Kosovo Dispatch: Final Statusquo

the new republic Ǡ june 26, 2006 11 Belgrade and Pristina are supposed to decide the province’s Kosovo Dispatch “final status” by the end of the year—that is, whether it remains a part of Serbia, becomes its own state, or is offered something in between. While Serbian President Boris Tadić Final Status Quo has proposed “more than autonomy, less than independence” for the breakaway province, most observers believe by jeremy kahn the negotiations will result in an independent Kosovo. When that happens, one of the most significant pieces of un- eventy-year-old Svetislav Joviciˇc sits in the finished business from the 1990s humanitarian interven- noonday sun on the dusty steps of the Serbian tions in the Balkans will be concluded—but only on paper. Orthodox Church in Orahovac and laments In the United States, the American-led intervention in what his life has become. He used to own a Kosovo is widely perceived as a success, especially by liber- winery in the lush green hills surrounding this als who are fond of contrasting it to the mess President south central Kosovo town, a place his ances- Bush has made in Iraq. Nato went to war in 1999 to end a tors have lived for more than three centuries. brutal campaign of repression and ethnic cleansing against SAs a younger man, he played for an amateur soccer club, Kosovar Albanians launched by then–Serbian President earning the friendship of many of his ethnic Albanian team- Slobodan Miloˇsević, in which at least 10,000 Albanians mates. “For many, many years in Orahovac, everyone lived were killed. In this, the nato campaign succeeded. But end- very well with Albanians,” Joviciˇc says. ing Miloˇsević’s reign of terror was not the only goal of nato But now, his winery is gone, destroyed by the Albanians intervention. For the last seven years, the United States and who seized the land six years ago. His Albanian soccer bud- the international community have invested billions of dol- dies never visit anymore. Today, Joviciˇc lives as a virtual lars in Kosovo in the hopes of building a peaceful, demo- prisoner in the tiny warren of garbage-strewn streets that cratic, and multi-ethnic society. “Failure to secure a multi- make up the town’s Serbian enclave. Located just uphill ethnic Kosovo would be a failure of our efforts over the last from Orahovac’s town center, the enclave’s border with the six years, and indeed, the last decade,” Under Secretary of surrounding Albanian neighborhood is demarcated by rolls State for Political Affairs Nicholas Burns told a congres- of barbed wire that can be used to seal off the tiny ghetto in sional committee last year. the event of ethnic violence. On a number of occasions Yet this multi-ethnic dream remains almost as distant as since 1999, Albanians here attacked Serbs and their prop- it was on the day nato forces arrived. Freed from Serbian erty. During major ethnic violence in March 2004, two Ser- oppression, Albanians—who make up about 90 percent of bian Orthodox churches in nearby villages were burned to Kosovo’s 2.2 million people—have taken revenge on their the ground. “Recently, it has been mostly peaceful, but it is Serb neighbors.They killed at least 1,000 Serb civilians dur- not safe to go down,” Joviciˇc says. He and other residents of ing and in the immediate aftermath of the nato bombing the Serbian enclave fear they will be attacked if they wan- campaign, and, since then, as many as 100,000 Serbs have der into the town center.“They say it is open for free move- been driven from their homes. Those that remain, such as ment, but that is not the reality.” Joviciˇc, live in ghettos, their movement and ability to work The reality is bleak. Joviciˇc complains that there are no severely restricted. Meanwhile, in northern Kosovo, which jobs for his children here;Albanians refuse to hire them. He still hosts a large Serb population, ethnic Albanians live subsists on the 40 euros per month he receives from inter- similarly precarious lives. Following the last major spasm of national aid organizations. Faced with such conditions— ethnic violence in March 2004, an uneasy calm has descend- and with the occasional waves of ethnic strife—many of ed across Kosovo. Mainstream Albanian politicians, con- Orahovac’s Serbs have left, moving to new homes and new scious that continued ethnic strife would hurt the chances lives in Serbia. Once, the town had a Serbian population of for independence, say pleasant things about building multi- more than 2,500. Today, 500 at most remain—all of them ethnic institutions and protecting the rights of the Serb mi- living within the enclave, guarded day and night by a contin- nority. Beneath the surface, however, darker political cur- gent of Austrian soldiers. rents swirl. The Austrians are part of a 17,000-man nato force that continues to keep the peace in Kosovo seven years after a lbin Kurti does not look like a dangerous nato bombing campaign drove the Serbian military out of man.With his tousled brown hair, Elvis Costello the province. Since then, Kosovo has been administered by glasses, and faded blue sweater, the 31-year-old a U.N. special representative, although the province has re- sitting in the lobby of Pristina’s Grand Hotel mained technically a part of Serbia. U.N.-brokered talks sippingA a macchiato could pass for a typical Williamsburg currently underway in Vienna between negotiators from hipster—or at least the talented computer science student he once was. But, to hear some tell it, Kurti poses a grave Jeremy Kahn traveled to Kosovo on a German Marshall threat to Kosovo’s future as a peaceful, multi-ethnic state. Fund fellowship. Kurti is something of a cult hero to the worldwide Alban- 12 june 26, 2006 Ǡ the new republic ian diaspora.As a student at the University of Pristina in the tition is not on the table.) “This will bring war! This will late ’90s, he led an underground movement that organized bring violence! We want to stop this,” Kurti says, pointing sit-ins and other nonviolent demonstrations against Serbian emphatically at his maps. control of the university. Sporting long hair and a mustache Kurti claims to be a fervent believer in nonviolence. And (think Yanni), he quickly became a recognizable face of op- so far, Self-Determination!’s “actions,” as he likes to call position to Serbian power in Pristina. He later worked as an them, have indeed been peaceful. Kurti and his followers assistant to Adem Demaçi, the political leader of the Kosovo have held numerous protests outside the U.N. headquarters Liberation Army (KLA), the guerrilla group that was fight- in Pristina, surrounded the compound with yellow tape ing to liberate the province from Serbia. During the nato reading crime scene—do not cross, blocked access to the bombing campaign in 1999, Serbian police arrested Kurti. compound with bales of hay, trashed U.N. flags, and spray- When Serb forces withdrew from Kosovo that summer, they painted slogans on the compound’s walls. Just last week, took him and other Albanian prisoners with them. Kurti was Kurti and more than 80 supporters were arrested for pro- held largely incommunicado for nine months and endured testing outside the U.N. compound; Kurti got ten days in savage beatings at the hands of his jailers. Almost a year af- jail. They have also tossed rotten eggs at the motorcades of ter his initial arrest, he appeared, hair and mustache shorn, Serb politicians when they have visited Pristina. (“Here you in a Serb court, where he was tried and sentenced to 15 years do this and they call it radical. In Palestine, it would be for subversion and conspiracy to commit terrorist acts. ridiculous,” Kurti says.) But some of Kurti’s actions have “Free Albin Kurti Now!” became a rallying cry among eth- moved in a more sinister direction. nic Albanians from Pristina to San Francisco. t-shirts and posters were printed with the slogan, and rock concerts were n April 14, Kurti led a demonstration of sever- held to support the cause. International pressure for his re- al hundred people in the western Kosovo town lease mounted, but with Miloˇsević still in power in Belgrade, of Decani, blocking the entrance to the U.N. of- Kurti remained in a cell. Only after Miloˇsević’s ouster did fices there to protest the U.N.’s decision to desig- his successor, Vojislav Kostunica, finally let Kurti go in De- Onate 800 hectares surrounding Decani’s Serbian Orthodox cember 2001. monastery a “protected zone.” Nestled amid the verdant Back in Pristina, Kurti now leads Self-Determination!, woods beneath the snow-capped Prokletije mountains, the a movement that claims thousands of supporters in 17 Decani monastery has stood for centuries as an important cities and towns throughout Kosovo. Self-Determination! is touchstone of Serb culture, even as the Serbian population opposed to the U.N. presence in Kosovo and also to the in the surrounding countryside slowly withered away. Here, final-status negotiations. “People don’t want status, they beneath the elaborately frescoed walls of the monastery’s want freedom,” Kurti tells me. He argues that indepen- chapel, lies the fourteenth-century Serbian saint King Ste- dence should not come through a negotiated settlement fan, his body allegedly preserved, as in life, through some with Serbia—which, he says, has shown “no remorse, no re- supernatural force. And here, in front of the altar, hangs a pentance” for its persecution of Albanians during the ’90s— massive bronze chandelier that, according to local myth, nor through U.N.

Load more