Bosnia-Herzegovina
Report #1 – Kosovo By Peter Lippman
Mid-July, 2013
2013 Report index
Report 1: Kosovo, mid-July, 2013 Report 2: Sarajevo, July 2013 Report 3: Sarajevo, continued July 2013 Report 4: Tuzla, July 2013 Report 5: Mostar, July 2013 Report 6: Srebrenica, August 2013 Report 7: Srebrenica, continued, August 2013
Report 8: Prijedor and vicinity, August
2013
Report 9: Prijedor and vicinity,
part two, August
2013 Report 10:
Tomašica,
December 2013
To contact Peter
in response to these reports or any of his articles,
In
mid-July, I went to Kosovo to visit some friends and to update my
impressions of the place, after having been there last November. On
the political scene, some big changes are taking place. This refers
to the “Brussels agreement” between Belgrade and Prishtina, brought
about by negotiations under pressure from the European Union.
Between 1912 and 1999, Kosovo was under Serbian rule and had been
annexed to Serbia. NATO drove Serbian forces out of Kosovo in 1999
and the province was then governed as a UN protectorate. In February
of 2008 Kosovo declared independence with the support and
recognition of the United States and most of the EU. In 2010 the
International Court of Justice (the World Court) found that Kosovo’s
declaration of independence was legal under international law.
Official recognition of Kosovo’s independence by additional
countries came gradually, but to date somewhere around a hundred
states have recognized Kosovo. Serbia itself has not done so,
continuing to assert that Kosovo is historically and legally part of
Serbia. And Russia has backed up Serbia, making it impossible for
the UN to afford official recognition to Kosovo.
There is no reason to believe that this official limbo will change
for a long time. However, the EU has exerted great pressure to
effect an improvement in relations between Kosovo and Serbia,
demanding this normalization as a condition for Serbia’s eventual
membership in the EU. There are ways to make these things happen –
and gradually to absorb both Serbia and Kosovo into the EU – without
forcing Serbia’s leaders to publicly renounce the politically
expedient conceit that Kosovo still belongs to Serbia.
In Serbian elections in the spring of 2012, Tomislav Nikolić of the
Serbian Progressive Party and Ivica Dačić of the Socialist Party of
Serbia won positions, respectively, as President and Prime Minister
of the country. These results were discouraging to those hoping for
reconciliation in the region, since Nikolić, a Chetnik anointed by
Vojislav Šešelj (now on trial for war crimes at The Hague) was
anything but a progressive. And Dačić was Slobodan Milošević’s
spokesman during that leader’s war-ridden mandate in the 1990s.
But Dačić is someone who has shown that he can read the handwriting
on the wall. Several years ago, he implicitly recognized that Serbia
had lost Kosovo forever when he suggested that the country be
partitioned and the Serb-populated enclave in the north be annexed
to Serbia. And President Nikolić’s recent behavior has shown that he
too can engage in realpolitik in the interests of his country. It is
apparent that both politicians have decided to cut their losses
through a de facto recognition of Kosovo, in return for the opening
of negotiations for EU membership. Cutting a deal with Kosovo was
one major obstacle to achieving that goal.
The Brussels agreement, signed in the Belgian capital in April,
works to resolve a host of tense problems between Serbia and Kosovo.
First, there is the problem of the northern Serb enclave in Kosovo,
centered around Mitrovica and bordering on Serbia. While other Serb
enclaves within Kosovo do not share borders with Serbia, the Serbs
in Mitrovica have been able to harbor thoughts of annexation of that
part of Kosovo to Serbia, just as proposed by Dačić. These ambitions
have for years been bolstered by ongoing payments of cash from
Belgrade to Serbs in a de facto-partitioned Kosovo, who constituted
a parallel government that remained loyal to Serbia.
The recent agreement puts an end to such ambitions, uniting those
four northern, predominantly Serb-populated municipalities into a
district – an "association of Serb municipalities – that will be
subject to Kosovo rule, but will have autonomy in matters of
economic development, health care, and education. The agreement also
arranged to incorporate the enclave into the Kosovo police and
justice systems.
The Brussels agreement further arranged to incorporate all Kosovo
Serbs into Kosovo's electoral system. It stipulates, wisely, that
neither country will obstruct the other's entrance into the EU. The
agreement also, significantly, disbands the parallel Serbian
political, judicial, and law enforcement structures that have been
supported financially by Belgrade. Henceforth all officials in such
institutions are to be paid by the Kosovo government from its own
budget.
These arrangements ostensibly remove Belgrade from the picture as a
direct material influence on the fates of the Serbs still living in
Kosovo. It is hard to imagine what could be a more concrete, if
still de facto, recognition of Kosovo's independence. And both
Serbia and Kosovo are now in line to participate in a Stabilization
and Association process, the first step required for joining the EU.
This is not to say that everyone in Kosovo is happy – far from it.
Many Serbs, especially in the northern enclave, have responded with
outrage and have even been involved in several violent incidents,
declaring that they will never be part of Kosovo, and that their
leaders in Belgrade are "traitors." And some Albanians, led by the
activist organization Vetëvendosje
(self-determination),* criticize the Brussels
agreement for giving away sovereignty to Serbia over parts of Kosovo
territory.
Click
here and
here to see
Vetëvendosje's position on the agreement,
also
here.
*(For
my previous writings on this organization, click
here).
One of Vetëvendosje's fiercest complaints, shared by many Albanians,
pertains to the amnesty clause in the Brussels agreement. This
legislation was set to provide amnesty to all Serbs who had
participated in resistance to the Kosovo government through
smuggling, setting up roadblocks, carrying weapons, and other
crimes. The purpose of the amnesty is to allow Kosovo Serbs to be
integrated into domestic governmental functions without fear of
prosecution. Protest was raised against the law because it would
exonerate not only those who had resisted Kosovo for political
reasons, but also common criminals. In the face of broad protest,
the law was amended to exclude those accused of violent crimes.
Furthermore, the agreement saw fit to amnesty dishonest Albanian
officials as well, prompting the accusation that it was an
opportunistic law put into place to shelter the corrupt elite. In
mid-September the amnesty law is still involved in contentious
proceedings within the Kosovo Parliament, and it has not yet been
finalized.
Meanwhile, the fear on the part of many Serbs is that in becoming
absorbed into the Kosovo state institutions, they will lose the
income that they have been accustomed to receiving from the Serbian
government. Now, many of them, for example teachers and other
government employees, will be paid from the Kosovo budget – but
those payments are considerably lower than what Serbia was paying.
On top of this Serbs, especially in the northern enclave, had widely
avoided paying taxes, and now there will be pressure on them to
pay.
Statue of Bill Clinton in downtown Prishtina, on Bill Clinton
Boulevard.
George Bush Avenue, which intersects with Bill Clinton Boulevard.
Arriving in Prishtina, I visited with my old friend Naim, a
professor of computer engineering whom I had met during the
turbulent days in the late 1990s. He lived through everything and
survived. More recently his family converted his two-story house
into a lovely restaurant, where we sat and talked about current
events on a couple of occasions.
“In
Kosovo, religion is coming back in a big way. People are looking for
answers to their problems,” Naim said. “Albanians do things in
extreme ways. When it was communism, we were the biggest communists.
Now, some of our people aren’t seeing other answers to their
problems, and religion has the answers.”
I asked Naim what he thought of the Brussels agreement. He saw it in
a critical light, but said, “This is a negotiation. No one gets all
they want, that’s how an agreement works. But the stronger party,
and that’s Serbia, is going to get more.” Naim was particularly
critical of the amnesty agreement, especially of the part pertaining
to corrupt Kosovo Albanian officials, who pose a massive problem to
the development of the country and even to the essential legitimacy
of its government. He was willing to leave in place all amnesty for
the Serbs, as long as corrupt Albanians were punished and corruption
brought under control.
Speaking of Vetëvendosje, Naim conjectured that the party may not
win enough votes to participate in Parliament in country-wide
elections due to be held later this year.
The “NEWBORN”
sculpture in Prishtina, created upon the declaration of Kosovo’s
independence.
On the second day of my visit I went right away to Gračanica, a Serb
enclave not far from Prishtina, towards the southeast. Not only do
Serbs live there, but there is also a Romani population. After the
1998-1999 war, the Roma in Kosovo experienced hostility,
mistreatment, and discrimination from the Albanians, and many of
them left the country (see my report on the Roma of Kosovo from last
fall
here).
Many of those who did not leave, or who came back, ended up living
in Serb enclaves because they got along better with the Serbs than
with the Albanians.
I tracked down my friend Džafer, the human rights activist I had
interviewed last fall. As we were walking down the street in
Gračanica after we met, he started explaining to me that there too,
some Roma were becoming ostentatiously religious. Just as Džafer was
telling me this, a friend of his came up and said to him,
“Selam alejkum,” the greeting that, in these parts, only religious
Muslims use.
Džafer
laughed and said to me, “Do you see what I mean?”
I had never been to Gračanica
before, so we stopped by the famous Byzantine monastery, built
nearly seven centuries ago during the height of the medieval Serbian
kingdom. Vidovdan, the Serbian national day that commemorates the
Ottoman victory at nearby Kosovo Polje over the Serbian kingdom, had
taken place less than a month earlier.
Džafer told me that thousands of people had come to Gračanica from
Serbia on that day, June 28th, to observe the
anniversary.
As we walked through the center of town I noticed that the
atmosphere was markedly different from that in the
Albanian-dominated parts of Kosovo – especially Prishtina, where
there is ongoing construction and a relatively cheerful feeling on
the whole. In Gračanica
I saw people selling meager produce and looking rather desperate
about it. The Albanian names on the bilingual road signs were
crossed out, leaving only the Serbian ones – the opposite of the
case in the Albanian-dominated areas.
Džafer told me that people in Gračanica, a surrounded enclave,
worried about the results of the Brussels agreement. He said, “With
the new agreement with Serbia, government officials and employees
will be absorbed into the Kosovo government. So people will no
longer be paid by Serbia. Serbs in Gračanica are worried about
losing their incomes.”
We went to
Džafer's house, visited with his family, and talked. Džafer was
expressing great worry about the political and social situation in
Gračanica and beyond. He told me that he thinks there
will be war again in six or seven years. “People are preparing for
this,” he said. I asked who was preparing, and he named
Vetëvendosje
on the Albanian side, and some extreme nationalist organizations
that are operating in Serbia. I commented, “But for there to be a
war, there has to be approval and involvement from the respective
governments.” Džafersaid,
“Not necessarily.” Džafer concluded his worried statements by
saying, “I am a child of war, I don’t want my children to have to
live through that.”
*
We were about to go off to hunt down Šani, a friend I knew in the
United States who had recently returned home to Kosovo, when he came
knocking on Džafer’s door. Šani is both a folklorist – beloved
around the United States for his sharing and teaching of Romani
dance and music – and a human rights activist, closely involved in
the work of the organization Voice of Roma (I quoted him in the
report cited above from last year).
Šani took us on a walk back from Džafer’s neighborhood into the
center of town, where he was staying. On the way he told us that
there were Albanians in living in Gračanica, but that they have been
leaving, and there are “fewer and fewer now.” As for relations with
the Serbs, he said, “The Serbs and Roma live side by side here, but
you can tell where the Serbs live - their roads are paved, the
others are not.”
We came to Šani’s neighborhood and met his new neighbors, some Roma
and some Serbs. Some of the Serbs had been displaced from other
parts of Kosovo. We did not discuss politics very much, beyond Šani
expressing a distrust of the Albanians. We sat and shared a drink
with Šani’s neighbors and, true to his personality, he was already
holding court as the central charismatic figure, just a few days
after arriving in his new neighborhood – after living in the US for
twenty years.
As we were sitting, someone came up driving a contraption that was a
cross between a chain saw and a Third World go-cart. For him, it was
a way to make a living. Šani promised a donation from Voice of Roma
for a new motor for this mobile lumber mill. He told me that the
organization is giving scholarships to young people in the community
to help them stay in high school. Voice of Roma is paying particular
attention to young girls, encouraging them to study and to avoid
getting married at a very young age.
Our conversation wandered into folklore. It turns out that one of
Šani’s parents is first cousin with the renowned singer Esma
Redžepova (look her up) On the subject of cultural appropriation,
Šani talked about the famous Bosnian-Serbian musician and sound
track arranger Goran Bregović, who has used many Romani themes in
his arrangements. Šani said, “Bregović stole everything he used from
us and then he said, ‘even the Gypsies are now using my melodies.’”
And he said of the “Roma wannabes in the West,” i.e., the scores of
musicians who play Romani music without due respect: “They don’t
want to be Roma – they want to be Gypsies.”
I’ve noticed that in Bosnia, Serbia, and most of the rest of the
former Yugoslavia where I’ve spent time, there’s a routine practiced
by people who have a lot of time on their hands, and perhaps not
much work. Maybe it adds structure or eventfulness to their day.
That is to sit and socialize at one kafana or other visiting place
for a while, and then move to another place and do the same thing.
We did this with Šani. After visiting a kafana, and then his
neighbors, he took us to a place that is probably the finest
building in Gračanica, after the monastery. That is the
Hotel Gračanica, a new hotel built by a Swiss
doctor who took a personal interest in the well-being of people in
the enclave. With its brightness and classiness it seems out of
place in the bedraggled enclave – an enclave within an enclave. This
five-star hotel boasted beautifully crafted woodwork, folksy and
tasteful paintings on the walls, an outdoor pool, and pleasant rooms
at 80 euro or less. We sat outside and had meze – Šani’s treat –
while looking at the rolling hills in the background, and nearby, a
little brook flowed beside the swimming pool, lined by red poppy
flowers. The hotel was a special source of pride because some of the
very few employed Roma, including Džafer’s wife, work there.
Prominent portrait of Ibrahim Rugova, pacifist leader of Kosovar
Albanians in the 1990s.
I met
with my old family friend Bardhyl in Prishtina and we talked about
current issues and life in Kosovo. Bardhyl told me that this year,
fewer people are coming to visit Kosovo, and therefore there is less
money coming into the country. Economic difficulties are setting in.
Many people have gone to Europe to seek asylum.
Asylum seekers from Kosovo have become a thorny problem in the
European Union. People leave Kosovo for Europe without a plan or any
guaranteed employment. Until Croatia became a member of the EU at
the beginning of July, Hungary was the closest point of entry into
the EU for people traveling from Kosovo. There, they get stuck
because they don’t have European work visas – Kosovo is the last
part of the former Yugoslavia from where visas are required to enter
Europe. Bardhyl noted that there are five thousand Kosovars in just
one camp in Hungary, and many more in Belgium as well. These people,
he said, are paying a thousand Euros each to be smuggled into
Europe, and then they face legal complications, usually resulting in
deportation.
Bardhyl is not completely satisfied with the Brussels agreement.
But, he says, “we did not achieve our freedom all by ourselves. So
we have to listen to the West, to the people who helped us, and
cooperate by participating in the negotiations. The part of the
agreement about the association of Serb communities is not perfect,
but we can live with it.”
*
I visited with my friend Erëblir, whom I wrote about last fall (see
that writing
here). Commenting about the Brussels agreement, he said, “I
am against the agreement. This is a compromise between the two
peoples, but there is not closure on the war yet. Around Gjakova,
for example, there are still over 2,000 people missing. You can’t
tell the families of those people that it is time to make peace.
“And there is the amnesty law, which says that all who committed
crimes are to be pardoned. This is so that the Serbs in the enclaves
don’t fear being part of Kosovo. But it is also designed to apply to
corrupt Albanian politicians, and that is not acceptable.”
As the Kosovo Parliament was preparing to ratify the Brussels
agreement in June, Vetëvendosje organized protest demonstrations in
Prishtina. For the most part these were peaceful, but there was a
violent response on the part of the local police, who arrested
dozens of protestors. Speaking of the organization, Bardhyl said,
“Vetëvendosje
is still a positive force. They have done the best work against
corruption, exposing the crooked highway contract, for example
(referring to an overpriced construction project lacking in
transparency – see the above link). They are the best option, but
they might not win in the upcoming elections. This is because there
are 80,000 people on the government payroll, and they have to
protect their incomes. They will vote for the ruling party, the PDK.
Also, there is corruption in the voting process.”
Prishtina, capital of Kosovo, is not placed in a particularly lovely
setting as are some other towns in the country. But its atmosphere
is pleasant enough in some parts of town, especially along the
pedestrian thoroughfare now called Mother Teresa Street, lined with
comfortable sidewalk cafes that are served by friendly waiters.
Visiting with friends in those cafes, you have the feeling that
things are looking up in Kosovo, that people who live there have a
future, that they are able to make things happen for themselves in
life.
Discussing life in Kosovo, Erëblir said that the security situation
both for Albanians and Serbs is better than it has been before.
“People even speak Serbian in the city now, without fear of
criticism or worse. But the welfare situation is very poor. Almost
40% of the population of Kosovo lives on less than fifty Euros a
month. You don’t see as much poverty in Prishtina, but it exists
elsewhere. And the hospitals are in very poor shape. People have to
buy their own medicine, even though we citizens are paying for
medicine for the public hospitals through our taxes. Nor are the
schools in good shape. There are too many students per class.”
Statue of Mother Teresa on Mother Teresa Boulevard, center of
Prishtina.
Finally, I met with Emrush, a local lawyer I had met last year. He
is working on his doctorate in international law. Emrush commented
on the affection that Kosovar Albanians have for the United States:
“I like that in Kosovo they celebrate July 4th. And when
the 9-11 attacks happened, people in Kosovo were crying.” (Here I
must mention that one of the main streets in Prishtina, boasting a
life-size – if not quite artistic – statue of Bill Clinton, is named
“Bill Clinton Boulevard.” And it intersects with “George W. Bush
Street.”)
Sharing recollections from his youth in the pre-war period, Emrush
told me, “We used to celebrate the holidays of all the religions.
Religion was not the issue in Kosovo. Then things got very bad
because of politics. In 1997, when I was a teenager in high school,
I was arrested by the police. Our schools had been abolished, and
the police were angry at me for carrying Albanian textbooks. They
took me into the police station and made me stand all day in the
hall, for seven days. They would question me for a few minutes every
day. I could see my friends across the street, but I could not
leave.”
After the Serbian regime was driven out of Kosovo and the war ended,
Emrush finished college and was able to find employment in a
government agency. Unlike Erëblir, he is not a fan of
Vetëvendosje, but supports the Brussels agreement. He said, “The
Brussels agreement leads to a consolidation of the country. We gave
up some things, and there is a big problem with corruption. There
have been some trials, but we have to develop an independent
judiciary. In any case, going towards membership in the EU is the
only thing that can help Kosovo make progress.
I mentioned the serious economic difficulties that Bulgaria and
Romania have had with the transition to membership in the European
Union. And now Croatia, the EU’s newest member, is confronted with
the imperative of second-class economic status as well. Emrush
responded, “But I would like to know, what is the alternative?”
*
I discovered one helpful source of information when I picked up the
local newspaper, “Prishtina Insight,” at the Hotel
Gračanica.
It is published twice a month in English, and it’s an affiliate of
the very competent Balkan Insight Regional Network (BIRN). The issue
I picked up in mid-July featured stories about the highway
corruption scandal, the amnesty law, and a special on journalistic
independence. You can see the front page of recent editions, full
earlier editions, and subscribe at
http://prishtinainsight.com/.
