Ibrahim Rugova and the Failure of Non-violence
A national leader’s failure to keep the peace.
On January 26th, 2006, the father of a new nation died of lung cancer.
Ibrahim Rugova was born on December 2nd, 1944, in the Yugoslav province of Kosovo (1). Although raised in difficult circumstances, Rugova became a college professor and literary critic.
In the 1980s, Rugova found his calling at the behest of his fellow Kosovar Albanians. As Yugoslavia dissolved into warring republics, Rugova — the head of Kosovo’s first political party — sought a non-violent path for Kosovo’s independence.
Rugova would be remembered for his pacifist crusade against repression, but his legacy of non-violence would be remembered as a failure.
Ibrahim Rugova.
During the Nazi occupation of Serbia, Ibrahim Rugova’s father and grandfather were executed for allegedly siding with the Germans.
Faced with a hard upbringing, Rugova pursued an education and completed schooling in Peja/Pec. Rugova studied at the University of Pristina in the 1970s before completing his doctorate in Paris (2).
In the 1980s, when Rugova served as chairman of Kosovo’s Writer’s Association, tensions between the province’s Albanian majority and the…
