New Kosova Report

Columns

Blackbird

Blackbird's Kosovo flag entry

As we walked along Vushtrri’s main thoroughfare, we spoke of the bar that he—like all young men in Kosovo—wanted to open. He envisioned a live music venue emulating the western rock clubs that he himself dreamed of playing. The sidewalk was crowded with teenagers, parked cars, vendors and old men deep in conversation. We stepped into the road, and the driver of a passing car nodded his head to the sound of Albanian techno folk. My friend shook his head and sighed. This, he suggested, would be his biggest challenge. The citizens would love his bar, he thought. It was the villagers who were responsible for spreading throughout Vushtrri.

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Kosovars are running away from risk

Henry H. Perritt
Henry H. Perritt Jr. Ten years after thousands of young Kosovar Albanians risked their lives to fight against Slobodan Milosevic’s oppression and to win independence, Kosovo’s young well-educated professionals are holding back Kosovo’s future by fearing to take risks. Read More Add Comment (1)

A Sunday in Kosovo

Blackbird
Blackbird writes from Mitrovica We woke up early and drove to the Danish camp. On Sundays the mess served brunch. There were waffles, pancakes and other food you could not find easily in Kosovo. Read More Add Comment (1)

Kosovo is more like Georgia, not S. Ossetia

Arianit Dobruna

Lazy journalists, couch geopolitical strategists, and Cold War nostalgists have all been convinced that South Ossetia is like Kosovo. They are all convinced that the similarities are there; the only detail to square off remains which of one of the many combination of similarities has taken place in this case. But if there is any similarity - because connection there is none - between the two conflicts, Kosovo is like Georgia, not S. Ossetia.

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Watching the Mitrovica bridgewatchers

Blackbird

Blackbird writes from Mitrovica

They sit in two places, a café and a bench across the street, and they stand in a third place of that intersection. There are more bridgewatchers than this, in apartments above our heads, but I have never actually seen them, only heard of them. On the bench outside of the corner store they sit, two or three of them, talking or reading newspapers. There are rarely less than two there and they have perhaps the least obstructed view of the bridge.

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