Today at K2.0, we publish a five-part series on the 1990s in Kosovo. We focus not only on the oppression met with resistance, but also on how the decade in Kosovo was defined by an apartheid-like regime, where systemic segregation, economic exclusion and political disenfranchisement of Albanians were enforced by the Yugoslav and Serbian state.

The ’90s are a formative period for K2.0, a magazine that emerged from a generation too young to actively take part in the organized political resistance, yet old enough to experience and remember the daily realities of oppression and subjugation that defined life throughout the decade. This generational positionality has shaped our approach to the decade, making it not just a historical reference point but an ongoing site of inquiry.

With this series, we return to the ’90s as we continually do — not just to document stories, but to ask new questions, to examine overlooked fragments of memory and to draw new knowledge that informs our present. In this line, there are a number of reasons why we see producing this record of the ’90s as crucial today.

We are now halfway through the third post-war decade, and with time passing by, the ‘90s continue to be largely referenced through the 1998-99 war period. Much of what preceded — be it Kosovo’s longstanding othering within Yugoslavia or the ongoing violence by the Serbian regime throughout the ‘90s — sometimes seems to be fading from both official accounts and collective memories. 

Such forgetfulness paves the way for an exploitation of history. Across the region, there are deep divisions over the details, causes and consequences of the wars of the ‘90s. Historical revisionism has reached the point of not just distorting events, but actively denying the violence and atrocities of the period. 

Based on this, we wanted to situate Kosovo within the broader history of Yugoslavia and the deep structural inequalities that have long othered Kosovo, economically, politically and culturally, and show how these forces ultimately materialized in the repression of the ‘90s.

Another reason is that much of the mainstream knowledge that has been produced about Yugoslavia and the subsequent war period is often limited, if not used as a tool to drive certain agendas. Meanwhile the more detailed documentation, that which provides more thorough theorizing and analysis, can feel confined within academia. 

This is a gap the media can fill. And at K2.0, like with this series, we have actively used storytelling to do so. Through initiatives like our ‘90s print edition in 2016; ongoing first-person blog submissions across generations, new or rediscovered insights about the decade; and community-based public discussions, we challenge historical revisionism, confront erasure and critically engage with histories.

Lastly, we bring this series for the meaning it carries in the present. Today, we are witnessing increasing economic precarity and the ways economic dissatisfaction is weaponized to scapegoat, marginalize and exclude — whether in nationalist rhetoric, anti-migrant policies or broader reactionary movements. 

As we worked on these articles, it became clear how regimes often resort to similar tactics — from scapegoating to using economic hardship as a tool of division — demonstrating how these strategies, though evolving, remain consistent in consolidating power and control. 

Yet, it is precisely within such political and structural crises that forms of care, support and solidarity emerge. These moments also remind us that the politics of the everyday — how personal experiences, memory and acts of resistance take shape — are not merely reflections of the past, but sites from which new connections and relatabilities can be forged. 

The connections between past and present allow us to understand struggles not as isolated events, but as multifaceted processes that are shaped across a variety of political, social and personal dynamics. 

This series fosters such an understanding. It focuses on the Kosovo Albanian experience as part of Yugoslavia’s broader unraveling — a process rooted in the Yugoslav disintegrative project itself, which manifested through political and economic shifts that began in the 1960s and escalated in the 1980s. 

“Foundations of Kosovo’s parallel state” by Besnik Pula examines how the gradual collapse of the federation’s economic model exposed and then furthered inequalities in Kosovo, making it a primary target of repression. This oppression did not go unchallenged. The 1981 protests — dismissed at the time as nationalist unrest — marked a decisive moment, signaling a shift in power dynamics that culminated in the revocation of Kosovo’s autonomy in 1989. Revisiting this history reveals that Kosovo’s struggle was not an isolated event, but part of the fractures that ultimately tore Yugoslavia apart. 

Author Shkumbin Brestovci, in “Resistance in Impossible Conditions,” focuses on one of the most devastating measures of the period: the mass firing of over 15,000 Albanian workers in 1990, followed by a general one-day strike on September 3 seeking not only to protest the illegal firings but to also mark the presence of Albanian workers and the impact their dismissal could have in paralyzing multiple sectors of the economy. 

These firings were more than just economic attacks; they were a deliberate attempt to erase the Albanian presence from public life. By the end of that year, an estimated 45% of the 164,210 Kosovo Albanian workers had lost their jobs, and by the end of the decade, almost 90% of Kosovo Albanians would be fired.

Yet, as Brestovci states: “This regime had no concern for the economy or the value of labor.” Instead, the regime’s actions were driven by nationalist rhetoric, implemented to feed its expansionist ambitions — regardless of the human costs, and with a deliberate intent to pursue ethnic cleansing.

The economic impact of the decade is thoroughly examined in “An economy for the darkest hour.” Author Edison Jakurti maps how the decades-long economic marginalization of Kosovo, worsened by apartheid-like policies and institutional dismantling in the ‘90s, created obstacles to Kosovo’s development that persisted until its more contemporary history. He highlights ways people survived, as besides mass migration — further consolidating the diaspora’s political identity — those who stayed embraced entrepreneurship “demonstrating the resilience and adaptability of the community amid adversity,” as he puts it.

A parallel state emerged, as a way of surviving and as a site for building resistance. In “Spaces of hope, solidarity and resistance,” Linda Gusia speaks to how systemic repression in the ‘90s in Kosovo gave rise to a grassroots infrastructure of survival via home schools, makeshift clinics, underground cultural spaces and more. In this infrastructure, women played a pivotal role from the kitchen tables to the workshop tables to the negotiating tables. That is, a fundamental contribution that largely remains unrecognized. In mutual aid and feminist activism, while performing everyday acts of care — sharing food, supporting neighbors and maintaining communal spaces — women transformed solidarity into both a necessary and deeply political practice. 

Finally, “The silence and noise of a decade” by Eli Krasniqi invites us to engage with how personal experiences and memories are continuously constructed, not only at the moment of occurrence, but within community and across time. As she recalls fragments of memories, dialogues and reflections — from her own experiences as a teen and university student, to the recollection and reconstruction of memories shaped by close family and research — she intertwines these with pivotal political and historical movements and events. The article powerfully underscores the necessity of recognizing that histories are not only written in textbooks, but also lived and shaped by the everyday memory and experiences of individuals.

This brings us back to K2.0 and its formative generational moment — a moment that continues to change over time, as do our readers.

In the beginning of K2.0, we turned to the ’90s, revisiting the decade because we needed it as a reference point, a space from which we could draw, learn and critically reshape our understanding of Kosovo’s independence as a moment deeply rooted in decades of struggle, resistance and resilience internally and not one that was given or granted externally. 

Now, as time passes, we continue our inquiry. For younger generations, particularly those who see the ’90s as a distant past, continuing to produce this kind of content takes on a different meaning. It challenges the assumption that “these things are known” simply because some remember them — history is not a given, but something that must be revisited, questioned and actively engaged with. Because of this, we will certainly return to the ‘90s again. 

Feature image: K2.0.