On the arrival of NATO troops it was still property of the Yugoslav state and run by Serb management.
The KLA moved in and organised a non-stop party together with the Albanian staff. Quite sophisticated form of struggle.
The legal ownership of the hotel is now alleged to be completely unclear. The Albanians claim it is a cooperative run by the (exclusively Albanian?) workers. A new Albanian director also claims that the previous management was incompetent.
None of this legal confusion has prevented an amiable English major working with the NATO forces by writing letters to Britain to business people inquiring whether they would like to help the reconstruction of Kosovo by investing some capital.
Thus national struggle turns to class struggle, and state socialist property turns to a cooperative, and may turn into a capitalist limited company, owned to an indeterminate degree by a mixture of local and foreign capital.
A lot may depend on some fine skirmishing on the ground.
If this is part of a wider KLA takeover of the Kosovo economy, much may also depend on whether their agenda is purely nationalist or whether there are some consciously socialist or at least cooperative elements within it. Hopefully the latter.
Chris Burford
London