"The head of the family has the right to occupy the principal place in the house, to own his weapons, to control the earnings of those who live with him, to buy, sell and exchange land, to give and take loans and enter into guarantees, to build house, to have wine or brandy, to punish those who live in the house when they do not behave in the interest of the family. —From the laws of the Canon of Lekë Dukagjin (Kosovo, XV century).
This is how William Langewiesche, the journalist of the American magazine, Vanity Fair, would start his article, dedicated to the former Prime Minister of Kosovo, Ramush Haradinaj on November 12, 2008.
While bringing back to attention the entire ordeal of Haradinaj's journey, from a practitioner of martial arts and sports, to moving with a weapon in his hand through the mountains of Kosovo and Albania, the article also stops at the trial in The Hague.
WHAT VANITY FAIR WROTE ABOUT 'RAMBO'
In the category of small curiosities of life, consider the experience of the Austrian engineer who took the seat in the row directly in front of me in the economy section of Austrian Airlines, a small plane being loaded before departure last spring for the morning run from Amsterdam to Vienna. The engineer had a thin, moral face and short, gelled hair. He sat very straight with his head bent slightly forward, reading some newspapers. He wore an immaculate white shirt with cuffs around his wrists. The window seat was empty and he probably hoped to keep it that way. He had the body of a wrestler and a long, fat face with a slightly open mouth and a prominent lower lip. He was wearing a blue suit with an open neck shirt. It was Ramush Haradinaj, an ethnic Albanian commander and guerrilla in the Kosovo war, who the day before, after a three-year trial, was acquitted of war crimes charges at the United Nations tribunal for the former Yugoslavia in The Hague.
I knew something of him already – and I had indeed booked this flight in an effort for him to be there. A village boy, Kosovar rebel, the eldest of the children of one of the important Albanian families. Like most Albanian families, he was Muslim, but secular in fact. Haradinaj did well in school, but was seen as a potential troublemaker by the Serbs and was barred from attending university. After a one-year stint in the Yugoslav Army, he joined the diaspora in Switzerland and France, where he worked as a laborer and in nightclubs. During that time he trained for war, competing in marathons and learning martial arts. He claims he once swam for 27 hours in the open sea just to prove he could. After his return to the Balkans, around 1995, he started moving the mountains with weapons from Albania to Kosovo. After the war began in earnest, he earned the name 'Rambo' for his stubbornness in the battle against the Serbs. Imagine a warrior covered in blood holding a machine gun in each hand. He was wounded many times. He killed many people. Perhaps more than anyone else, he was responsible for provoking Serbia into the campaign of ethnic cleansing that led to NATO intervention in 1999. He later formed a political party and served briefly as interim prime minister of the protectorate before being forced out. to resign because of the accusation of war crimes. To my surprise now, he was unaccompanied on the plane. He had no guardians, no family, no guards. He put a small suitcase in the luggage compartment.
I said to him from my place: "Congratulations, Mr. Haradinaj." We shook hands. He didn't know me and neither did the engineer. The latter allowed Haradinaj to slide into the window seat. Haradinaj took off his jacket with surprising grace for a man of his stature, and started texting on his phone.
The flight eased the pressure on his soul. Haradinaj looked up from his phone and looked out the window as the plane climbed east over the Netherlands. The engineer had returned to his reading when Haradinaj approached him and began a conversation in fluent English. "I was in the custody of the United Nations in The Hague for a war crimes trial, but I have been acquitted, and now I am returning home to Kosovo. It's a good day. Yesterday was a good day. I have to change planes in Vienna. How about you? ", said Haradinaj. The engineer looked at him suspiciously. Kosovo?! He had heard of it. The conversation might have ended there, but Haradinaj opened the in-flight magazine to a road map of Europe and pointed to Kosovo—a country so small that its name could not be contained within the indicated borders. We have more than two million people, Haradinaj said. "90 percent are Albanians like me. Ten percent are Serbs. Some are Roma. We have a parliament. Our capital is Pristina. There are good cafes. I was prime minister once. Our government offices are overseen by the United Nations, but we recently declared sovereignty. Several countries have recognized us and the European Union is now stepping in to help. We don't have an army, we are protected by NATO troops," added Haradinaj.
Kosovo is calm but tense. Haradinaj is the embodiment. United Nations prosecutors in The Hague accused him of organizing the killing of civilians during the war, a charge he has always denied. In March 2005, when the legacy of war came back to claim him, he became the only prime minister in history to surrender to international justice. Paradoxically, on the eve of his departure, senior international officials attended his farewell dinner. The head of the United Nations mission expressed confidence in Haradinaj's future and called him "a partner and close friend".
The engineer asked Haradinaj: "Can I ask you something?" How old are you?"
Haradinaj answered him; "Thirty six."
"We are the same age! I'm 39! ", answered the engineer.
After arriving in Vienna, Haradinaj left for the flight to Kosovo. I took the same flight, two hours south from Vienna, with a detour around Serbia to avoid interception. Haradinaj sat in front of the plane, now wearing a tie. We drove through the broken farmland southwest of Pristina, where a crowd of about 2000 people waited to welcome Haradinaj under the black eagle banners of the former Kosovo Liberation Army. One of Haradinaj's staff took me into a small office for an official presentation. While shaking hands, Haradinaj said; "You were on the plane this morning in Amsterdam."
BLOOD FOR BLOOD
Home for Haradinaj is a plateau called Dukagjin, along the mountains of northern Albania, to which it is culturally very similar. Albanians are divided into clans and closely related farming families, among which the Haradins have long been prominent. They have mostly governed themselves by internal rules – a code known as the Kanun, which emphasizes the sanctity of land, blood and honour. The canon serves as a constructive guide to village life, defining public and private responsibilities, and, for most violations, specifying sanctions that are lenient. In the case of violent crimes, the dishonor is believed to lie not with the perpetrator, but with the victim – and indeed with the victim's entire family. It is said that the blood of the family has been stolen. The family must then reclaim their blood by committing an equal act of violence against each male member of the family of the original perpetrator. This is known in the Canon as the principle of blood for blood.
Haradinaj's father knew that the war was coming and he would not spare his sons. He is the hereditary patriarch of a region—a stoic farmer named Hilmi. His village is called Gllogjan, where there are stone and brick houses, 20 minutes away from a main road. About 2,000 people live there. The Haradinaj complex stands far from the village, but within its borders. Ramushi, when he was 13 years old, in 1981, witnessed one of the violent demonstrations during which Albanians were beaten by the police, and after which one of his cousins was sentenced to 15 years in prison. In his teenage mind, Ramush declared war on the Yugoslav state. By the looks of it he was an immigrant worker with a Rambo fantasy, practicing kung fu in Swiss gyms.
By the early 1990s Pristina's elites were in full separatist rebellion, but using peaceful resistance tactics. They were led by an erudite professor of literature named Ibrahim Rugova, who saw himself as a Balkan Mandela. Since then history has shown that peaceful resistance would never succeed. Haradinaj still lived in Switzerland, but increasingly spent time in the Balkans. In 1994 he and a small group of men called themselves the Kosovo Liberation Army. The army on the Dukagjin plateau initially consisted of more than Hilmi's sons - Ramushi and some of his younger brothers, who continued to travel back and forth across the Albanian border.
The article also covers the killing of Luan, Haradinaj's brother, during the fight with the Serbian army. Among other things, the article shows the moment when The Hague acquits Haradinaj, while the hall rises to its feet with cheers.
"Mr. Haradinaj, please stand up?", said the judge. Haradinaj stood straight, his fingertips lightly resting on the table in front of him. "This chamber declares you innocent, and therefore acquits you of all charges against you in the indictment." The hall erupted in cheers. Anita Haradinaj jumped into Dau's arms. Haradinaj remained serious," the article continues.
It is further written: "But Haradinaj is not so easy to categorize. He will continue to live in Pristina with his elite wife in Pristina, and will party in restaurants and bars with Daut by his side. One day he may become prime minister again. When we arrived in Gllogjan he mentioned it briefly as we drove past. If I didn't know, he said; "We have survived like this for centuries. We have built our lives. Our traditions have survived. The tower is more than a house. It is a school, a court, a base for the army. ". We headed to the old family compound, rebuilt since the damage it suffered in the war, but forever violated in Haradinaj's mind. His father, Hilmi, was there and led us into a long room heated by a hearth. The room was lined with cushions along the walls and filled with villagers. The party continued into the night, with raki and traditional songs. I sat next to Hilm, who said: "I don't want to brag about my son."
At one point he took a pistol out of his pocket and fired at the pillow next to us. For an instant the pillow lit up. The celebrants understood the comment. Eventually the others pulled out pistols and fired through the open windows. Half the windows were closed. As the party continued, the men began to shoot directly. Later, when I mentioned gun shooting to a friend in Pristina, he said that the tradition had been abolished years ago, and he condemned it as primitive and archaic. But I thought, 'No.' Indoor shooting, like Haradinaj himself, is as much a part of modern times.
William Langewiesche, Vanity Fair International Correspondent.
(BalkanWeb)
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