By Veton Surroi
1.
I caught myself once again repeating a truth about the unpredictability of the past.
Bujar Bukoshi died, and people wrote about him.
Some of what was written seemed as though he hadn’t died at all. The Three Percent Fund, the UÇK-FARK conflict, how Rugova was left without cigarettes… anecdotes recycled in service of a political war that began over thirty years ago—one that some still want to continue for another thirty.
In the last century, in Western culture, twenty years after an event—considered a safe distance by historians—would usually yield a consolidated narrative. While not exhaustive—since history is always enriched by new sources—this narrative would contain an essential, broadly accepted core. In that core, reflecting the consensus of a society, Bujar Bukoshi would be remembered with a long, dignified story—an illustrative testament to the awareness of a man, and of a generation, dedicated to giving something to their country.
But in this century of social media, history has become a thick book that most people have no interest in reading. Instead of that thick book—researched with the discipline of a professional historian—our public space (and this is a global phenomenon) is flooded with fragments: thoughts, declarations, posts, all carrying the hope of becoming part of a virtual history—with no author, no research, no editing, no peer review, no publisher, and no critical readership.
In this scattered public space, I came across a piece on Bujar, written by someone known for having admitted to collaborating with Serbia’s State Security Service during the height of the Kosovo war. In that piece, I found the statement: “My father and Bujar were old friends.”
The statement was made when Bujar had already been dead for several hours and could no longer speak for himself about this alleged friendship. Moreover, the author’s father was not a figure of cultural, artistic, or scientific significance that would warrant such a contextual mention. On the contrary, among parts of the city’s intellectual circles, he was seen—though never legally proven—as an informant for the authorities, the kind once euphemistically called “operatives” in Kosovo’s Autonomous Province. As such, it would have been extremely unlikely for him to be a friend of Bujar Bukoshi.
But Bujar no longer mattered—the story did. His death was exploited to insert new meanings into past events and people; to replace a 50-year-old perception with a single sentence about a friendship that never existed—uttered at the moment when the coffin had already begun to descend into the earth.
And then came the imaginary liberation day of Pristina.
Again this year, the Municipality continued its quarter-century-old tradition of celebrating June 11 as the day Pristina was “liberated” in 1999. That day, from a high point in the city, I watched rooftops burning. On the radio and television, I followed the arrival of Russian soldiers from Bosnia and Herzegovina. That night, until two in the morning, I heard and saw constant Kalashnikov fire in downtown Pristina—a celebration by some of the city’s Serbian population together with the Russian troops.
To the remaining Albanian population in the city, Pristina didn’t look liberated that day or that night. But reportedly, a UÇK unit had entered a house in the village of Kolovica on June 11—and that single fact served as the foundation for a public narrative that has lasted a quarter of a century and was institutionalized as the official “Liberation Day” on June 11.
A historical recap—based on irrefutable facts—shows that the FRY and Serbia capitulated through the Military-Technical Agreement of Kumanovo, signed on June 9. NATO troops entered Kosovo on June 12. The signatories were NATO and FRY-Serbia. NATO’s entry occurred under UN Security Council Resolution 1244, which also established Kosovo’s civil administration.
In the parallel history still alive today, the UÇK liberated Pristina… and Kosovo. And from there, the narrative limps along—because in real history, the force that liberates a country also governs it. That didn’t happen here.
Had the UÇK liberated Pristina on June 11 and Kosovo on June 12, there would have been no UNMIK, no Ahtisaari negotiations, no Brussels dialogue. But this doesn’t bother the parallel narrative. The fictional event continues to live on under the belief that if it’s repeated year after year, eventually everyone will believe it.
And so, gradually, I am supposed to start believing myself—that the words spoken in a meeting I personally attended, even my own words, are whatever a faceless institute—run, staffed, and directed by one single person—claims them to be.
This weekend, social media again circulated an alleged transcript from a May 1998 meeting at the White House between President Clinton, President Rugova, Prime Minister Bukoshi, and myself (they conveniently forgot Dr. Agani, who was also present). According to this clumsily fabricated transcript, Clinton, Rugova, Bukoshi, and I spent the entire meeting gossiping about Fatos Nano and the UÇK.
“Complete fabrication! Or, to put it plainly: a lie, through and through!” I wrote.
There was no need to specify which part was false—the entire transcript was so fake it resembled those phony two-euro coins circulating in Kosovo that pretend to be gold.
This forgery—claiming to reveal word-for-word what we discussed in the White House—has been floating around since 1998.
And when you point out that it’s fake, the propagandists respond with something like: Prove it’s not.
Umberto Eco made a famous statement in Turin in 2015:
“Social media gives legions of idiots the right to speak—when previously they only spoke at the bar after a glass of wine, without harming the community… Now they have the same right to speak as a Nobel laureate. It is the invasion of the idiots.”
It’s even worse than that. This invasion is perhaps how the entire century is being constructed: a public sphere where the right to lie has become a civic entitlement. And instead of burdening the liars with the responsibility to prove their claims, the burden falls on the rest of us to prove otherwise. In Eco’s words, the legions of idiots can release any falsehood into the ether, and it is up to the rest of us to try and disprove it—a hopeless mission akin to collecting feathers from a pillow during a windstorm.
In this era of falsehood, objectively verified truth becomes less and less objectively accepted—less and less tolerated as truth.
In that space, the Informant becomes Bujar’s old friend, Pristina is liberated on June 11, and at the White House—while Kosovo burned—President Clinton, Dr. Rugova, Dr. Bukoshi, and I were busy discussing how Enver Hoxha’s leftist ideology influenced Fatos Nano’s politics.
The next step is the ambition to make all this the past—one we all accept as real.