VZCZCXRO6163
PP RUEHAG RUEHAST RUEHDA RUEHDBU RUEHDF RUEHFL RUEHIK RUEHKW RUEHLA
RUEHLN RUEHLZ RUEHROV RUEHSR RUEHVK RUEHYG
DE RUEHPS #1072/01 3491043
ZNR UUUUU ZZH
P 151043Z DEC 06
FM USOFFICE PRISTINA
TO RUEHC/SECSTATE WASHDC PRIORITY 6829
INFO RUEHZL/EUROPEAN POLITICAL COLLECTIVE
RUFOADA/JAC MOLESWORTH RAF MOLESWORTH UK
RUCNDT/USMISSION USUN NEW YORK 0949
RHFMIUU/AFSOUTH NAPLES IT
RHMFIUU/CDR TF FALCON
RHEFDIA/DIA WASHDC
RUEKJCS/SECDEF WASHINGTON DC
RUEPGEA/CDR650THMIGP SHAPE BE
RHEHNSC/NSC WASHDC
RUEAWJA/DEPT OF JUSTICE WASHDC
RUFOANA/USNIC PRISTINA SR

UNCLAS SECTION 01 OF 04 PRISTINA 001072 
 
SIPDIS 
 
SENSITIVE 
SIPDIS 
 
DEPT FOR DRL, INL, EUR/SCE 
NSC FOR BRAUN 
USUN FOR DREW SCHUFLETOWSKI 
EUR/ACE FOR DROGERS, MOKEEFE 
 
E.O. 12958: N/A 
TAGS: EAID KCRM KDEM PGOV PINR PREL SOCI YI UNMIK
SUBJECT: KOSOVO:  GORANI EDUCATION DISAGREEMENT ILLUSTRATES 
COMMUNITY'S PRECARIOUS POSITION 
 
REF: PRISTINA 290 
 
SENSITIVE BUT UNCLASSIFIED, PLEASE PROTECT ACCORDINGLY 
 
Summary 
------- 
¶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? 
------------------- 
 
¶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 
 
PRISTINA 00001072  002 OF 004 
 
 
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 
 
PRISTINA 00001072  003 OF 004 
 
 
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. 
 
 
PRISTINA 00001072  004 OF 004 
 
 
¶11.  (U)  Post clears this message in its entirety for 
release to Special Envoy Martti Ahtisaari. 
KAIDANOW