BY JILLIAN TIMKO
In Belgrade, the party line that Kosovo is a secessionist region, rather than a sovereign nation, is clear from the moment you arrive. A banner spanning the entire block in front of the Serbian National Assembly honors the victims of “KLA terrorists” and “NATO aggression.” In contrast, streets in Pristina bear the names Clinton and Bush, and a visit to the bombed-out home of former KLA leader Adem Jashari—considered a founder of the young nation—in Prekaz feels like a pilgrimage to the shrine of a divine being. These contradicting political identities clash most vividly in Mitrovica, one of Kosovo’s divided cities. The streets on the northern side of the city are decorated with garlands of Serbian flags and a mural that reads, “Kosovo is Serbia, Crimea is Russia,” in Cyrillic. To the south, the Albanian double-headed eagle and Kosovo’s blue and gold flag reign over the streets. The two sides are precariously linked by a well-known bridge over the Ibar River, still closed to vehicular traffic and closely supervised by KFOR armored trucks.
This was Kosovo and Serbia in July 2018, 19 years after a war that involved widespread human rights abuses and only ended when NATO intervened. While relations between the two countries have remained mostly nonviolent since then, political negotiations regarding Kosovo’s independence, the fundamental issue of the 1998-1999 war, remained unresolved. The challenge in reaching such an agreement has a simple explanation: the two sides still have inherently different political goals. Kosovo wants recognition of its sovereignty from Serbia, and Serbia considers Kosovar independence a blow to its national identity. Nearly two decades of deadlock on this question, and the impact of this deadlock on other political issues, have resulted in a frustrated, fatigued, and disillusioned Kosovo citizenry.
A Cold Peace
Qendresa Krasniqi experienced the war in Kosovo firsthand as a child, and completed her high school degree at the United World College in Bosnia. The school had a diverse student body and was designed to foster understanding between students from different ethnic and political backgrounds. However, Qendresa says the experience actually solidified her confidence in the Kosovar narrative because the school “invited students to see all perspectives without acknowledging that some are heavier than others.” Most of the student body was very critical of Western interference in the region and Kosovo’s ensuing independence. Qendresa found herself defending the veracity of the events of the war and Kosovo’s claim for independence over and over again. As a result, she is now less willing to tolerate the Serbian side of the story. “My roommates were Bosnian Serbs, and they were so entrenched in their beliefs that they wouldn’t even acknowledge that I would probably be dead if it weren’t for NATO,” she said.
Strong, irreconcilable opinions like those of Qendresa and her former roommates exemplify how deeply entrenched the lines of this conflict have become since Slobodan Milosevic’s rise to power in Yugoslavia during the 1980s. Milosevic’s rule emphasized strong Serb nationalism, leading to quasi-apartheid policies against Albanians. After several years of peaceful resistance, violent conflict broke out in 1998 between the Kosovo Liberation Army, an armed group of Albanian civilians, and Serbian troops. In response to alleged human rights abuses and ethnic cleansing, NATO conducted a bombing campaign against the Serbian army, ending the violence on June 11, 1999. Kosovo unilaterally declared independence from Serbia in 2008, and is currently recognized by about half of the countries in the world.
While the unresolved problems in Kosovo-Serbia relations today are political, the narratives surrounding them build on elements of history and ethnicity. For example, tour guides in Belgrade will tell you that Kosovo is important to Serbia because a significant battle occurred there in 1389 between the Ottoman Empire and the medieval Serb Kingdom, and because of the rich history of the Serbian Orthodox church in that area. On the other hand, Kosovars focus on their right to self-determination, their predominantly Albanian ethnic identity, and the history of crimes committed by Serbs against their people. According to Judita Krasniqi (no relation to Qendresa), “Serbs have always thought they were better than Albanians, in the same way that white people in the US used to hate Black people during slavery and afterwards…if NATO hadn’t done something, the Serbs would have slowly but surely killed or pushed all Albanians out of Kosovo.” These narratives have supported the development of two diverging histories of the 1998-1999 war, with each side heavily biased towards a set of facts that will help them achieve their own political goals.
Research into the history curriculums taught in the two countries reveals that Serbian textbooks omit the decade of repression and abuse that led to Kosovo’s armed uprising, inflate Serbian casualty figures, and vilify NATO and Western nations. In the same vein, a review of Kosovar high school textbooks conducted by the Youth Initiative for Human Rights identified multiple instances where textbook language could be classified as “inciting ethnic hatred.” These textbooks omit Serb and other minority casualty figures from the 1998-1999 war, while amplifying Kosovar-Albanian casualties. In Kosovar towns with significant Serb populations like Mitrovica, students learn these two different versions of history in schools operated by different education systems, while living in the same communities. According to internationally recognized numbers, about 10,000 civilians were killed in Kosovo during the war, about 8,000 of which were Albanian and 2,000 were Serb or other ethnicities. NATO airstrikes killed an additional 500 civilians, mostly of Serb identity but including some Albanians and other ethnicities.
Part of the reason Kosovar and Serbian politics have remained fixed on fundamentally incompatible goals regarding Kosovo’s independence is because there has been limited success in creating a shared historical narrative of the conflict. The Historical Dialogues, Justice, and Memory (HDJM) Network has mapped several projects that have tried to developed a compromise narrative. These projects take a variety of forms, including political development, educational programs, support for judicial processes, cultural representations, and other types of civil society advocacy, and are mostly located in Pristina and Belgrade. However, these projects have not been successful in moving the needle of the dominant narratives of the war in either Kosovo or Serbia.
Elazar Barkan, Director of the Institute for the Study of Human Rights that houses the HDJM Network, offers an explanation by pointing out that Kosovar and Serbian politicians have little to gain politically from compromise. “At the moment, Kosovo will not benefit from an agreement with Serbia, and Serbia has no interest, because in both cases the governments were chosen by nationalists…even if they come to an agreement that satisfies the EU, I don’t know that there will be much support for it among the people.” A treaty to normalize day-to-day activities such as trade, energy sharing, and cross-border travel is critical for both countries to be admitted into the EU, but requires agreement on Kosovo’s independent status.
Politicians on both sides use the Serbia-Kosovo conflict to distract from other domestic political developments. Jennifer Ginsburg, a Peace Corps volunteer who spent two years in the Serb-majority village of Šilovo, says that, “Serbian politicians use Kosovo to divert attention from domestic developments and to wrest concessions from the international community. They exploit Western fears of renewed regional conflict to incentivize the EU to facilitate Serbian membership….many people in the region will say they have no problem with other ethnic groups, and that the problem is the politicians.”
Within Kosovo, the routine denials of well-documented human rights abuses by the “Serbian propaganda machine” and lack of legal accountability constantly reignite arguments about blame and responsibility, and Kosovar politicians only fan the flames. This discourse “allows corrupt politicians to distract people from real, everyday problems,” according to Qendresa. She says that nationalism against these kinds of statements from the Serbian government is continually mobilized and weaponized by Kosovar politicians to distract from the lack of political and economic progress in their country.
These political dynamics make many of Kosovo’s citizens feel powerless and frustrated. Qendresa calls this “outrage fatigue.” She says that, beyond general nationalist sentiment, it is nearly impossible to get Kosovars to be politically active. Kosovar citizens are continually disappointed by their own government and the high levels of corruption and unemployment, while youth feel isolated from the rest of Europe due to travel restrictions. Ginsburg remarks that the Serbs within Kosovo feel frustrated because they are stuck in the middle between Belgrade and Pristina, with little ability to build their own political identity.
Beyond fatigue, Qendresa says that the political deadlock contributes to a “collective depression, PTSD, or numbness” because Kosovars were just expected to move on once the violence stopped. “Serbia has never accepted what happened,” says Qendresa. “Thousands of women were raped, and neither side has done anything about it, and people are still missing. But we were never encouraged to deal with anger or the past.” Judita reiterates this, telling me that most of the men and boys who disappeared from Gjakova, the village where she grew up, are still missing 20 years later.
Unsurprisingly, moving on is difficult in the aftermath of rape, injuries, and murdered or missing family members. In the course of sharing her story with me, Judita tells me, “My childhood was broken, killed, robbed, you name it.” She hones in on the type of accountability and recognition that might help ease these memories. “No matter who did the killing or the terrorizing, it was wrong. But I am frustrated by the constant focus on the Serbs that were killed by Kosovo-Albanians. The numbers are so small when compared to the Albanians killed by Serbs that it’s disrespectful to talk about it in the same way.” Recognition that some perspectives are “heavier than others,” in the words of Qendresa, might begin to ease the painful memories carried by Kosovo’s citizens.
Most people do not see the political deadlock between Kosovo and Serbia changing for better or worse in the next few years. Ginsburg holds the most optimistic outlook; she says, “I think change is always possible. History and identity are not fixed and unchanging across the centuries.” Near-term improvements, however, seem unlikely. Qendresa is hoping to “rile up people” to be more active in the political discourse on Kosovo, but is under no illusion that this will alter the political deadlock. Barkan says, “There is no party that will benefit from creating peace. I don’t see change in Kosovo.”
On the question of future violence, Barkan doesn’t believe the situation will deteriorate, but notes that “It’s always easier to explain what happened” after the fact, rather than before. Qendresa answered this question before I even asked it; when I remarked that Kosovo was no longer an area of violent conflict, she crossed her fingers and simply said, “Hopefully.”