The Self-Determination Movement

Vetevendosje, “Self-Determination,” was created in Pristina by Albin Kurti and a few friends on July 12, 2005, after the Norwegian diplomat to Kosovo, Kai Eide, stated that Kosovo lacked a real status and should make an agreement with Serbia to gain recognition as a semi-state. Kurti’s Vetevendosje movement, which currently is not a political party but solely a ‘movement,' believed at the time Eide made that statement, that Kosovo had (and still has) an international status equal to an independent state. Yet although Kosovo declared independence in February 2008, it still lacks sovereignty because they do not have control over their borders, have no military, and are guided by the international community. Vetevendosje believes that Kosovo’s independence was not preceded by their right to self-determination.

One of the main goals of Vetevendosje is to attach sovereignty with independence. They want to change the character of the state from corrupt to trustworthy. They charge that the international diplomats in Kosovo turn a blind eye to the corruption in the name of stability and as a tradeoff for these same international diplomats to be able to govern over the actual Kosovar government. Additionally, the international presence is actually making Kosovo become less of a real state, which in turn is destabilizing Kosovo internally.

I must point out here that Vetevendosje is not against the international community, meaning the movement does not hate the countries who have a presence in Kosovo on an individual level (such as Al Qaeda ‘hating’ the US), but they are strongly against international rule over Kosovo. The problem is that the international presence pushes for stability and security as a priority, and not progress of democracy and economics. In short, the international community's first priority is to prevent crisis in Kosovo.

Vetevendosje understands that the economy of Kosovo is bad, with around 45% unemployment, 40% live in poverty (a couple of Euros a day) and 18% live in dire poverty (1-2 Euros per day). Therefore they want to develop a long-term sustainability model that searches out Kosovo’s comparative advantages and capitalizes on them. Further, they want the government to subsidize baby industries until they are competitive and profitable (this model has been used before and is still in use by countries like Brazil and China). They also want public ownership of Kosovo’s strategic resources, like telecommunications, power/energy production, and mining of minerals such as lead, zinc, magnesium. Currently, Kosovo only has a short-term plan and lacks the long-term future outlook.

Vetevendosje's outlook on decentralization is that it is essentially destabilization. Decentralization is written in the Ahtisaari plan and is the process of decentralizing state level governance to the public through creating more municipalities and strengthening these municipalities local governance. Thus decentralization creates more boundaries and more municipalities that are not connected and will also create municipalities that are ethnically dominated, such as Leposivic, which is a Serb majority municipality in Northern Kosovo. Kurti thinks that having Serbian majority municipalities will only give Serbia a greater opportunity for more leverage in Kosovo because there will be local governments made up of Kosovar Serbs. (As a side note, the Atisaari plan allows for Serbia to have ties with the Serb communitiy/municipalities as long as it is transparent and any money given goes through the Kosovar government (which is unlikely.)) With decentralization, Serbia can indirectly create more municipalities in Kosovo and control them to counter governmental policy/influence.

Vetevendosje believes that the problems for Kosovo are Serbia, UNMIK, EULEX, ICO, and all the other international presence in Kosovo (read USA). Vetevendosje wants to get to the roots of the problems in Kosovo and try to resolve them. They understand that they must mobilize to bring people together, to get a reputation of being active and progressive, because action is important to gain reputation and/or legitimacy in the eyes of the civilian population. Vetevendosje is very idealistic, and it is anyone’s guess as to whether they can implement their goals for Kosovo; but at the same time, the movement can exemplify change coming from the bottom

There is a general stance that Vetevendosje wants Kosovo to join Albania to create a ‘greater Albania,’ but really they just want to have the right to self-determination and for Kosovo to have the decision to join up with Albania (a decision that would not be allowed to be brought up now). It seems that Vetevendosje wants autonomy for Kosovo and for Kosovo to be allowed to lead and decide what is best for itself, without the help of the international community.