Say “Hero” Loud Enough and the Looting Disappears

Heroes don't need silence, thieves do. This was never about a hero. It was about who controls memory, who profits from silence, and how quickly a state panics when the spell breaks.

In December, before the calendar had even made up its mind whether to turn the page, I found myself reading the same sentence dressed up in different outfits, again and again, across Kosovo’s media and social feeds. Hashim Thaçi as hero. Thaçi as the man who carried the war on his shoulders. Thaçi as the name you say with a lowered voice, as if criticism itself were a kind of betrayal. It was not only repetition, it was choreography. You could feel the invisible hand guiding the tone, the pacing, the little moral cues about what a decent person is supposed to think.

I do not mean the ordinary reverence that societies keep for their wartime memories. I mean something more transactional, the way a flag can be held up like a receipt. You can almost hear the implied bargain. Accept the story as offered, and you will be allowed to belong. Question it, and you will be made to feel you have stepped outside the warm circle of the nation.

By the end of that month I had stopped thinking of it as…