His advice always was for us to show up for our country. But he used to say, ‘First you should ask yourselves, do you want to, or not? If you want to, then,’ he used to say, ‘you should make sure to fight an honest war.’ He said, ‘If you fight an honest war you will always be a winner. It can take longer, but you will win.’ And the other aspect that he used to say was, ‘Let’s think about what it takes to fight in a war,’ our question was where are the guns, we had a shortage of guns. We had somewhere… and up to that moment, he didn’t tell us that he had a gun somewhere or to go out and buy another gun, the guns were lacking. ‘Yes, the guns’, he said, ‘don’t worry about it because war brings the guns. When war happens the guns will come, that’s not an issue. But of course we won’t have guns like the other side, but the guns will come.’ But his other advice was that we should know, ‘If you fight, if you fight an honest war you should know that Serbs will still be in Kosovo, Serbs will live here and you should still live together with them.’ He used to say, ‘Even if there will be no Serbs left in Kosovo,” he said, ‘you should be aware that Serbia is a neighbor. You have to trade, you have to do business, you should develop the country. All of that,’ he said, ‘it helps to know at the time when if you do an honest war then the opportunities for collaboration after the war are better if you fought under these kind of conditions.’
Xhavit Gashi was born in 1973 in Studenicë, Municipality of Istog. He received a Bachelor’s degree in English Language and Literature, University of Prishtina, and a Master’s in Strategic Studies – U.S Army War College. He was Senior Officer in the Kosovo Security Force (KSF), with a proven academic record and with more than 18 years of experience in Security Sector Reform. In the last three years of his public service he has served as the very First Consul General at the Consulate of the Republic of Kosovo in Des Moines, Iowa. He retired from the Military as Brigadier General and with honorary rank of Major General after completing almost twenty years of service. Currently, he lives with his family in Pristina.