Kosovo: Schüsse im Dunkeln

Führende Kosovo-Bürger befassen sich in diesem Artikel von Transitions Online mit der Frage, was sich hinter den jüngsten Anschlägen auf hochrangige Politiker verbirgt.

Just months before the international community is to decide on the next steps for Kosovo, three incidents have highlighted how tense the situation still is in the UN-administered province. 

An apparent assassination attempt in March on President Ibrahim Rugova failed to cause major injury but sent the rumor mill spinning. 

On 15 April, Enver Haradinaj, brother of former prime minister Ramush Haradinaj, was killed in an ambush in western Kosovo. Ramush Haradinaj, a former commander of the main anti-Serbian armed group, the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA), resigned in early March to stand trial at the International Criminal Tribunal for former Yugoslavia (ICTY) in The Hague. He was allowed to travel from the Netherlands to Kosovo for his brother’s funeral.

The latest attack came on the night of 17 April, when a powerful explosion rocked the Pristina offices of a small but influential opposition party, Citizens‘ List Ora, led by prominent journalist and publisher Veton Surroi. Three children who lived in the building were slightly injured by flying glass.

Touring the devastated office, Larry Rossin, a senior UN official in the province, said the blast was an „assault on the democratic process.“

He told the media, „This kind of thing destroys the future of Kosovo.“ 

Surroi and other public figures in Kosovo had received threats the week prior to the bombing from a previously unknown group called Homeland Security. According to Deutsche Welle, the threats appeared on the Internet and targeted Surroi, Urosevac mayor Faik Grainca, and prominent opposition politicians Bujar Bukoshi and Jakup Krasniqi. 

The time of the attack – 10 p.m. on a Sunday night – suggests that it was meant to send a warning rather than to actually harm people.

Surroi, who runs the daily Koha Ditore and an affiliated television station, said he thought the attack was politically motivated. In preceding weeks, he had accused Rugova’s Democratic League for Kosovo (LDK) and its junior partner in the ruling coalition, the Alliance for the Future of Kosovo (AKK) of former prime minister Haradinaj, of consolidating their power in Kosovo through cooperation with organized crime.

To read the article in full, visit the Transitions Online website.