphasized the trial was not about the legitimacy of the Kosovo Liberation Army and its goal of an independent Kosovo, but about the use of certain criminal means by some of its members to achieve these goals.” But this is, of course, not entirely true. The Presiding Judge did say this. But the disclaimer sat uneasily with the lengthy narrative that followed. His lengthy opening statement was riddled with accusations, conclusions, and innuendo that called into question the very decision made by these men (most of them then in their early or mid-twenties) to use violence in order to liberate themselves from an oppressive regime. The judge did not use his time before the global media (nor, apparently, his roughly 2,000-page confidential verdict) to provide a clear and unambiguous account of the legality of armed resistance against an apartheid-like regime. Nor did he spend much time explaining that these abuses, serious as they were, represented only a small fraction of the violations committed over many years by the Milošević regime.

Foreign diplomats also point out that the verdicts are not final. Indeed, the convicted founding fathers of the Republic of Kosovo will appeal, but they will do so mindful of the strikingly asymmetrical record of appeals filed by the Prosecution and the Defence. As Luka Mišetić, Thaçi’s experienced but deeply frustrated lawyer, pointed out in July, the Prosecution had filed three appeals and won all three - a 100 percent success rate. The Defence, meanwhile, had filed 44 appeals and lost all 44 - a 100 percent failure rate. The relationship between the Chambers and the Prosecution has become legally incestuous - there is no meaningful arm’s-length separation, as has been pointed out by the Bar Human Rights Committee of England and Wales, hardly an institution of KLA sympathizers.

As for reactions in Kosovo, well… Global music icons like Dua Lipa and Rita Ora, football stars like Granit Xhaka, and hundreds of thousands of others filled their timelines with UÇK logos, accompanied by statements such as “Not in my name” and “Freedom has a name”, a clear rebuke of the absurdity of judges ruling “on behalf of the people of Kosovo,” on the criminality over the people’s liberation movement. As for the political fallout, we shall speak about that later.

Whatever happens on appeal, that finding has inflicted profound reputational damage not only on four men, but on the historical image of Kosovo’s entire liberation movement. Daniel Serwer, a senior fellow at the Johns Hopkins SAIS Foreign Policy Institute and a former senior US diplomat, was scathing about the verdict: “The Americans and Europeans should be chagrined,” he wrote, arguing that they had “criminalized a liberation movement that they supported and reduced international justice to political revenge.”

The broader irony is difficult to miss.

At a moment when Western governments speak constantly of confronting hostile influence, historical revisionism and hybrid warfare by Russia, they have now spent hundreds of millions of dollars building and sustaining an institution whose judgment provides precisely the kind of narrative ammunition their adversaries have sought for decades. For revisionists in Moscow and Belgrade, there was reason to open champaign bottles.

For liberation movements fighting for liberty – and democracy – across the world, the lesson will be clear: Beware of friends bearing international tribunals.

Written in The Hague, this 17th day of September, Anno Domini 2026.

The coming Sept. 16 verdict in the case of ex-Kosovo president Thaçi shows how international courts made themselves vulnerable to political attack.

The Trump administration’s sanctions against officials of the International Criminal Court have triggered an outpouring of concern: European governments and human-rights organizations warn that the international justice institutions painstakingly constructed over three decades are being weakened. They’re right. But the problem is not Trump.

International justice spent years eroding the credibility and legitimacy on which its authority ultimately depends. The consequences will be on display Sept. 16, when judges in The Hague are scheduled to deliver a first-instance judgment in the case of Hashim Thaçi, ex-president of Kosovo. By then, he will have spent nearly six years in detention without a verdict.

Americans have a particular reason to pay attention. Thaçi’s path to The Hague runs directly through Washington — and through Jack Smith, the prosecutor who would later become one of the most consequential figures in American politics.

In June 2020, Smith, then the specialist prosecutor in The Hague, publicly announced an indictment against Thaçi before a judge had even confirmed it. The timing was extraordinary. Thaçi was preparing to attend a White House summit with Serbia organized by the first Trump administration. Thaçi canceled his trip. The summit collapsed. The peace efforts have stalled ever since.

A prosecutor had, intentionally or not, derailed a major American diplomatic initiative before a judge had even confirmed his indictment. That is no small footnote. And I do not write this as an opponent of international justice — quite the opposite. I come from Kosovo, where we desperately needed it.

In the 1990s, international justice achieved something close to moral authority. The tribunals for the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda may have been slow and imperfect, but they established a revolutionary principle: presidents, generals and architects of mass murder could be held personally accountable.

The Yugoslavia tribunal established an extraordinary factual record against denial of the crimes committed by Slobodan Milosevic’s forces in Kosovo, Bosnia and Croatia. It showed that the wars were not eruptions of some mysterious “ancient hatreds,” but the results of identifiable institutions, policies and people.

I therefore know what international justice can accomplish when it has credibility. That is why its loss of credibility should concern us.

I realize, of course, that international justice has its detractors on principle. The United States has long been wary of surrendering sovereignty to international courts, and Trump and many of his supporters have made that objection particularly explicit. Why should Americans — or citizens of any democracy — accept the authority of judges and prosecutors who are not accountable to them?

That is a legitimate position. Asking a country to accept the judgment of a court it does not control is an extraordinary demand.

I nevertheless believe there are crimes so vast, political systems so compromised and conflicts so poisoned by competing versions of history that domestic justice alone may be incapable of establishing accountability. The Yugoslavia tribunal demonstrated what international justice could contribute: individual responsibility, a credible factual record and some barrier against the political rewriting of mass atrocities.

But that bargain places an extraordinary burden on international courts themselves. The more sovereignty they ask nations to surrender, the more legitimacy they must earn.

They must be more scrupulous about impartiality, due process and political independence, not less. They cannot afford selective justice. They cannot casually become actors in political disputes. And they cannot answer legitimate questions about procedure merely by pointing to their own statutes and insisting that legality settles the matter.

International justice was always asking the world for an enormous amount of trust. Its great mistake was behaving as though that trust were inexhaustible. The result, says Sir Geoffrey Nice, Milosevic’s prosecutor at The Hague, is that “the international courts and tribunals of the 1990s and beyond increasingly appear as aberrations in historical terms.”

Kosovo is hardly the only place where the promise of the 1990s has faded.

The Special Tribunal for Lebanon spent more than a decade and over $1 billion prosecuting the assassination of former prime minister Rafik Hariri, yet closed without establishing who ordered the murder. In Cambodia, important Khmer Rouge convictions were dogged by allegations of political interference that prompted international judges to resign.

As for Thaçi he’s been detained in The Hague since November 2020; his trial did not begin until April 2023. At some point, ‘complexity’ stops being an acceptable explanation, and the dubious aspects of a case start piling up.

The Kosovo Specialist Chambers grew out of a Council of Europe investigation whose most sensational allegation was that KLA members had removed organs from prisoners in Albania. It was formally established by Kosovo’s Parliament, but it is staffed exclusively by international prosecutors and judges, operates under its own statute, and reports to no Kosovar institution. And organ harvesting is not among the charges Kosovar indictees now face.

This year, the Bar Human Rights Committee of England and Wales — hardly a KLA advocacy group — published an independent preliminary review of the court. Its findings make difficult reading. The human-rights lawyers raised concerns involving detention, judicial accountability, evidence originating with Serbian authorities and equality of arms. They warned that expansive judicial questioning, without adequate safeguards, could allow a panel to function “in effect, as a second prosecutor.”

There are other legitimate questions about the prosecution’s case as well. Thaçi’s defense also called former NATO commander Wesley Clark, former U.S. envoy Christopher Hill and former State Department spokesman Jamie Rubin, whose testimony challenged the prosecution’s depiction of a disciplined KLA hierarchy controlled from the top.

The judges will decide what that evidence means, and nothing here prejudges their verdict. But neither can the eventual verdict retrospectively settle fundamental questions about the legitimacy and the transparency of the process that produced it.

Legality alone is not legitimacy. International courts possess no electorate, territory or sovereign authority of their own. Their power depends on governments and societies believing they are impartial and procedurally fair.

The cumulative damage now threatens the entire project. For those of us who believe international justice can serve a valuable purpose – especially here in Kosovo — that’s particularly painful. We know what international justice can accomplish because we watched it establish an authoritative record against denial when we desperately needed it.

The authority did not come from armies, elections or sovereign power. It came from credibility. And because international courts ask sovereign nations to accept judgments from institutions they do not control, credibility is the whole game. That credibility took decades to build and years to squander.

On Sept. 16, Hashim Thaçi will finally receive a judgment after nearly six years in detention. Whatever that judgment says about him, the history of his case has already delivered a judgment of its own. International justice cannot survive on the self-proclaimed righteousness of its mission alone. It must earn back the credibility its institutions have squandered.

Petrit Selimi is a former foreign minister of the Republic of Kosovo and a research fellow at the USC Center on Public Diplomacy. The original column published under different editorial title was published in The Washington Examiner on September 5, 2026.

I moved to Norway in 1996, at seventeen, to attend the International Baccalaureate programme at Berg High School. One of my strongest first impressions of Norwegian society was how egalitarian and quite unassuming people seemed. I lived with the family of Norwegian State Secretary Kai Eide, and it was, in every sense, a regular family: regular dinners, regular teenagers, the usual ups and downs of family life. At school, some of my classmates came from very wealthy families, yet they still took the metro to school and worked ordinary part-time jobs to earn pocket money for CDs or video games.

Even the monarchy somehow belonged to this culture of modesty. The story everyone knew was of King taking public transport, riding the Holmenkollen line like everybody else. To a seventeen-year-old arriving from the Balkans, where men in power were engaged in genocidal enterprises annihilating entire communities, my only experience of real royalties came from movies, and in those movies, kings and queens didn’t use public transport. Those first months of living in Oslo, I was riding the tram half-expecting I will see King Harald V in his full royal regalia sitting among ordinary commuters.

And then came 1999, and the genocidal war reached Kosovo. Slobodan Milošević’s campaign of ethnic cleansing produced the gravest refugee crisis Europe had seen since the Second World War. Kosovo became the first item on the news every day, on every television channel. My own family had to flee Prishtina. They became trapped in the horrific refugee encampment in the no-man’s-land between Kosovo and Macedonia.

Norwegians showed extraordinary solidarity with Kosovars, and King Harald was a leader of that national display of empathy. While NATO’s bombing campaign against Milošević was under way and hundreds of thousands of Kosovo Albanians were being driven from their homes, Norway opened its doors to thousands of refugees and humanitarian concerts were organized to raise money for the victims of the war.

I remember attending one of those benefit concerts myself, in April 1999, at the height of the refugee crisis. The King sat in the front row alongside Prime Minister Kjell Magne Bondevik - himself an ordained Lutheran minister, also a modest man in manner but firm in committing Norway to the NATO effort against Milošević. Norwegian F-16s were already taking part in the air campaign. For me, the image remained striking: the King and the Prime Minister lighting candles in a cathedral while a war was unfolding in the country my family had just fled. Months later, my mother Violeta, a refugee herself now, had the opportunity to host Queen Sonja for a visit to their refugee camp in Oslo.

Living in Norway, one could hardly miss the story of young Crown Prince Harald’s love for Sonja Haraldsen, a commoner and therefore hardly the first choice bride expected for a future king by his own old King Olav. For nine years, the stubborn Prince Harald waited and fought for the right to marry the love of his life. Marriage outside European royalty and nobility was still considered damaging to the monarchy.

Harald prevailed in the end. After consulting the government and parliamentary leaders, King Olav gave his consent in 1968, and Harald and Sonja married in Oslo Cathedral that August. There is a wonderful recent television series, Harald og Sonja, about those nine years - a great royal love story which really did end happily ever after.

And then came the unspeakable horror of the terrorist attacks carried out by Norwegian white supremacist Anders Behring Breivik, who murdered 77 people - most of them teenagers attending the Labour Party’s summer camp on the island of Utøya. In a grim twist, Breivik was later found to have drawn inspiration from Serbian war criminals and ultranationalists. At Norway’s National Memorial Ceremony on August 21, 2011, exactly one month after the attacks in Oslo and on Utøya, King Harald became visibly overwhelmed with emotion. Looking out at the families of the 77 victims, his voice cracked and he gave way to a sob as he delivered these words.

"As a father, grandfather and husband, I have some feeling of what you are going through, but I can only imagine the depth of your pain. As the King of this nation, I feel for each and every one of you."

Historians and citizens alike remember this as a defining moment of his reign, as it bridged the gap between a head of state and a grieving citizen, showing pure empathy.

But my favorite speech of the late King Harald V was not a crisis speech or a formal national address. King Harald delivered it on 1 September 2016 at a large garden party in the Royal Palace Park in Oslo, held as part of celebrations marking King Harald and Queen Sonja’s 25 years on the throne. Invited guests were from all over Norway and civil society organizations. This famous speech had lines that reverberated widely:

“Norwegians are engaged young people and older people rich in life experience. Norwegians are single, divorced, families with children and elderly married couples. Norwegians are girls who love girls, boys who love boys, and girls and boys who love one another.

Norwegians believe in God, Allah, the Everything and Nothing.

Norwegians like Grieg and DJ Kygo, Hellbillies and Kari Bremnes.

In other words: Norway is you.

Norway is us.”

In memory of the late King Harald V, I’m sharing this speech here in full. I believe that today, perhaps more than ever, its message reaches far beyond Norway. It speaks to a fundamental truth about identity, love and compassion - and, to me, captures something essential about the reign of the late King.

Rest in peace.

As the political crisis deepens in Kosovo’s parliamentary landscape, with the former governing party accused of “hijacking” the process of constituting the new parliament following the June elections, another potential crisis is brewing in northern Kosovo, centered on the new security arrangements around the bridge that divides the Albanian- and Serb-majority municipalities of Mitrovica.

It all started with the somewhat inconspicuous statement by the NATO’s Kosovo force (KFOR):

“The NATO-led KFOR mission has begun the gradual transition of the permanent KFOR presence from the Main Bridge in Mitrovicë/Mitrovica. In line with the improved security situation in Kosovo, this is part of the process for optimising KFOR’s posture. This process will be gradual, conditions based, and is being closely coordinated with all relevant stakeholders, including representatives of the Institutions in Kosovo and of international organisations, as well as with representatives of the Kosovo Police and the EU Rule of Law Mission in Kosovo (EULEX). The Serbian Chief of Defence, General Mojsilovic, has also been regularly informed.”

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To those uninitiated in the devilish details of the Balkans, an “improved security situation” certainly seems like something to celebrate. NATO’s coordination with Kosovo institutions, the EU presence in Kosovo, and Serbian military counterparts is also a seemingly sensible step. But the issue of this specific bridge (one of half a dozen in the immediate vicinity) has long been a source of disproportionate dispute in relations between Kosovo and Serbia.

The bridge acquired this outsized significance in the aftermath of the 1999 war, when the Ibër river effectively became the dividing line between the predominantly Albanian south and Serb-majority north of Mitrovica. In the years that followed, the bridge was repeatedly barricaded by the Serb nationalist “Bridge Watchers,” while attempts by Albanian civilians to cross into the north using this specific bridge became flashpoints of violence, turning what was once an ordinary piece of urban infrastructure into a symbol of division - much like the Ledra Street in divided Nicosia, or the “peace walls” in Belfast.

Reactions by Serbian President Vucic to the NATO announcement went into overdrive. He initially stated that decision “did not surprise him”. He framed it as part of a conspiracy in which Prishtina and international actors were continuing their “game,” while saying Belgrade needed to remain “patient, smart enough and responsible.”

In a different media appearance, Vucic went on refusing NATO claims of improved security, by stating that situation was “not about the safety of Serbs”, continuing old propagandistic claim that Serbs were already being “harassed, beaten and arrested” and that international actors supposedly do not care.

In the very end, Vucic escalated the rhetoric, announcing that Serbia was “considering changing the river's flow” and that engineers would “examine possible solutions”, followed by the typically vucician provocative line about seeing “what the Albanians in Kosovo will do then.”

Changing the flow of Ibër river is an unthinkable proposition, which is why Vucic’s threats were received with outrage in Prishtina. It would be disastrous for the water inflow to the Gazivode water reservoir that is used as a drinking water source in northern Kosovo as well as the operations of Kosovo power plants. It would be a real casus belli in relations between Kosovo and Serbia, which is why Albanian foreign minister Ferit Hoxha reacted, stating:

“Water cannot be used as an instrument of political pressure or as a means to punish another country or population. Albania strongly supports the right of Kosovo to security, sustainable development, and the protection of its water resources.”

This in turn brought further escalation from Serbian foreign minister Marko Djuric who, somewhat out of context (or not), accused Albania for using the river to promote Great Albania project.

Albania’s PM Edi Rama got involved, quipping (in his witty and pointed diplomatic prose):

“Very interesting summertime exchange between our foreign ministers. Although I was expecting an answer about the Ibër, we somehow travelled from hydrology to international law, made the obligatory stop at “Greater Albania”, passed through “Kosovo and Metohija”, and eventually arrived at the familiar museum of Serbian historical anxieties. There is a peculiar piece of political folklore in Belgrade that appears immune to time: whenever Albania speaks about Kosova, “Greater Albania” must immediately be summoned, as if repetition might one day turn an old ghost into a relevant argument. It won’t.”

EU also reacted to Vucic, in their own unwitty, terse prose. EU's spokesperson for foreign affairs, Annita Hipper, recalled that Vucic’s threat “does not help the normalization of relations between Kosovo and Serbia, while this normalization is a prerequisite for progress towards the EU for both sides.”

In many ways, Vucic succeeded again in his modus operandi as the chief agent provocateur of the Balkan politics. What should have been a positive news from Kosovo, marking “improved security situation” and greater operational responsibility of Kosovo police in the north - became yet another test stress-test of both inter-ethnic relations inside Kosovo, relations between West and Serbia as well as hostile communication between several Balkans government.

Vucic knows what he did. His army chief has participated in coordination over transfer of responsibilities from KFOR to Kosovo police in Mitrovica bridge and Deçan monastery. KFOR made sure to keep overall command over process and will keep an eye over the way how Kosovo police behaves, especially because when in 2024 then Prime minister Kurti wanted to open the bridge unilaterally, KFOR forces were ready to physically stop Kosovo police to do so.

But Vucic’s constructive communication behind closed doors with EU, NATO or Western countries is almost always followed by provocative acts to placate nationalist sentiment inside Serbia. Speak softly and constructivly outside Balkans, spewing venom inside the region.

What is to be done in Kosovo. The most rational action would be to ignore Vucic. He’s provoking with the intention for Kosovo institutions to respond in kind - or worse, so he can prove that there’s no “improved security situation”.

This is where Kosovo’s national interest and its raison d’État should converge. Blerim Shala, one of Kosovo’s best political thinkers, had a very good analysis of Kosovo’s raison d’État as the basis of our relations with Ukraine and the wider world. Kosovo’s state interest is to support Ukraine’s fight regardless of whether Ukraine recognizes us at this particular moment. Our emotional reaction - such as taking down Ukraine’s banner in central Prishtina - is understandable, but it is precisely that: an emotional response. It’s telling that, following Kosovo’s reactions to Zelenskyy’s statements in Belgrade, Vucic piled on, stating “this is the heaviest diplomatic hit Albanians have endure in the last 14-15 years”.

The most rational response to Vučić’s provocations is the most obvious one: not to fall into the traps they are designed to set, but rather to demonstrate the institutiomal maturity he is trying to deny Kosovo’s institutions. Raison d’État demands that we stop playing that role assigned to us by the regional agent provocateur.

That requires discipline: managing the Mitrovica bridge in close coordination with KFOR and our Western partners; guaranteeing the safety and status of the Deçan monastery; and, above all, refusing to respond to every provocation. This is easier said than done, as former Prime Minister Kurti is another political actor who revels in crisis.

But it would be an important lesson for some future government in Kosovo: that statecraft means focusing on strengthening Kosovo’s position, rather than constantly responding to - and sometimes creating - crises.

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Elections after elections after elections…

Kosovo had national elections in February 2025. The governing party won the plurality but lost the majority of votes. The opposition could not unite to form a government, mostly due to the smaller opposition party, LDK, refusing to partake in any coalition talks with the larger PDK.

A series of constitutional crises and debates later, Kosovo had national elections again in December 2025. This time, VV got more votes, especially from the visiting diaspora. But, it still lacked the 2/3 majority needed for the election of a President, and the acting PM was adamant about not sharing the position of President with any opposition party.

Debate was inflamed, deadlines were missed, and Kosovo had to organize new national elections in June 2026. The result was unsurprising. Turnout dropped significantly - a clear sign of voter fatigue - and for a while, it seemed that VV and LDK might manage to establish a coalition government. Kurti took his time making this happen and left the constitution of the parliament until the very last week of the constitutional deadline to formalize the new parliament.

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Lo and behold, after four rounds of talks, nothing changed: VV wants to keep both the premiership of the government and the presidency, while being ready to give LDK the speakership of the parliament and four (or five) ministries. LDK insisted on having the presidency and four (or five) ministries.

VV is now stalling the constitution of the parliament. Formal deadline to constitute the parliament has passed so in theory, Kosovo doesn’t have a legal parliament, government and presidency. Kurti’s tactics are clear: delay the processes for weeks during the summer and autumn, so that the new election date falls on 27 December, when Kurti can count on his loyal voting bloc in the diaspora being in Kosovo for the Christmas holidays.

Radicalization remains an option

Opposition seems unable to crack the code of Kurti’s populism. But the political landscape is becoming more polarized. Opposition MP Time Kadriaj (a doctor and a war veteran) threw eggs at Kurti during the failed session to constitute parliament, an incident that became world news. Other MPs have also warned of more radical steps, including protests. Here are some reactions to capture the increasingly frustrated tone of observers:

• Editor of ‘Nacionale’ Berat Buzhala: “Starting next week, opposition MPs should go, together with their own bodies and those of their supporters, and block Albin Kurti from entering and leaving the Prime Minister’s Office. The opposition should make it impossible for him to carry out his duties, because, in any case, he has neither the mandate nor the legitimacy to do so.”

• Director of KIPRED Lulzim Peci: “Since yesterday, the only legally constituted governing bodies in Kosovo are the municipalities! In reality, we have gone from being a state based on a Constitution and laws—which are supposed to be respected by those who have sworn to uphold them—to becoming an association of municipalities! Look how far we have fallen! This situation must come to an end as soon as possible! Enough is enough!”

• Senior Fellow of Atlantic Council Agon Maliqi: “When the Constitution is repeatedly trampled on and institutions are taken hostage and turned into instruments of political blackmail, the political struggle can eventually spill outside the boundaries of rules and democracy… So, under these circumstances, the eggs are the least of the problems and merely the beginning of a downward slide. I fear that this hostage-taking of the state will lead toward civil disobedience.”

Journalists managed to at least crack one secret: who is behind some of the most notorious FB profiles spreading fake news and threatening content against opposition politicians, independent journalists, and civil society figures. One of them, Lule Gjeli, who amassed tens of thousands of followers and whose divisive and highly inflammatory content (which included announcing death of opposition politicians or AI-generated “sexual scandals” by opponents of Kurti) is regularly shared by VV apparatchiks, turned out to be a fake account from Delaware, maintained by a VV operative who regularly met with VV officials over the past few years (and mysteriously claimed to have intelligence service connections).

The Hague to deliver a verdict. Will it deliver justice?

While some opposition MPs seem ready to take more radical steps of “resistance” against “state capture” by VV, eyes of many citizens seem focused on the events unfolding in The Hague.

The absurd trial against former President Hashim Thaçi, former parliamentary Speakers Kadri Veseli and Jakup Krasniqi, and former VV MP Rexhep Selimi is nearing its end, with a verdict expected on 16 September. The verdict was previously postponed from May and July due to the “complexity of the proceedings”, but the questions the judges must ultimately answer are straightforward: was the Kosovo Liberation Army a real military force with an unambiguous and clear chain of command and control, and was Hashim Thaçi the KLA’s top military leader?

The defence witnesses - including NATO generals, senior US and UN diplomats, and intelligence operatives from the UK and US - as well as the objective truth of the war in 1999, leave the defence with a clear argument: the KLA was a rural uprising, a “ragamuffin army,” as former NATO Secretary General Lord Robertson described it, with no real centralized command structure, while Hashim Thaçi was primarily a political leader with limited influence over guerrilla operations on the ground.

So it is fair to say that many people expect a full exoneration and a clear verdict of “not guilty.” Back in 2010s, Senator Bob Dole has stated: “Thaçi’s journey is Kosovo’s journey. Kosovo had an incredible journey and one man critical to the development of this bastion of democracy in the Balkans is President Hashim Thaçi”.

Which is why many now believe that return of Thaçi et al. may be a game-changer to unlock the political stalemate in Kosovo (if he decided to return to politics, which is far from certain). On the other hand, sentencing Thaçi et al. may contribute to the growing frustrations and dangerous escalation. In any case, watch this space.

Things falling apart in diplomacy too

It was a sad sight when municipal workers in Prishtina took down the massive banner proclaiming “Free Ukraine” that had adorned central Prishtina since the first days of Russia’s occupation of Ukraine. Officials in Prishtina stripped down the banner in outrage following President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s first official visit to Serbia, where he reiterated Ukraine’s position that Kosovo is not an independent state.

Kosovars had natural sympathies towards Ukraine, which was facing a bigger, nastier neighbor to the north, hellbent on the physical destruction of its smaller neighbor. The situation echoed the war in Kosovo.

But Ukraine has its own war, its own urgent tasks, and it has started looking at Serbia both as a source of armaments — Serbia has been secretly selling weapons to Ukraine in a deal facilitated by the US government — and as a potential diplomatic victory, proving Putin’s weakening influence even over his traditional ally Serbia.

Zelenskyy didn’t really have to go gung-ho on his newfound alliance with Serbia. As Una Hajdari of Politico Europe noted:

“Zelensky has, consciously or not, dragged himself into the merciless, fiery pit of Balkan political squabbles. Someone should have briefed him better on how to answer questions about Kosovo — inevitable during a visit to Belgrade. Many others have handled it far more deftly.”

But Serbia has also launched the inaugural U.S.–Serbia Strategic Dialogue in Washington, D.C., with U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Serbian Foreign Minister Marko Đurić. The U.S. Embassy in Belgrade has also facilitated a massive $2.6 billion hydro-energy investment by US-based Bechtel Corporation. What are Kosovars going to do - start stripping down US banners too?

The fact remains that Zelenskyy’s statements, US warnings to Kosovo on LNG projects, the complete stalling of Kosovo’s accession process to the Council of Europe and other multilateral organizations, and the overall disappearance of Kosovo’s diplomatic clout in the West (and East) all have a common denominator: a government that has ruled Kosovo for the last half-decade and has been more keen to cater to isolationist and sovereignist populism at home than to strategic coordination abroad.

There was a time, not so long ago, when Kosovo had a stronger presence in Washington, D.C., than any other country in the former Yugoslavia. There was a time when Kosovo was seen by many in Europe as a constructive, dynamic democracy, especially when compared to the increasingly sinister autocracy in Serbia. Those times are gone, and it will take completely new leadership to reimagine and reignite Kosovo’s diplomacy.

But first, we’ll have to have another national election.

Or two.

Today I am republishing an open letter sent to the President of the Kosovo Specialist Chambers ahead of the forthcoming judgment in the Thaçi et al. case.

Signed by the most noted and respected researchers, academics, and civil society representatives from Kosovo, the letter does not argue against accountability or seek to prejudge the verdict. Rather, it raises concerns about due process, prolonged detention, public confidence, prosecutor’s narrative and conduct and the broader societal consequences of a judgment delivered in a context where most Kosovars have come to doubt the fairness and legitimacy of the process.

I believe these concerns deserve to be part of the public record and the broader discussion about justice, reconciliation, and Kosovo’s democratic future.

1 Prishtina, 25 June 2026

• To: Judge Ekaterina Trendafilova, President Kosovo Specialist Chambers The Hague, Netherlands

• Copied to: The Ombudsperson of the Kosovo Specialist Chambers; the Ombudsperson Institution of Kosovo; the Diplomatic Missions of the States funding the Kosovo Specialist Chambers; the EU Office in Kosovo / EU Special Representative

• Re: Fair-trial guarantees, public confidence, and broader security concerns.

Dear President Trendafilova,

We write as researchers, members of academia, and civil society actors from Kosovo. We do so in good faith, with respect for victims, with respect for the presumption of innocence, and with full awareness of the difficult responsibility carried by the Kosovo Specialist Chambers, and specifically the Trial Panel in the case Thaçi et al.

We are not writing to prejudge the judgment.

We are writing because the way this process is handled will shape not only a legal outcome, but also public trust, interethnic relations, and Kosovo's confidence in international justice.

This is not our first public reaction on the work of the Kosovo Specialist Chambers (KSC). In August 2025, several of us reacted publicly to the admission of documents originating from Serbian state authorities.

We argued then that such material required a higher level of scrutiny, given its source, its historical context, and the role of Serbian state institutions during the 1990s. That concern has not gone away. It has become part of a wider concern about fairness, transparency, and public confidence in the process.

On 29 April 2026, the Kosovar Centre for Security Studies (KCSS) convened a webinar with legal scholars, transitional justice researchers, and civil society practitioners to take stock of what the KSC has delivered over its years of operation.1 The discussion is summarised in a discussion 1 Webinar is available online -

“The Kosovo Specialist Chambers: The Politics of Justice and the Long-Term Consequences”.

The paper put the matter bluntly that the verdict will land in a society that does not trust the process that produced it.

This is the core issue we want to bring to your attention. Kosovo established the KSC through its own constitutional amendment and legislation at significant political cost. Kosovo accepted this process in order to show its commitment to justice, accountability, and the rule of law, and to maintain the strategic alignment with the EU and the United States, which promised to integrate Kosovo into Euro-Atlantic structures.

That is why it should matter to the Court, and to the states that fund and support it, that the process is now widely seen in Kosovo as distant, opaque, selective, and disconnected from the society it is meant to serve.

Our main concerns:

• First, the fair-trial concerns are now documented, not only alleged. The preliminary review prepared by the Bar Human Rights Committee of England and Wales, commissioned by the Ombudsperson Institution of Kosovo, raised serious concerns about provisional release and prolonged detention, judicial independence and impartiality, admissibility and credibility of evidence, equality of arms, legality, and institutional accountability. The KSC has publicly disputed some characterisations of that review. We note that position. But a rebuttal is not enough. These issues go to the heart of whether the proceedings are seen as fair in practice, not only formally valid on paper.

• Second, prolonged detention has become one of the most damaging issues for public confidence. The accused in the Thaçi et al. case were transferred to the KSC Detention Facilities in The Hague on 4 and 5 November 2020. They have spent more than five and a half years in detention before a trial judgment. We understand that detention decisions are made by judges and that risks are assessed periodically. But from the perspective of many people in Kosovo, detention of this length, combined with repeated denials of provisional release, has created the perception that detention is becoming punishment before judgment. A process of this historical and political weight cannot carry that perception lightly.

• Third, the handling of evidence originating from Serbian state institutions remains deeply troubling. We are not arguing that such documents should be automatically excluded only because of their origin. We understand the difference between admissibility and evidentiary weight. But documents produced by Serbian state bodies from the 1990s cannot be treated as ordinary administrative records. Many of the same state structures were involved in repression, forced displacement, war crimes, denial, and organised disinformation against Kosovo Albanians. For that reason, their provenance, chain of custody, corroboration, and use in final findings require the strictest possible scrutiny. (See the discussion paper - https://qkss.org/images/uploads/files/KSC_Discussion_Paper.pdf)

• Fourth, the line between individual responsibility and collective guilt has not been clearly protected in the eyes of the public. Formally, the case concerns four individuals. Socially and politically, however, many Kosovars see the process as a judgment on the Kosovo Liberation Army, on Kosovo's struggle for freedom, NATO’s humanitarian intervention to stop ethnic cleansing and the killings of civilians, and on the experience of statebuilding that followed. This does not mean that individual crimes should be ignored. They should not. But international criminal justice must be careful not to turn individual accountability into collective blame. That line has not been convincingly communicated to the society most affected by the process.

  This is why the question is not only legal, but also historical and political. Formally, the case is against four individuals. But in Kosovo, many people do not hear it only as a case about four individuals. They heard the Prosecution referring to the KLA in its entirety as a joint criminal enterprise, turning Kosovo’s struggle for freedom and the moral foundation of Kosovo’s statehood to be the result of a criminal undertaking. That perception cannot simply be dismissed as emotion or nationalism. It comes from the way the case has been framed and from the fact that the prosecution’s theory appears to reach far beyond specific criminal acts and into the character of the wartime movement itself.

  Our view on this is clear, as it is for the absolute majority of the Kosovars citizens. We believe the KLA fought a just and defensive war for the freedom of Kosovo against a repressive and violent state apparatus led by Slobodan Milosevic.

  We also reaffirm that wherever alleged crimes were committed, whether against civilians, political opponents, or members of minority communities, those crimes deserve justice. But this is not the first time such crimes have been addressed. The ICTY, UNMIK, EULEX, Kosovo courts, and now the Specialist Chambers have all dealt with Kosovo-related war crimes cases, including cases involving former KLA members.

  What is deeply troubling is the shift to a narrative that risks presenting Kosovo’s war for liberation from Serb oppression as criminal in nature. That would not strengthen justice. It would deepen the feeling among many Kosovars that this process has moved from individual responsibility toward collective label.

• Fifth, the KSC has not built the public trust needed. Its outreach has been too limited, too technical, and too distant from everyday public concerns in Kosovo. As a result, many Kosovo Albanians see the Court as one-sided, many Kosovo Serbs may see any acquittal as failure, and victims from different communities may still feel unseen. That is a serious legacy problem.

• Sixth, the security and political ramifications must not be underestimated. A judgment delivered into a society that does not trust the process can deepen polarisation, feed disinformation, and create new space for actors who want to delegitimise Kosovo's liberation, statehood, and EuroAtlantic future and sow enmity between Kosovo’s communities.

  We do not raise this to exert any pressure on the Court. We raise it because responsible institutions must understand the sociopolitical environment into which their decisions land. We would be doing the court a disservice if we did not name the wider societal context. The process that led to the court's creation has a contested political history, and that history is well documented in the academic literature on how strategic narratives, some of them traceable to actors hostile to Kosovo's statehood, shaped the path to the court's establishment.

  We do not ask the Panel to adjudicate that history. We ask it to recognise that the judgment will be read against it, and that it will almost certainly be weaponised by Serbia and Russia to delegitimise Kosovo's liberation narrative and its case for statehood, regardless of the verdict's content.

• Seventh, the jurisdictional timeline raises a question of selective accountability. The court's mandate extends into September 1999, after the deployment of KFOR and UNMIK. Acts allegedly committed in that period occurred while Kosovo was under international administration, which carried its own responsibility for security. Holding KLA figures responsible for events that unfolded under international supervision, while the international actors of that period face no comparable scrutiny, is a framing that many in Kosovo experience as selective. International crimes can be committed not only by acting but also by omission when there is a legal duty to act and to protect, as there clearly was under UN Security Council Resolution 1244 (1999) and customary international law. We raise this not to excuse any crime, but because perceived selectivity corrodes the legitimacy on which a court depends.

In this spirit, we respectfully ask the Specialist Chambers and the States supporting the institution to take the following steps:

1. Provide a substantive public response to the concerns raised by the BHRC preliminary review and by the Ombudsperson Institution of Kosovo, especially on prolonged detention, provisional release, equality of arms, contested evidence, and institutional accountability.

2. Apply and publicly explain a heightened scrutiny standard for contested evidence originating from Serbian state institutions from the 1990s, including provenance, chain of custody, corroboration, and the weight given to such material in final findings.

3. Review the practice and reasoning around prolonged detention and provisional release, including the impact on family life and defence preparation, and make clear why any continued restriction is necessary and proportionate.

4. Facilitate sustained, independent trial and legacy monitoring from the judgment stage through any appeal process, so that the fairness and broader impact of the proceedings can be assessed transparently rather than simply asserted.

5. We also ask the diplomatic missions and States funding the KSC to support transparency, independent monitoring, and responsible public communication. Good-faith criticism from Kosovo's civil society should not be dismissed as hostility to justice. It is precisely because justice matters that these concerns are being raised.

We are not asking for impunity. Alleged crimes against civilians and war crimes, wherever they occurred and whoever committed them, deserve justice and accountability. But accountability must be delivered through a process that people can recognise as fair and impartial. A process that appears selective, distant, and politically motivated cannot repair trust or support reconciliation. Justice and Kosovo's statehood are not contradictory goals. They should reinforce one another.

Kosovo accepted the KSC because it was told that justice, accountability, and international legitimacy would go hand in hand. The Court and its supporting States now have a responsibility to show that this was not an empty promise.

Thank you!

Respectfully, (order of signatures by alphabetical order) •

Abit Hoxha, Assistant Professor at the Institute for Nordic and Media Studies at University of Agder in Norway • Aferdita Sylaj Shehu, Executive Director of the Community Building Mitrovica (CBM) • Agon Maliqi, Policy analyst and civil society activist • Agron Demi, Executive Director of the Atlas Institute • Arian Zeka, Executive Director of the American Chamber of Commerce in Kosovo • Dr Armend Bekaj, Researcher in the Department of Peace and Conflict Research (DPCR), Uppsala University • Dr Artan Mustafa, Political science researcher • Dr Butrint Berisha, Researcher • Prof. Dr. Enver Hasani, Former President of the Constitutional Court of the Republic of Kosovo • Fisnik Rexhepi, Policy consultant • Fitim Gashi, Executive Director of Sbunker • Dr Gëzim Visoka, Associate Professor of Peace and Conflict Studies, Dublin City University (DCU) • Ismet Kryeziu, Executive Director of the Kosova Democratic Institute (KDI) • Laura Kryeziu, Executive Director of the Leadership and Growth Council (LGC) • Leonora Kryeziu, Executive Director of the Prishtina Institute for Political Studies (PIPS) • Dr Liridon Lika, Lecturer, Center for International Relations Studies (CEFIR), University of Liège, Belgium • Dr Lulzim Peci, Executive Director of the Kosovar Institute for Policy Research and Development (KIPRED) • Mentor Vrajolli, Executive Director of the Kosovar Centre for Security Studies (KCSS) • Njomza Arifi, Executive Director of the Group for Legal and Political Studies (GLPS) • Dr Ramadan Ilazi, Head of Research, Kosovar Centre for Security Studies (KCSS) • Dr Robert Muharremi, Assistant Professor, RIT Kosovo • Senad Šabović, Senior Researcher, WB Peacebuilding Expert, and Civil Society Activist

The following text is an English translation (by AI) of a recent essay by Shkëlzen Maliqi, one of Kosovo’s most prominent public intellectuals, philosophers, and political commentators. For more than four decades, Maliqi has been an influential voice in debates on democracy, nationalism, culture, and the political development of Kosovo and the wider Albanian-speaking world. Known for his independent and often provocative analyses, he has written extensively on the political transformations of the Balkans and the challenges of post-communist societies. In this essay, he reflects on the protests in Tirana, questions of sovereignty, foreign investment, and Albania’s path toward European Union membership.

Some Half-Structured Reflections on Hormuz, Zvërnec, and Trepça

A few days ago, Edi Rama declared that he would step down from power the day Albania becomes a member of the European Union, saying that this has been the mission of the four electoral mandates he has won convincingly. My concern is that the protests in Tirana risk becoming not Rama’s downfall, but Albania’s—a setback on a path that Rama has helped pave, despite the mistakes he has made or those unfairly attributed to him.

1.

Today’s Albania, the Albania of the Zvërnec protests, knows what it does not want, but not what it wants. It does not want Rama and the Socialists, yet neither does it want his opponents, Sali Berisha and the faction-ridden Democrats, who remain locked in perpetual disputes over who should lead the alternative to Rama.

The protesters demand Rama’s resignation from government, Berisha’s resignation from opposition, the formation of a technocratic government, and new elections guaranteed not to return either Rama or Berisha and his entourage to power. But who, then, is supposed to govern? No one seems to know. The protesters do not see themselves as a political party because they distrust politics altogether. So who would form this technocratic government? Who would call new elections?

2.

The phenomenon of “we know what we don’t want, but we don’t know what we do want” is not new. We saw it in the Occupy Movement in the United States (2010–2011), the Yellow Vest protests in France (2018), and the student movement in Serbia (2006–2024).

These movements mobilized large numbers of people, voiced radical demands, and aspired to transform political systems. Yet they largely remained spontaneous uprisings and broad appeals. Occupy’s famous slogan, “We are the 99%,” expressed widespread frustration but lacked a concrete organizational center capable of translating protest into political power.

Against the organized structures of the state—security services, police, armies, party structure, paid activists, and state-aligned media—such movements, especially in Balkans, occupied squares, blocked institutions, and marched for weeks or months, but achieved little lasting political change.

The Tirana protests began in a similar fashion: large-scale, daily, peaceful in form, radical in rhetoric, and resistant to any clear organizational or political structure.

3.

Yet after three weeks, on June 22, Dritan Goxhaj read a statement on behalf of a Coordinating Group for the protest. It outlined five concrete demands:

1. The unconditional resignation of Prime Minister Rama;

2. The formation of a one-year technocratic government;

3. A new social contract between citizens and the state, including constitutional changes;

4. New elections after one year;

5. Repeal of the law on protected areas.

If such a coordinating body truly exists—and it had not been mentioned before—these demands suggest that the protests are moving toward a revolutionary project aimed at dismantling the current political order and constructing a new system.

To date, the government, whose mandate runs until 2029, has not used violence against protesters. But once the legitimacy of elected institutions is openly challenged, the situation enters a confrontational phase. It is unrealistic to expect state institutions to surrender easily. Nor is it clear that the original purpose of the protests was ever to pursue such an outcome.

More likely, this indicates that “revolutionary” actors have entered the movement with questionable objectives, seeking to destabilize Albania at a sensitive moment when it is nearing the conclusion of accelerated EU accession negotiations.

4.

The Zvërnec issue has undeniably exposed a fundamental question about Albania’s next stage of development: the inseparable relationship between politics and economics.

Zvërnec is not merely about economic development. It touches on environmental and political strategy, international alliances, and even questions of sovereignty.

A recent global example illustrates this intersection. Consider the peace agreement between the United States and Iran. It raises a question relevant to the Zvërnec debate: is it sometimes better to resolve crises not through military confrontation, but through diplomacy and economic incentives?

Last week, the world learned that the United States had effectively ended its conflict with Iran by “buying peace,” reportedly through a package exceeding $300 billion, nominally intended to compensate Iran for wartime damages. President Trump dismissed reports of such an arrangement as “fake news,” yet Gulf states and Vice President J.D. Vance indicated that Iran would indeed receive massive economic compensation in exchange for abandoning its nuclear weapons ambitions—the central issue behind the conflict.

5.

This may be one of the clearest examples of how political and economic interests intertwine at the global level, and it explains the seemingly unusual subtitle of this essay: Hormuz–Zvërnec–Trepça.

What could Albania’s coastline and Kosovo’s mining complex possibly have in common with the Strait of Hormuz?

The connection lies in investment and geopolitical capital. In recent years, American billionaires with close business ties to investors from the Gulf states have shown interest in Albania’s southern coast, particularly the protected natural areas of Zvërnec and Sazan.

These same networks are believed to be connected to the consortium interested in investing approximately $4 billion in a luxury tourism project in Zvërnec, alongside Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner, relatives of President Trump. Their involvement in acquiring land and developing the resort sparked concern among many Albanians and observers across the region.

For some, the project raised alarms about the sale of sovereign land.

6.

In fact, it is healthy that the issue of sovereignty has entered public debate. It exposes one of the most persistent misunderstandings in Albanian political thought: what sovereignty actually means for Albania and Kosovo as small states.

In today’s turbulent world, pure sovereignty no longer exists.

I often explain this through an analogy with gold. Pure gold is measured as 24-karat gold. Yet pure gold is soft and easily bent, making it impractical for many uses. To strengthen it, other metals are added, producing 14-karat gold—less pure, perhaps, but far more durable and useful.

The same applies to sovereignty.

A completely “pure” sovereignty for countries like Albania and Kosovo would be fragile, like 24-karat gold. By contrast, sovereignty reinforced through alliances with the United States, the European Union, and NATO becomes stronger and more functional—more like 14-karat gold.

These alliances do not diminish sovereignty; they make it viable.

7.

Economic sovereignty is equally difficult to imagine in its pure form. Albania under Enver Hoxha pursued precisely that model, severing ties with both the Soviet Union and China and attempting total self-reliance. The result was economic collapse by 1990 and widespread poverty.

That is why I connect Hormuz, Zvërnec, and Trepça. The strategic resources of Albania and Kosovo cannot be fully developed through domestic means alone. Their potential depends on integration into global processes and access to major investment capital.

One should be wary of romantic sovereignists—whether from old regimes or current governments like the Kosovar one—who have failed even to capitalize on Kosovo’s lignite or mining reserves and who continue to treat Trepça as a treasure to be guarded indefinitely underground, waiting for some future era when Kosovo magically acquires billions of dollars of its own.

Meanwhile, much of the population survives on remittances and social assistance funded by a modest state budget.

8.

Looking at Albania’s nearly four decades since the fall of communism, one cannot deny the scale of its transformation.

Sali Berisha was the driving force during the first decade of transition, while Fatos Nano and later Edi Rama shaped the decades that followed.

Berisha initiated Albania’s Western orientation and NATO integration. Yet democracy itself remained a concept and practice that he struggled to fully embrace.

9.

Many Albanians view the country’s difficulties through the lens of the fierce rivalry between the Socialist Party and the Democratic Party. During the years when politics revolved around the personal competition between Berisha and Nano, I argued that it was Nano—not Berisha—who truly inaugurated capitalism in Albania.

Even after returning to power in 2005, Berisha’s government retained many characteristics of an older political culture, relying on epic rhetoric, patriarchal narratives, and informal structures.

Rama represented something different.

As mayor of Tirana between 2000 and 2011, he transformed the city visually and institutionally. From painting drab urban landscapes in vibrant Mediterranean colors to dismantling much of the informal construction that had overwhelmed the capital, he embodied the possibility of a modern Albania.

His style was often criticized as autocratic, but it was also visionary. Given the conditions of the time, it is difficult to imagine such transformations being achieved through a more hesitant approach.

Rama had to transform not only Albania, but also the Socialist Party itself and the political culture inherited from the turbulent transition years.

10.

One can identify countless flaws and shortcomings in Rama’s rule. Yet the scale of change that Albania has experienced under his leadership is undeniable.

Even those who dislike him must acknowledge that the transformations occurred. It is always easier to criticize how something was done than to accomplish it in the first place.

11.

Many legitimate grievances have contributed to the Zvërnec protests. Much could have been done better, faster, and more fairly.

Take corruption and criminality. Protesters often attribute these problems to Rama, but also to previous governments. Yet they frequently overlook one of the most significant reforms of the past decade: the creation of SPAK, Albania’s independent anti-corruption prosecution office.

SPAK has investigated and brought to justice a former president, mayors, numerous ministers and senior officials from both government and opposition ranks. It has not spared even Rama’s closest associates.

12.

Rama recently stated that he will leave office voluntarily on the day Albania joins the European Union because that goal has defined his four mandates in power.

My fear is that the Zvërnec protests may become not a trap for Rama, but a trap for Albania itself—a disruption of a historic process that, despite all its imperfections, has moved the country closer to Europe.

Let SPAK continue investigating the cases before it. If Rama bears responsibility for abuses involving public tenders or ministers, he should face the consequences. But do not undermine Albania’s European trajectory in the process.

Rama currently possesses the influence and credibility needed to advance Albania’s case in European capitals. Weakening that effort could ultimately serve those, both domestic and foreign, who seek to obstruct the country’s EU path.

And it is precisely this process that may bring Albania into the next stage of development—the very future that many of the original protesters likely aspire to achieve. Such goals are far more likely to be realized through the institutions and regulations of the European Union than through any revolutionary attempt to seize power.

That outcome would satisfy only those who do not wish Albania well.

Original post in Albanian from Gazeta Metro.

The United States is urging Kosovo to join regional liquefied natural gas (LNG) initiatives, arguing that energy security is essential for economic development and attracting foreign investment. In an interview with KosovaPress, Micah Savidge, Economic Affairs Officer at the U.S. Embassy in Pristina, said Kosovo risks missing important investment opportunities if it cannot guarantee a stable energy supply.

Savidge discussed the role of American LNG, the potential of lignite gasification, renewable energy investments, and regional gas infrastructure projects, emphasizing that Kosovo’s future energy security should be based on a diversified energy mix rather than reliance on a single technology or resource.

KosovaPress: Could you explain why the United States is so interested in selling LNG to Kosovo?

Micah Savidge: Thank you for the question, and welcome to the Embassy.

In February this year, during the Transatlantic Gas Security Summit held in Washington, D.C., twelve Eastern European countries signed a joint declaration aimed at strengthening natural gas supply security across Europe. The objective was to diversify gas sources and supply routes as part of the European Union’s gradual effort to reduce dependence on Russian natural gas.

Infrastructure designed to distribute LNG from the United States is being planned to cover all Western Balkan countries—with the exception of Kosovo. When we speak with American businesses, which we do frequently here at the Embassy, they express strong interest in expanding into Kosovo because of its young population, widespread English proficiency, educational standards, and skilled workforce. However, they consistently ask about reliable energy supply.

Without dependable electricity, Kosovo risks losing potential American investment. That is why Kosovo, as perhaps the most pro-American country in Europe, is being invited to join this regional U.S.-backed initiative, enabling us to work together on strategic investments and strengthen our partnership for the long term.

KosovaPress: Why can’t Kosovo simply rely on its own lignite reserves for energy production?

Micah Savidge: For decades, Kosovo has benefited from its domestic lignite resources, and they remain an important component of the country’s energy system. American companies such as General Electric have been involved in coal-fired power plants that are currently operating.

However, true energy security is not achieved by relying on a single source of energy. A more diversified energy mix provides resilience, improves system reliability, and gives Kosovo more options as regional and global energy markets continue to evolve.

The question is not simply “coal or gas.” The real issue is how Kosovo can build sufficient and reliable energy capacity for the future. Economic growth, industrial development, and increased investment all require stable and competitive electricity supplies. Additional generation capacity could also reduce Kosovo’s exposure to expensive electricity imports, particularly during periods of high regional demand, especially in winter.

That is why we advocate access to LNG and regional gas infrastructure—not because they would replace Kosovo’s existing resources, but because they would add another tool to the country’s energy portfolio, improve system flexibility, and reduce dependence on a single source, namely coal.

Countries with diversified electricity systems are generally better positioned to withstand price shocks, supply disruptions, and changing market conditions. We would like to see Kosovo achieve that same level of resilience.

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KosovaPress: What is coal gasification, and could Kosovo make use of it?

Micah Savidge: There has been significant media coverage, so let me clarify that the potential coal gasification project and the potential LNG pipeline project are separate initiatives. We support both.

Coal gasification is a process that converts coal—including lignite, which Kosovo has in abundance—into synthetic gas, or syngas. This gas can be used to generate electricity, support industrial production, manufacture chemicals and synthetic fuels, and create other valuable byproducts.

Because Kosovo possesses such significant lignite resources, the United States supports exploring innovative technologies that could help Kosovo make better use of its domestic energy assets.

The United States has already engaged with American companies to better understand what may be technically and commercially feasible. We welcome further discussions on this issue.

That said, Kosovo’s long-term energy security will require a combination of different energy sources, including additional generation capacity and access to multiple forms of energy. No single technology or energy source can provide the entire solution.

KosovaPress: What about renewable energy? Can Kosovo generate more of it?

Micah Savidge: Absolutely. Kosovo can produce more renewable energy, and we strongly support expanding renewable generation capacity.

We hope these capacities continue to grow in order to meet future energy demand, strengthen energy security, and support Kosovo’s economic development. Renewable energy is undoubtedly a key component of Kosovo’s strategy for building a diversified energy portfolio.

We have also supported American companies operating in the renewable energy sector, and they are making new investments in Kosovo.

One particularly important example is the Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC) Compact program, which includes a $202 million battery energy storage project. The United States is providing the $202 million, while the Government of Kosovo has contributed an additional $34 million.

This battery storage project will improve grid reliability, reduce energy costs, and enable Kosovo to integrate more renewable energy sources into the system.

I recently spoke with colleagues at MCC, and they confirmed that the program is proceeding according to plan. Engineering and preparatory work have been completed, including permits and land transfers. Procurement for construction of the battery system is ongoing.

Additionally, a new entity—the Energy Storage Corporation—has been established to manage the battery system in the future.

KosovaPress: If Kosovo agrees to import LNG, would it be competitive in terms of price? Who would finance it?

Micah Savidge: We believe that access to LNG, supported by a long-term supply agreement with an American supplier, has the potential to provide Kosovo with more predictable energy costs and support competitive domestic electricity generation in the future.

Kosovo’s current dependence on imported electricity exposes consumers and businesses to volatility in regional energy markets, especially during periods of high demand and limited supply.

According to customs data, Kosovo spent approximately €735 million on electricity imports over the past four years, including €259 million in 2025 alone.

Without additional generation capacity, Kosovo will likely continue to depend on electricity imports to meet future demand.

This raises an important strategic question: how should Kosovo best strengthen its long-term energy security? Is it better to secure predictable energy supplies for domestic electricity production, where costs can be forecast more easily, or to remain dependent on imported electricity purchased at market prices beyond Kosovo’s control and vulnerable to external fluctuations?

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KosovaPress: What is the regional context? Are all of Kosovo’s neighbors connected to American LNG projects?

Micah Savidge: Not yet, but there are plans to connect all of Kosovo’s neighbors—and much of Europe—to pipeline networks supplied by American LNG.

Since this infrastructure will be built over the coming years and supply contracts will be finalized during that process, the sooner Kosovo joins regional integration efforts, the better the terms it may be able to secure.

If Kosovo waits too long, opportunities may be lost.

One example is the pipeline connecting Alexandroupolis in Greece with Skopje in North Macedonia, which is currently nearing completion. By the end of May, half of its planned ultimate capacity had already been reserved by Serbia through a separate connection.

Had Kosovo acted earlier, it might have secured a larger share of future supply capacity.

KosovaPress: What is your view of the recent proposal to connect Kosovo to the gas terminal in Vlora?

Micah Savidge: As far as I know, that project has not yet been fully finalized, so it is difficult to discuss specifics.

Nevertheless, we welcome Kosovo’s willingness to invest in regional natural gas infrastructure. We see it as a positive sign that Kosovo may eventually decide to build domestic natural gas infrastructure.

The energy decisions Kosovo makes today will shape its future for decades. Ensuring a stable energy supply is essential for Kosovo’s development path and for the speed with which it can reach European Union living standards.

For this reason, we strongly encourage Kosovo to consider further investment in natural gas, including the possibility of building a gas-fired power plant. If constructed with sufficient capacity, such a plant could meet Kosovo’s domestic energy needs and potentially create opportunities for electricity exports to neighboring countries.

Like many energy experts, I believe the future will be increasingly energy-intensive. As more technologies and processes become electrified, demand for energy will continue to grow.

Kosovo must prepare itself for that future.

As the Chargé d’Affaires recently wrote in her editorial: energy security is national security.

The United States stands ready to begin a structured dialogue on securing Kosovo’s energy future through a diversified energy mix that includes coal, coal gasification, LNG, and renewable energy sources.

• Original link: https://kosovapress.com/ekskluzive-kosova-ti-bashkohet-projektit-rajonal-te-lng-sa-seshte-vone-mbeshtesim-edhe-gazifikimin-e-qymyrit-zyrtari-amerikan

• Translated with ChatGPT

Last November, I found myself in an intimate conference room at the opulent Oxfordshire estate of Ditchley Park, which served as a secret retreat for Winston Churchill during World War II, attending a small gathering devoted to one question: how to create economic incentives for progress in the Kosovo–Serbia dialogue. Around the table sat top European envoys for the Western Balkans, British diplomats, business leaders, and regional experts. During one of the discussions, a speaker made a remark that was at once obvious and startling (to me, at least) - a simple fact that I had somehow never paused to ponder before.

“Kosovo,” he said matter-of-factly, “is the only country in all of Europe that does not border a member state of the European Union.”

It was a blatant fact, a truism really, yet hearing it stated so plainly made me return to it several times over following months.

Like when I was waiting at the Evzoni border crossing between North Macedonia and Greece. The queue of cars was not particularly long, yet it still took time before we managed to cross. The EU’s new Entry/Exit System (EES) requires non-EU travellers to provide fingerprints and undergo a facial scan when entering the EU. Drivers, families, children, everyone had to step out of their vehicles and go through the procedure.

As I waited, I found myself thinking about the shock many Kosovars will experience when they realize they will have to undergo a similar process every time they travel to neighboring Albania or Montenegro once those countries fully enter European Union, sometimes during the dusk of this decade. Millions of border crossings, multiplied by many additional minutes spent waiting, will translate into billions of minutes lost as Kosovars head to their favorite vacay spots on the beaches of Drymades or Dolcinium.

Businesses, especially small exporting ones focused on the region, will be hit even harder. Other European countries outside the EU, from Bosnia and Herzegovina to Ukraine, have shared borders with member states and have accumulated years of experience navigating the practical realities that come with it: phytosanitary inspections, customs procedures, regulatory checks, transport bottlenecks, and countless administrative frictions that accompany trade across an EU frontier.

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We have largely been spared of these realities, surrounded entirely by non-EU neighbours, living our blessed lives in a kind of geopolitical waiting room. Yet as the European map around us continues to (rapidly?) change, that anomaly is becoming less a curiosity and more a strategic vulnerability.

Kosovo’s ruling regime of the past 5-6 years has been talking the talk of the European integrations, but little walk was walked.

Anyone who makes a living in Brussels - whether as a diplomat, eurocrat, journalist or correspondent - will tell you the same thing: Kosovo’s file is gathering dust in the enlargement departments.

Other countries from the region have moved forward. Montenegro and Albania have made remarkable progress, while Moldova’s journey is gathering pace. Others have regressed, such as autocratic Serbia and Georgia, or remain trapped by circumstances largely beyond their control - looking at you North Macedonia - held hostage for years by the whims of complicated EU neighbors. Bosnia continues to endure paralysis.

Kosovo, however, occupies a category of its own. We have neither progressed nor regressed. We are not stuck because of some external obstacle. We have simply stopped participating in the EU integration race altogether.

We are still not a formal candidate for EU membership. Half a decade has been squandered by the ruling regime on unnecessary spats with allies and partners, while little effort has been invested in the kind of sustained diplomatic work that could have improved Kosovo’s standing in European capitals. There has been shockingly scant interest in tackling the larger strategic questions: deepening cooperation with key allies, coordinating with allies and delivering on big ticket items in dialogue with Serbia, or creating the political conditions for additional recognitions from EU non-recognizers such as Greece, Romania, Spain, Slovakia or Cyprus.

Some readers less versed on the European integration tactics and tantrums may think maybe Kosovo has instead focused on building a more stable, strategic relations with the USA. We are after all, “the most pro-American nation in the world”.

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Alas, we have fumbled the ball in this game too, proving largely unable to navigate the new realities in Washington DC, and now face a rapidly shrinking footprint in a key alliance where we have traditionally been at our strongest.

Kosovo’s strategic dialogue with the US has been effectively suspended by the Biden administration. The Kurti government also cancelled the coal-based power plant project awarded to a US company, later resulting in more than 20 million Euro in compensations paid to the firm. Kurti then cancelled the gas pipeline project that was supposed to be built with US federal grants from Millennium Challenge Corporation.

Kurti’s foreign ministry has significantly (and intentionally) reduced Kosovo’s diplomatic and lobbying presence in the American capital. Where Kosovo once engaged high-level figures such as Susie Wiles, Ambassador Frank Wisner or Senator Bob Dole, and maintained access to influential networks that shaped Washington’s policy ecosystem, for much of this decade it has effectively shut down formal lobbying efforts and is operating through an embassy that has been severely understaffed for ever since Kurti came to power in 2021.

As the Kosovo’s current Ambassador Ilir Dugolli warned in a leaked email to bosses in Prishtina:

“It is hard to find another Embassy where reliance is concentrated in a single diplomat, without local staff, combined with treatment by the host state that is far more brutal than can be perceived in the capital…”

Kosovo seems to be the only country to have been unable to further its interest in Washington nowadays.

• In April, Albania, the United States, and Greece signed a 20-year energy agreement valued at 6 billion dollars, which focuses on supplying American liquefied natural gas (LNG) to Albania and developing regional energy infrastructure.

• Only last month, US Energy Secretary Chris Wright and Croatian Prime Minister Andrej Plenković, also signed a multi-billion dollar deal, which came on top of a 1.5 billion dollar deal connecting US, Croatian and Bosnian energy interests.

• Serbia is moving ahead with 2.6 billion dollar deal for a massive hydropower project of over 2000MW, together with US company Bechtel. This agreement is result of a Strategic Energy Agreement signed between Serbia and US last year and US Embassy in Serbia has just published the procurement for this project.

• North Macedonia and the US Government are proceeding with regular meetings of their Strategic dialogue, hoping to conclude agreements in energy, military support, etc.

  

Agon Maliqi, a Senior Fellow at the Atlantic Council in Washington DC noted last week that “the central US focus today [in Western Balkans] seems to be on energy and economic infrastructure projects”.

James Carafano, a senior executive at The Heritage Foundation and a Balkans connoisseur in the Republican circles, with whom I shared a panel at an AmCham event in May, also commented on how Kosovo is missing the window of opportunity:

“Kosovo is probably one of the most pro-American countries in all of Europe. But, if I'm honest, I think Kosovo has left a lot of untapped opportunities. We have an American government that wants to work with this region, that wants to create partnerships, that wants people to go to the US and bring concrete agreements to the table. And, frankly, I don't think we're seeing that”.

A recent Policy Paper from American Chamber of Commerce in Kosovo warned of risks for Kosovo’s lack of engagement in the American energy connectivity projects in the Wastern Balkans:

“As Europe moves decisively to replace Russian gas and neighboring countries increasingly integrate into LNG-backed regional energy corridors, this gap risks leaving Kosovo structurally exposed to security-of-supply challenges, cost volatility, and regional strategic marginalization.”

All these worries of Kosovo’s lack of attention to the regional energy connectivity, prompted Anu Prattipati, Chargé d’affaires at the US Embassy in Pristina to publish an unprecedented editorial just days before the national elections in Kosovo, concluding:

“The window for Kosovo joining these projects is closing. Delaying this decision risks American LNG supplies being committed elsewhere and could leave Kosovo as the only Western Balkans country without access to American LNG. History cannot stand in the way of decisions that will benefit Kosovo’s people today and into the future.”

Where does this take us? Nowhere it seems. Kosovo has just held its third national election in a year. While opposition parties have raised alarms about the implosion of Kosovo’s foreign affairs and energy policy, Kurti remains acting prime minister and - at this point - there is little sign of urgency to restore institutional stability or relaunch a coherent strategy that could realistically restart Kosovo’s path toward EU integration and a forward-looking strategic relationship with the United States.

Kosovo is heading toward its third national election in less than a year. For most of this period, the atmosphere on the partisan pitch as well as the voters’ stands projected democratic fatigue. Two pairs of elections in 2025 felt more like a football match dragged into extra time with exhausted players showing tired movement on the field with little creative dribbling. Voters were watching from the stands, grumpy, with folded arms, an opposition too weary to press forward. The political slogans came and went like rehearsed chants in a disinterested stadium. Both the players on the pitch and public on the stands seemed to understand that another whistle would soon blow anyway and the winner seemed predetermined. VV won both scrappy matches not because it had a good history of playing, but because the opposition was unable to unlock a way to beat the main playmaker, the perennial acting Prime Minister Kurti.

This time around, the competition feels different. If previously we watched a slow, tactical stalemate, we’re now witnessing something closer to a derby on the verge of explosion, every tackle harder, every statement sharper, every social media post delivered to inflame opponents. These Kosovo’s elections now resemble a match that has abandoned any rules midway through the second half: players shouting over one another, swearing and kicking, and the observers left unsure whether they are witnessing strategy, improvisation, or pure panic.

Rhetoric has escalated and there are two main reasons for it.

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Firstly, Albin Kurti seems to have been genuinely stunned that he wasn’t able to hold on to power even after winning 51% of the vote in the December 28 elections. His decision to backstab President Vjosa Osmani, his former staunch ally turned frenemy turned chief antagonist, was a gamble that cut ridiculously short his third mandate in a year. He must be seeing the current slipping poll numbers, worried that he can’t count on the enormous diaspora that spent their Christmas holidays all too happily in Kosovo, bringing tens of thousands of guaranteed votes. According to UBO Consulting exit polls, around 5% of voters in February 2025 declared themselves to be from the diaspora. In December 2025, that number jumped to 15%. We’re safe to assume over 70% of those votes went to VV.

Kurti switched to a mode he knows best: a highly polarizing campaign, engaging in every dirty trick from the book of political dark arts: peddling conspiracies, framing critics as enemies of the state, amplifying old regional divisions, and unleashing an outright filthy onslaught of online harassment, smears, AI-generated fake news and deep fakes from an army of trolls.

Secondly, former President Osmani is confirming the old lines of William Congreve: “Heav'n has no rage, like love to hatred turn'd, / Nor Hell a fury, like a woman scorn'd". She has (re)joined her old party LDK and is campaigning aggressively (if somewhat hypocritically) against Kurti. On interviews she had no qualms putting out the dirty laundry from her co-habitating days with Kurti. List is long: Kosovo government has sent confidential Notes Verbales to countries hosting Osmani, saying “she doesn’t represent Kosovo”; Kurti has also told her “it’s a mistake to be sitting in a same table with Donald Trump”; Kurti has accused her for organizing military parade for Independence Day.”

Osmani is adamant that it’s personally Kurti who gave orders for, what she called, “the worst smear campaign in Kosovo’s history”, which also includes sexual innuendos by social media accounts close to the ruling party.

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But the rhetoric and online mudslinging soon escalated into a kerfuffle and then into something altogether far more serious last week, following an incident in the PDK heartland of Drenica. According to reports, one of Kurti’s deputy ministers visited a bar in the town of Skenderaj and began insulting the town’s mayor Sami Lushtaku, a founding member of the KLA (known for his short temper), accusing him publicly of being a Serbian spy. A physical altercation followed, and the VV official was hospitalized with minor injuries.

What happened next was both strange and sinister: at around 1 a.m., dozens of armed and masked special police officers descended on Skenderaj, prompting local residents to take to the streets. PDK MPs from the constituency reacted furiously, accusing Kurti of employing Milosevic-style tactics with the intention of inflaming tensions. Usually calm head of PDK Bedri Hamza, was very clear in his warning to Kurti:

“Last night we witnessed deeply troubling scenes, as the Kosovo Police, acting on government orders, deployed special units to Drenica with the apparent aim of exerting pressure and demonstrating force. I call on the acting prime minister to stop the propaganda, stop spreading hatred, and above all, immediately halt the provocations and the misuse of state institutions for his partisan political scenarios.”

Agon Maliqi, a senior fellow with the Atlantic Council in Washington DC gave an acute observation:

“PDK, LDK, and VV have only truly been national contenders for power at moments when they managed to extend their reach across all of Kosovo. Albin Kurti’s political objective is to confine PDK to the status of a regional Drenica-based party, limiting both its broader appeal and its national potential. By consistently redirecting attention toward Lushtaku and Drenica during election periods, Kurti effectively kills two birds with one stone.

First, he unsettles racist urban constituencies with the specter of Drenica returning to power, presenting himself as the sole savior capable of preventing such a scenario — partly out of fear that these votes could otherwise drift toward LDK. Second, through this strategy, and by understanding the Drenica mentality and the emotional reaction provoked by the deployment of special police units, he actually strengthens the dominance of that region’s branches within the party itself.”

On the other hand, Flaka Surroi, the chief editor of “Koha Ditore” also expressed alarm over hate-speech - and lack of focus on what matters - the inflation of 7.5%:

"…When there is so much hatred and so many insults spreading — especially through social media — it does not take much for a spark to ignite somewhere. And that leads nowhere. Amid all the commotion, it cannot conceal a fact that should concern us far more than Sami Lushtaku: prices in April, compared to the same period last year, increased by 7.5%. That is alarming. This is a matter of survival. The rest is theatre.”

Kosovo still prides itself on a surprisingly resilient democratic tradition for a “newborn” state: fiercely independent media, an outspoken civil society, competitive elections, and voters unafraid to challenge those in power. That is precisely why Kurti’s increasingly reckless political shenanigans matter. The real danger is not one ugly campaign, but the normalization of intimidation, conspiracies, online harassment, and permanent political division as tools of governance. Kosovo’s democracy has endured because no leader has managed to place himself above the state and this election may test that principle more than any before it.

Limbo is an interesting word. Limbo, the Caribbean dance, asks a simple question: how low can you go without falling? In Kosovo, the political leaders have been dancing limbo for quite some time. We spent years bending under ever-shifting conditions: lowering the bar, lowering the expectations of integration with Euro-Atlantic family, lowering the standards of governance.

In theology, limbo asks a very different question than the dance: it’s not “how low can you go,” but rather: what happens to those who exist on the threshold of salvation, neither fully condemned nor fully redeemed? So if limbo, the dance, is about physical balance under threshold of pain, theological limbo is about existential suspension, existing in a space of just waiting, uncertainty, and unresolved belonging, like the unbaptized souls who carried no personal sin. Not punishment, not reward, but an in-between that quietly asks: is it possible to exist indefinitely on the edge of grace? It is a condition that aptly describes Kosovo - a state that, since its “newborn” days, has hovered at the threshold of full inclusion in multilateral institutions such as the European Union, NATO, and the United Nations, never fully outside possibility of membership, but never quite inside.

And then we have the related, derivative concept of political limbo, where the key, blunt and uncomfortable question is how long can a state (or its people) be kept in a state of political, economic and diplomatic suspension without resolution?

Kosovo organized national elections in February 2025. Acting PM Kurti got the plurality of the votes, but not a governing majority. Opposition had a theoretical governing majority but couldn’t agree on actually realizing this parliamentary potential and got stuck in a quicksand of parliamentary procedures and incessant bickering over quintessentially unimportant issue of parliamentary speakership. Acting PM, aided by his then-ally President Osmani, managed to drag the process to December 2025, when Kosovo organized the second, snap, national elections.

This time around there was a clear governing majority. Kurti won 51%, more than enough to control the parliament and the government. It was widely expected (or at least I expected so) that Kurti would reach agreement to extend Osmani’s mandate or allow for another figure to become a President of mostly symbolic power (similar to Greek or Italian presidents). But Kurti backstabbed Osmani in the most spectacular fashion and then refused to contemplate to allow opposition keep the presidency (which was the only way to ensure 2/3 of parliamentary votes). Deadlines have passed and Kosovo is now facing its third parliamentary elections in 16 months, scheduled for June 7th.

In the meantime, we remain in the political limbo. While EU Commission now declares that Montenegro is on track to conclude its EU enlargement process in 2028 and Albania also marching forward in opening and closing of accession chapters, Kosovo has nothing to show in its EU and NATO integration process. Those few non-recognizing countries in EU and NATO are no closer to recognizing Kosovo’s independence. The suspended strategic dialogue with the US Government (under Biden) is still suspended under Trump.

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Croatia few days ago signed a deal with the United States on Wednesday to boost the expansion of gas pipelines and energy infrastructure throughout the Balkans. Zagreb has also struck a deal with Bosnia to build the long-discussed Southern Interconnection gas pipeline. The deal, reached on the sidelines of the Three Seas Initiative summit in Dubrovnik, is being framed by officials as a breakthrough that could loosen region’s dependence on Russian gas.

At the same time, Albania, the United States, and Greece signed a 20-year energy agreement valued at 6 billion dollars, which focuses on supplying American liquefied natural gas (LNG) to Albania and developing regional energy infrastructure.

North Macedonia too, signed a deal with the US, paving the way for energy to become key for the bilateral strategic partnership as part of the strategic dialogue with the United States. Turkey and Bulgaria are also negotiating deals left and right to create a new energy landscape in the Balkans, independent from the Russian energy resources.

James Carafano, a leading foreign policy expert from Heritage Foundation, commented today on this state of affairs between the US and Kosovo: “Kosovo is probably one of the most pro-American countries in all of Europe. But, if I’m honest, I think Kosovo has left many opportunities untapped. We have an American government that wants to work with this region, that wants to build partnerships, that is looking for people to go to the U.S. and bring concrete agreements to the table. And, frankly, I don’t think we’re seeing that.”

Kosovo’s economy is already in limbo. Inflation is among the highest in Europe, reaching nearly 7% in March. The flagship Mediterranean Games project, scheduled for 2030, is facing delays in the construction of key sports and transport infrastructure due to political limbo. Meanwhile, mortgage and interest rates have climbed to nearly 10%, levels not seen since the early days of the banking system, exacerbating the cost-of-living crisis and access to capital for private companies.

Is there a way out of the limbo? In theology, limbo is not a prison with an escape route, it is a state resolved only by God’s mercy, not something navigable like a system. Exasperated Kosovar voters may hope for divine intervention, but more practical paths may exist. The opposition is better positioned to achieve a stronger result in June. Kurti is expected to win again, but the only path forward will likely require re-learning the lessons of Kosovo’s democratic tradition, where political cohabitation was once embraced. A presidency held by VV alongside a united opposition forming a government may be one possible scenario. An opposition president and a VV-led coalition government may be another.

Ultimately, what breaks political limbo is rarely a sudden rupture, but a slow epiphany - when rival actors recognize that permanence of crisis is an illusion, and that governance requires compromise rather than conquest.

There’s a bit more than a week left for Kosovo’s Kuvend to elect a new president. Failure to do so will trigger third national elections in a year, but one doesn’t sense any urgency in Kosovo to avoid this mind-numbing (and expensive) scenario. The Parliament already failed to elect the president back in March, which enabled the now-former President Osmani to disband the parliament and pave the road to elections in April/May. Alas, the Constitutional Court told Madame President “not so fast” and cancelled her decree, which bought four more weeks of reprieve for the Government majority to try and assemble the 2/3 majority needed to elect a President. One would have thought that the Government would do its utmost, with the greatest urgency and deepest engagement with the opposition, to identify a woman or a man fit to become President of the Republic, but Kurti doesn’t seem bothered in the slightest.

The opposition seems to be somewhat shocked that they get another attempt at casting the electoral die, while the Prime Minister is busy traveling across Europe, after spending much of his second mandate as a pariah, unwanted in EU capitals due to his perceived intransigence in the dialogue with Serbia. Kurti 3 decided to play nice and agreed to a relatively minor compromise in the dialogue with Serbia with regard to the execution of the Law on Foreigners, which gave him a bit of a diplomatic windfall: a bilateral meeting with Macron in Paris and with Foreign Secretary Yvette Cooper in London. He even got to hobnob with global leftist leaders and billionaires at the conference of Global Progressive Mobilization in Barcelona, where he was in a cheerful mood to dispense ideological advice to the global Left: “Geopolitics is seen as belonging to the right. But in my view, this should change. Geopolitics should also belong to us on the left - to analyze, to think through, and to put forward our own positions. Geopolitics is far too important to be left to the right.”

Kurti didn’t show such enthusiasm for the mobilization of votes for the election of the President at home, where he continues with the old tactical habit of avoiding media, staying silent and waiting for the clock to run out. He had one or two meetings with LDK’s leader Lumir Abdixhiku, with whom he seems to show a faint interest in reaching an agreement on the presidency. He also sent apparently one or two WhatsApp messages to the leader of PDK, Bedri Hamza, and continued to completely ignore AAK. From this staggering lack of urgency, one can only deduce that Kurti’s focus is on finding an excuse for why the President was not elected, rather than finding an electable President.

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New campaign, old tricks

On the other hand, the Government seems to be in a great deal of rush to use the remaining week or two of Parliament to ram through its agenda. The Government tried to (unsuccessfully) push for approving the controversial Law on the Bureau of Confiscations, which was already deemed unconstitutional by the Constitutional Court of Kosovo. The Venice Commission, too, had raised serious concerns regarding the “compatibility of the provisions of this draft law with the minimum standards of human rights and the rule of law.”

A spate of other bills and decisions is being processed too, including the election of two judges to the Constitutional Court, which may change the balance in Kosovo’s primary and most credible legal vehicle for institutional checks and balances. A new attempt is also made by the VV to fully control the public broadcaster RTK and the Independent Commission of Media, which led the experts of European Centre for Press and Media Freedom to declare that the attempts of the government will “result that we will no longer have media pluralism in Kosovo, which is one of the foundations of the free society.”

The lack of focus on governance is taking a significant economic toll. Inflation in Kosovo was already among the highest in Europe before the war in Iran and has reached 6.7% on an annual basis in the month of March. The IMF has lowered its projections for economic growth due to inflation, a decline in exports, and weakening private sector demand. Energy prices have risen even further in April, hitting all layers of society and the economy hard. The Government has refused to lower VAT on oil imports, but the word on the street is that the Government is planning a massive “inflation package” of circa €200 million. It is hard not to view this move through the prism of electoral needs to pump money into key voting demographics. Kurti has already spent €67 million in February to dispense the “13th salary” to all public sector employees.

An interesting side note here: the Kosovar Anti-Corruption Agency published its annual income declarations for all public officials, and the one self-declared by Albin Kurti raised a few eyebrows and inspired countless memes. The 51-year-old Prime Minister of Kosovo declared that he has never taken out any mortgage, does not own a car, does not own any property, has zero declared assets, and currently has a total of €16.41 in all of his bank accounts. The Robespierre of Kosovo thus stayed true to his image of a “poor mouse,” but the public reaction to a not-so-young leader having no more than sixteen euros to his name generated more ridicule than respect. As one economics analyst quipped: “No serious country should have a prime minister with only 16 euros at his disposal. In any case, this is not normal. So either we are dealing with a big and dangerous gambler who has gone “all in”, or with a person who has not managed to save even 100 euros for basic family security in emergency situations.”

Opposition: same old, same old…

One would expect that the fact that Prime Minister Kurti, who won 51% of the vote in December, shows a stunning lack of ability to actually govern and to lead negotiations in the election of the President would reinvigorate the Kosovar opposition. Here is a man who cannot make even the most modest of compromises in sharing power and is willing to risk new elections and turmoil because he cannot stand being overshadowed by his former bestie Vjosa Osmani, and is willing to block Kosovo in his attempts to control all levers of power.

But opposition seems slow as ever to capitalize: LDK is hoping it can be invited into a power-sharing agreement by the government, though Kurti’s laissez-faire attitude doesn’t really seem promising for such a scenario. PDK is gearing towards elections, hoping that those will be held in June with a far lower turn-out, which may (or may not) give the party a more significant share of MPs from its stable pool of voters. Osmani on the other hand is continuing to air her grievances on the media and is in a pre-election mode of her own, visiting Kosovar towns for a “post-presidential tour”.

In Kosovo, tragedy and farce have learned to share the same stage. For now, the curtain has not fallen. But the audience, increasingly familiar with the script, may soon stop believing in improvisation.

A group of eminent journalists and publishers from Kosovo have addressed the institutions of the European Union and the Government of the United States with a letter, in which they raise serious concerns about the way proceedings are being conducted at the Kosovo Specialist Chambers in The Hague, particularly in the case against Hashim Thaçi, Kadri Veseli, Rexhep Selimi, and Jakup Krasniqi.

In the letter, among other things, it is stated that these concerns are not political, but are based on reporting from independent media.

Participating journalists:

1. Blendi Fevziu (Klan TV, Albania)

2. Adriatik Kelmendi (Klan Kosova, Kosovo)

3. Afërdita Saraqini – Kelmendi (RTV 21, Kosovo)

4. Lirim Mehmetaj (VOX Kosova, Kosovo)

5. Berat Buzhala (Nacionale, Kosovo)

6. Ermal Panduri (RTV Dukagjini, Kosovo)

7. Sidorela Gjoni (Top Channel, Albania)

8. Leonard Kerquki (T7 & Gazeta Express, Kosovo)

9. Alban Dudushi (RTSH, Albania)

10. Kushtrim Sadiku (Kanal 10, Kosovo)

FULL STATEMENT: JUSTICE CANNOT BE SELECTIVE

Addressed to the institutions of the European Union and the Government of the United States

We, a group of journalists from Kosovo and the region, raise serious concerns about the way proceedings are being conducted at the Kosovo Specialist Chambers in The Hague, particularly in the case against Hashim Thaçi, Kadri Veseli, Rexhep Selimi, and Jakup Krasniqi.

These concerns are not political. They are based on reporting from independent media, reactions from civil society, institutional assessments, and the positions of legal experts.

The EU and the United States not only supported the creation of this court — they guaranteed that it would represent the highest standards of justice. For this very reason, any deviation from these standards is a direct test of their credibility.

Today, that test is being seriously called into question.

– Judicial interventions beyond the role of a neutral arbiter
– Detention exceeding five years without a final decision
– Delays in proceedings beyond any standard of “reasonable time”
– Lack of transparency through closed hearings
– Admission of evidence without sufficient verification
– Decisions that deviate from fundamental European principles such as lex mitior

These are not procedural details. These are issues that affect the very essence of justice.

In this context, we ask for clear answers:

– Who bears responsibility for such prolonged detention?
– How is the impartiality of the trial guaranteed?
– Why is transparency the exception rather than the rule?
– What happens if violations of international standards are established?
– And above all: is this court functioning as a mechanism of justice — or as an instrument with double standards?

Kosovo amended its Constitution under international pressure, with the belief that justice would be fair, transparent, and equal.

Today, that belief is wavering.

These questions do not harm justice.
Silence does.

If a court built in the name of European values loses public trust, it risks transforming from a symbol of justice into a symbol of selectivity.

And that is a cost no one can afford.

Find below the opinion piece published by Ambassador Daan Everts, one of the most experienced European diplomats engaged in the former Yugoslav crisis. He led the OSCE Mission in Kosovo from 1999 to 2003, in the crucial time of Kosovo’s post-war developments. Republishing his text here without editing.

There is a notorious prison in Scheveningen: the Oranjehotel. Dutch resistance fighters during World War II were imprisoned here, often until their execution. It is now a museum paying tribute to the heroes of the resistance.

In the same building complex, which no longer houses prisoners, four resistance fighters from Kosovo have been imprisoned for five and a half years, more than two of which were spent in pre-trial detention. Not as resistance heroes, as they are regarded in Kosovo, but as defendants charged with "war crimes," "crimes against humanity," and "participation in a criminal organization." A poignant irony.

The four detainees are not just anyone: a former prime minister and president, two former speakers of parliament, and a former member of parliament/party leader. All four belonged to the leadership of the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA, or UCK in Albanian) that sought to end the Serbian apartheid regime in Kosovo in the 1990s. They opted for guerrilla warfare because negotiations on far-reaching self-government, which Milosevic had taken away from Kosovo, proved fruitless. Although they reluctantly accepted the Western-sponsored Rambouillet peace agreement in March 1999, the struggle escalated into full-scale war when the Serbian government under Milosevic refused to agree to it. As in the Yugoslav War, the Serbs once again failed to seize the opportunity for a positive outcome.

That Yugoslavian fratricidal war had legal consequences in The Hague with the so-called Yugoslavia tribunal that tried war crimes. Not entirely without reason, this court was accused in Serbia of anti-Serbian bias. So when a Swiss senator from the Council of Europe, Dick Marty, published a report in 2011 accusing KLA leaders of nothing less than trafficking in organs from Serbian prisoners, Russia and Serbia were quick to demand special legal proceedings for Albanian Kosovars. The allegation had previously been made by Carla del Ponte and later repeated by Clint Williamson of the Yugoslavia tribunal, without any further evidence.

Under heavy international pressure and at the internal insistence of the then Deputy Prime Minister Thaci—one of the four defendants—Kosovo, now independent, agreed to a special court in 2015. Although it was made part of the Kosovar legal system, it was established in The Hague as a completely independent, international institution that enjoys supremacy over all Kosovar legal institutions. It is mainly financed by the EU and related countries but, remarkably, is run almost entirely by Americans. The Public Prosecutor has always been an American, as have the presiding judge and the lawyers for the four defendants. American justice in action on Raamweg in The Hague!

When the final indictment was published in October 2020, it appeared that the original, main reason for establishing a special court—criminal organ trafficking—no longer existed. Other charges, such as those mentioned above, had to justify its existence. More mundane reasons also contribute to the tribunal's stubborn persistence: apart from the hundreds of highly sought-after, often tax-free jobs involved, the countless hundreds millions of euros invested, and the international indifference to this process and the fate of the four Kosovars, now that attention is focused on much greater war crimes in much more important parts of the world.

The prosecutor has now announced his sentence demand: 45 years in prison. For those involved, this effectively means life imprisonment, as they are all over 50 years of age. The sad thing is that the so-called field commanders of the KLA, who were much closer to the acts of resistance in the war zone, were previously acquitted of similar charges by the Yugoslavia tribunal in The Hague.

As I have experienced firsthand, the KLA was highly decentralized, not to say quite disorderly. Local resistance groups paid little or no attention to the highest leadership. It is diddicult to understand how they can be accused of involvement in local guerrilla activities, which undoubtedly included murderous acts of revenge.

Former President Thaci, for example, spent almost the entire war abroad. It is also highly unlikely that NATO would have intervened in the conflict in favor of the Kosovo Liberation Army if its well-informed intelligence service had labeled the KLA leaders as members of a criminal organization. Various witnesses from the highest military and diplomatic circles, including NATO's then Supreme Commander, have confirmed in recent weeks the improbability of command lines between the formal KLA leadership and local resistance groups.

Looking at the big picture, I fear that international justice is not being served by this dubious trial.

A week or two ago, Kosovo seemed on track to finally appoint all vacant institutional positions after a protracted political crisis that lasted over a year, marked by endless parliamentary maneuvers and two rounds of national elections.

The breakthrough came after the national elections of 28 December 2025. The ruling party, VV, led by Albin Kurti - who relishes the politics of chaos and crisis - won by a far larger majority than anyone expected (or feared), securing the stable parliamentary majority needed to appoint the Speaker of Parliament as well as Prime Minister Kurti for his third consecutive mandate (the first was brief, after he lost a vote of confidence).

The only remaining piece of the puzzle was the position of the President of the Republic. Vjosa Osmani, in her lame-duck period, went into diplomatic hyperdrive to secure another mandate. She delivered a few recognitions of Kosovo (supported by President Erdoğan’s diplomatic goodwill) and also pivoted strongly toward the Trump administration - from signing Kosovo onto the Board of Peace to organizing a presidential screening of the film “Melania” and gathering support from individual Albanian-American entrepreneurs and members of the U.S. Congress.

Alas, none of it mattered, as Kurti did not appear in the mood to forget or forgive Osmani’s perceived intransigence in foreign policy. It is an ironic twist (and quite a backstabbing move from Kurti), considering that Osmani also worked tirelessly last year to help Kurti block Kosovo’s parliamentary life by agreeing to constitute the parliament based on unconstitutional procedure (as decided so belatedly by the Constitutional Court), nominating him twice for prime minister and choosing the election date in the middle of Christmas holidays with the greatest possible diaspora participation in mind, a key constituency for VV.

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As Osmani’s chances for a second mandate rapidly faded, Kurti moved to propose a member of Adem Jashari’s family for president. This proposal would likely have secured the votes of Democratic Party of Kosovo (PDK) and Alliance for the Future of Kosovo (AAK), but first Murat Jashari, a respected professor of law, and then Bekim Jashari, a former maverick mayor, both refused to enter the presidential race, choosing to keep the family legacy outside party politics.

The vote for the President must happen by 3rd of March. First two rounds of voting require a quorum of two-thirds of MPs. This specific provision always increased the tensions during previous presidential elections in Kosovo. This is why Kosovo parliamentary parties always had to compromise on presidency.

Bedri Hamza of PDK met Kurti yesterday and proposed a formula of agreeing on a “credible figure” put forward by PDK in agreement with VV. Hamza’s stance is clear: PDK has indicated some readiness to vote for Murat Jashari, but since that option fell through, it is now ready to reach an agreement with VV by nominating a candidate acceptable to both PDK and VV.

Kurti responded with a twist: as Murat Jashari distanced himself from the race, VV will propose its own candidate, and whoever secures the 61 votes should become president, with all parties providing quorum. This would inevitably mean that VV would control the premiership, the parliament, and the presidency. That is hardly a compromise the opposition is ready to support. While half of Kosovo’s voters did give Kurti a strong mandate as prime minister, the presidency requires a broader majority - and a willingness to compromise.

We’re still unsure what is the LDK stance. The rumor is that party leader Lumir Abdixhiku has already proposed Lufti Haziri to Kurti. Haziri is a moderate LDK patrician who has served as a Deputy Prime minister in past. AAK has already nominated Ramush Haradinaj as president, but with its 6 MPs, the party of Dukagjin region is in no position to have a serious role in negotiations.

It seems doubtful that Kurti will accept either the PDK or LDK proposal for president. He appears comfortable with the prospect of parliament failing to elect a president and voters being pushed toward a third round of national elections within a year. VV is in government, has already planned to disburse a 13th salary to public sector employees, and to allocate an additional €100 to pensioners and students ahead of the forthcoming Eid. The party is flush with cash and can use its incumbent position (and a newly approved state budget) to curry favor with economically fatigued voters. Kurti sees the opposition as fragmented, demoralized, and in dire straits. The leftist Prime minister of Kosovo has even stated that the 51.1% of votes from December elections have provided him with a heavenly mandate, as if “God himself wrote with a pen 51.1%”.

Only week ago, it seemed Kosovo would elect a President and most likely candidate was Murat Jashari. Kurti kept his cards close to his chest but as we approach the actual vote, he doesn’t really seem to have a reserve joker up his sleeve.

It’s a high-stakes gamble this. Kurti is playing a game of chicken with the opposition, hoping his political opponents will blink first - much like the fatal showdown in Rebel Without a Cause - but hubris has a way of blinding even the most disciplined tacticians, and if no one swerves, the resulting crash could end up weakening his authority and shorten his mandate as a prime minister.

In the end, he may discover that brinkmanship is a dangerous substitute for governance.

Madame President must be a bit stressed these days. When Vjosa Osmani was elected as only the second woman ever to serve Kosovo as President of the Republic, the political landscape looked very similar to what we see now in Parliament. Prime Minister Albin Kurti was riding high on the back of a deep electoral victory, the opposition was fragmented, and Osmani was a shoe-in thanks to the votes of Kurti’s Vetëvendosje, the non-Serb minority MPs, and the opposition Democratic League of Kosovo, a severely weakened party that nevertheless provided the necessary two-thirds quorum.

Five years later, Kurti is still riding high on the back of a new electoral tsunami, the opposition remains fragmented, and Osmani is once again a candidate for the presidency. But this is where the similarities end.

While in 2021 Kurti and Osmani were in a formal and seemingly happy coalition, Osmani’s political party Guxo has since melted under Vetëvendosje’s large tent. LDK’s vote is far from assured, and most importantly, Albin Kurti has shown a distinct lack of enthusiasm for Osmani. He has not endorsed her. He has not even politely acknowledged her desire to continue as president. He has adamantly refused to compliment or even utter anything positive about Osmani’s signature on the creation of the Board of Peace and her diplomatic offensive in Washington, D.C.. Kurti’s silence is indeed deafening - to use an old cliché.

Kosovo’s Kuvendi must meet and start electing the president by March 4. There are three rounds of voting, but the first two rounds require the participation of at least two-thirds (80 out of 120) of all MPs. Albin Kurti has established a majority of 66 MPs consisting of his parliamentary group and a conglomerate of Turkish, Roma, Bosniak, and Egyptian parties, along with the single Serb MP who does not belong to Serbian List. Fourteen MPs from the Democratic League of Kosovo could create a quorum, but LDK leader Lumir Abdixhiku, still licking his wounds from a divisive party congress where he barely scraped a vote of confidence after his (non)resignation, has already indicated that LDK MPs may decide freely whom to support - knowing well that several backbenchers will not endorse Vjosa Osmani.

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What can happen next?

Osmani can still win. She is, after all, the incumbent president. Everyone knows that failure to elect a president after three rounds of voting will inevitably trigger new snap elections. If Kurti stands firmly behind Osmani, it is difficult to imagine that a majority of LDK MPs - as well as potentially AAK - would boycott the session, thereby causing new elections and inviting fresh uncertainty about their own electoral fortunes. So, by and large, Osmani ought to be the bookmakers’ favorite for a second mandate.

Yet there are glaring uncertainties. PDK is unlikely to vote for Osmani, based on statements from party officials (despite her too-little-too-late pivot to the issue of Hashim Thaçi’s trial in The Hague). LDK has given mixed signals, asking for a “political agreement” with VV on the election of the president - something many have interpreted as a (pipe dream) desire to negotiate a broader formula that could include LDK joining the government. AAK has not indicated in any meaningful way that it supports Osmani, instead proposing former prime minister and party chairman Ramush Haradinaj as an “opposition candidate.” The numbers for Osmani simply do not appear to be there - especially since Kurti himself has refused so far to provide an unflinching support, or indeed any support at all.

Part of Osmani’s problem is that she has failed to cultivate durable political alliances inside Kosovo. She did not develop strong personal ties with MPs across the political aisle, instead often behaving more like a partisan actor than a unifying president. She (and her husband, who has shown a propensity to act as a one-man praetorian guard to his presidential spouse) has also damaged her relationship with much of the media. A senior correspondent of the prestigious German daily Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung even tweeted that Osmani engages in “intellectual prostitution.”

Osmani won her mandate on the back of a coalition with Kurti, but since those early days, their relationship has been under strain, with tensions occasionally spilling into public view. Her good relations with the United States are not necessarily an advantage with Kurti, who is known to tolerate little political competition around him.

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So really, what are the other options?

Rumors suggest that Kurti has already spoken to a member of Adem Jashari’s family about a potential presidency. That person is most likely Bekim Jashari, who once ran (unsuccessfully) for mayor of Skenderaj with VV’s support. He is considered a loyal Kurti ally. A candidate from the Jashari family might entice PDK and AAK to provide quorum.

Another possible candidate is Glauk Konjufca, the former speaker of parliament and newly appointed foreign minister who is considered as somewhat of a patrician within VV. His candidacy would ensure VV controls the trifecta of governance: the presidency, parliament, and government. Yet he is also regarded as relatively moderate and is well liked across the partisan divide. Many opposition MPs respect him and may be far more inclined to support him than Osmani.

It would not be surprising if a completely unexpected candidate were to emerge, a woman or man who would pose no threat to Kurti’s forthcoming drive to fully consolidate power, but who commands a modicum of respect sufficient to cross the quorum threshold.

There is only one reason why none of us (or even MPs themselves) know who will be president in a fortnight: Kurti is silent. He is keeping his cards very close to his chest. The situation underscores just how powerful he has become in Kosovo. His lack of transparency on this and many other matters is troubling for institutional watchdogs, media, and civil society, yet it has not harmed him electorally. He cultivates, almost banally and comically, the mystique of the “man with a plan.”

Kosovo will most likely elect a president in a few weeks. Kosovo’s PM has started consultations and has already met PDK’s affable technocrat leader Bedri Hamza. Hamza gave a pointes statement after the meeting: “We do not support candidacies that do not represent civic unity, in accordance with the spirit of the Constitution. I hope there will be reflection from those who have the constitutional responsibility to propose candidates with broad support, avoiding short-term party calculations." Kurti will meet rest of opposition leaders later this week, but again - we’re far still from the white smoke up the parliamentary chimney.

No one wants new snap elections. We do not know who she or he will be, but we do know that the only acceptable candidate will be one who meets Kurti’s expectations for remaking Kosovo according to his own image and ushering in what he has called the “Third Republic.”

A president unwilling to provide guardrails against the capture of independent institutions, the Constitutional Court, public service, intelligence and security agencies, and other oversight bodies, will not find a place in Kurti’s calculations.

A background note

We are approaching the very end of the trial of Kosovo’s former President Hashim Thaçi and other leaders of the KLA at the Specialist Chambers in The Hague. This special court (together with the Specialist Prosecutor’s Office), formally part of Kosovo’s legal system but operating in the Netherlands with fully international staff, was established by the Kosovo Assembly in 2014, after immense pressure from both the Obama Administration and the EU. As a number of academics have argued: “Specialist Chambers was imposed on Kosovo primarily by the EU using Kosovo’s stabilization and association process with the EU as a political instrument to accept the creation of the Specialist Chambers.”

The KSC itself was created largely in response to ghastly allegations in the 2010 Council of Europe report authored by Swiss senator Dick Marty, which claimed that Kosovo Prime minister Thaçi and the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) had engaged in organ harvesting during Kosovo war.

The Marty Report was drafted as a CoE report, following requests from mostly far-right and far-left members of Parliamentary Assembly of Council of Europe, led by Konstantin Kosachev, a Russian MP, then chairman of the Committee on Foreign Affairs from the Russian Federation. Kosachev is now sanctioned by the EU for his role in enabling Russian occupation of Ukraine. In his memoirs, the former Serbian Ambassador to Switzerland Milan St. Protic has admitted that he has provided “evidence” from Serbian government to Dick Marty to ensure the publication of this infamous report.

Ironically, Dick Marty spent his last years of life under armed Swiss police protection following intelligence from Swiss state that a assassination plot by Serbian secret service was targeting him and his wife. Marty himself publicly stated that Serbian intelligence structures were behind threats on his life, aimed at framing KLA leadership during the trial.

The indictment against Thaçi and others was made public in June 2020, at a politically sensitive moment while Thaçi was flying to Washington DC for meeting with President Trump and expected to participate in U.S.-brokered talks with Serbia.

Former prosecutor Jack Smith, an American prosecutor appointed in 2018, oversaw the indictment process before later leaving the post in 2022 to take a role as a Special Prosecutor in a case involving President Trump.

The trial has been unusually lengthy. Pre-trial procedures alone lasted more than two years, leading to accusations that Smith launched the indictment before having the evidence.

During this period, Thaçi and co-defendants have remained in pre-trial detention since 2020, with judges repeatedly rejecting requests for release, despite several NATO member countries providing sovereign guarantees for house arrest of the former President of Kosovo in their respective territories.

The prosecution’s case, led by Smith, has relied on two central premises:

1. That the KLA functioned as a “joint criminal enterprise” with a “real” army with a clear command structure and unambiguous chain of command.

2. That Hashim Thaçi was a central military leader within that organized structure.

The defence, coordinated by Pierre-Richard Prosper, the former US Ambassador-at-Large for War Crimes Issues, has countered that:

1. The KLA functioned largely as a highly decentralized, mostly rural uprising that emerged as a people’s liberation response to Serbian state atrocities.

2. Thaçi’s role was primarily political rather than operational or military across different zones of KLA activity.

Defense witnesses for Thaçi included Wesley Clark, a retired United States Army four-star general and NATO’s Supreme Allied Commander Europe; Christopher Hill, former US ambassador and Assistant Secretary of State under Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama; James Rubin, former Assistant Secretary of State for Public Affairs under President Clinton; James Covey, former Deputy Special Representative of the UN Secretary-General for Kosovo; John Stewart Duncan (OBE), a senior British diplomat seconded to NATO, etc.

I, for one, believe the defense has done more than enough to ensure there is more than reasonable doubt in the indictment. Prosecution has failed to prove that KLA had an unambiguous command and control. As Lord Robertson, the Former Secretary General of NATO has quipped, the KLA was more of a “ragtag army” with no real leadership. Individual crimes that have happened as acts of revenge or criminality cannot be prescribed to an organized, planned and executed criminal process of a “joint criminal enterprise”

But this trial has reportedly cost close to one billion euros, and it remains to be seen in spring whether nefarious political considerations will prevail over justice and historical truth.

The Essay

On this occasion, I am republishing an essay - or more precisely, a book review - written by Dr. Nevenka Tromp in 2023. She read this in an event in Prishtina which I attended, in presence of journalists, foreign diplomats and Albanian politicians from Kosovo, Albania and North Macedonia.

From 2000 to 2012, Dr. Tromp worked as a researcher on the Leadership Research Team in the Office of the Prosecutor at the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY), where she served as principal researcher on history and politics in the trial of Slobodan Milošević. She also led research related to the investigation into events in Srebrenica conducted by the Dutch Institute for War Documentation (NIOD), commissioned by the Dutch government.

The Meaning of “Myth”

The term “myth” refers to a traditional story, often of unknown origin, that explains natural phenomena, customs, or beliefs of a culture. A “myth” typically involves gods, heroes, and supernatural events that articulate cultural values, explain the unknown, and provide moral lessons.

In colloquial use, the word “myth” usually refers to a slightly exaggerated narrative of heroism and success that does not correctly depict reality. It is used as a figure of speech in which the accuracy of the factual foundation is subordinated to the moral message the myth conveys.

Foundational Myths and Nation States

Every nation-state will — sooner or later — come up with a relatively short but comprehensive story about its foundation. This type of narrative is also called a foundational myth. “Myth” does not imply that the story is false, but that the story conveys a simplistic, yet heroic, interpretation of past events.

The foundational myth becomes a semi-“official” version of the origins of the nation and of the way the nation-state was created for a general audience. A foundational myth will usually include: a few defining historical events, such as the date and place of at least one important political gathering; the beginning and end dates of a war deemed a liberation war; a massacre of civilians that symbolizes collective suffering of people belonging to the nation; and the names of a few individuals who distinguished themselves in this liberation struggle with exceptional leadership, wisdom, and bravery.

Foundational myths enter the “collective memory” of a nation because they are comprehensive, relatable, and easy to grasp. The foundational myth, as such, serves the purpose of cultural transmission of values and beliefs accessible to every member of society. By presenting succinct narratives of unwavering bravery of its main protagonists, a myth captures the imagination and attention of listeners, ensuring that important messages are easily remembered and passed down through generations.

For example, a foundational myth will carve out patriotism and heroism by presenting these as individual and collective virtues of the “good” side and contrasting them with the adverse “evil” side. It will celebrate liberation from oppression as the ultimate victory of the “good.”

The Foundational Myth of Kosovo

The foundational myth of the Kosovo state has been built upon two pillars. The first pillar in the narrative is its rebellion against the apartheid oppression and repression against the Kosovo Albanian population by Serbia during the 1990s. The suffering and heroism of Kosovo people led to liberation, and liberation led to the creation of Kosovo as an independent state.

The second pillar in the narrative is the support of the “free world” — consisting of the major liberal democracies — for Kosovo in its liberation war and the subsequent declaration of independence in 2008 and beyond. The role of liberal democracies’ support of Kosovo — in words and deeds — makes Kosovo’s foundational myth part of the global struggle between “good” and “evil” that the world has faced in the aftermath of the Cold War.

Kosovo’s determination to side with the “free world” of liberal democracies was not merely a security issue at the time when Kosovo’s fragmented armed forces took up the fight against Serbia’s security forces in the 1990s and needed military support to win the war. It was an important civilizational choice made by Kosovo’s leadership during and immediately after the war of the 1990s. Kosovo pledged to become a liberal democracy and, on the path to becoming one, it has dedicated its politics to cooperation and not confrontation in resolving the hurdles on its path to becoming a fully functioning de jure state. It also means that Kosovo, as a state, adopted the highest standards of rule of law and has pledged to organize its society and political institutions accordingly.

The Book and Its Place in the Foundational Narrative

The book published about President Hashim Thaçi’s role in the creation of Kosovo as an independent state is an important piece of prose that underlines both pillars in Kosovo’s foundational myth: the suffering and heroism of the Kosovo people that led to victory, and the dedication of Kosovo to the rule-driven international liberal order, as expressed in practice through its continuous cooperation with the Euro-Atlantic alliance and the UN.

The continuous close cooperation with the UN, US, and the EU is thus also the guarantor of the irreversibility of Kosovo’s independence and a guarantor that Kosovo needs to pursue a strategy to transition slowly but steadily from a “de facto state” to a “de jure state” and a future member of the UN — something that can only be achieved with the support of its allies.

President Thaçi’s book opens many more complex issues that derive from the structure and status of Kosovo as a “de facto” state. When this book was first published in English, the Kosovo Specialist Chambers (KSC) already existed. The KSC’s official website cites the Council of Europe report compiled under the authority of Dick Marty as the reason for the court’s establishment.

In Marty’s report on the alleged crimes committed by KLA leaders, the region of Drenica features prominently. The name of Hashim Thaçi — who, at the time the Marty report was published in 2010, was Prime Minister of Kosovo — has been mentioned over 30 times throughout the document.

The frequency of the appearance of President Thaçi’s name in the report indicated that the authors of the report — and those who were feeding information to the authors — were aiming at the creation of a specialist court and that President Thaçi could most probably be one of the indictees. Paradoxically, the court could be formally established in 2015 only after Hashim Thaçi, as Prime Minister, pushed hard to lobby for amendments to the Kosovo Constitution that would allow a court of such format to be outplaced to The Hague, the Netherlands.

This did not contribute to President Thaçi’s popularity among his fellow Kosovars. The opposition used it in the political power struggle against him and his party; his own party members and prospective voters took it against him as well. In the elections of the fall of 2019, his party lost the elections — partly because of his support for the creation of the KSC.

In the same year — 2019 — coinciding with the time when his party lost elections to the opposition — the then still-sitting President of Kosovo, President Thaçi, received a request for the first of the interviews with investigators representing the SPO, the KSC’s Prosecutor’s Office. By the summer of 2020, the SPO announced indictments against President Thaçi and three more high-level military and political KLA officials. The trial started in February 2023 and is still ongoing, with no judgment day in sight yet.

Why Is the Personal History of Hashim Thaçi Important for the Foundational Myth of the Kosovo State?

Firstly, it represents the complexity of historical processes, where no one-dimensional, straightforward, and continuous story exists. This is when and where the foundational myth needs to be expanded — or followed — by history writing. The static power of a myth needs to be transformed into the dynamic process of history writing, where event history needs to include causality — how did things happen and why?

Secondly, this book presents a typical historical source. It is an authorized biography, or rather memoirs, the difference being that a biography usually covers a whole life of an individual, while memoirs are concentrated on a specific period and events of someone’s life. In this case, President Thaçi’s life before he was indicted for serious crimes as defined by International Humanitarian Law, for the period of several months during the armed conflict in Kosovo in 1998 and 1999.

Thirdly, this book demonstrates the complexities in the transitional period, where legal mechanisms to deal with past atrocities and human rights abuses can upend the heroism of the winning side by imposing legal accountability for crimes. What does a transitional society that exists largely of victims of crimes inflicted by the other (defeated) side do with its own heroes being indicted by a court? How does it deal with a hero who maybe is — or will be — found guilty of violations of International Humanitarian Law? Shall (and could) a conviction and a prison sentence define this person definitively, overshadowing all former military, diplomatic, and political achievements?

Foundational Myths vs History Writing

Foundational myths are important and useful as collective memory narratives that convey, in a nutshell, important parts of a nation’s history. They are useful for dates to be made national holidays, for street names named after fallen soldiers, and for monuments in central squares that visualize suffering, heroism, and martyrdom. They are good for short history lessons in schools and other state institutions, but no foundational myth can replace the writing of national history.

If one defines history as an interpretation of the past, then the recording, collecting, and preserving of written documents, artefacts, audio, video, and electronic data need to be taken seriously by every nation-state aiming to write its own history in the language its citizens understand. This applies even more to a young state such as Kosovo. Many of you still vividly remember the war years — and many of you have never put your memories on paper to preserve them for future generations. President Thaçi’s book is a good example of why every personal account of past events is important. His book would only gain in importance if more similar accounts about the same period from many angles are published. This book should serve as encouragement for all of you with war memories and a story to tell to do so.

The Debate Around the Creation of the KSC

I shall now turn to the central issue of President Thaçi’s role in the formation of the KSC. The book touches upon it but does not follow the controversy that has been ongoing and has remained unanswered to date. The core issue of the debate is whether President Thaçi’s support in creating the KSC was an act of political weakness or political strength.

How could he support its creation, knowing that he would most probably be one of the first indictees, given the frequency of his name being repeated in the Marty report? In past years, we have heard and read all sorts of interpretations that cast President Thaçi’s role in the creation of the KSC as political weakness. This narrative is best summarized as “a political bargain that went wrong.” President Thaçi allegedly cooperated with the US and EU on the foundation of the KSC because he was given guarantees that if he helped with the constitutional amendments vote, he would not be indicted. But once the amendments to the Kosovo Constitution were adopted and the KSC was founded, his Western allies let President Thaçi down, and he was indicted after all.

This discourse of a “bargain gone wrong” casts President Thaçi’s role in the formation of the court as leadership weakness. His allies failed him, the KSC has the potential to undermine the heroic foundations of the liberation war as depicted in Kosovo’s foundational myth, and he and his war comrades ended up indicted for defending their mothers, wives, sisters, and daughters from Serbia’s apartheid repression.

Another discourse interprets the role of President Thaçi in the creation of the KSC as leadership strength. It goes like this: President Thaçi, understanding the risks that once the court existed he would most probably be indicted himself, put the long-term strategic interest of Kosovo before his own personal and professional interests.

How could he not cooperate with Kosovo’s allies on this or any other issue that could jeopardize the role of the US as Kosovo’s patron state? Kosovo, as a “de facto state,” has serious limitations as an active actor in international relations. For Kosovo to continue as a “de facto state,” it needs at least one patron state to support and advance Kosovo’s interests where Kosovo cannot do it bilaterally or multilaterally.

The relationship between a “de facto state” and its patron state cannot be an equal partnership, because a “de facto state” is more dependent on long-term support from a more powerful patron state than the patron state needs the “de facto state” it chose to support. This partnership can exist and continue as a long-term commitment only when it is based on trust, respect, and mutual understanding.

If President Thaçi had refused active cooperation on this issue, where would Kosovo be now — almost 10 years later — and how would Kosovo’s citizens be looking at their immediate future without the support of allies?

The question that needs to be raised here is: Why did Kosovo’s allies, with the US in the lead, find it necessary to create a specialist court to deal with accountability for alleged crimes committed by the KLA? Was the creation of the KSC a concession to Serbia — a tactical step aimed at appeasing Serbia and keeping it participating in dialogue talks for normalization of relations with Kosovo in the post-2008 period, which would compel Serbia to fulfill its part of the bargain, i.e., to recognize Kosovo as an independent state within its current borders? What happens if Serbia, despite all concessions made, does not fulfill its part of the bargain? If so, is there any contingency plan by the US, EU, and QUINT to act if Serbia, after achieving the interim objective of prosecuting the KLA at the KSC in The Hague, does not fulfill any of the concrete agreements on the path to normalization?

Liberal Democracy, International Law, and the Court

A second reason why President Thaçi’s cooperation with Kosovo’s allies in the foundation of the KSC is important is that once Kosovo was constituted as a liberal democracy, President Thaçi could not but support a court that deals with International Humanitarian Law. Compliance with IHL and human rights, and their application in practice, are among the most important achievements of the international liberal order since its development after the end of World War I in 1918, when the League of Nations was founded, followed by the foundation of the UN in 1945.

Kosovo, as a state, adopted all fundamental principles of the international liberal order, and its commitment to this order is reflected in its cooperation in the constitution of the KSC. Complying with US and EU direction, the cooperative attitude of the Kosovo government headed by Hashim Thaçi demonstrated the determination of the Kosovo state to stay on the path of liberal democracy and to stay on the right side of history. President Thaçi accepted the accountability mechanism of the KSC with the expectation that the trials at the court would be fair and the verdicts just.

Justice, Trials, and Historical Truth

The outcome of his trial in The Hague will be a watershed moment to revisit how right or wrong President Thaçi was when putting his trust in Kosovo’s allies and their institutions.

Judicial and legal justice is peculiar — it produces verdicts based on the test of whether a person has been found guilty beyond reasonable doubt on the charges in the indictment. The criminal process is not calibrated to prove someone’s innocence. There are many reasons why the “truth” coming from the forensic process of a criminal trial cannot be held in higher regard than political or historical truth. We cannot allow lawyers and judges to have the last word for many good reasons.

Legal justice and legal truth are frozen in time. Once a judgment is final, it remains frozen in time. If a criminal trial has been finished with a final appeal judgment, there is still a way to reopen the case if new evidence appears that might be deemed powerful enough to reverse the judgment and verdict. If a defendant has died in the meantime, there is no legal way to reopen the case.

Memoirs, History, and Political Legacy

President Thaçi’s book shows the importance of memoirs, diaries, biographies, and autobiographies as historical sources for critical history writing of Kosovo’s independence path. It needs to evaluate, in stages, the historical periods that led to current realities. History writing needs to move narratives about the past from one-dimensional heroism and martyrdom to critical evaluation of protagonists who were in decision-making leadership positions.

Foundational myth narratives need national heroes and martyrs, but historical narratives need to emancipate themselves from too much emphasis on the contribution of individuals by balancing it with evaluation of historical processes depicting national and international dynamics. President Thaçi’s book is a very important step in this direction.

But this book is more than a historical source about a very relevant period of Kosovo’s history. This book opens many ongoing political issues that Kosovo, as an independent state, faces today.

A Generational Story

This book makes us see Hashim Thaçi as a representative of a whole generation of young Kosovars who were coming of age in a trying political time at the end of the 1980s and in the 1990s. From growing up as teenagers, apprentices, and students, they became activists rejecting Serbia’s apartheid system in Kosovo.

They took up arms to protect their homes, mothers, sisters, wives, and daughters from a state that was supposed to protect and not oppress them. This generation of Kosovars, despite their young age, rose to the occasion and fought the war that will be marked in the history of Kosovo as the “liberation war.” After the war, they became politicians.

It is generally known that people usually become politicians out of idealism or opportunism. Regardless of their initial motivation, the best politicians become those who eventually become pragmatists — those who understand politics as the “art of what is possible.” This “art” also implies that a good politician is one who can distinguish between his or her private and particular interests and the public and national interest of the state he or she represents. This requires every politician to practice the skills of cooperation and compromise. Political skills such as bargaining, deal-making, and compromising replace the heroism and bravery needed to win a war.

From Politician to Statesman

What is then the path that an effective politician has to make to transition into a statesman?

A statesman is a politician who, in challenging times, can make visionary decisions to advance his people’s interests and the interests of the state he represents. A statesman needs to be a good tactician but an even better strategist who might sacrifice some temporary state interests for the sake of a long-term future position that would benefit his people and the state he represents.

A statesman will find ways to cooperate and persuade others to follow strategic goals and give legitimacy to achieve consensus for a political vision that might not be equally clear to everybody. A statesman is a politician who will be unselfish and bold enough to advance his vision even when most of the people around him do not see as far as he does at that moment.

In Kosovo’s political history, there have been many able politicians who successfully articulated and represented the interests of the Kosovo people, but who among them have been perceived as statesmen? Not too many. In the absence of role models, this wartime generation of Kosovo politicians and post-war Kosovo leaders has been setting examples of what modern-day political leadership should be about. Only with the passage of time shall we be able to recognize which of these politicians will turn out to be statesmen.

(I’ve edited the text by Dr. Tramp for grammar, typos, punctuation, and very small flow fixes. I added subtitles only for readability.)