December/January 2004-2005

Views expressed are those of the authors, not necessarily of the AFSC.

Searching for My Peace

Ylber Kusari, a Kosovar Albanian, wrote this paper as a student in the class "The Politics of Peace" taught by Colman McCarthy at American University, spring 2004. He is now a senior at Duquesne University.

"Why am I in this class?" I asked myself over and over on my way back to the dorm from the class. I was shaking like a leaf, full of emotional pain and rage. I did not want to go back with those kids who knew little about real life, yet were proclaiming how they wanted peace for the world. And who was this professor who was calling my country's savior, Bill Clinton, a hypocrite? I decided I wasn't going back. However, next Tuesday came and the clock was ticking. Instinctively, I grabbed my notebook and told my roommate, "Time for class, let's go."

A question for the class: "Has anyone here been in a war?" Two hands went up. Another question: "Has anyone had relatives killed in a war?" Two hands again. The responses came from two students in my Politics of Peace class last spring at American University in Washington DC. Hesitantly but intensely, Ylber Kusari, a Kosovo Albanian, and Milica Koscica, a Serbian, took turns telling their 40 classmates about their life-and-death experiences when their homelands were shattered by violence. Unlike myself and all others in the class, they had experiential knowledge, not mere theoretical knowledge, about war. The two might have been an Israeli and a Palestinian, a Belfast Protestant and a Catholic, a Greek and a Turkish Cypriot, a Northern and a Southern Sudanese, a Pakistani and an Indian. I have had such students in earlier classes at American, a university with a remarkably diverse international student body and first rate academic programs to serve it. But this was the first class in which the feelings and thoughts of students from different cultures were expressed so candidly, publicly, and honorably. At the end of the semester, Ylber and Milica turned in the journals they were keeping. Each gave me permission to publish excerpts. I was enriched by having these students in my class, educating, as they surely did, all of us in ways we never expected. They came into the class as enemies but, many months and many discussions later, they left as allies. --Colman McCarthy

The reason I didn't like the class is simple. This class is scratching my wounds. I was at a point where I either had to defend my beliefs and completely shut myself off from the class, or expose myself to the new ideas and beliefs.

I grew up knowing fear, fear, and fear. Those people called Serbs hated us the Albanians and were killing us because of our language, our religion, tradition, and history. People wanted revenge. Revenge was what kept people alive in that cruel world for years and years. The war escalated into this fusion of madness and hatred where reason was gone and violence prevailed once more in the bloody history of the Balkans, where the lives of people seem to be predetermined from the minute they arrive into this world. As far as we could see, the Serbian-Albanian conflict couldn't be any different. We were oppressed by them and we wanted to escape. We wanted an end to the oppressive regime. That day came and we could finally breathe the free air.

The post-war madness made me open my eyes and look at the conflict differently. The war left Kosovar society traumatized, with a weak foundation, ready to tumble and fall down. On top of experiencing ten years of systemic oppression, Kosovars had experienced a real war with bombs dropping out of the sky. I came to realize that the international community could have solved the problem in the beginning by diplomatic means. Instead, the world's governments neglected a country of two million people for a decade. Only then did NATO come to the rescue, using their latest sophisticated missiles and artillery on civilians, under the pretext of "humanitarian intervention." I saw that right after the war, disappointment wiped away the euphoria. A cycle of victims turning into perpetrators was in place. Violence produced violence.

I came to the United States convinced that the US was our savior and we were blessed to have its support. The people I talked to in the US were thrilled to know that a young man like me, coming from a war-torn country that had seen the worst, thought the world of America and its actions in the region. I was happy to see that my comments made these people happy, too. But the truth proved to be different. The Politics of Peace class is one of the places where I realized that.

The reason I took this class is that I yearn for peace. I feel I am ready to leave the rage and anger behind me and try to look at things differently. Admitting in front of the whole class that my people did bad things during the war too, is a step forward.

I want to embrace the spirit of peace and open my soul to the wind to swipe away my pain. When watching the documentary about Joseph Giarratano, the death row inmate in Virginia, I was on the verge of tears. I could feel his pain. I too was sentenced to death from a state system for years and years, but under a different accusation. I was sentenced to death just because I existed. All of us who were in war were sentenced to death, and we, the ones that were lucky to see the light of the sun again, must know better than to spend the rest of our lives with hatred and violence prevailing over us. I don't want to lose hope in humanity. I want to be able to trust people, and I want people to trust me.

While doing the readings for the class, the words of Anne Frank would echo in my head: "I keep my ideals because, in spite of everything, I still believe that people are really good at heart. I simply can't build up my hopes on a foundation consisting of confusion, misery, and death." Yes, there is a hope for a better world, and it all starts with individuals, people like me, people who have seen the worst but still haven't given up hope for that precious thing called peace.

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