Ibrahim Rugova, Kosovo's awkward survivor

摘要

In The Balkans, Shakespeare's whirligig of time often brings its revenges. For much of the past decade, Ibrahim Rugova has cut rather a pathetic figure. As the leading representative of Kosovo's ethnic Albanian majority, his task was often thankless: to tell westerners, preoccupied with quenching the flames of war in Bosnia and Croatia, that his homeland was combustible too. From 1997, as Kosovo flared up, his warnings were proved right—but that did nothing to boost his standing. His non-violent campaign for independence was sidelined by the hard men of the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA), and the American-led air war against Serbia. By mid-summer of last year, after NATO and the KLA had between them forced Slobodan Milosevic, the Yugoslav president, to sue far peace, many Balkan-watchers pronounced Mr Rugova politically dead.