The significance of the policy of non-violence of Ibrahim Rugova in Kosovo, 1989-1998

This thesis explores the emergence, development, and the effects of Ibrahim Rugova's policy of non-violence in Kosovo in the period between 1989 to 1998. Applying a cultural approach and an interpretative methodology, this study examines Rugova's success in garnering the support of both the local population in Kosovo and the international community for his policy of non-violence. More precisely, it is a study that analyses the rise of Ibrahim Rugova to the political scene in Kosovo, which during the 1980s and 1990s had been subjected to repressive Serbian policies culminating with the removal of Kosovo's autonomy of 1974. Autonomy had elevated Kosovo's political status in the level of six other Yugoslav republics all but in name. This constitutional and political reversal placed Kosovo Albanians in a precarious situation with a very bleak cultural, political, and existential future. However, a political turn came about in the form of the policy of non-violence that was led by Kosovo Albanian intellectual Ibrahim Rugova. Building on cultural and historical legacies, Rugova was able to create a movement of resistance with non-violent means, which was a novelty not only for the Albanians but for the whole Balkan region. Through a close examination of documents and interviews with individual participants who participated directly in the political events in Kosovo during the 1980s and 1990s, and LDK's QIK archive, this thesis shows the process by which Rugova was able to side-line the Serbian regime in Kosovo and build a parallel state. It describes how the parallel state eventually came to provide basic social welfare and medical care, including education with independent national curriculums at all levels. As a result of a successful political organisation led by Rugova's party, the Democratic League of Kosovo (Lidhja Demokratike e Kosovës - LDK), Rugova was able to build an international information and diplomatic campaign that internationalised the Kosovo issue and pulled it out from the marginalisation that Serbia had placed on it after it had removed Kosovo's autonomy in March 1989. The study shows that although it was the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) that escalated the conflict 1998/99, and forced the international military intervention, it was Rugova's policy of non-violence, and the parallel state that prepared the groundwork for the independence of Kosovo, facilitated by the international community in 2008.