A Battle for Remembrance? Narrating the Battle of Košare/Koshare in Belgrade- and Pristina-Based Media

Introduction

The twentieth anniversary of the Battle of Košare, the two month period of fighting that took place around the Yugoslav Army outpost Košare, on the Yugoslav-Albanian border, between 9 April and 14 June 1999, was marked by both belligerents, Serbia and Kosovo, as an event of the highest importance. Thus, on 9 April 2019, families, citizens, and political leadership of Kosovo Albanians paid homage to Kosovo Liberation Army fighters who had fallen in the battle at the memorial complex (Kompleksi Memorial “Beteja e Kosharës”) located near the former Yugoslav Army outpost (Presidenti shpall heronj të Kosovës, Koha.net, 9 April 2019). Two months later, on 14 June 2019, a huge state-sponsored solemn symposium dedicated to this battle was organized at the Sava Center in Belgrade, and attended by participants in the battle, members of their families, families of the fallen Yugoslav soldiers, Serbian state leaders, including the president, prime minister, defence minister, and several other ministers (Akademija povodom, Politika, 24 June 2019).

However, when fifteen years earlier, on 9 April 2004, the Pristina-based daily Koha Ditore had reported that “a few kilometers long column of citizens from all over Kosovo, co-warriors, families of fallen fighters and members of municipal leadership institutions among them, in total quietness paid homage to and laid wreaths on the tombs of the 120 martyrs fallen in the Battle of Koshare” (Kosharja ishte rruga, Koha Ditore, 9 April 2004), Belgrade-based media and political leaders were completely silent about the battle. As I shall detail in the following, collective remembering and honoring the fallen in the battle in postconflict Serbia and Kosovo have been two completely separate processes that have resulted in the emergence of two narratives detached from each other. In Kosovo collective remembering began in the context of annual visits of families, friends, and comrades of the fallen fighters of the Kosovo Liberation Army (Ushtria Çlirimtare e Kosovës, KLA) to the battlefield and its vicinity, where their loved ones were buried. In Serbia, the event was absent from the public sphere during the war and there was no public expression of memory on it almost a decade and a half after the war ended. Only in recent years have annual commemorations dedicated to the battle become events of great national importance.

Analyzing media discourses about the Battle of Košare/Koshare, I expose how and when the commemorations of the battle became large-scale and state-sponsored events, both in Serbia and in Kosovo. I identify the social groups and institutions that have been particularly active in preserving the battle’s memory in the public, organizing annual commemorations. Examining representations of “us” and “them”, and the causes and outcomes of the battle as it has dominated these mnemonic discourses, I demonstrate that the interpretative framework on both sides has been embedded in the ethnonationalist realm. Therefore, I argue that for the postconflict political elites in Pristina and in Belgrade the spheres of collective memory have been suitable for relativizations, denial, and the perpetuation of the nationalist war narratives.

The Battle of Košare/Koshare

The Battle of Košare/Koshare was fought between the Yugoslav Army and the KLA during the NATO airstrikes against Yugoslavia. It started early in the morning of 9 April 1999, when members of the KLA, coming from the direction of Albania, attacked the Yugoslav border outpost in Košare, near the Yugoslav–Albanian frontier. The battle took place on the slopes of the Junik and the Prokletije mountains, on a rough, difficult to access terrain more than 2000 metres above sea level, in cold and snowy weather. Officially, it lasted until 10 June 1999, but the members of the Yugoslav Army withdrew from Košare only four days later, on 14 June 1999 (Mutavdžić 2018, 9). During the first two days of the massive artillery attack, the KLA broke the first line of defence of the Yugoslav Army, seized two mountain peaks near the border outpost (the Rasa Kosares peak and the Maja Glava peak), continued shelling the outpost, and entered it during the second day. The Yugoslav troops retreated to the second line of defence and from there launched a counterattack in the middle of April, but failed to reconquer the peaks or recover the outpost. By the second half of April, the frontline had stabilized and more or less remained where it was until the end. According to the Yugoslav Army sources, 108 of its soldiers were killed around the Košare outpost, of whom 18 were officers or non-commissioned officers, 50 soldiers in regular military service, 13 reservists, and 24 volunteers (Mutavdžić 2018, 9). According to Albanian sources, 114 KLA fighters fell in the battle (Presidenti shpall heronj të Kosovës, Koha.net, 9 April 2019).

Following a decade of political turbulences and oppressions of Kosovo Albanians by the regime of Slobodan Milošević, the internal conflict between the Yugoslav Army and police units on one side and the Kosovo Liberation Army on the other had escalated in late February 1998, and was followed by international military intervention beginning on 24 March 1999. During the war, more than 850,000 Albanian refugees left Kosovo and found shelter in Albania and Macedonia (Human Rights Watch 2001, 4). The conflict ended with the signing of the agreement between the NATO-led security force (Kosovo Force, KFOR) and the governments of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia and the Republic of Serbia (NATO 1999) on 9 June 1999, in the town of Kumanovo, in North Macedonia. In the following ten days, the Yugoslav Army and police withdrew from Kosovo. The conflict resulted in more than 13,500 casualties (both civilian and uniformed), of whom the majority were ethnic Albanians (80%), 16% were ethnic Serbs, and 4% were Romas, Bosniaks, and others (Humanitarian Law Center 2011). After the Kumanovo Agreement, at least 150,000 non-Albanians, most of them Serbs, fled Kosovo (Human Rights Watch 2001, 454).

The regime of Slobodan Milošević was overthrown in October 2000, and he himself was arrested at the beginning of 2001 and brought to The Hague to face charges before the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY). Meanwhile, the broad alliance of political parties united in the Democratic Opposition of Serbia (Demokratska opozicija Srbije, DOS) led Serbia towards democratic change. Kosovo, however, was placed under a transitional UN administration (United Nations Mission in Kosovo, UNMIK) and, nine years after the end of the war, in 2008, declared independence from Serbia—a declaration which Serbia has not recognized until present times.

Former KLA leaders have dominated Kosovo’s political scene for two decades. They have engaged in creating a usable origin myth for a post-independence Kosovar Albanian state (Ingimundarson 2007, 105), based on their own vision of the past. The militarist discourse of struggle, sacrifice, and victory that these leaders have embraced and promoted evolved around the master narrative that is centered on one of the KLA founders, Adem Jashari, known as the Legendary Commander (Di Lellio and Schwandner-Sievers 2006, 514), who was killed with fifty other members of his extended family, including twenty-eight women and children, by Serbian special police in 1998. Although the leaders of the Democratic League of Kosovo (Lidhja Demokratike e Kosovës, LDK) created their own forms of commemorations to preserve the memory of the peaceful resistance, the militarist strand has remained in “a stronger political position to shape national identity through memory politics than the peaceful one” (Ingimundarson 2007, 117).

In 2012, in Serbia, the democratic political elite was defeated in the presidential and parliamentary elections and replaced mostly by former allies from the Milošević era, gathered mostly in the Serbian Progressive Party (Srpska napredna stranka, SPS), a fraction of the far-right Serbian Radical Party (Srpska radikalna stranka, SRS). Although the political changes in Serbia after 2000 were followed by new state-sponsored memory politics and hegemonic narrative transformations, the dominant discourse of post-Milošević Serbia retained the nationalist mythical narrative frame of the Serbian nation that was introduced in the late 1980s (Stojanović 2017).

Theoretical Framework and Methodology

Methodologically, this study is set in the realm of memory studies. Memory and history are far from being synonymous: “Memory is life, borne by living societies”, and “it remains in permanent evolution and is vulnerable to manipulation and appropriation, and [...] it is susceptible to periods of long dormancy and regular revival” (Nora 1989, 8). One of the ways to ensure the survival of collective memory, even long after the event, is through anniversaries. They stabilize memory through regular repetitions that provide meaning and consolidate identity. Although dedicated to the past, anniversaries have a future-oriented task. They can lean more strongly either towards history or myth, depending on whether the resuscitation of a former event takes the form of historical memory or mythical renewal (Assmann 2006). Those who organise annual commemorations certainly reshape the memory in a particular direction.

For political elites, it is vital to control memory. Those with political power are interested in creating and reshaping a certain representation of past events, especially those from the recent past, which can “legitimize their current position through claiming a privileged link to the past, asserting continuities or ruptures” (Jelin, Rein, and Godoy-Anativia 2003, 26–7). Moments of political transition and radical change open political scenes for incoming actors. Transitions are usually moments of “confrontation between actors with opposing political experiences and expectations” (Jelin, Rein, and Godoy-Anativia 2003, 31). These opposing groups in their search for legitimization produce competing narratives about past events. Therefore, besides the transformation of the state, transitions also involve new readings of and meanings given to the past. These competing narratives are embedded in particular discourses which, in a certain way, lead to the construction of representations of “us” and “them”, and use a particular rhetoric and linguistic form in order to interpret the past, favoring or hiding segments of the events, certain actors, and actions (Jelin, Rein, and Godoy-Anativia 2003, 30).

When commemorative ceremonies of “critical dates”, or dates of events which have a particular symbolic significance for the community, are organized by the state they make national calendars. The power of these calendars as social unifiers, but also as social separators, is tremendous. On the one hand, by highlighting and accentuating the similitude among group members vis-à-vis others, calendars help to solidify in-group sentiments and, thus, constitute a powerful basis for “mechanical” solidarity within the group. On the other hand, such calendars clearly contribute to the establishment of intergroup boundaries that distinguish and separate group members from “outsides” (Zerubavel 1985, 70). Calendar reforms and changes are associated with great social, political, and cultural changes. Significant efforts directed towards breaking with the previous political and cultural order usually lead to major calendar changes.

Against this background informed by memory studies, I employ critical discourse analysis on a selected number of articles published in two dailies—the Belgrade-based Politika and the Pristina-based Koha Ditore (the daily associated webpage’s name is Koha.net), both in print and online. These two dailies are selected due to their reputation for serious journalism (OSCE 2010; Reporters Without Borders (RSF) and BIRN Serbia 2019), despite the differences in circulation, their ownership, and visible relationships with the state and ruling structures. Koha Ditore is the most read daily in Kosovo, while Politika has a long tradition as a pro-government daily. My analysis relies on Theo van Leeuwen’s understanding that discourses “as social cognitions, socially specific ways of knowing social practices, can be, and are, used as resources for representing social practices in texts”, and that it is “possible to reconstruct discourses from the texts that draw on them” (2008, 6). He makes a distinction between social practice and representations of social practice, or discourses about the practice, since an initial practice may be inserted into another practice, such as interviewing, reporting, and narrating about the practice (2008, 14). During this process, the practice is recontextualized, which means that certain assumptions, values, and goals pertinent to the research and reporting about the subject will reshape the questions, answers, and final text about the practice. Thus, I will look at how certain elements, such as participants, causes and consequences, time, and environment have been represented in texts about the battle. Further, following van Leeuwen’s suggestion (2008, 17–8) that changes of context could involve the substitution of elements of the actual social practice with semiotic elements, deletion of elements of the social practice, or rearrangements and additions of elements, I will try to ascertain the elements that were included or excluded in discourses about the Battle of Košare/Koshare over time, in order to provide insights into its evolution.

Considering that most of the articles about the battle, in the years after the war, were published during the period from the beginning of the NATO bombing until the withdrawal of the Yugoslav army, this was the time frame for their selection. The selected texts of Koha were published in relation to the anniversary of the beginning of the battle. In the case of Politika, there were no texts on the anniversary of the beginning of the battle in 2013 and 2015, but rather a little bit earlier, on 25 March 2013, and later on 7 April 2015. Since 2017, 14 June has been marked at the state level in Serbia as the anniversary of the Battle of Košare, so I also include two texts published in Politika on that day—one of 2017 and another of 2019. In total, I have analysed 21 texts—12 from Politika and 9 from Koha Ditore.^[1]

Framing the War in the Media

So far, the literature has documented very well how the Milošević regime prepared the public in Serbia for the wars through the most prominent electronic and printed media, after their editorial boards were purged and taken under the regime’s control (Kolstø 2009; Mimica and Vučetić 2008; Odavić et al. 2011). In Serbia, in the early 1990s, the ruling party controlled all editors-in-chief, appointed them from its ranks, and financed their whims and media experiments (Odavić et al. 2011, 57). The only media that covered the entire territory of Serbia were state radio and television. From the late 1980s, Politika became the main carrier of Milošević’s media offensive, put itself at the service of Serbian nationalism, and played a prominent role in creating anti-Albanian hysteria. Politika continued its work and remained under the tight control of the regime until its fall in 2000. During the first decade of the twenty-first century, it was partially privatized under non-transparent circumstances, but it still remained 50 percent state-owned (Reporters Without Borders (RSF) and BIRN Serbia 2019). At the same time its circulation declined significantly since readership started to opt for tabloid and semi-tabloid press instead (Hrvatin et al. 2014, 350).

In Kosovo, the Milošević regime established tight control over the media in the summer of 1990: the editor-in-chief of Radio Television Pristina (Radio Televizija Priština) was replaced, and more than a thousand employees were fired. Rilindja, the only daily in the Albanian language, was closed (Odavić et al. 2011, 66). The Koha company, founded in 1990 by Veton Surroi, initially printed a weekly of the same name in the Albanian language. In March 1997, it launched the daily Koha Ditore, which was closed down by the Serbian police on the eve of the NATO intervention in March 1999. Soon after the intervention ended, it was re-established in Pristina, and has been one of the three most widely circulated dailies during the postwar period (Berisha 2015, 23).

The regime-controlled media covered the conflict that escalated in Kosovo during 1998 and the NATO intervention of March–June 1999 in a similar way to the previous wars in Bosnia-Herzegovina and Croatia: partially, selectively, and mendaciously. The regime propaganda machinery deprived the public in Serbia of information about the crimes committed by the Yugoslav forces, with more than 850,000 Albanian refugees fleeing or driven out of Kosovo. At the same time, those incidents in Kosovo that were the consequence of NATO bombs did appear in Serbian media. Information about the deaths of either Yugoslav soldiers or KLA fighters around the Košare border post was absent from the print media. In Serbia, this was true not only of Politika, but also of other dailies, such as Večernje Novosti and Blic. Like Politika, they published two reports each and remained silent about the casualties during the battle (Mučki napad iz Albanije, Večernje Novosti, 10 April 1999; Moguća vazdušno-kopnena bitka, Večernje novosti, 15 April 1999; Napad na karaulu Košare iz Albanije, Blic, 10 April 1999; Likvidirano 150 terorista, Blic, 13 April 1999).

Under the Milošević regime, the politicians and print media never referred to Košare as a battle. The press release of the Yugoslav Army, published by Politika on 10 April 1999 (Artiljerijski napad, Politika, 10 April 1999), was its first account about the events near the Košare outpost. The second, and last, was the report of the RTS journalist on 10 April, which Politika (Naši graničari, Politika, 11 April 1999) published the next day. Both referred to the events near the border post as “an artillery attack” and “an act of aggression”. While the first one referred to the attackers as a “group of terrorists”, the report by the RTS journalist claimed that the attack was carried out by “members of the separatist KLA”, “800 to 1,000 terrorists with artillery support from the Albanian Armed Forces” (Naši graničari, Politika, 11 April 1999). Regarding the outcome of the attack, the release by the Army reported that the Yugoslav Army border units “vigorously repulsed this aggressive act and smashed the terrorist group” (Artiljerijski napad, Politika, 10 April 1999). Nothing in the Army’s release indicates that the attack was a serious threat to the Yugoslav Army and border stability. On the other hand, the report of the RTS journalist described the attack as a more serious threat for the Yugoslav border units and that, at the time of the reporting, the attack was still not over (Naši graničari, Politika, 11 April 1999). After this, there was no further echo of the battle in Politika. This did not change for the first anniversary of the battle either, whilst the Miloševic regime was still in power.

Between Facing the Past and Denying the Crimes

Dealing with a legacy of human rights violations has been one of the most challenging issues in postconflict Serbia and Kosovo. Since the war ended, the denial of war crimes and the unwillingness to establish the truth about human rights violations has remained widespread among elites and media both in Belgrade and Pristina. On the other hand, the Commission of the European Communities (known as the European Commission, EC) had already in 1999 included full cooperation with the ICTY as a conditionality to the Yugoslav successor states (Commission of the European Communities 1999), so that accession to the European Union was directly related to the progress in this field.

After the political transition in October 2000, there was no consensus among the representatives of the new democratic regime in Serbia on how to deal with the crimes committed by members of the Serb forces. They were stuck in disputes between the forces advocating a “soft transition” led by the Yugoslav president Vojislav Koštunica and those that advocated a break with the past and a “hard transition,” represented by the first democratic prime minister Zoran Đinđić (Gordy 2013, 172). The issues of Milošević’s arrest, his extradition to the ICTY, and the law that would regulate cooperation with the ICTY and further extraditions showed the severity of these confrontations. All this was the lead-up to the murder of Đinđić in March 2003 (Gordy 2013, 69–75). In the period that followed concrete efforts to establish accountability were made, but they were also accompanied by delays, relativization, and avoidance. Serbian governments have looked for ways to silence any public debate regarding the wars of the 1990s, rather than accept any responsibility (David 2015, 60).

Along with the legal and political institutions, the media remained mostly stuck in the interpretative framework of the Milošević times. Media reports on the trials before the ICTY rather perpetuated nationalist myths than informed the public about the legal proceedings (Ristić 2014a, 222). The political discourse as well as media discourse on the trials before the domestic courts when the accused were Serbs subscribed to the nationalist view of the equal guilt of all parties for war crimes, and to the narrative of Serbian victimization (Ristić 2014c) and relativized guilt and responsibility, minimized crimes, and dehumanized victims (Ristić 2014b).

A new regime led by the Serbian Progressive Party that came to power in 2012 brought some key people of the Milošević regime back to the political stage. It transformed memory politics and revived the nationalist rhetoric. The wars of the 1990s have become the focal point of Serbia’s official memory politics, while the return of national pride became the central discourse that the government has built its memory work on (Đureinović 2021, 21–2). The new memory politics have represented the wars through the lens of victims and heroes while deliberately leaving out the dark episodes of the national history (Đureinović 2021, 22). Since then, and particularly since Aleksandar Vučić became prime minister in 2014, the significance and memory of the NATO bombing in the public space were changed. The state-sponsored commemorations of the NATO bombing have played a key role in nurturing the public’s national and patriotic sentiment (or resentment), whilst also serving pragmatic interest-led politics (Satjukow 2018; Satjukow 2022, in this issue). At the same time, the memory about the Battle of Košare started entering the political sphere and, in 2016, the state began to sponsor commemorative ceremonies.

In Kosovo, the process of transitional justice is also contested. War crimes trials of Albanians accused of murdering Serbs or Albanian collaborators have been handled by the UN court in The Hague, by the UN and EU’s missions in Kosovo, UNMIK and EULEX, but all of them failed to fulfil expectations. Thus, in 2008, when UNMIK finished its mandate, Amnesty International reported that hundreds of cases of war crimes, enforced disappearances, and interethnic crimes remained unresolved (Amnesty 2008). Four years later, in 2012, the same organization concluded that UNMIK’s successor EULEX in several areas “either failed to identify solutions or gradually fell back into UNMIK’s old ways” (2012). As a result of a new effort by the EU and the United States to address previous failures of the ICTY, UNMIK, and EULEX, in 2015 the Kosovo Assembly, that is the central legislative body, adopted the law that established the Specialist Chambers and Specialist Prosecutor’s Office (Assembly of the Republic of Kosovo 2015). Since 2018, the Special Prosecution Office of Kosovo has taken an active role in investigating and prosecuting war crimes. Up to now, the legacy and impact of international and hybrid courts in Kosovo remain highly contested. Many ethnic Albanians have considered the attempts of the international community to establish accountability for war crimes in Pristina as an unjust punishment and have perceived those ex-KLA fighters charged with committing war crimes as heroes (Kosovo Ex-Premier Haradinaj, Deutsche Welle, 29 November 2012; Kosovo Parliament Approves, BBC, 4 August 2015).

While the internationally-led top-down agenda for transitional justice has been focused more on retributive justice than other mechanisms, such as victim support or memorialization, the authorities in Pristina have addressed these areas of concern through an ethnonationalist framework. Thus the 2014 Law on Reparations favors mostly Kosovo Albanian victims, excluding civilian victims belonging to other ethnic groups, because these are associated with “enemy forces” or because the crimes affecting them fall outside the time frame covered by the law (Visoka and Limani 2020, 23). KLA war veterans, invalids, and families of martyrs have been privileged in relation to the issue over civilian victims and victims of sexual violence during the conflict, since their monthly pension is twice the amount which civilian victims or families of missing persons receive.

Simultaneously, KLA-derivative parties and their leaders, former KLA leaders such as the Democratic Party of Kosovo (Partia Demokratike e Kosovës, PDK) headed by Hashim Thaçi and the Alliance for the Future of Kosovo (Aleanca për Ardhmërinë e Kosovës, AAK) headed by Ramush Haradinaj, made a significant effort to monopolize representations of the military struggle and to send a clear message that the armed resistance had had a decisive impact on the removal of the Serbian threat (Ingimundarson 2007, 104) and on achieving independence. Former KLA fighters are represented as heroes and patriots who sacrificed themselves for the nation. The killing of Adem Jashari and his extended family by Serbian Special Police in 1998 became a core around which a narrative of heroism and sacrifice has developed. In order to visualize such representation of the armed struggle KLA war veterans have engaged in constructing war memorials throughout Kosovo in honor of dead fighters and organizing annual commemorations. Also, former KLA elements have sought to monopolize representations not only of the military but also of civilian victims (Ingimundarson 2007, 104). Invoking a nationalist discourse of liberation and heroism has enabled KLA-derivative parties to win elections, come to power, and become memory patrons in postconflict Kosovo (Visoka 2016, 68). Therefore, commemorations and political and media discourse concerning the Battle of Koshare need to be discussed in the context of this dynamic between the external pressure to establish accountability of the former KLA members for the crimes and the internal efforts to delegitimize such requests, hand-in-hand with attempts at state-building and obtaining international recognition.

The Memory of the Battle of Košare/Koshare

The following section sheds light on the political context, both in Kosovo and Serbia, in which governments decided that the Battle of Košare/Koshare was an important event for their respective statehoods. They added the date into the national calendars and began to commemorate it at the highest state level.

The area of the former Koshare outpost became a site of memory for Kosovo Albanians soon after the end of the battle. In that area fallen KLA fighters were buried while military action was still ongoing. When the battle ended, the cemetery of the fallen KLA members had already been formed in the area nearby. In the following years, although some families decided to take the remains from Koshare and re-bury them in their home towns, the memory site was visited by many families every year. Thus, commemorations started as a bottom-up process. As previously mentioned, on the fifth anniversary in 2004 citizens from all over Kosovo formed a few-kilometers-long column (Kosharja ishte rruga, Koha Ditore, 9 April 2004).

However, when on the ninth anniversary of the battle, on 9 April 2008, Kosovo’s new constitution was ratified, the annual commemorations of the Battle of Koshare now overlapped with the National Day, the “Day of the Eagle” (Kujtohet Beteja e Koshares, Koha Ditore, 9 April 2009). As a result of the merging of these two events, Kosovo Albanians celebrate 9 April as one of the most significant days in recent history. The most important political institutions and figures organise ceremonies and commemorations. This linkage ensured commemorations took place at the highest state level. On 15 June 2011, the government of the Republic of Kosovo declared the area where the Battle of Koshare took place as protected and of special interest (Ministry of Environment and Spatial Planning of Kosovo 2013). On the thirteenth anniversary, a foundation stone for a Memorial Complex of the Battle of Koshare was put in place (Zyra e Kryeministrit 2012).

The analyzed articles published in Koha Ditore reveal that, although the former KLA leaders have dominated the commemorative ceremonies, the LDK leaders also have participated in the ceremonies during the second decade after the conflict. However, both groups have described the battle in a similar manner. Thus, in 2015 Ramush Haradinaj, the former KLA and now AAK leader, claimed it to be “one of the most successful KLA battles, where for the first time the terrible unjust frontier between the Albanians was removed” (Haradinaj: Beteja e Kosharës, Koha.net, 9 April 2015), indicating that the Yugoslav–Albanian border, which separated Albanians in Albania from those in Kosovo, was an unjust creation which was “removed” during the first day of the battle. In 2019, the LDK leader Isa Mustafa echoed him saying that “the removal by war of the border between Kosovo and Albania on 9 April 1999 is one of the most important dates in the Kosovo war history calendar” and that the battle was the most heroic battle of the KLA (Presidenti shpall heronj të Kosovës, Koha.net, 9 April 2019). As they are unanimous in emphasizing the “removal of the border”, none of the analyzed articles provide more details about the following two months, when the fighting around the border continued, leaving the impression that the battle was quickly won in April.

In Serbia, the public commemorations of the Battle of Košare took a different path. The silence of Milošević’s regime about the events and casualties around the Košare outpost was continued during the decade that followed the overthrow of Milošević. Media space was slowly opened up for the memory of Košare after 2012, when a populist regime led by the Serbian Progressive Party came to power. The number of media reports significantly increased since 2016 (Stojčić, Cvetković and Savić 2020). The Belgrade daily Politika described the fighting on Košare as “the scene of the fiercest and bloodiest battles” (Bojović 2015), as “an epic about patriotism, courage and determination in defending the country” (Galović 2019a), and as “one of the brightest moments of our military and national history” (Godišnjica početka, Politika, 9 April 2016). From the beginning, the narrators of the Battle of Košare in Politika were the Yugoslav Army commanders. They presented the two months’ fighting as a continuation of the previous fragility of the Yugoslav–Albanian border, which was said to “never have been peaceful, as evidenced by the names of the outposts that bore the names of dead border guards, such as the outposts ‘Boško Žilović’, ‘Dejan Radanović’ or ‘Mitar Vojinović’” (Galović 2019a). On the other hand, regarding the outcome of the battle and the withdrawal of the Yugoslav police and military units from Kosovo during June 1999, Politika and its sources rather avoided or mentioned without going into the details of the reasons or consequences, and without evaluating it either positively or negatively. Instead of referring to the actual events, Politika’s interlocutor from the army command (Galović 2019b) concluded that his battalion formed a column heading towards central Serbia, and that he went to the Monastery of Visoki Dečani and lit 16 candles for 16 soldiers of his unit, fulfilling the story of heroism and sacrifice that he produced in the three-part article.

In December 2016, the anniversary of the Battle of Košare became an integral part of the State Programme for Marking the Anniversaries of Historical Events in the Liberation Wars of Serbia. According to this document, the anniversary of the battle is to be celebrated every year on 14 June, the date when the battle ended. As the site for the commemoration, the document prescribes the local self-governments in the Republic of Serbia, and the organiser of the commemoration is to be the Sector for Veteran and Disabled Protection within the Ministry of Labour, Employment, Veterans and Social Affairs (Ministry of Labor, Employment, Veterans and Social Affairs 2016).

On 14 June 2017, Serbian president Aleksandar Vučić unveiled a monument in the village of Debeljača, 50 kilometres north of Belgrade, dedicated to Tibor Cerna, one of the 108 Yugoslav Army soldiers killed in Košare in 1999 (Ministarstvo za rad, zapošljavanje, boračka i socijalna pitanja 2017). According to the testimony of his comrades-in-arms, Cerna voluntarily got up from the shelter with the intention of discovering the position of the sniper who took the lives of many of his comrades-in-arms for days. Soon after he went out into the open, he received a bullet in the chest. Although badly wounded, he managed to stay on his feet to the astonishment of all and shouted “it is worth dying for this country”. His death became a symbol of heroism and sacrifice for the homeland. In the speech he gave in Debeljača that day, Vučić described the Battle of Košare as “a historical battle” and called it a “Serbian Thermopylae” and “the Second Battle of Kosovo”. In the speech, he described Cerna as “a hero, a Hungarian, a citizen of Serbia” (Ministarstvo za rad, zapošljavanje, boračka i socijalna pitanja 2017). As previously mentioned, on 14 June 2019, a solemn symposium marking the twentieth anniversary of the Battle of Košare took place at the Sava Center in Belgrade. High-profile politicians and military leaders attended the event, including the president, prime minister, defence minister, and several other ministers, as well as participants in the battle, members of their families, and families of the fallen Yugoslav soldiers. Empty chairs were left in one part of the hall, with the names and surnames of those fallen in the battle of Košare. The audience heard the testimonies of the surviving soldiers, the quotes from the letters of the fallen soldiers to their families, and the speech that president Vučić gave. Politika quoted the parts of the president’s speech in which he promised the participants in the Battle of Košare that Serbia will never be ashamed of its heroes and added that they are the best part of Serbia (Akademija povodom, Politika, 24 June 2019). Vučić in his speech embraced a discourse of heroism and sacrifice.The parts of his speech quoted by Politika were rather present- and future-oriented.

Thus the dynamic of the nationalization of memory and the political contexts in which the memory of the Battle of Košare/Koshare was placed became important for the governments both in Pristina and Belgrade. In Serbia the shift from silence to the presence of the event in the media and in the wider public overlapped with the more general transformation of the official memory politics in relation to the wars in 1990s. As a part of this change, in 2016 the government decided to include 14 June 1999, the date when the battle ended, in the national calendar. Simultaneously, the number of media reports significantly increased. The authorities in Pristina, on the other hand, after Kosovo’s declaration of independence in 2008, linked the KLA attack on the Yugoslav–Albanian border around Koshare, which included breaking through the border on 9 April 1999, with the ratification of the constitution on 9 April 2008.

Making the Self and the Other in the Battle of Košare/Koshare

In this section I analyze how the actors involved in the battle of Košare/Koshare were represented by looking into linguistic features that created images of “us” and “them,” of the “self” and the “other.” Unsurprisingly, the Belgrade-based daily ascribed heroic traits to the Yugoslav soldiers. Politika provided space to the battle commanders to give their own testimonies about the battle, and how they were wounded (Galović 2013; 2019c). The public image of commanders was infused with virtues such as strength, courage, and endurance. Simultaneously, Politika portrayed their subordinated comrades as brave, self-sacrificing, physically and mentally strong, and persistent. For example, the rescue of one of the battle’s commanders, colonel Vidoje Kovačević, was described in the following way: “His comrades came to save him […]. Soldier Predrag Denda bandaged him, and at that moment he also was hit […]. The commander’s comrades did everything to save him. They carried him in their arms […] dragged him down the mountain in a tent wing, borne on makeshift stretchers” (Galović 2013).

The role played in the battle by young soldiers, those on regular military service, has been gradually revealed too. In an article published in 2013, Politika did not mention the contribution of young soldiers to the battle. However, in 2016 Politika wrote that “the majority of border units in Košare before the battle were conscripts who had served in the army since March 1998 and were mostly 19 or 20 years old” (Godišnjica početka, Politika, 9 April 2016). Here, it remained unclear whether these conscripts participated in the battle, since they are only mentioned in the pre-battle context. However, on the twentieth anniversary of the battle in 2019 Politika wrote that “the burden of the fighting was borne by young men on military service, young men aged 19 or 20; and that especially worthy of mention were the March generation, i.e. the class of soldiers of 1998” (Galović 2019c). Politika’s source, one of the battle commanders, colonel Duško Šljivančanin, described those young soldiers—frontiersmen (graničari)—as “psychophysically the most capable among recruits,” “in the rank of specialists,” “independent in making decisions,” and as those whose life and work at the border was a “specific military experience” (Galović 2019a). Unlike the Yugoslav Army commanders, who were represented individually, the ordinary soldiers appeared as a group, collectively. It was rare for one among them to be singled out and given a name. Also, they became visible almost always only where there was a certain link with the commander who mentioned them—as above, for example, in the context of the wounding of a commander (Galović 2013; 2019c).

The representation of “them” mostly remained unchanged in Politika. From the beginning of the narrations about Košare, the enemy was indicated as “the KLA with the support of NATO and the regular Army of Albania” (Artiljerijski napad, Politika, 10 April 1999; Naši graničari, Politika, 11 April 1999). Also, as was explained by the Yugoslav Army commanders, “blacks in French uniforms” (Galović 2013) and “hired mercenaries” (Galović 2019a) filled up the enemy units. The estimates of the number of enemy troops varied, but left the impression that the enemy was more numerous and superior in strength. However, the casualties of the enemy, though not fully known, were more numerous than “ours,” since “there are about 150 graves of killed KLA members in the area of the Košare outpost, but it is estimated that several dozen more KLA people are buried in Albania” (Godišnjica početka, Politika, 9 April 2016).

In Koha Ditore, the exaltation of the courage, youth, unity, and harmonious relationships among the fighters of the 138th Brigade, and of the KLA as a whole, were the central values around which the image of “us” was formed. In 2015, Koha wrote that “fighters from all over Kosovo were united in the 138th brigade, led by commander Agim Ramadan, and tore down the nearly centenary wall [i.e. the state border] between Kosovo and Albania” (16 vjet nga beteja e Kosharës, Koha.net, 9 April 2015). While Koha and its interlocutors have glorified the contribution of the KLA fighters to the battle, the role of NATO, the KLA’s ally, in relation to the Koshare Battle more often than not has been omitted or represented as minor. Thus, in one of the rare mentionings of NATO in the Koshare context, prime minister Isa Mustafa explained that 9 April 1999 was the beginning of “the Albanian strategic partnership with their natural allies united under the umbrella of NATO” (Mustafa: Beteja e Kosharës, Koha.net, 9 April 2016).

Ordinary soldiers, in the articles published in Koha Ditore, just like in those published in Politika, were generalized. They were assimilated into the 138th brigade and the KLA as a whole. Quoting the words of one of the former KLA leaders, Ramush Haradinaj, who labeled these fighters as the “nation’s best daughters and sons” who sacrificed themselves “for freedom and the state we are building”, Koha Ditore indicated that they were very young, and also that there were females among them (Haradinaj: Beteja e Kosharës, Koha.net, 9 April 2015). However, their names, origin, age, education, training, and the way they reached Koshare remained indeterminate. Similarly, the fallen were represented as numbers, such as “114 martyrs of the nation” (Pesëmbëdhjetë vjet nga Beteja, Koha.net, 9 April 2014). On the other hand, their commanders were named, especially when they fell in the line of duty, such as Agim Ramadani, Sali Ceku, and Abaz Thaçi, who are recognized as heroes. For them, even separate events were organized, as Koha stated in 2015 that on 11 April at the Red Hall in Pristina a commemoration was to be held in honor of the fallen hero Agim Ramadani, while on 19 April at the Emerald Hotel a memorial ceremony would be held for the other hero of the 138th brigade, Sali Çekaj (16 vjet nga beteja e Koshares, Koha.net, 9 April 2015).

The representation of enemies in the articles published in Koha Ditore has undergone significant changes. On the occasion of the fifth and tenth anniversaries, reference to the enemy was completely excluded. Kosovo officials and former commanders in the battle in their speeches focused on addressing certain current issues and on the inspiration that the fighters of the 138th brigade offered for solving present problems. Thus, Rrustem Berisha, former commander of the 138th “Agim Ramadani Brigade”, stated that “anarchic liberalisation kills true freedom”, and that “if we allow our ego to conquer us, as an individual or society, then we will be finished and move to self-imprisonment”, adding that “we must be guardians of law and order and noble fighters in this struggle for justice” (Berisha: Pavaresia nuk dhurohet, Koha Ditore, 10 April 2004). Then, during the second decade after the conflict, the enemy became visible. On the fifteenth anniversary, the first battalion commander of the 138th brigade, Hysen Berisha, described them as “Serbian forces that had landed with their entire arsenal of weapons and intensified their actions to the point of genocide” (Pesëmbëdhjetë vjet nga Beteja, Koha.net, 9 April 2014). Five years later, on the twentieth anniversary, LDK president Isa Mustafa stressed that KLA fighters “triumphed in this battle against a bigger and well-armed enemy” (Presidenti shpall heronj të Kosovës, Koha.net, 9 April 2019).

The parallel reading of Politika and Koha Ditore over the last 20 years shows how the dominant narratives and images of “us” and “them” have been constructed in a similar way. In both cases, the representations of “us” has revolved around the army depicted as righteous and heroic—in the case of Kosovo around the Kosovo Liberation Army and in the case of Serbia around the Yugoslav Army. While the KLA fought to correct what it perceived as the hundred-year-old injustice—that the border between Albanians in Kosovo and those in Albania represented, in the case of Serbia, how the Yugoslav Army defended the borders of the homeland. Ordinary soldiers were represented collectively, while their commanders were individualized. On the other hand, the analysis also shows the similar way in constructing the image of “them”, since the enemy in both cases is shown to be numerically and technically superior and dangerous. In this way, both memory projects have reinforced militaristic discourses, celebrating the armed struggle and military forces.

Conclusion

By examining articles about the Battle of Košare of 1999, published in two daily newspapers—the Belgrade-based Politika and the Pristina-based Koha Ditore—during the last two decades, this article sheds light on how ethnonationalist factions in Kosovo and Serbia have appropriated the memorialization of the Battle of Košare/Koshare, organized annual commemorative ceremonies, and promoted their own interpretation of the event from in the media.

In Serbia, after more than a decade of silence, the Battle of Košare has gradually appeared in the media and was included on the national calendar in 2016. The trigger was the new official memory politics of the populist regime of the Serbian Progressive Party since 2012 and especially since 2014 when Aleksandar Vučić, minister of information during the Kosovo war, became prime minister. The wars of the 1990s then became an important part of the state-sponsored memory politics, which interpret these wars through the lens of either victims or heroes while, at the same time, avoiding taking any responsibility for the wars. In Kosovo, public commemorations of the battle started as soon as families, relatives, and friends of fallen KLA soldiers started visiting the location near the former Yugoslav border outpost, where their loved ones fell and were buried. However, in 2008, the annual commemoration of the Battle of Koshare was merged with the ratification of the Kosovo constitution and since then 9 April has been celebrated as one of the most important days in recent history. The KLA-derivative parties and their leaders, who have dominated in postconflict Kosovo and become a sort of memory patrons, used commemorations to send the strong message that the armed resistance had a decisive impact on the removal of the Serbian threat and in the struggle for independence.

My analysis shows how supportive and uncritical the two influential dailies have been toward memory politics. Both dailies have drawn from similar types of sources in constructing their narratives of the battle and images of the “self” and the “other”. The voices of the family members of soldiers, both the fallen and the surviving, have been extremely rare, almost inaudible in both dailies. Rather, memory agents and sources of information about the battle have been the battle commanders and middle- or high-ranking members of the Yugoslav Army, in the case of Politika, and in the case of Koha Ditore the battle commanders and high profile politicians who were former KLA leaders.

Interpretations of the Battle of Košare/Koshare in Politika and Koha Ditore are deeply embedded into an ethnonationalist framework. Both dailies and their informants consider the battle as one of the brightest moments of national and military history and as a decisive and inevitable moment. Both sides have created the impression of invincibility on the battlefield. Armies are the central figures of the discourse, with an emphasis on commanders, while ordinary soldiers are generalized. The enemy in both cases is represented as superior and dangerous, just like it was depicted during the war. With such representations of the battle and images of “us” and “them”, both sides uphold, even further intensify, the animosities between Serbs and Kosovo Albanians, providing almost no room for any process of reconciliation. By creating divisive interpretations of the conflict and with the ethnic boundaries and divisions re-emerging, the ethnonationalist factions in Kosovo and Serbia seek to solidify their respective legitimacy among the population, while undermining the peace process and regional cooperation.