Kosovo: News, Politics & Issues

[Frank]

Romania was a closed State like Albania people didn't leave or enter, that what I was eluding to

An Communism is not all the same Yugoslavia was the last Socialist Communist State in Europe that is why the West destroyed it and the Croats and Serbs made it happen

[Onur]

Romania has some Islamic churches and they are beautiful and look amazing inside.

Can you post pictures of these churches pls? If you can find some on the internet? Btw, It`s great to hear that. Instead of destroying those buildings, you use it by converting mosques to churches.

I also understand that the former Yugoslavia were under Communism the same as Bulgaria and yet they have a sizable population of Muslim inhabitants in the respective countries as I have listed.

It`s probably because the lands of former Yugoslavia and Bulgaria was in peace for centuries while current territories of Romania was a battlefield between the Turks and Austrian Hapsburgs. Turks mostly didn't fight with local Romanians tough. Hapsburgs was mostly using Hungarians as their soldiers to attack Ottomans, mainly Szekely people. Ironically, according to some European and Hungarian historians, Szekely people were just magyarized Turks too!

I heard that you have some problems with these Szekely people right? AFAIK, they want autonomy from Romania right?

[Big Bad Sven]

The rise of radical islam in the Balkans is something that has been created and controlled by the corrupt and radical muslims in Saudi Arabia, and to a lesser extent Egypt. These people are in a VERY good financial position hence why they are able build new mosques and Islamic schools in Macedonia, Kosovo, Albania, bosnia and southern Serbia. They even send their crazy religious men to preach their crazy fanatical mumbo jumbo to poor, stupid and gullable populations.

I however personally think that the rise of fanatical islam is NOT the key issue here, I as a Macedonian am more concerned with the albanin involvement in this. The Saudis know that in order to create a dominant and large muslim population in the Balkans they can only really have one race/peoples. Currently there are shiptars but also turks, roma, bosniaks, torbeshi etc. All of these individual peoples have their own national interests.
This just wont work for the Saudies so they are assisting the racist shiptars in albanicizing all other non-albanian muslims and turning them into Albanians. All for the purpose of having one large ethnic group that is muslim. And it probably makes sense to support the shiptars as they have known to have a “militaristic” history while the other muslim people have always been peaceful.

Hence why these new Saudi schools and mosques only have services conducted in Albanian, it’s a quicker method to albanisize all non-albanian muslims
Also there have been stories of turks, roma, torbeshi being violently forced to become Albanian or even paid to be Albanian. Yest the muslim world stays silent in the genocide of these peoples…..

The ironic thing is that it appears that islam is now looking at the orthodox church and using their old methods that they used in the ottoman times, the method of using religion to brainwash and turn people into another race/people.

Just as the “orthodox family” keeps a blind eye as their priests transformed Macedonians into grks/serbs/boogars through the power of “gods word”, so does the Islamic world turn a blind eye when saudies in tetovo or Kosovo transform turks, roma, torbeshi etc into good Albanians

And to finish, the ironic thing is that in the 90’s we had red neck serbs and griks with racist intentions creating scary bed time stories that it was turkey who was financing and wanting to create a Islamic empire in the Balkans, they used terms such as the “umbilical cord of the ottomans” to describe their “presence” in the Balkans. How wrong could the serbs and griks be hey………..

[Big Bad Sven]

In communist Yugoslavia religion had more freedom then the rest of the other communist countries. Thats why when you compare shiptars from macedonia or kosovo to the ones in albania, the shiptars in the former yugoslavia are more islamic then the ones in albania, as albania was very against religion during communist times.

I would imagine the reason as to why there is such a small islamic population in romania is because of the very strict communist rule. However in saying that, the Romanians did a very good job in converting all of their Roma into orthodox Christians

[Risto the Great]

Kosovars Turn Blind Eye to Fake Foreign Marriages

http://www.balkaninsight.com/en/article/kosovars-turn-blind-eye-to-fake-foreign-marriages

Kosovar Albanians are increasingly tolerant of men who divorce local wives in order to temporarily marry foreigners and obtain resident status in the West.


Each time she goes to sleep, Valbona, 35, from Peja, western Kosovo, looks at her wedding photograph taken 13 years ago. Beside her, she sees her smiling husband.

Today, that moment is just a memory. Two years ago, her husband remarried a German woman. Not only did Valbona, mother of their four children aged four to 11, know of his plan, she approved it. 
This is because Valbona is not really divorced in the eyes of her family or the wider community.

Many Kosovar Albanian men divorce their first wives by mutual consent, departing for western Europe where they find new spouses who enable them to obtain residency papers.

They leave their children behind in Kosovo so that they can pose as single men and remarry fast. Once they have permanent residency in Germany, or other EU states, they divorce their second wives, go back to their first ones and bring the family to the West.

Germany is a popular destination for Kosovars seeking foreign wives, and eventually an EU passport, because there is already a large Albanian expatriate population living there.

The women that these Kosovar Albanians marry in the West believe they have found ideal, attentive husbands.

However, once the men have gained permanent residency in their host country – after five years of marriage to a citizen in Germany - they often demand a divorce.

Valbona is confident that her husband will do the same: leave his new wife after three more years and return to Kosovo to take her, and the children, to a new life in the affluent West.

“The ‘divorce’ was difficult, but as both of us knew its purpose, it was somewhat easier,” explains Valbona who - in the absence of her husband - lives with her children next door to her husband’s brothers. “It’s a big sacrifice but I’m doing it for the sake of a better future for me and the children,” she adds. 
Unknown to his German wife, Valbona has already spent one summer holiday with her ex-husband back in Kosovo.

Benefits override taboo

In the past, Albanian families did not accept divorce so easily. But the taboo has been forgotten now that Kosovar Albanians have discovered the usefulness of divorcing and remarrying foreigners in order to gain papers to live in western Europe.

Not all foreign wives are equally acceptable, of course.

A second marriage to a non-Albanian is seen as worthless unless the new wife has citizenship of the European Union. But if men divorce their Kosovar wives for that reason, society turns a blind eye.

Each month, Valbona’s ex-husband sends back money for her to spend on their four children. Such money counts for a lot in a country as poor as Kosovo, where 40 per cent of the population is unemployed and the average monthly salary of those in work is only about 200 euros.

Kosovars who have moved to western European countries send home 530m euros each year. These remittances account for around 13 per cent of country’s GDP, according to the Kosovo Central Bank.
 Sokol Havolli, a senior official at the bank, says that 30 per cent of Kosovar households regularly receive money from relatives working abroad.

Against a background of such economic hardship, many people feel desperate to obtain the right to live and work in western Europe.

But obtaining a visa to enter the EU is difficult. Unlike their Balkan neighbours, Kosovars do not enjoy visa-free travel within the EU Schengen zone. Nor is a relaxation of visa requirements imminent.
It is almost impossible for Kosovars to gain German citizenship unless they are born there, or enter the country as an infant and go to school there.

But adult Kosovars, like other non-EU foreigners, can request permanent resident status in Germany, or Niederlassungserlaubnis, if they have legally resided in Germany for more than five years - the grounds for which are normally either higher educational studies or marriage to a German national.

Rising divorce rate

In the Kosovar capital of Pristina, a city with a population of about 600,000, officials recorded 127 divorces in 2007. That number might appear low by western European standards but it is high for Kosovars. Municipal officials in Pristina recorded just 36 divorces as recently a 2003.

In parallel with the increased number of divorces, marriages to foreign citizens have also risen, mostly to residents of western countries. In 2009, officials in Pristina recorded 98 such marriages between Kosovar men and women from the West.

Shefqet Buqaj, a city hall official, admits knowing of cases in which Kosovars have remarried their local first wives after divorcing their foreign spouses.

The ability of officials to monitor the motives behind marriages to foreigners is poor, he admits. When Kosovar men wish to remarry their first wives, the couple may simply declare that they have been reconciled.

But Buqaj insists that when they doubt the motives behind the marriage of a Kosovar to a foreign woman, they ask questions.

One especially suspicious case involved a local man marrying a foreigner who was 15 years older than him, he recalls.

Such unions are practically unknown in patriarchal Kosovo, where marriage to a woman more than a decade older than her husband violates all tradition.

But Buqaj says they could not find any good reason to disallow the marriage. “We talked with them and concluded it wasn’t a fictitious marriage,” he says.

Lonely western women

Sonja, a German from Stuttgart, was the target of one Kosovar Albanian man seeking permanent residency in Germany.

Now in her early thirties, she married an Albanian from the Mitrovica area of northern Kosovo 13 years ago.

Jobless and a little lonely at the time, she was charmed when a good-looking, dark-haired man, a few years older than her, approached her in a café in Stuttgart and said hello.



She had no idea that this supposedly single man had, in fact, married at the age of 18 in Kosovo and obtained a divorce before coming to Stuttgart. She was also unaware he was now on the hunt for a German wife, for reasons that had little to do with love.

They soon married, after which Sonja threw herself into learning the Albanian language and adopting the modest lifestyle of a Kosovar housewife, no longer going out of the apartment to visit friends for coffee, for example.

“I became more Albanian than an Albanian woman,” she recalls.

Unusually, Sonja’s husband did not demand a divorce after five years. Apparently because, by then, they had a little boy whose fate complicated matters. Sonja’s husband wanted to ensure he would enjoy sole custody of their son before he left.

They finally divorced only two years ago, after Sonja agreed to leave her son, then eight, with her ex-husband. He soon remarried his first wife, and now lives outside Stuttgart with her and the son he had by Sonja.

Sonja does not know the whole story of her marriage, but some Kosovar Albanians living in the neighbourhood are well aware of the secrets of her ex-husband’s background.

She knows only that her ex-husband remarried “an Albanian woman who didn’t have any papers”. She still believes she married for love and doesn’t understand what went wrong.

Tradition pushed aside

Many Kosovar Albanians defend the practice of men going abroad to seek temporary foreign second wives in order to improve their prospects.

Valdrin Hoxha, an unemployed 23-year-old from Pristina, said he would do the same thing if he could.

“I would explain to my family that after getting the [EU] documents I would divorce my foreign wife and marry a Kosovar girl,” he says, confidently.

Years ago, only infertility could legitimately separate couples, says 71-year-old Hamdi Veliu, from Polac, a village in central Kosovo.

“If the wife couldn’t have a baby, she had two choices; to divorce, or stay,” he explains. “But, if she decided to stay, she had to accept that her husband needed a second wife.

"If she accepted that her husband needed another wife, and stayed in the same house, she could still be head of the home,” he says.

“Nowadays, the situation is very bad,” Veliu maintains, going on to talk disapprovingly of a Kosovar he knows whose first wife’s family pressurised him into bringing her to Germany before he had even divorced his second German wife.



He says he knows of other similar cases, in which Kosovar wives live somewhere in Germany while their husbands are somewhere else, still with their second German wives. 
“Such situations are not based on our tradition,” he complains.

Veliu says possession of all-important EU residency papers gives men immeasurable prestige in modern Kosovo.

With these, a man in his forties can take his pick of the local girls, even if she is 20 years younger than him.

Such men often use the services of a marriage mediator, or village matchmaker, to find a young bride.

Smajl Shatraj, 60, from the village of Llausha, in central Kosovo, has performed this task often over the years. 
“Now that most of the girls want to live abroad, it’s much easier to arrange [when the man has EU papers],” he says.

Back in the old days, he adds, they chose couples who were more or less the same age and who appeared suitable for one another.

Today the most important factor is whether the future husband has the right documents. “They are pushing traditions to one side in favour of interests,” he sighs. 
In fact, mixed marriages - and especially marriages to improve men’s social and economic prospects - are not entirely new among Kosovars.

Previously, these marriages tended to be established within the framework of the old Yugoslav state. They usually involved Kosovar men marrying Serbs - seen as the most powerful ethnic community in the former Yugoslavia.

“Through a marriage in former Yugoslavia, one could gain social prestige,” explains Anton Berishaj, professor of sociology at the University of Prishtina.

Some people also entered such marriages in order to prove their loyalty to the multiethnic Yugoslav idea, he is careful to add.

An important difference between these marriages and those taking place with Germans today, is that the men had no incentive to divorce their wives after a certain period.

They remained together, often moving to the Yugoslav capital, Belgrade.

Some, like the Selimis, still live there together. But whereas an Albanian-Serbian marriage was a socially advantageous move in the 1960s and 1970s, this is far from the case now, following the break-up of Yugoslavia, Kosovo’s declaration of independence and the decline of Serbian-Albanian relations in general.

“Today these couples live with a stigma,” says Professor Nada Raduski, of Belgrade’s Demographic Research Centre.

‘Not moral or correct’

Anton Berishaj, professor of sociology at the University of Pristina, strongly disapproves of Kosovar men marrying foreign women in order to obtain permanent residency in the West.

“A ‘double’ marriage, in which one side doesn’t know the whole situation, and when families pretend nothing is happening, is not human, moral or correct,” he says.

Leaders of all the main faiths in Kosovo also vehemently condemn the trend.

Most Kosovar Albanians are Muslims but there is also a small Catholic minority. The clergy of both religions view matrimony as sacrosanct. “Marriage is permanent and has no time-limit; it is eternal,” says Bedri Syla, an imam from Skenderaj in central Kosovo. The imam views so-called “divorces”, contracted mainly for the sake of obtaining documents, as a mockery and sacrilegious.

“These are games that break down families and morality,” he says, citing verses from the Koran. Such doings can never be justified in Islam, he adds, regardless of the potential benefits.His views are fully echoed by Don Shan Zefi, a Catholic priest in Pristina.

“Marriages like these are not permissible morally, psychologically or legally,” he says.

‘The sacrifice is worth it’

However, Agron, 40, says it is worth compromising on morals and traditions in order to obtain the European dream.
A stonemason, he now lives with his first wife in a village some 30km from Stuttgart, having completed the long and difficult process of divorcing his second German wife in order to remarry his first Kosovar one.

Agron tries to forget the fact that he had to leave his first wife and their children in Kosovo for five years while being married to a German woman.

“The sacrifice is worth it, as long as you don’t forget your [first] wife and children back in Kosovo,” Agron maintains. “For me, living here is like paradise,” he adds, referring to the small German village that is now his home.

In order to attain a similar “paradise”, Valbona and her four children must wait for at least another three years.

Looking forward to a new life abroad, she doesn’t bother about the nationality of the foreigner to whom her husband is currently married - as long as she gets to the West in the end. 
“For me, it simply doesn’t matter,” she says. “Miserable economic conditions forced us to do this.”

The Albanians sold their Orthodoxy for the economic benefits of Islam during the Ottoman occupation. Now they are selling their wives.

I cannot see Macedonians doing this and would be very surprised to hear of instances such as this coming from Macedonians.

[Vangelovski]

RtG,

Prepare to be surprised. I know of many instances of Macedonians doing this from Struga, Ohrid and Bitola. They have no moral convictions and undertake abominations towards their own families. Its no wonder that they could sell out their country when they don't have any moral convictions towards their own families.

[George S.]

People aren't behaving in the normal behaviour expected.When there are no moral qualms given then we can expect the unexpected.

[Risto the Great]

Wow, I am astounded.
Money talks!

[Prolet]

The Albanians sold their Orthodoxy for the economic benefits of Islam during the Ottoman occupation.

Risto, Albanians were Catholics and the majority of them still are (Christian Albanians) but they do have orthodox believers there is an Albanian Orthodox Church recognized from Cari Grad. Kosovo and Macedonia are different ofcourse but in Albania when i went there i saw more Cathedrals then mosques and the mosques i saw were nothing like the raketi we have in Stari Kraj or what you'd see in Kosovo.

[fyrOM]

Like all cases of supply for it to work there need to be a demand. Without the demand the supply becomes irrelevant. Stupid decisions by the German woman and then they suffer.

[Big Bad Sven]

These german women must have very little confidence or are extremely desperate to get married to some ugly uneducated shiptar refugee with missing teeth and dodgy background. And a muslim as well , which are hated with a extreme passion in germany.

However i remember reading somewhere that in these modern times a lot of german and scandanavian woman preffer the "blacks" that come from the balkans, italy and eastern europe. Maybe i should move to Denmark for a while

[Big Bad Sven]

Risto, Albanians were Catholics and the majority of them still are (Christian Albanians) but they do have orthodox believers there is an Albanian Orthodox Church recognized from Cari Grad. Kosovo and Macedonia are different ofcourse but in Albania when i went there i saw more Cathedrals then mosques and the mosques i saw were nothing like the raketi we have in Stari Kraj or what you'd see in Kosovo.

Hey bratko, i thought they were originally Orthodox, as they were originally in the Byzantine Empire and Sphere of Influence?????

[Big Bad Sven]

RtG,

Prepare to be surprised. I know of many instances of Macedonians doing this from Struga, Ohrid and Bitola. They have no moral convictions and undertake abominations towards their own families. Its no wonder that they could sell out their country when they don't have any moral convictions towards their own families.

What i find even more worse are those crazy idiots who go to Albania and get albanian women for wives. Its happening a lot on Ohrid and Struga, and i think there is even some sort of "agency" that helps these people get to albania and get wives.

Just what macedonia needs, more albanians today and also more albanian kids in the future.....

But to be fair, i cant blame some of these guys for going to albania to get a humble hard working wife, from my experience with the "smizli" in skopje and Ohrid most of them are pretty materialistic and arrogant and worship jewgoslavian turbo-folk culture. I would imagine getting married to a typical "smizli" in macedonia you would have channel pink blarring 24/7 and you would not dare ask her to help with the dishes.....

[Prolet]

Hey bratko, i thought they were originally Orthodox, as they were originally in the Byzantine Empire and Sphere of Influence?????

They are Catholics for sure, if you go to Albania you will see the Cathedrals still there especially in the southern part. The Toski are Catholics, the Gegi are Muslims the majority of them.

[Dimko-piperkata]

Report identifies Hashim Thaci as 'big fish' in organised crime

Kosovo's prime minister accused of criminal connections in secret Nato documents leaked to the Guardian

Monday 24 January 2011 18.34 GMTMonday 24 January 2011 18.34 GMT

prime minister, Hashim Thaçi, has been identified as one of the "biggest fish" in organised crime in his country, according to western military intelligence reports leaked to the Guardian.

The Nato documents, which are marked "Secret", indicate that the US and other western powers backing Kosovo's government have had extensive knowledge of its criminal connections for several years.

They also identify another senior ruling politician in Kosovo as having links to the Albanian mafia, stating that he exerts considerable control over Thaçi, a former guerrilla leader.

Marked "USA KFOR", they provide detailed information about organised criminal networks in Kosovo based on reports by western intelligence agencies and informants. The geographical spread of Kosovo's criminal gangs is set out, alongside details of alleged familial and business links.

The Council of Europe is tomorrow expected to formally demand an investigation into claims that Thaçi was the head of a "mafia-like" network responsible for smuggling weapons, drugs and human organs during and after the 1998-99 Kosovo war.

The organ trafficking allegations were contained in an official inquiry published last month by the human rights rapporteur Dick Marty.

His report accused Thaçi and several other senior figures who operated in the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) of links to organised crime, prompting a major diplomatic crisis when it was leaked to the Guardian last month.

The report also named Thaçi as having exerted "violent control" over the heroin trade, and appeared to confirm concerns that after the conflict with Serbia ended, his inner circle oversaw a gang that murdered Serb captives to sell their kidneys on the black market.

The Council's of Europe's parliamentary assembly in Strasbourg will debate Marty's findings and vote on a resolution calling for criminal investigations. The vote is widely expected to be passed.

Kosovo functioned as a UN protectorate from the end of the Kosovo war until 2008, when it formally declared independence from Serbia.

Thaçi, who was re-elected prime minister last month, has been strongly backed by Nato powers. His government has dismissed the Marty report as part of a Serbian and Russian conspiracy to destabilise the fledgling state.

However, the latest leaked documents were produced by KFOR, the Nato-led peacekeeping force responsible for security in Kosovo. It was KFOR military forces that intervened in the Kosovo war in 1999, helping to put an end to a campaign of ethnic cleansing by Slobodan Milosevic's Serbian forces.

Nato said in a statement tonight that it had instigated an "internal investigation" into the leaked documents, which are intelligence assessments produced around 2004, shortly before tensions with ethnic Serbs fuelled riots in Kosovo.

In the documents, Thaçi is identified as one of a triumvirate of "biggest fish" in organised criminal circles. So too is Xhavit Haliti, a former head of logistics for the KLA who is now a close ally of the prime minister and a senior parliamentarian in his ruling PDK party. Haliti is expected to be among Kosovo's official delegation to Strasbourg tomorrow and has played a leading role in seeking to undermine the Marty report in public.

However, the Nato intelligence reports suggest that behind his role as a prominent politician, Haliti is also a senior organised criminal who carries a Czech 9mm pistol and holds considerable sway over the prime minister.

Describing him as "the power behind Hashim Thaçi", one report states that Haliti has strong ties with the Albanian mafia and Kosovo's secret service, known as KShiK. It suggests that Haliti "more or less ran" a fund for the Kosovo war in the late 1990s, profiting from the fund personally before the money dried up. "As a result, Haliti turned to organised crime on a grand scale," the reports state.

They state that he is "highly involved in prostitution, weapons and drugs smuggling" and used a hotel in the capital, Pristina, as an operational base. Haliti also serves as a political and financial adviser to the prime minister but, according to the documents, is arguably "the real boss" in the relationship. Haliti uses a fake passport to travel abroad because he is black-listed in several countries, including the US, one report states.

Haliti is linked to the alleged intimidation of political opponents in Kosovo and two suspected murders dating back to the late 1990s, when KLA infighting is said to have resulted in numerous killings.

One was a political adversary who was found "dead by the Kosovo border", apparently following a dispute with Haliti. A description of the other suspected murder – of a young journalist in Tirana, the Albanian capital – also contains a reference to the prime minister by name, but does not ascribe blame.

Citing US and Nato intelligence, the entry states Haliti is "linked" the grisly murder, going on to state: "Ali Uka, a reporter in Tirana, who supported the independence movement but criticised it in print. Uka was brutally disfigured with a bottle and screwdriver in 1997. His roommate at the time was Hashim Thaçi."

Haliti is also named in the report by Marty, which is understood to have drawn on Nato intelligence assessments along with reports from the FBI and MI5.

Marty's report includes Haliti among a list of close allies of Thaçi said to have ordered – and in some cases personally overseen – "assassinations, detentions, beatings and interrogations" during and immediately after the war.

Haliti was unavailable for comment. However, in an interview with the media outlet Balkan Insight last week he dismissed the Marty report as "political" and designed to "discredit the KLA". "I was not surprised by the report. I have followed this issue for years and the content of the report is political," he said.

But he accepted that the Council of Europe was likely to pass a resolution triggering investigations by the EU-backed justice mission in the country, known as EULEX.

"I think it's a competent investigating body," he said, "It's a European investigation body. I think that there is no possibility that EULEX investigation unit to be affected by Kosovo or Albanian politics."

Responding to the allegations in the NATO intelligence reports tonight, a Kosovo government spokesman said: "These are allegations that have circulated for over a decade, most recently recycled in the Dick Marty report. They are based on hearsay and intentional false Serbian intelligence.

"Nevertheless, the prime minister has called for an investigation by EULEX and has repeatedly pledged his full cooperation to law enforcement authorities on these scandalous and slanderous allegations.

"The government of Kosovo continues to support the strengthening of the rule of law in Kosovo, and we look forward to the cooperation of our international partners in ensuring that criminality has no place in Kosovo's development."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/jan/24/hashim-thaci-kosovo-organised-crime?INTCMP=SRCH

and he´s still in office...
when we look back to serbia´s leader miloshevich, no one of the western leader wanted to have contact with this "terrorist" but thaci is not a terrorist ???