ABSTRACT
The municipality of Glogovac, situated in the central Kosovar Drenica valley, one of the former hotbeds of the Kosovo Liberation Army (in Albanian Ushtria Ҫlirimtare e Kosovës, henceforth KLA) and nowadays one of the strongholds of its political successor party, the ruling Democratic Party of Kosovo (in Albanian Partia Demokratike e Kosovës, henceforth PDK), informs the interested reader on its website: ‘[E]conomic development [in Drenas, formerly Glogovac] in the past used to be very low, because the former anti-national power holders, who were directed from the centre, pursued a specifically discriminatory policy, particularly in the field of economics’. 2 The accusation that Yugoslav Communists intentionally deprived those rural regions which had violently resisted the Yugoslav Partisans 3 of economic investment is an integral part of the master-narrative of those political actors who identify themselves as heirs to the KLA and as representatives of the formerly illegal clandestine groups, known in Albanian as ilegalja. 4 Both networks constitute influential political lobby groups in and outside Parliament. Glogovac and its neighbouring municipality in the Drenica valley, Srbica, lagged far behind the socio-economic average in all development indicators throughout the socialist period (Pokrajinski Zavod 1978, 1982). Both municipalities received industrial investments only in late socialism with the opening of the munitions factory in Srbica and the nickel plant Feronikl in Glogovac in 1981 (Schmitt 2008: 251).
