Ibrahim Rugova and the peaceful resistance of Kosovo

Ibrahim Rugova was born on 2 December 1944 in Cërcë, near Istog. In January 1945 his father, Uka, and his grandfather were summarily executed by the Yugoslav communists. Rugova grew up without a father, in a Kosovo where Albanians were the majority but had little power.

The scholar

He finished secondary school in Peja in 1967 and studied at the University of Pristina. In 1976–1977 he studied in Paris, at the École Pratique des Hautes Études, under the French theorist Roland Barthes. He became one of Kosovo's best-known literary critics. In 1988 he was elected president of the Kosovo Writers' Association.

The Democratic League of Kosovo

In 1989 Serbia severely curtailed Kosovo's autonomy. Many Albanians were dismissed from their jobs, and Albanian pupils and students were excluded from public school buildings. On 23 December 1989 Rugova took over the leadership of the Democratic League of Kosovo (LDK), which soon became the main political force of the Kosovo Albanians.

Resistance without weapons

Rugova believed that an armed uprising against a much stronger army would lead to massacres. So he advocated peaceful resistance and the building of a "parallel state": schools working in private houses, health services, institutions funded mainly by contributions from Albanians in Kosovo and in the diaspora. For this approach he was called the "Gandhi of the Balkans". In May 1992 he won the first presidential election of the Republic of Kosova, which was unofficial and not internationally recognised.

Rugova's resistance was not passivity. It was the effort to keep a whole society alive, with its schools and institutions, without giving the opponent a reason to destroy it.

Debates and the war

Rugova's path was not accepted by everyone. After the Dayton Agreement in 1995, which left Kosovo out, many Albanians were disillusioned and some joined the KLA. During the 1999 war, in early April, Rugova was taken to Belgrade and appeared on state television with Slobodan Milošević, calling for an end to the war. This moment was much debated and interpreted in different ways. In 1998 the European Parliament awarded him the Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought.

The president

After the war and the establishment of the UN administration, Rugova was elected President of Kosovo on 4 March 2002 and held the office until his death. He was also known for the silk scarf around his neck and for his habit of giving visitors stones from his mineral collection. He died on 21 January 2006 in Pristina, of lung cancer, two years before Kosovo declared independence.

How to remember him

The history of Kosovo in the 1990s has two paths that are often set against each other: Rugova's peaceful resistance and the KLA's armed struggle. Many historians think both played their part. Rugova's path kept society united and made the Kosovo question known in the world as a question of human rights.