Azizi: The Commanders Forgot the Purpose of the War After Being Intoxicated by Power

Adnan Azizi, an MP from VLEN, has sharply criticized the outcome of the Ohrid Agreement and the way he says the document has been handled politically for more than two decades.

He said the gravest consequence for the 2001 war and the Ohrid Agreement is not merely the fact that Albanians failed to achieve full equality. According to Azizi, a cause that should have been concluded in 2004 with the realization of rights was transformed into a perpetual political pledge.

The VLEN MP said the Ohrid Agreement had been conceived as a process that would end the conflict and enable reforms to be implemented within a specified period. According to him, this also included the demilitarization of the UÇK, while the obligations under the agreement were supposed to be fulfilled in parallel.

Azizi said that after taking power, the commanders became intoxicated by it and lost sight of the reason the war had been fought. He said that instead of closing the chapter on the Ohrid Agreement with rights and equality having been achieved, it was turned into an inexhaustible source of political capital, used whenever remaining in power needed to be justified.

He linked this situation to more than two decades of government by the BDI. Azizi stressed that although more than 20 years have passed since the Ohrid Agreement was signed, its fundamental issues continue to be presented as goals for the future.

According to him, after more than two decades of BDI rule, the basic pillars of the Ohrid Agreement continue to be discussed as though they were promises with no set deadline.

The MP also raised the question of what concrete results have been achieved over all these years.

Azizi asked why, after more than 20 years, Albanians continue to be told to wait for justice and equality if the war was fought precisely for those two goals.

In his assessment, the war and the Ohrid Agreement have been exploited politically to gain and retain power. For this reason, he believes that after so many years, accountability must be demanded for the actual results of this process.

Azizi said that today it is not enough to make appeals in the name of the UÇK, the war or the Ohrid Agreement. According to him, after all this time, the question should be direct: What was achieved with all that power?

He said equality for Albanians remains an unresolved issue because, according to him, Albanians are still not legally recognized as a constituent element in the same way as the Macedonian side.

In conclusion, Azizi said that a cause used for more than two decades to gain and retain power cannot be called a success while the same rights remain mere promises. According to him, this proves that a great ideal was misused for a much smaller objective: power.