Don’t Destroy the Kosovo That Hashim Thaçi Won Through War

By Mero Baze

Today’s Hague verdict against Hashim Thaçi, Jakup Krasniqi, Kadri Veseli and Rexhep Selimi is grave and shocking for Kosovo.

The Albanian world experiences it as a stab in the back from a Western-controlled court against those it has placed on the pedestal of its history as the liberators of Kosovo.

And the anger is natural. Even the excess, the banality and perhaps the violent calls are understandable.

A society prepared for a victory at the Hague Court is now reacting disoriented and hopeless in the face of this decision.

Whatever happens from now on for them, even if they were sentenced to 81 years, even if they were released by the Appeals and returned to their homes in Kosovo, what they did for Kosovo and for themselves will never be repeated and no one can bring them down from that pedestal.

Therefore any extreme reaction that today harms the state of Kosovo on the pretext of defending the history of its heroes does more damage to Kosovo’s heroes, more damage to Hashim Thaçi and his comrades.

Those who agreed to go to the mountains and die for Kosovo did it so they would have a state of Kosovo, and they achieved it. Therefore now any attempt to damage the state in the name of their freedom not only offends and harms them, but blows up the greatest work of their lives, which is not their personal freedom, but the freedom of Kosovo.

This is a harm done to Hashim Thaçi, Jakup Krasniqi, Kadri Veseli and Rexhep Selimi. All four of them could have been killed in the war, since they went to the mountains to be killed. Fate made them leaders of the war and of the new state of Kosovo.

This battle is not won by attacking the West, burning flags or presenting Kosovo as the victim of a conspiracy of all its allies. It is won by dissecting the verdict, challenging the evidence, the way individual responsibility was constructed and, above all, raising the evident issue of the proportionality of the sentences.

The Hague Court made a historic gesture by rejecting the charges of crimes against humanity. This has extraordinary historical and political importance for Kosovo, as it preserves the importance of the KLA war, its justice and the right of the Albanian people of Kosovo to freedom. The Prosecution failed to prove that a widespread or systematic attack against the civilian population as such existed. According to the reasoning announced by the Court, the victims were selected mainly as individuals considered opponents or collaborators of the Serb forces.

Kosovo must pursue this battle with all the seriousness of a state and not turn it into an issue for the cousins and idiots of its justice ministers, who treat the Hague trial as votes for a municipal assembly, degrading the seriousness of the state.

Even Albania could legally allocate a fund of millions of euros for clarifying and investigating these charges on appeal, so as not to leave the fate of the freedom fighters to the political appetites of Pristina and their political calculations.

It is important to avoid any reaction that could isolate Kosovo, which has already been isolated enough by those who govern it. It is too much to add another ring to this isolation from the Hague Court.

Whoever turns anger over a court decision into hatred against the United States, the European Union or NATO is not helping its four heroes convicted by the Court.

Today Kosovo must be united, but not blinded by anger. In defending its four leaders, Kosovo must defend precisely their greatest work: the alliance with the West.

Hashim Thaçi on the ground and NATO in the sky liberated Kosovo once, while Hashim Thaçi in The Hague and stones on Western embassies could bury it.

The battle for the freedom of Hashim Thaçi, Jakup Krasniqi, Kadri Veseli and Rexhep Selimi is not won by leaving Kosovo without friends. It is a Pyrrhic victory, which the first to despise would be the four of them in the Hague cells. Nobody needs that Kosovo, except those who had it before 1990 and from whom the Albanians, first with Ibrahim Rugova and then with the KLA and NATO, took it out of their hands.

Hashim Thaçi finds it easier to die in the Hague prison than to come out of prison and find Kosovo in a new prison, at enmity with those who liberated it. Don’t kill the dream he won through war.