Want to turn Iraq over to the UN? The "Times" says they are not doing too well in Kosovo.
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October 14, 2003
An Ethnic War That Still Rages
By ANDREW ROSENBAUM
CRISTINA, Kosovo — Today in Vienna, the first-ever talks will begin between the autonomous government of Kosovo and its former rulers in what we now call Serbia and Montenegro. Although the participants say they will cover only "technical matters," others have hinted at higher stakes. Bill Clinton last month told cheering crowds here — there is a Bil Klinton Boulevard in Pristina — that the talks could "create for the world a model of positive interdependence." Richard Holbrooke, the Clinton administration's point man on the Balkans, and Bernard Kouchner, the founder of Doctors Without Borders, wrote in The Wall Street Journal that today's meeting "is the beginning of something that could be very important."
Unfortunately, anyone who spends even a day walking the streets of Pristina and its neighboring towns will come away convinced that peace is not to be gleaned through diplomacy. The wounds of ethnic-Albanian majority and ethnic-Serb minority alike have not healed, and the 12,000-plus NATO troops here are simply stanching the bleeding by force.
As an ethnic-Serbian traffic officer who works just over the border in Macedonia told me: "I wouldn't go to Pristina. I'd get my throat cut. The Albanians there hate us." This view is echoed by the 200 or so ethnic Serbs who still live in this city. They stayed home when Mr. Clinton spoke — in fact, they don't go out much at all, and with good reason. In August, two ethnic-Serbian children were killed and four wounded by machine-gun fire while swimming in a stream 50 miles south of here. A few days later, two ethnic-Serbian men were slaughtered by ax-wielding assailants in the enclaves outside Pristina to which so Serbs many have fled for safety.
Yet many ethnic Albanians live in willful disbelief. "Look, there goes a Serb," my ethnic-Albanian taxi driver, Abas Abazi, pointed out as we headed through town. "You see, no one bothers him." But later, when we passed through the Serb-dominated village of Shilovo, the streets are almost empty at 10 in the morning. An old man herding goats waves us away. "Leave us alone," he shouts.
Catherine Cocco, a United Nations aid worker, tells me: "When we bring Serbs in to visit their old homes in Pristina, the buses are stoned. In their enclaves, they listen avidly to hard-line Serbian radio stations that proclaim the need for Kosovo to rejoin Serbia and Montenegro."
Why can't the NATO troops stop the killing? "Ours is a culture of guns," said a Kosovar police officer. More than 300,000 arms — about one gun per household — are in circulation in Kosovo, according to the Small Arms Survey project of Vienna. And we're not talking about Saturday Night Specials but rather grenade launchers, Kalashnikovs and large-caliber pistols. "People here need guns," Bashkim Pllano, a 25-year-old Albanian waiter at a restaurant in central Pristina, told me. "We're all afraid of what might happen."
And the unease is growing as the initial joy of independence has faded. Virtually every block here sports a new building rising out of the rubble — but with the first rush of aid money drying up, many are are unfinished and abandoned. Bearded youths loiter on street corners, hoping to get jobs doing manual labor at $11 a day. "We are waiting for some hope, but we are getting tired of living in fear," Agim, a 28-year-old student who wouldn't give his last name, told me.
There is no civil or commercial law, and searches by the NATO forces disrupt day-to-day business. Near the town of Gjilani, Agim Avoiu, a 43-year-old Albanian restaurant owner, sat forlornly at his empty establishment. "There is a checkpoint outside Shilovo, and it makes it hard for people to get here," he said. "And then they haven't much money; I've put my life savings into this business, and now I don't know how long I can keep going."
Mr. Avoiu pins his hopes to Western companies investing in Kosovo, an outlook shared by the prime minister, Bajram Rexhepi. "If we can attract investment, we can create jobs, and jobs will bring stability and reduce ethnic tension," he told me in a group interview. That is possible, eventually, I suppose. But as long as Serb and Albanian Kosovars settle their disputes with guns, foreign investment is a moot point.
"What is needed," said Ms. Cocco, the aid worker, "is an independent tribunal that will punish ethnic murderers on both sides. When Kosovans see these criminals brought to justice, they will stop killing each other. Then we can get all the Kosovans to work together to help rebuild this place."
She has a point: with an independent tribunal to punish the worst killers on each side and seek reconciliation, perhaps calls to end the violence by political and religious leaders will come to have some legitimacy. Perhaps then the outlook of the people on the Pristina streets would come to have more in common with that of the politicians gathering in Vienna.
Andrew Rosenbaum writes frequently on European politics and business.
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