Today marks the 18th anniversary of the death of the former president of Kosovo, Ibrahim Rugova. He passed away on January 21, 2006 and was buried with high state and military honors.

Ibrahim Rugova was born on December 2, 1944 in the village of Cercë, municipality of Istog. On January 10, 1945, the Yugoslav communists shot his father, Uka, and grandfather Rrustë Rugova, who had been a well-known fighter against the Chetnik gangs that had infiltrated Kosovo during the Second World War.

Ibrahim Rugova completed primary school in Istog, secondary school in Pejë, in 1967. He completed the Faculty of Philosophy – Albanian Language and Literature Branch in Pristina. During the academic year 1976-77 he stayed in Paris, at the Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes, under the supervision of Prof. Roland Barthes, where he pursued his scientific interests in the study of literature, with a focus on literary theory.

In 1996, Ibrahim Rugova was elected a corresponding member of the Academy of Arts and Sciences of Kosovo. At first he was an editor in the student newspaper Bota e re and in the scientific magazine Dituria (1971-72), which were published in Pristina. For a while he also worked in Fjala magazine. Then, for nearly two decades, Dr. Ibrahim Rugova developed his scientific activity at the Albanological Institute as a literature researcher. At one time, he was the editor-in-chief of the Albanian Traces magazine of this Institute. He has been engaged in literary creativity since the beginning of the sixties.

In 1988, Rugova was elected president of the Writers’ Association of Kosovo. As an intellectual who gave voice to this intellectual and political movement, Ibrahim Rugova was elected on December 23, 1989.

In cooperation with other Albanian political forces in Kosovo as well as with the then Assembly of Kosovo, Ibrahim Rugova and the LDK completed the legal framework for the institutionalization of Kosovo’s independence.