In a recent study for the evaluation on nonviolent struggles in the world ( ), after many examples of successful cases, Kosovo is presented as a failure of nonviolence. I would like to discuss with you of the reasons of this failure.

The positives examples are many. Galtung, in one of his last publications ( ), quote 10 of them. Among these:
- The Gandhi’s campaign for the indipendence of India;
- The Martin Luther King’ s campaign against apartheid in the South of USA;
- Womans in Plaza de Maio of Buenos Aires, against the military regime;
- The movement “People’s Power”in Philippines which succeeded in ending the dictatorship of Marcos;
- In 1943, during the Nazist Regime, the liberation of Jewish people who had been arrested by the Gestapo, trough their wives nonviolent struggles.

But why in Kosovo the nonviolent struggles, which has seen involved during the years 1989-1992/3 a great majority of the Albanian population of Kosovo, in wonderful nonviolent actions, failed?

Of course, in the literature about this, several external factors are mentioned ( ); I will only recall three of them:
a) The dumbness of the International Community on these struggles. She waited the starting of armed conflcts betweeen Albanians and the Serbian Army, to get interested and involved in this conflict. As one of your historian, interviewed by me in 1995, said: “The International Community understand only the language of arms, not that of nonviolence. We can still go on for some time in our nonviolent struggles, but if the I.C. continues to be dumb, we will have to resort to arms, also if this may result in our distruction”.
b) Not taking in account the problems of Kosovo in the Dayton treaty, answering positively to the specific request of Milosevic;
c) Removing the sanctions of first level to Serbia as soon as Milosevic signed the school agrement on Kosovo, facilitated by the Community of Sant’Egidio of Rome, and declaring, the European Community, Serbia as an “’area of privileged market,:
- without conditioning this to the elimination of the so called “emergencies laws” in Kosovo, which were, in reality, a martial law,
- without monitoring the real implementation of the agreement, which was not applied for more than one year and half, until the war in Kosovo started.

But in addiction to these external factors are not there some internal factors which can be connected to the today’s topic, i.e. the role of the leadership in the construction of peace?

On this topic those who would have liked a more active type of nonviolence, accuse the passivity of Rugova, and put to him the blaim for this failure ( ).
I think, on the contrary, that the responsability has to be given to all the leaders of Kosovo who did not succeed to work together and to elaborate a common strategy of nonviolence. The lack of this strategy was one of the main reasons for the failure of the nonviolent struggles in Kosovo. This is not only my opinion, but also that of Jan Oberg, the Director of the “Transnational Foundation for Peace and Future Research” in Sweeden , who has studied for long time the problems of this area and who, in 1992, had written a document on the prevention of war in Kosovo in which he proposed nearly all the solutions which have brought, many years later, to the end of the war.

The Nonviolent Albanian Movement in Kosovo was in reality divided in two main lines:
1) that of Rugova who did not approve and accepte the nonviolent direct action ( he was afraid that the violent reaction of the Serbian Police could bring to a violent response from the Albanians, and at last, at a carnage of his people), but who has supported the Parallel Government (taxes, alternative school sistem, parallel socio-sanitarian services, ecc) which is normally considered one of the most important weapons of nonviolence. I call this position not “passive”but as a work through the “constructive project”;
2) That of many others (Demacy, Chosia, the Student Movement, etc) who wanted the starting of “nonviolent direct actions struggles”, and considered the first line as an help to the Serbian Government who did take taxes from the Albanians but did not give anything to them, and, in the same time, as a way to render invisible to the world the terrible conditions of the Albanians under the martial law.

It is sure that all the winning nonviolent struggles we have mentioned had used both these weapons (Direct Nonviolent Actiosn, and Constructive Projects), one in connection and interdipendence with the other. The lack of a common strategy between these two lines has strongly weakened the nonviolent movement of the Albanians in Kosovo, giving at least a partial invisibility to the real situation of the Kosovar population, and giving also a justification to the Dayton’s silence. In addiction to that it has given to Milosevic the impression that the nonviolence of the Albanian Population in Kosovo was, in reality, what Gandhi has called the “nonviolence of the weak”, of people who dont have the courage to struggle with nonviolence, and not also to resort to violence, but ask to others to use violence for them.

In the sociology of conflicts it has been found the”principle of reciprocity” ( ): i.e. the tendency of the opponent to answeer in the same way of that of his adversary. If you increase your violence, I will increase mine. From that the well known excalation of violence, and of nuelear weapons in the world. But this principles works also in the contrary direction ”if you decrease your violence I will decrease also mine’’. Kriesberg, who found this principle, brought as an example for this the Salt Treaty between Russia and USA for the limitations of long distance missiles. This agreement started with the unilateral proposal of Gorbaciov to stop the excalation of nuclear missiles (there were, in the world, so many nuclear weapons to bring the distruction of the intere World (someone speaks of seven times) , if a war started, also by a mistake – and in several moments we had been very closed to this. After a certain period, seeing the seriousness of the proposal of Gorbaciov, this was accepted also by the USA. But Kriesberg finds also an exception to this principle, in the descalating process. If your adversary thinks your are diminishing your level of violenee because you fill weak, and you are afraid of fighting, instead of decreasing his violence he will tend to increase it to eliminate you more quickly. Gandhi, who was a very good strategist, had understood this principle and its exceptions, and he did his proposal of stopping the struggle and arrive to an agreement, always after having done a winning nonviolent struggle (after what he called the “nonviolence of the strong), trying to leave to his adversary the possibility to save his face.

So, for the lack of a common strategy, the impression of Milosevic that the nonviolence of the Albanians was due to cowardice, and not to their strenght, and it was the nonviolence of the weak, strenghtened in him the idea of using violence, and terror, to destroy completely the resistance of the Albanian population.

This is my hypothesis on the failure of the nonviolent resistance in Kosovo. But I would like you to comment of this and to say if it is completely wrong, or partially, or if it has some fundation on the facts. Thankyou for your comments.

NOTE
Stieren C., “Facing down the guns: When has nonviolence failed?”, in, C. Schweitzer, a cura di, Nonviolent peace force: feasibility study, 2001, info@nonviolentpeaceforce.org.
J. Galtung, Peace with peaceful means, (traduz. Italiana, Pace com mezzi pacifici, Esperia ediz., Milano, 2000, expecially , pp.209-231).
A. L’Abate, “Kosova and the place of prevention of armed conflict in the politics of Europe “ paper presented at the International Scientific Symposium, Kosova-Balkan-Europe, Prishtina, 7th-8th December 2001
See Maliqi S. "Why peaceful resistance movement in Kosova failed", in “Anthology of Civil Society”, Kosova Institute for Euro-Atlantic Integration, Pristina, 2001..
About this principle see Kriesberg L., The sociology of social conflicts, Prentice Hall, Englewood Cliffs, N.J., 1973; see also mine, “ Violenza e nonviolenza: un’analisi dei processi di scalata e descalata dei conflitti”, in, AA.VV., La nonviolenza come strategia di mutamento sociale, Ediz. CEDAM, Padova, 1992, pp. 176-207.

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