2. Balkankongresi Icindekiler

371 PEACE BUILDING, CONFLICT RESOLUTION AND CULTURAL COOPERATION BETWEEN ALBANIANS AND SERBS: THE EXAMPLE OF CSO ACTIVITIES IN THE REGION VUJANOVAC (SOUTHEAST SERBIA) Christoph GIESEL Humboldt University, Germany 1. Introduction The three municipalities P resevo (Serbian; Albanian: P resheva), Bujanovac (Serbian; Albanian: Bujanoci) and Medveda (Serbian; Albanian: Medvegja) with their eponymic, urban administrative centres in the southeast of Serbia directly at the border to Kosovo possessing, unlike the remaining municipalities of Serbia, a large fraction of Albanian population. In the com- munities of Presevo and Bujanovac Albanians constitute majority of the population. Therefore, the Presevo-Bujanovac-Medveda region (PBM region or P resevo Valley1) constitutes the densest Albanian settlement area directly under Serbian administration. Official information from the partially controversial 2002 Serbian census (cp. Kothenschulte 2002c)2 describes the ethnic distribution in the individual administrative areas in per cent as follows (cp. Zavod za Statistiku 2002): 372 3. Uluslararas› Balkan Kongresi / 3rd International Balkan Congress The main problems this region has had to cope with since the creation of Yugoslavia and until now are its economical backwardness and discrimination and, resulting from this, the overall poverty and lack of prospects for all its inhabitants, regardless their ethnicity, as well as the political and social discrimination the Albanian majority had to suffer from the Serbian administration, who did not even stop at violent persecution and expulsion in the past. Especially since the disintegration of communist Yugoslavia the multiethnic region has suffered highly aggressive ethnically motivated tensions between groups of Albanian and Serbian population, as well as general bad interethnic relations, social, political and enormous economical and infra- structural problems. These are perfect conditions for a breakout of violent conflicts which are either ethnically motivated or exploited. The conflict in this region is very miscellaneous and formed by a large range of different social, political and economical dimensions and players or interest groups on a local, regional and international level. 2. Topical Subject, Matter of the Essay and Material Foundation The essay on hand4 deals with the role of civil society organizations (CSOs) in building peace, resolving conflicts and cultural co-operation in the Balkans using the example of the two Serbian-Albanian CSOs Odgovornost za Buducnosti (OzB; engl.: Responsibility for Future) from Belgrade and Susedi za Mir (SzM; engl.: Neighbours for Peace) from Bujanovac which are aiming at developing the multiethnic dialogue between Serbians, Albanians and Roma and operating in the region of Bujanovac. In the course of the presentation the following aspects will find consideration: basic concerns and con- cepts, methods of operation, projects, successes, problems, cultural dimensions and the range of effect and methods of operation. It seems necessary to carefully analyze the most important political, social, historical and ethnical aspects (partly with a special focus on the Albanian case) connected with the situation and the resulting regional conflicts. The objective is a better under- standing of difficulties and conditions in which the activities of the organiza- tion are embedded. On account of the complexity and multidimensionality of the context of the topic and the small frame of this presentation, however, it is impossible to demonstrate the complex and controversial nature of the conflict to a suitable extent. The following information is an attempt to outline the basic aspects, although many relations, aspects and causes cannot be subject to a detailed treatment. Apart from critical judgements to some aspects it is not my intention to take sides for positions of the different protagonists. This attitude requires (in Peace Building, Conflict Resolutin and Cultural Cooperation Between Albanians and Serbs 373 spite of a frequently superficially appearing congruence) that in the judgements protagonists are not equalized with the respectively ethnical group in whose names so called representation of interests takes place on the military and political sphere. In that sense conflicts between the basic needs of the mul- tiethnical population on the one side and the interests of Albanian and Serbian political protagonists on the other side shall be revealed. The material foundation of the essay is the result of a series of interviews and group talks which were conducted by the author with 28 different persons being in contact with the CSO at the end of April 2007.5 One-to-one interviews were conducted with a former 36 year-old UÇPBM militant from Veliki Trnovac as well as the Albanian, regional politician Shaip Kamberi (mean- while mayor of the town Bujanovac) in Bujanovac and the journalist and peace activist Branka Jovanovic in Belgrade. The group talks were conducted in the following places in the municipality of Bujanovac which mostly differ in their ethnic structure and consisted of the following interview partners: • Biljac (mixed population, predominantly Albanian, about 90% Albanian and scarcely 10% Serbians6; five male, Albanian partners aged between 17 and 24), • Bujanovac (mixed population, in each case about a third Roma, Serbians and Albanians, one Albanian and two Serbian partner(all female) as well as at a time one Serbian and two Albanian male partners aged between 21 and 38), • Konculj7 (purely Albanian population; one female and four male partners aged between 15 and 18), • Oslare (mixed population: about 60% Albanians, 40% Serbians; at a time two male Serbian and Albanian partners aged between 17 and 22), • Rakovac (purely Serbian population; two female partners aged 17 and 18) and • Zbevac (purely Serbian population; four partners aged between 16 and 29). During the interview primarily the following aspects received attention: general information about the respective places and the overall situation in the region; interethnic relations; political, social conditions, activities in the region from the 1990s until today; project activities of the CSO and their effects; esti- mation of future conditions and perspectives, personal attitudes, experiences and evaluations, which stand in connection with the topic and many more.8 A further source of information, were written materials which are in most 374 3. Uluslararas› Balkan Kongresi / 3rd International Balkan Congress cases available in the internet (especially internet articles from the homepage of the international operating German radio station Deutsche Welle, cp. www.dw-world.de) as well as a few German and Serbian newspaper articles. Three reports of the organisation Schweizer Flüchtlingshilfe (“Swiss Refugee Work”) on the situation in the PBM-region from (cp. Brunnbauer 1999, Mattern 2005; Ilazi 2009) just as two reports published by a German peace keeping initiative about the activities of the CSO (cp. Hülsbusch / Keimburg 2001; Jovanovic 2002) which is closely studied in this essay served as main sources. 3. Selected Aspects of the Political, Ethnical and Social Basic Issue and the Regional Conflict since the Creation of the Communist Yugoslavia until Today9 Due to the high fraction of Albanian population, the PBM region was originally part of the Autonomous Province of Kosovo which had been creat- ed by the Yugoslavian constitution of 1946. Modelled after the Soviet Union where Stalin had drawn arbitrary borders between soviet republics and autonomous provinces in multiethnic areas, the region was divested from the autonomous province and subordinated to the administration of the truncated People´s (later Socialist) Republic of Serbia within Yugoslavia. In exchange the regions of Leposavic and Zubin Potok, which were inhabited predominantly by Serbians, were integrated into the North of Kosovo (cp. Mattern 2005, 2) Because of pseudo-federalism and centralistic coordination of political, social and economic concerns during the early years of communist Yugoslavia, perceivable social and political differences occurred only after a gradual upgrade of the legal status of the Kosovo as an autonomous province from 1974 onwards. Although the Albanians in Kosovo and the Albanians in the PBM region understood themselves as a historical, political, cultural and linguistic unit, Albanians in the PBM region had a substantially lower legal status than those in Kosovo and were divided in two administrative units with a different status by a purely administrative border (cp. Brunnbauer 1999, 373 ff.; Dominik 2001, 41, 47 and 171). Although multiethnic life in the PBM region was not always free of conflicts and tensions the interethnic co-operation to a large extent still worked (cp. Hülsbusch / Keimburg 2001 et al). The dissolution of the autonomy of Kosovo in 1989 and the resulting loss of privileges for the Albanians there in turn also lead to the virtual equalisa- tion of the legal status of the Albanians in Kosovo and PBM. Particularly from this moment onwards they were subject to tightened repression, human rights violations and discrimination, the government of Slobodan Milosevic consis- tently breaching regulations of the Yugoslavian constitution (cp. Brunnbauer Peace Building, Conflict Resolutin and Cultural Cooperation Between Albanians and Serbs 375 1999; Mattern 2005, 2). Emigration movements of Albanians from the PBM region to Macedonia and Kosovo, which had

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