Monday, 26 February 2007
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IS DIALOGUE EVERYTHING?
Dejan Anastasijevic’s article in this week’s Time magazine about Kosovo and the importance of dialogue amongst Kosovo’s ethnic communities was indeed a well crafted piece. While her arguments were based on the ethnic Albanians’ and Serbs’ need to sit down and dialogue, their significance would apply to any community in anywhere in the world.
The prospect of an independent Kosovo may sound very lucrative to some but as the author rightfully argues, they will still be right next to each other hence forgiveness is paramount. In six months, the map may be redrawn but the roads will stay intact, and so will the communities.
The article had me thinking about post-genocide Rwanda and how it took extraordinary methods to heal a country that many thought would never heal. Only two ethnic communities live in Rwanda, Hutus and Tutsis. After a 90 day madness in 1994 that left almost one million people dead through some of the cruellest methods of killing imaginable, it would have been impossible for these two communities to trust each other again.
Since part of the problem arose from competition for political leadership, naturally, the most sensible thing would have been to cut out any future temptation of a repeat massacre by simply creating a nation for Hutus and another for Tutsis.
Unfortunately they would still be next to each other and the hatred would still be in existence. A wiser path was chosen; healing and forgiveness, which largely involved having to lay history aside and focusing on the future.
Indeed an independent state of Kosovo may sound nice but unless the Serbs and the Albanians lay history aside, no plan for Kosovo will work.
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