UNMIK ON AIR
8 December
2003
GORANIS –
A FORGOTTEN COMMUNITY IN KOSOVO
(By Zoran
Culafic)
The Gora region lies in the
southern part of Kosovo where the Shar Mountains continue into Macedonia.
Dragash is the administrative center of the Gora region, the homeland of a
small minority community in Kosovo, the Goranis, who today number around 7.000,
down from an estimated 18.000 before the conflict in 1999.
Hello and welcome to UNMIK ON AIR.
Stuck with the unfortunate legacy
of being loyal to their own state, a country that has changed its names several
times this past decade, Kosovo’s Gorani community is adrift, insecure in the
present and clueless about the future.
We are much too small, they say,
to be of any significant interest for political parties both in Serbia, which
is still in their opinion their home state, and in Kosovo.
35-year-old Sultan Aslani lives in
Mlike village, some three kilometers from Dragash town. He is not optimistic
about the future of his community.
Sultan Aslani: In the
near future, and it shouldn’t mean literally in ten or twenty years, Goranies
must adapt themselves to other communities. Some of them will be assimilated
into the Serb community, others in the Bosniak or Croatian community as for the
Gora region, it will disappear.
A pessimist’s view perhaps, but it
reflects feelings in this community that claims to have been disadvantaged for
two reasons: being loyal to Serbia and being too small to successfully defend
their own interests.
Up to the year 1947, all Goranis
had surnames ending with IC, which is common in Slavic communities. The “IC” was lopped off under a decree
issued by the then Yugoslav Government and today Goranis have similar surnames
to Albanians. One of the reasons for that was, allegedly, to bring Goranis and
Albanians closer to each other.
Goranis, he says have been marginalized both by Belgrade and the Kosovo
government.
Rustem
Ibisi: I think they abandoned us in a way they do not even
mention us in any context. Our community was well known as having been loyal to
Serbia and Yugoslavia however today we consider we were betrayed. People here
are particularly angry with the Kosovo Coordination Centre because when
enumerating communities in Kosovo, it does not mention Gorani community.
Something happened in Serbia that we are no longer worth even a mention.
Rustem
Ibisi: To say it in one word – we consider ourselves us as
stateless in our own country. The state pulled out from this area has lost its
competencies here. We considered Serbia to be our state, our home and we think
Serbia is not present here at the moment and maybe this is why people do not
believe in a future here.
The village of Mlike today has merely 80 inhabitants, down from a
pre-war population of 1.350 people. This seems to be common for all the Gora
villages, and Rustem cites village after village that are empty today – Backa,
Dikance, Mlike, Opcusa, Vraniste, Rapce, Ljubiviste, Radesa, Lestane ... and a
dozen more have only their names and no people.
Goranies can be found in just three villages in the Gora region – in
Restelica, Brod and Krusevo.
Rustem Ibisi: My children left, like
all the other young people from this area. The destination is Europe and I
think if the situation continues like this then there will be no returns. This
is unavoidable since those people will end up being assimilated in their new
environments. I don’t see any perspective here; more to the point, young people
don’t see any perspective here. After the war, there wasn’t a single job
opening in our municipality. In the beginning people left mostly because of
security reasons, later on the situation improved a bit but it did not make
young people stay here. On the contrary, the emigration process is continuing
and there are no returnees.
Security conditions
have improved compared to what they were in 1999 and 2000 but unemployment
continues to run high, forcing Goranis to look for better chances elsewhere in
the region, where they do not need a passport and visas. This boils down
essentially to Serbia and former Yugoslav states. But the new borders make life
difficult for people like Nusret Hasani, a 48-year-old tailor from the nearby
village of Vraniste. But he said he has been forced to start working with
leather in order to make ends meet.
Nusret Hasani: I sell leather now just
to earn some money, to be honest, though my profession is tailoring but now I
also work as a butcher one kilo of leather costs 50 cents, when I slaughter a
calf I earn 10 euro but Serbian border rules do not allow us to export so I
export to Albania. I was twice at the
Merdare crossing, two times and they check you down to your skin. Who are you,
what are you doing and so on whereas on the Albanian border you just show your
documents as a tailor I have a stamp because leather is considered to be a
textile.
So what are the chances of this small community in Kosovo of preserving
its own identity? Politicians stress publicly on every occasion that each
community enriches the entire cultural environment in the region, but words
alone are not enough for Goranis. Rustem Ibisi again.
Nusret Hasani: The sentence you hear most often here is - What to do
and after such a question - there is no answer. I think people here have
completely lost their bearings, they are disoriented, always waiting for
something to happen. But, we are waiting for Godot who will never come.
A winter’s tale from the Gora region – And that was
it for this edition of UNMIK ON Air. Thanks listening.