KOSOVO: GORANI EDUCATION DISAGREEMENT ILLUSTRATES

UNCLAS SECTION 01 OF 04 PRISTINA 001072

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SUBJECT: KOSOVO: GORANI EDUCATION DISAGREEMENT ILLUSTRATES
COMMUNITY'S PRECARIOUS POSITION

REF: PRISTINA 290

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Summary
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1. (SBU) A long-simmering disagreement between Gorani
leaders, Kosovar education officials, and Belgrade's
Coordination Center for Kosovo and Metohija (CCK) highlights
the complex situation of the Gorani, a Muslim minority who
live in the southern part of Dragas municipality and speak a
dialect of Serbian. At issue is who will pay Gorani teachers
and which curriculum their children will use. Most teachers
who refused to sign contracts with the Provisional
Institutions of Self Government (PISG) have been replaced,
but the fight over education has added to the sense of
grievance of the Gorani, who see themselves as having been
alternately ignored and exploited both by Belgrade and
Pristina. END SUMMARY.

Who are the Gorani?
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2. (SBU) The Gorani are a group of Slavic-speaking Muslims
who have resided for centuries in Gora, the southern,
mountainous part of Dragas municipality which was a separate
municipality until 1999. About 8,000 of a prewar Gorani
population of around 18,000 remain in the area; much of the
outmigration occurred immediately after the war but the
economically deprived area had seen a net outflow to other
parts of then-Yugoslavia and Western Europe for decades
before. The Gorani dialect is most closely related to
Serbian/Bosnian, but includes strong Macedonian influences
and some unique vocabulary. Some Gorani see themselves as a
distinct ethnic group, while others insist that "Gorani" is
merely a term for the subset of the wider Bosniak community
who live in the Gora region. Those who claim a Bosniak
identity do so, in part, to ease cooperation with the
neighboring ethnic Albanian majority, since the Gorani's
traditional sympathy with Serbian policy on subjects
including school curricula has prompted many Albanians to
view them with suspicion as a potential "fifth column" for
Belgrade. According to PM Ceku's political advisor Arben
Qirezi, Macedonia and Bulgaria are now claiming the Gorani as
their own.


3. (SBU) The issue of Gorani ethnic identity has become
caught up in Kosovo's dysfunctional intra-Bosniak politics,
as two rival parties vie for the votes of Gora's citizens.
The Citizens' Initiative of Gora (GIG),some of whose leaders
are more sympathetic to Serbian positions, has close ties to
Serbia's CCK, while Vatan, a Bosniak party that belongs to
the "Six Plus" minority bloc in Kosovo's governing coalition,
received the largest share of non-Albanian votes in the area
and governs Dragas in coalition with the Democratic League of
Kosovo (LDK). Vatan leaders and their Six Plus colleagues
stress their community's interest in fostering good relations
with their Albanian neighbors and insist that GIG's coziness
with Belgrade and strident complaints damage their
community's prospects for a future in post-status Kosovo,
while Gorani leaders insist that the Gorani who posit a
Bosniak identity are denying the community's heritage and
failing to address its concerns.

The Education Issue Heats Up
--------------


4. (SBU) The issue of whether Gorani schools should use the
Serbian or Kosovar curriculum has festered since at least
2003, with a series of patched-together agreements allowing
for Gorani students to continue in school after various
boycotts. Two things shifted the disagreement into high gear
earlier this year, however: the CCK's insistence in April
2006 that Gorani teachers stop taking salaries from the
Provisional Institutions of Self Government (PISG),and the

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Kosovar education restructuring that made high school last
three years (grades 9-12) instead of the four years (grades
8-12) in the Serbian system. Until that time, Gorani
teachers -- alone among non-Serb minorities -- had received
salaries from both the CCK and the PISG. When forced to
choose (reftel),most opted for the 500-600 euro monthly CCK
salary over the much smaller (approximately 150 euro per
month) PISG salary. The municipal government and Kosovar
Ministry of Education, Science, and Technology (MEST),
however, insisted before the start of the 2006-07 school year
that all teachers would be required to sign PISG work
contracts and to teach according to the Kosovar curriculum,
or they would be replaced by teachers who were willing to
sign contracts and accept PISG salaries.


5. (SBU) The recent restructuring of Kosovar education also
made the Gorani dilemma more acute, since Serbian
universities (including the Serbian-influenced university in
northern Mitrovica) refuse to admit graduates of high schools
using the MEST curriculum. This refusal to recognize
PISG-system high school diplomas limits Gorani high school
graduates to studying at one of the two Bosnian-language
university programs in Kosovo (the teaching faculty in
Prizren or the business faculty in Peja/Pec); attending
Pristina University, where they can take exams in
Serbian/Bosnian but must be able to understand lectures in
Albanian; or studying in Bosnia, where their diplomas are
accepted but they are required to pay out-of-country tuition
rates. This lack of access to higher education in Serbia,
where Gorani high school graduates have traditionally
studied, has fueled many parents' concerns with the
changeover to the new system.


6. (SBU) A series of confrontations and partial compromises
over the course of the past three months has left Dragas with
an odd patchwork of teachers and curricula. Teachers in a
few villages agreed to sign PISG contracts, while most
refused. The local authorities barred teachers who had not
signed PISG contracts from teaching in most areas, and
replaced many of those who refused with newly-hired teachers,
though teachers in Krusevo village set up a parallel school
run according to the Serbian curriculum. Calls by CCK-paid
teachers to boycott classes taught under the new curriculum
were heeded by parents and students in some areas but not
others. As of early December, all elementary school students
were back in school, as were all high school students except
those in the multiethnic high school in Dragas town, where
the CCK-paid teachers' boycott received stronger support due
to the dependence of most parents on salaries or stipends
from Belgrade. Most students (about 1100 of 1768) are now
being taught according to the Kosovo curriculum, though an
agreement reached with the support of the MEST allowed some
schools to postpone the implementation of the new curriculum
until the 2007-08 school year.

Intracommunity Divisions Complicate Issue
--------------


7. (SBU) Differences in views of the education issue among
local community members were conspicuous during poloffs'
December 7 meetings with Gorani and Bosniak leaders. Vatan
member and Dragas deputy mayor Sabidin Cufta and Prizren
deputy mayor Cemajlj Kurtisi, a member of the Democratic
Party of Bosniaks, a partner in the Six Plus coalition in the
Kosovo government, told poloffs that their strategy of
cooperation with ethnic Albanians had yielded benefits for
their community, including an equitable division of municipal
positions. They stressed that integration into the Kosovar
school system was in their children's best interest, since
"we see where final status is going" and such integration
would better equip them for a future in Kosovo after final
status is decided. Both insisted that the CCK was interested
only in manipulating the Gorani by compelling loyalty through
unrealistically high teacher salaries. They alleged that the
CCK-paid teachers, rather than parents or students, had been

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the moving force behind opposition to the new curriculum and
contracts, and that they had offered numerous compromises to
the parents of the few high school students still out of
school, but that the parents -- probably under pressure --
had refused to send their children to the multiethnic school
where other classes were taught under the new curriculum.
Bosniak journalist Mustafa Balje, who comes from Gora and has
followed the issue closely, took a similar view, charging
that the issue was created by the CCK's manipulation of
teachers through salaries, that many parents wanted their
children educated under the Kosovar system, and that the
newly-hired teachers were in many cases better qualified than
their predecessors.


8. (SBU) GIG vice president and Dragas CCK representative
Abdi Alija, by contrast, insisted that the PISG's insistence
on imposing the new curriculum on Gorani schools had caused
the problem. He acknowledged that the CCK's insistence that
any teacher who cooperated with the MEST would lose his or
her larger CCK salary had contributed to the current
situation, but insisted that most parents strongly preferred
the Serbian curriculum and its teachers because the teachers
were better qualified and the curriculum allows access to the
Serbian university system. He said the CCK has tried hard to
help the Gorani, but that the municipal government blocks any
attempt by Serbian authorities to implement projects, such as
road improvements.

"Our Voice Is Barely Heard"
--------------


9. (SBU) Both sides agree, however, that the Gorani
community's isolation and poverty, and the relative lack of
engagement with the Gorani by either Pristina or Belgrade,
leaves them worried about the future and vulnerable to
manipulation. The region suffers even more unemployment than
many areas of Kosovo, and the treacherous roads among its
mountain villages have the dubious distinction of being among
Kosovo's worst. Conversations about education with community
representatives on any side of the issue quickly turn to
other issues that make the Gorani feel neglected or
aggrieved, such as the fact that they are charged 3.5 euros a
month for RTK television service when they do not receive a
television signal, and are placed in the lowest category of
electricity distribution (category C) because they withhold
the 3.5 euro television charge from their electric bill
payments. Balje noted that many Gorani are worried about the
future because "our voice is barely heard" by PISG
institutions. The Gorani have no great confidence in
Belgrade -- Cufta noted that, aside from salaries, the only
CCK aid the community had received was a few food deliveries
that annoyed Muslim Gorani by including pork -- but the lack
of responsiveness of Pristina to their concerns has left them
vulnerable to salary pressure from Serbia. Balje noted that
more thorough and proactive PISG explanations of the new
education system, or action on other Gorani concerns such as
roads or electricity, would go a long way to show the Gorani
that they have a future in Kosovo.

Comment
--------------


10. (SBU) The Gorani will likely have little choice but to
adapt to the Kosovo education system -- as the Bosniak
community has done -- since the party that won the majority
of Bosniak/Gorani votes in Dragas firmly supports the MEST's
position of including them in that system. That the issue
became so difficult in the first place, however, illustrates
the sad combination of marginalization by Pristina and
pressure from the CCK to follow its policies. More effective
outreach by Kosovar authorities, and more active and
effective engagement in the Kosovo political process by the
Gorani, will be necessary to improve their situation in the
longer term.


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11. (U) Post clears this message in its entirety for
release to Special Envoy Martti Ahtisaari.
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