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InterviewwithDrMuhametHamiti,Charged’A¡airesoftheRepublicofKosovototheUK
Dr Hamiti is the first diplomat of the Republic of Kosovo to serve in the UK sinceKosovo’s declaration of independence in February 2008.
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In an exclusiveinterview with SEN’s Vivian Ibrahim, he discusses the years preceding Kosovo’sindependence, its nine years of United Nations administration and the euphoria that has existed since last year. Dr Hamiti also provides an insight into present-dayrelations with Kosovo’s immediate neighbours, the European Union and the UK.He concludes by discussing his role since undertaking his diplomatic post inOctober 2008.
SEN:
Let us begin, Dr Hamiti, by discussing March 1999, when NATO (NorthAtlantic Treaty Organisation) forces entered Kosovo. This marked the beginningof almost a decade of international UN administration over Kosovo.
Hamiti:
Yes. NATO started its air campaign against Serbian targets and theSerbian war machinery in both Serbia and Kosovo during March 1999. A year earlier Serbia had embarked on full-scale aggression against the people of Kosovo.Serbia was intent on ethnically cleansing the people of Kosovo, the overwhelmingmajority of whom are ethnically Albanian.
SEN:
Could we clarify from the beginning what percentage of the population areof other ethnic heritages, for example Serb, Roma, etc?
Hamiti:
We have not had a proper census for over 28 years but conservativeestimates put ethnic Albanians at ninety-two per cent, so eight per cent should benon-Albanians. The majority of those belonging to these minority communitiesare Serbs but we also have Turks, Romas and Slavic Muslim populations, whichwe call Bosnians.Milosˇevic´’s Serbia was intent on ethnically cleansing Kosovars and had launchedan operation to this effect in 1998. Kosovar Albanians had resisted the occupationthrough peaceful, political means since the 1990s but the Serbian state machineryembarked upon an ethnic cleansing campaign and killed whole extended familiesin 1998 and in 1999. This included the well-known massacre in Rae`ak in mid-January 1999, which triggered a more responsive approach on the part of theinternational community, the EU and NATO. But what we had in 1999 was the
 Studies in Ethnicity and Nationalism: Vol. 9, No. 2, 2009
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Rambouillet peace talks on Kosovo, spearheaded by the Contact Group of sixcountries: that is the USA, UK, Italy, Germany, France and Russia. The aim of thetalks was the conclusion of a peace agreement for an interim solution betweenwhat was then Yugoslavia (comprising Serbia and Montenegro) and a Kosovodelegation representing the ethnic Albanian majority population of Kosovo. TheRambouillet talks in Rambouillet and Paris in February and March 1999 weretorpedoed by Serbia, which was not seeking a political solution. It was not lookingfor peace. The Kosovar delegation signed up to the compromise deal offered bythe international community. On the other hand, Serbia, at the height of its hubrisas an occupier – a state that, in Kosovo, was waging its fourth war of aggressionagainst its fellow federal entities in less than a decade – called the bluff of theinternational community’s serious efforts to bring a peaceful end to the Yugoslavcrisis.
SEN:
There is, of course, a lot of controversy surrounding the actualevents in Rae`ak and those deaths in January 1999. What was the impact of Rae`ak,and particularly its portrayal by the media on international intervention inKosovo?
Hamiti:
Rae`ak was one among a series of concerted Serbian military and paramilitary actions against Albanians – mostly unarmed civilians, actually.As far as the controversy in Rae`ak is concerned, [it] is a fabrication by the Serbs but the reality is that more than forty civilians were slaughtered in a joint actionof the Serbian army and paramilitary police. The world was there to see it actually.The OSCE (the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe) monitorson the ground and the media broke the news and conveyed the unmediated imagesof slaughtered Kosovar Albanian civilians lying on the ground, with some of the bodies mutilated in a barbaric way. The top Serbian leadership involved in Rae`ak were tried and convicted by the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) earlier this year; each of them were sentenced to up to 22years’ imprisonment. The former Deputy Prime Minister of Yugoslavia (as it wascalled back then), Nikola Sainovic,
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as well as the Chief of Staff of the Militaryand the Chief of Staff of the Police – that is, Serbian military and police generals – were all convicted of having engaged in a joint criminal enterprise against theAlbanian population of Kosovo in the first half of 1999. Therefore, because theICTY has convicted them of war crimes and crimes against humanity, this should bring the so-called controversy of Rae`ak to an end.
SEN:
Moving on slightly to UN resolution 1244, which put Kosovo under international administration. Through what means did Kosovo manage to assert itsidentity and national feeling in those ten years or so?
Hamiti:
Actually, in political and cultural terms, Kosovo had always beendifferent from the rest of Yugoslavia. In fact the name of the state, ‘Yugoslavia’,alienated Kosovo because it means the land of the southern Slavs: the Kosovar Albanians are a non-Slavic people. Now in terms of the culture, identity and
 Interview with Dr Muhamet Hamiti
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values, the Kosovars were in many ways people who wanted to reconnect with theWest, who wanted to retrace their authenticity back in time; not for nostalgia but simply to reassert their identity in a new environment – that is, the post-Cold War context in Europe. The 1990s were the years in which the Kosovars built their ownstate, although under Serbian occupation. When I speak of ‘state’ I refer to what the English-speaking world would understand as an undergroundstate. The people[. . .] had elected a president and a parliament twice, we had a fully operationaleducation system up to university level, health and welfare systems of our own, aswell as a financial system. As such this was a state that was lacking only in the power of law enforcement. After a long political and ultimately armed struggle, inthe wake of the NATO-led humanitarian intervention that spared us outright genocide, we got our freedom on 12
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June 1999 and an international administra-tion was deployed in Kosovo under UN Resolution 1244. With the UN- and NATO-led missions – two components of a very robust international presence – in place, the Kosovars could recover and rebuild after a long period of occupation, persecution and divestment. From 1999 to 2008 – almost a decade – there was a heavy international presence, which, by and large, was very useful in this earlystage. I am referring here to the civilian presence; it enabled us to erect our owndemocratic structures, our own state system and to create a society in which wehad a fully functioning state, lacking only in the classical sovereignty powers that were with the UN administration.This was also very useful because it gave us a period to recover from the physicaldevastation and psychological wounds caused by the war. But in many ways this period was too long: during the last years of its existence, it began to create a culture of dependency in our country. The Kosovars had fought long and hard for independence and we were facing a situation where this ubiquitous international presence, with decisive powers in some areas of the economy (i.e. finances, but also security and foreign relations), had the upper hand as it were. We had anelected government of Kosovo accountable to, and responsible to, the people of Kosovo, but we had at the same time an unelected layer of government in the form[. . .] of the United Nations Interim Administration Mission in Kosovo (UNMIK).[The UNMIK] had decisive powers in certain areas, including [the power] toadminister up to one third of our budget – the budget that we collected from our own revenues. So the people grew impatient and wanted to see resolution of thestatus, because this was such an impediment to our future prospects in terms of our growth, prosperity and peace of mind. We wanted our status resolved, and this dayfinally came on 17
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February 2008.
SEN:
You talk of the overwhelming desire and expectations of the populationover a period of nearly a decade; how was it that February 2008 actually cameabout?
Hamiti:
Public opinion had been prepared for that; we were co-ordinating our steps towards declaring independence with our allies in the West. A comprehen-sive international process had taken place in order to determine the status of 
 Studies in Ethnicity and Nationalism: Vol. 9, No. 2, 2009
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