Ethnic Albanians won freedom from Belgrade a year ago, but Serbian unease simmers, writes Daniel McLaughlin
PRISTINA IS hung with international flags for today’s party to mark the first anniversary of Kosovo’s independence. But just 40km north, only a Serb tricolour flutters on the hill above Mitrovica, Kosovo’s second city, where the Ibar river is the de facto dividing line between ethnic-Albanian and Serb territory.
A year after Pristina’s declaration of independence from Belgrade, optimists note that the worst fears of communal violence and an exodus of Serbs have not been realised. Sceptics counter that about half the population is still unemployed and lives below the poverty line, and crime and corruption are still rampant.
Nearly everyone concurs that Kosovo’s Albanians and Serbs live almost entirely separate lives.
While Kosovo’s two million Albanians celebrate their long-awaited sovereignty today, its 100,000 Serbs are expected to hunker down in their isolated enclaves dotted around central and southern Kosovo, and protest against the very existence of this new country in their stronghold north of the Ibar.
“No one here trusts Pristina to look after Serbs, and no Serb leader in Belgrade could ever accept Kosovo’s independence. So the only thing I can see happening is a kind of partition, with northern Kosovo effectively being run by Belgrade,” said Mladen, a young Serb speaking in a northern Mitrovica cafe.
He pays for his coffee using Serbian dinars, not the euro used in most of Kosovo; outside, cars pass by bearing Serbian – not Kosovan – number plates; and it is common knowledge that the big men in black bomber jackets are members of the Serbian interior ministry, not the Kosovo police force.
Local Serb leaders have already established their own political assembly in northern Kosovo to deal with the region’s affairs and its relationship with Belgrade (which pays many people’s wages), bolstering the impression Serbs and Albanians are already living parallel lives in Kosovo.
Kosovo’s sovereignty has been recognised by 54 countries, including Ireland, but it is still overseen by a Nato-led force of almost 15,000 peacekeepers, and by the 3,000 police, justice and customs officials who comprise EUlex, the European Union mission which has adopted many of the powers of the United Nations administration that ran Kosovo from 1999 until last year. A Nato bombing campaign in 1999 ended a brutal Serb crackdown on Kosovo and drove Slobodan Milosevic’s troops from the region.
“Serbs see being governed by Pristina as like having a cruel stepmother,” said Mladen. “And with the foreign forces that impose Pristina’s will, it’s like having a parole officer in our house as well.” It is hard to find a moderate voice in northern Mitrovica, the main flashpoint for violence in Kosovo, and located barely 20km from Serbia itself. There, almost everyone scorns Pristina and its western allies, and vows never to countenance any dealings with it.
For Serbs living further south, in tiny villages surrounded by the Albanian majority, life is more complicated. Gracanica, a Serb enclave centred on an ancient Orthodox monastery, is fast becoming a suburb of ever-expanding Pristina, and its residents must find ways of dealing with their Albanian neighbours.
“Here we have to co-operate on some level,” said Bojan, an administrator at a Gracanica hospital. “In northern Kosovo, they are physically connected to Serbia, and they could walk there if they had to. That’s not possible for us.”
Serbs living in enclaves like Gracanica talk of being stranded on “islands” rather than being connected to “mainland” Serbia in northern Kosovo, and they fear the partition along ethnic lines that Serb leaders in the north propose.
Residents of the enclaves also resent being criticised by Mitrovica’s radical nationalist politicians for having contact with Albanians and institutions in Pristina: “It’s very easy to be a Serb patriot up in Mitrovica, but not down here,” said one. “We try to work and live, and they call us traitors.”
While most Serbs are implacably opposed to Kosovo’s independence, those living in the enclaves are far more pragmatic in their dealings with Pristina.
“I will probably stay in Kosovo for as long as Belgrade pays and supports us,” said Bojan who, like many Kosovo Serbs, receives his wages from Belgrade. Salaries paid under this scheme are often two or three times better than the equivalent offered by Pristina, although they are now being reduced with the economic crisis.
“But the international community should do more to make the police and justice system fairer here,” added Bojan. “Everything is corrupt and Serbs get no protection from the police, who are nearly all Albanian.”
Bojan claims a friend of his is now serving a jail sentence for a murder he did not commit, because a powerful Albanian had wanted to take over his apartment. And Velibor, an older Serb, scoffed at Pristina’s claim it is running a fully functioning, multiethnic democracy.
“There isn’t even the ‘d’ of ‘democracy’ here,” he said.
Such claims rile many Kosovo Albanians, but will not sour their celebrations today. For Serbs, Kosovo’s independence day will only sharpen their longing for more stability and security, and deepen their nostalgia for a time when they were masters of this disputed land.
“I moved with my family to Gracanica from Pristina in 1999. My family had lived there since the seventh century,” said surgeon Peter Ivanovic (45). “Now that connection – of 14 centuries – has been broken. It’s not our town or our country any more, and I can’t identify with it.”