The current situation among the Serbs in Kosovo is assessed by Jovanka Nikolic in the May 7, 1998, issue of the Kragujevac by-weekly Nezavisna Svetlost.

The fact that whatever is left of Serbs in Kosovo are massively moving away from Kosovo is also confirmed by the president of the Serbian Resistance Movement there, Momcilo Trajkovic, who said: Metohija is ethnically pure. The majority of Serbs have left.

The president of the Decani municipality and high official of the Socialist Party, Milivoje Curkovic is the only one who is denying that the Serbs are leaving: Nobody is resettling from these regions, nor do they intend to. During the last few days the children have been moved to Pec for security reasons.

Some information says that, due to the armed conflicts with the army and the police, the Albanians are also leaving Kosovo, mostly going to Montenegro.

After the clash of the police and terrorists close to the Albanian border, LDK issued a statement saying that the clashes around Ponosevac actually represent an attempt by the Serbian police to push way Kosovo Albanians from the strategic border regions.

The most recent movement of population in Kosovo is more dramatic than previous ones, since for the first time after the Second World War there are open armed conflicts between the two ethnic groups. The movement of Serbs from Kosovo is one of the key traumas in the Serb public according to the Belgrade sociologist Marina Blagojevic. She says that it was in Kosovo, and the manipulation of the resettlement data of the largest non-Albanian community in that region, where the wave of Serb nationalism started.

The data that Blagojevic is presenting actually speak about the fact that for decades, due to wrong state policies, Kosovo has been moving away from a civil state and was getting closer to a model of ethnic community as the solution.

In the poll that Blgojevic conducted concerning the motives for resettling, special moving force for the Serbs was the fear for the children, since the poll shows that as much as 28, 5 percent of the children among the polled households had physical injuries and conflicts, while 23,5 percent have encountered threats and verbal attacks.

The second motive was of economic nature. A man from Kragujevac, originally from Zubin Potok, mentioned recently that the Albanians paid as much for a field of stones that for this money one could buy much larger acreage of first quality land in Serbia.

Blagojevic says: There is no conscience in Serbia how much Kosovo actually costs Serbia, and what does keeping Kosovo in its borders mean for it. Which state could sustain such a large group which has clear stance against participating in the life of that state ? That is the key problem.

She is of the opinion that Kosovo should be divided. This would mean a division through an agreement and would understand a willingness to compromise by both sides, instead of maximalistic demands that both sides have now.

The most unbelievable possibility among the ones circulating recently has been put forth by the former foreign minister in the Panic government, Ilija Djukic. He said that the Kosovo problem could be solved through selling or exchange of territories. Djukic's estimate is as follows: Southern Serbia (Kosovo) in exchange for Western Serbia (Republika Srpska). If this is the deal Milosevic made with the international community, and his current approach speaks in favor of that, than this is an already done deal.




Source: Kragujevac by-weekly Nezavisna Svetlost, May 7, 1998