Graffiti in Prishtina

By Arianit Dobruna

About 95% of some 850,000 ethnically cleansed Kosovars returned home in about two months when UNHCR was projecting for the process to take 18 months. Before the Balkan winter set it, most of those people went on to rebuilt some 100,000 homes that were part of the scorched earth policy implemented by Belgrade. Those Kosovars that returned so quickly believed in Kosovo and its future, and they were eager for a fresh start after centuries under Turks, Serbs and many other occupiers in between.

While initially incredible money was being poured into Kosovo, things were rolling. But then about 2001 stagnation set in. Privatization was a few years down the road, international aid workers moved on to the next emergency, the important Diaspora got exhausted after a decade of supporting their families, and the post 9/11 world capitals shifted focus to Afghanistan and Iraq. All that was left were 2 million isolated Kosovars stuck in cycles of power cuts, without travel possibilities, and with an economy that largely consisted of gas stations, hotels, and restaurants that were built around the rich internationals.

In March 2004 when the built-up discontent erupted into anti-Serbian rioting, everyone in the UN leadership acted surprised. But the Kosovars could sense it coming. The March riots were not only ethnically motivated though, as UNMIK would like you believe. There was the jailing by UNMIK of popular KLA commanders for what Albanians believed was being done to damage the "ideals" of the liberation war, the running away from UNMIK prisons of Serbs accused of war crimes and the general lack of any action in catching others, the slow or nonexistent return of bodies transferred and buried in mass graves across Serbia, economic slowdown, corruption among local and international officials and the ineffective structures to address the squandering of millions of dollars - and most of all - promises of independence that had gone nowhere.

As a way to avoid addressing the issue of Kosovo independence, Kosovars were told to fulfill standards before status would be considered. But this was a chicken and egg problem. Kosovo had entered a vicious cycle of being considered too risky for any significant foreign investment, of textbook free-market economic policies without any basis in the Kosovar economic reality, and with the responsibility of all this mess being thrown back and forth between local officials and UN administrators, both corrupt and ineffective.

While this rioting ruined the widespread international goodwill that Albanians had enjoyed until then, it also made clear to the international structures that status quo would not last forever. In 2004, Kai Aide, a UN special representative turned in a proposal to the UN Secretary General, an action plan recommending a status process along with standards. That status process started on January 2006 and finished on December 17, 2007, after trying and failing to have Albanians and Serbs agree, at a cost of two more years of stagnation for two million Kosovars.

During the last two years the privatization process started rolling, though still with embarrassing results. In many ways the situations today is similar to 2004, although with much more abundant hope.

The battle for Kosovo has been multifaceted. With a land area about the size of Connecticut it brings together into a fight Russia and the United States, extreme right and extreme left, anti-Muslim bigots and the rest. Yet Kosovo not very long ago Kosovo has also been a point of agreement in a world increasingly divided along fake ideological lines.

One should not forget the Democrats and the Republicans that worked together in the U.S. Congress, with the Jewish caucus on both isles being the main driver of that; Christian Democrats and the Greens in the first military involvement for post-Nazi Germany; Gaullist Chirac of France who for once joined the rest of NATO; and Russia and China who went along with the bombing of a sovereign country.

Whatever your position on the issue of Kosovo, just remember that two million Kosovars call this place home, and their dreams of good education, free travel, and self-fulfillment through decent jobs are as respectable as yours. No one has more at stake in this fight than the Kosovars, who deal daily with the consequences of the status quo, and the European Union, which will pick up the tab of eventual failure.

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Hekuran Pira said:

... "Whatever your position on the issue of Kosovo, just remember that two million Kosovars call this place home, and their dreams of good education" You're absolutely right in putting the emphasis on education, look the survey done by the site, you see that economic development arrives first, you cannot have economic development without education. We have to have teachers that teach, not teachers that are there just to have an eye on children, and professors that give ex-cathedra curses, not diplomas you can smuggle.

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February 08, 2008
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