The ongoing, post-war construction of Albanian martyrs, memory and the nation in Kosovo has produced iconic tropes of militant resistance, unity and national independence. This critical interpretive account, based on years of the authors' ethnographic and political engagement with Albanians in post-war Kosovo, focuses on the making of a master narrative that is centred on the 'sublime sacrifice' of the insurgent KLA leader Adem Jashari, known as the 'Legendary Commander'. It also aims to trace voices of discord with this master narrative, testing contestations in terms of the rural-urban, political and gender divides in Kosovo-Albanian society. It concludes that the narrow international view of Albanians as either 'victims' or 'perpetrators' has contributed to the consolidation of this powerful narrative, its celebration of Albanian agency in militant resistance and the closing of public debate within Albanian society. This article focuses on the construction of a Pan-Albanian master narrative in post-war Kosovo 1 , a storyline for an independent country that also anchors a collective national identity. Kosovo is not an independent state and is no longer fully part of Serbia and Montenegro, but is held in a United Nationsled trusteeship. Its political status is a contested issue, whose negotiation is influenced by competing historical understandings and national identifications. Here we provide a critical account of the rise of a homogenising narrative in Albanian society, a subject that has not been given scholarly consideration until now. We concentrate on one symbolic event -the massacre 2 of the insurgent Jashari family, killed in the hamlet of Prekaz in March 1998 while fighting Serb troops. This was neither the only massacre nor the worst during the recent conflict, but is a place where many stories

The initiative to establish a truth commission in the successor states of the former Yugoslavia (ReCOM) presents a rich case study of the performance of the "toolkit" that transitional justice professionals propose on a global scale: an inclusive package that offers truth, justice, reconciliation and stability. Whether these goals could be achieved is the subject of a critical debate that questions overly ambitious projects of truth commissions, especially their sensitivity to local understandings and practices of transitional justice. We aim to contribute to this debate by examining the reception of ReCOM in Kosovo, where most local actors remain either noncommittal or outright opposed to ReCOM. What these actors share is the conviction that their own narratives be taken seriously, even when this means refusing the suppression of "truths" that can be divisive. We found that giving priority to "the local" implies more than adapting the received professional "toolkit": it might require abandoning it.

at different times, and for different reasons, Kosovo informal and organized women's networks have dealt with wartime sexual violence in different ways: they have followed either a strategy of silence or one of speech. Throughout, they have struggled to disentangle gender from ethnicity, straddling the line between a deep connection with local culture and domestic and international norms and agendas. This article tells their story, which in broader terms is the story of the subjectivity of women's rights activists-domestic and international-as it connects with the normative framework of transitional justice. The case of Kosovo shows that transitional justice meaningfully engages local actors as a human rights project sensitive to political change, more than as a "toolkit" which packages truth, reconciliation and justice with recipes for implementation. The case of Kosovo also confirms that lobbying by women's networks is crucial to the inclusion of women's perspectives in transitional justice, and that the exclusion of women from decision making results in a net loss for women's concerns. I would take the argument even further, and suggest that the inclusion of women and their agendas, as well as the struggle by women's networks for inclusion, is necessary for human rights transformation.

In this article, we present, as participants and observers, an analysis of the social and political impact of the 2015 art installation “Mendoj Për Ty” [Thinking of You], dedicated to survivors of wartime sexual violence in Kosovo. We argue that art possesses an extraordinary power to unveil the “public secret” of wartime rape, as well as produce a “reparative” reading of the past, creating solidarity for, and recognition of, survivors, which simultaneously empowers them and their advocates. We also confirm the crucial role of women’s networks and subjectivity to the inclusion of women’s perspectives for effective transitional justice.