A Voice For the Voiceless

MISSION

The Advocacy Project seeks to help community-based advocates produce, disseminate and use information, and so become more effective advocates for human rights and social justice

Sabit Rrahamani - Using the Ballot to Protect Minorities

Sabit Rrahamani is president of the first political party for Ashkali, one of Kosovo's dwindling minorities. He is also a rarity-a minority leader who has placed his trust in conventional politics. 

Sabit Rrahamani.

To Sabit it was a matter of survival. The Ashkali are closely related to the Roma. This makes them deeply suspect to the Albanians, who blame the Roma for siding with Serbia during the war. Sabit argued that the best way for the Ashkali to protect themselves was to speak with one voice. This could only be done by forming a party.

Others disagreed strongly. Indeed, by the time the Advocacy Project interviewed Sabit in December 1999, his initiative was embroiled in controversy. At the very least this showed how hard it is to create a new party from scratch in an ethnically divided society.

Sabit lives in a small country town of Dubrava, near Ferizaj. Before the war, Ferizaj had a thriving community of Roma and other minorities. Following the war, their houses were burnt, and many were driven out. But 3,700 Ashkali remained.

Like so many of Kosovo's beleaguered minorities, they were under a cloud of suspicion. Fourteen villagers from Dubrava had been conscripted into the Serbian forces during the NATO bombing campaign, and the entire village was suspected of collaboration. Ashkali did not dare to send their children to school. They were being turned away from health centers. They were receiving less than their allotted emergency food rations. Most of them were out of work.

In the summer of 1999, Sabit started making the case for a new political party, known as the Ashkalia Democratic Party of Kosovo.

To Sabit and his friends, it seemed the only course to take. But others worried that it further divide the Roma, who were leaving Kosovo in droves. These critics maintain that the Ashkali are descended from Roma who stopped speaking the Romany language and became assimilated by the Albanians. In other words, they are either ethnic Albanians or ethnic Roma. By insisting on a separate identify for the Ashkali, they said, Sabit was making it harder for the Roma to speak with one voice.

Even some prominent Ashkali in Ferizaj felt that Sabit was merely pandering to the international obsession with party politics. He was being an opportunist, not a democrat.

Sabit Rrahamani, a soft-spoken but confident 24-year-old, does not fit the image of a political firebrand. Nor does he strike one as a manipulator of the international community. (When we met him, he worked for a Lutheran aid agency).

His own story is of a man trying to straddle different identities. He is Muslim by religion, and his own credentials are solidly anti-Serb. Before the war, he was president of the Mother Teresa Society branch in Dubrava and captain of the Dubrava football team. It was the only Ashkali team in the region, and it did exceptionally well, winning the municipal championship. Sabit played striker.

His prowess at soccer made Sabit a potential rallying point for Kosovars and therefore suspect to the Serbs. He was arrested briefly in December 1998 and left Kosovo after being released. He returned to Dubrava after the war to find the villagers demoralized and divided, and quickly assumed the role of leader.

He organized security patrols and assumed the task of negotiating with the KLA on behalf of the 14 villagers who were suspected of collaboration with the Serbs. A third of the villagers had fled into exile, and Sabit used this fact to argue that both Albanians and Ashkali had both suffered at the hands of a common enemy.

Among his own people, he made much of the ordeal suffered by the Albanians at the hands of Serbian forces and paramilitaries. Sabit and three others even removed 42 kilos of explosives from the offices of the LDK. It was very brave and also very foolish-but he was doing everything to avoid confronting the Albanians. Even before his party was launched, Sabit was acting like a veteran politician.

His first challenge in building a new party was to clearly establish the separateness of the Ashkali from the Roma. He argued that Ashkali have their own distinctive form of dress, music, and marriage. This was more than enough basis for claiming a separate identity. Besides, he says, it was for him to choose his own identity-and the same went for his people. The real questions were practical: Could a new party attract support? Would it survive? Would they get the necessary support from the international agencies?

Interestingly, the signals were mixed. UNHCR officials in Ferizaj disapproved. They felt that Ashkali were facing a humanitarian, not a political crisis in Ferizaj. Ashkali needed food, education, housing, clothing, and medical care-not political representation. To present these humanitarian problems in political terms would only create confrontation.

But officials from the OSCE were delighted. They were trying to coax democracy from Kosovo's barren soil, and in Sabit Rrahamani they saw someone who was inculcating a sense of pride into Kosovo's dispirited Roma.

Sabit pushed ahead. Three representatives were chosen by each of the three Ashkali communities near Ferizaj (Metvici, Salahane, and Dubrava). An open meeting was then called to launch the actual party. It was attended by 60 Ashkali, some elders, and officials from the OSCE. Nine Ashkali were elected to a board, with Sabit as president.

They spent the next month consolidating the organization. Each Ashkali family was asked to contribute one D-mark every two weeks, and a member of the committee was designated to issue receipts. It was a small step on the road to accountability. After three weeks there were 900 D-marks in the kitty. By December, the new party was attracting articles in the press.

The Ashkali protested against the discriminatory food distribution practices of local Mother Teresa Society offices.

By focusing on building the party, they were able to postpone the tough decisions. Sabit knew that a political party thrives on campaigns, but he also knew that the crisis facing Ashkali-the denial of food aid, the lack of security-was caused by Albanians. Campaigning on such issues would define the Ashkalis' rights in terms of grievance. It could be suicidal.

When we met Sabit, he was seeking an issue around which his members could mobilize without provoking their neighbors. The municipal elections seemed promising. The whole purpose was to give local communities some control over their lives, and if the Ashkali could win votes they might well emerge with a seat on the council and a role in administering the basic services that they so badly need.

But before they could even field candidates, they would have to collect 3,300 signatures to register as a party. This was clearly beyond the means of the Ashkali from Ferizaj alone, and it meant they would have to form a partnership with Ashkali parties in other municipalities.

This would test even Sabit's political skills. He had found it hard enough to unite the Ashkali of Ferizaj-many of whom were related. How much harder would he find it to coopt Ashkali from other areas, where he was looked on with some distrust? When we left him, he was just starting to wrestle with the implications.

* Update: Sabit Rrahamani failed in his first bid for elective office. He managed to weld several Ashkali groups into a national party (The Democratic Party of Albanian Ashkali in Kosovo - PDASh). He also raised enough signatures to field candidates in seven municipalities during Kosovo's November municipal elections. But the party only won 1,562 votes in total. Only one PDSAh candidate was elected, in the municipality of Fushe Kosove (Kosovo Polje). The party won 425 votes in Ferizaj, or 1% of the votes cast.