Beyond the Bridge
Beyond the Bridge
G. O’Malley: Beyond the Bridge
THE CHANT, “oo-ch-kuh! oo-ch-kuh!” first hit the south side of the bridge over the Ibar River just before noon on the last Sunday in May. Muffled by distance and city traffic, the letters—Albanian for “KLA! KLA!”—were nonetheless clear. Everyone in the city of Mitrovica knew that Kosovo Liberation Army veterans would march to the bridge, which both spans and symbolizes the divide between the city’s Albanian-populated south and its predominantly Serbian north, to protest the legitimacy of the local elections the Serbs were holding in the north that day. As for how many veterans would show, or what they would do when they arrived at the bridge, most were wise enough to forgo predictions. A member of the Kosovo Force, a multi-nation security force tasked by the UN with keeping the peace in Kosovo, stood at the foot of the south side of the bridge with the chants still in the distance. Unsure of whether he or the riot police that lined the street that day would have to act to prevent a violent confrontation between the protesters and any Serbs intent on responding to a perceived provocation, he shook his head and said, with little conviction, “We can hope for the best.” Then he stood and waited.
Within minutes, a slow moving mass of more than two thousand men turned a corner and came into view. Scores of white placards bearing bold, black print rose high, declaring the protesters’ message: “Protect the Sovereignty of Kosovo.” The crowd crawled forward, peacefully, vocally, and steadily, until its front line stood thirty feet from the bridge. Then, without verbal command, the procession slowed and then stopped, seemingly unsure of whether to cross the space between it and the line of riot police before the bridge. The deliberation was brief. The protesters had not walked to this point to stare across a space at the police. Their goal was the bridge. As an Albanian man told me later in the day, to KLA veterans, Serbs holding their own elections in Mitrovica, without regard to the laws of Kosovo, was tantamount to them “spitting on the graves” of all who had fought and died to liberate Kosovo—something the KLA would never accept. The protesters pushed on, caterpillar-like but sure, into the riot shields lined before them.
Across the river, the Serbs took notice. They stopped their Sunday morning activities—voting, drinking coffee in outdoor cafes, and chatting with neighbors—and began to gather at the foot of the north side of the bridge, to view the crowd mounting before them. At first, they watched silently, but as their crowd grew, so did their reaction. Local and international media cameras, which had been trained on the Albanian clash with the police, rushed to catch the Serbian display. A gray-haired man in a suit stepped forward and barked in Serbian to a translator for the police, demanding protection for his people as he gestured toward the chanting Albanians across the bridge. The Serbs began to chant themselves. One of them shot a bright red flare across the bridge. It landed harmlessly thirty feet away from the Albanians, who were now crushed up against the shields of the police, but its glowing presence emboldened the Serbs, now hundreds strong, and further enraged the Albanians. An air-raid siren rang out from the north, calling every Serbian man within earshot to do two things: get his gun and come to the bridge. Without riot police on their side of the bridge to stop them from advancing, Serbs began to trickle onto the bridge. Snipers, already on a nearby rooftop with their guns trained, also moved to the bridge, which had been virtually empty just thirty minutes before.
Thousands stood in a fragile state of controlled animosity; close enough to hurl invective and hear mounting invective in return; close enough to see clearly their enemy’s flags waving furiously—the Serbian red, white, and blue tricolor and the Albanian black silhouette of an opened-winged, bicephalated eagle backed by a sea of red; close enough, but still far enough away that the spectacle had passed without physical incident. Then, a Serbian man with a flag made a run for the Albanians, who stood just 150 feet away.
IN MAY of this year, I traveled to Mitrovica, once Kosovo’s most ethnically integrated city, and now its most divided. I went to write about a conference there, at which delegates from ethnically or religiously divided cities from around the world gathered to address common municipal problems, on the theory that those who live in divided societies are in the best position to help others who live in divided societies. From the moment I arrived, however, the most intriguing actor at the conference, which was packed with plenipotentiary politicians, agency heads, and NGO representatives, was Mitrovica itself, an otherwise unassuming place that has devolved into an international symbol of the ongoing conflict between ethnic Albanians and ethnic Serbs in Kosovo over whether Kosovo should stand separate from Serbia, as a nation-state unto itself. The city roils with a noxious, subterranean tension of the sort that arises when two parties are locked in a situation they despise, but which neither will change for fear of the alternative. Discussions between delegates from Belfast and Nicosia on community policing, or between delegates from Haifa and Mostar on the provision of water, seemed pale and remote compared to the color and immediacy of the politically paralyzed municipality playing host to the conference.
Immediately, I changed focus and drew up a plan. I would limit my attendance at the conference to those times when leaders from Kosovo’s capital, Pristina, Serbia’s capital, Belgrade, or Mitrovica were scheduled to discuss the state of the city and would otherwise spend my days wandering, interviewing as many people as possible, and my nights with a beer in hand, tapping conference organizers, attendees, and residents of Mitrovica for information—all in the hope that I could peel back at least one layer of a place that presented itself as “normal” upon introduction, even though it so clearly was not.
Mitrovica’s ethnic tensions result from more than 1200 years of history in the region, but its current divide, with Serbs and Albanians balkanized by neighborhood, most refusing to cross into opposing territory for fear of being harmed, is a byproduct of recent political events. On February 17, 2008, Kosovo’s parliament unanimously passed a declaration of independence from Serbia. The document was so replete with UN obligations and conditions that one commentator suggested it was as much a declaration of dependence as one of independence, but that hardly mattered to the tens of thousands of ethnic Albanians who flooded the streets of Pristina to set off fireworks and fire gunshots in celebration of their newly established state. Serbia, which considers Kosovo its southernmost province and the heart of its religious and cultural identity, opposed the declaration but had no appetite for war to stop its fulfillment. Nine years on from the NATO bombing of Belgrade, which ended the 1998-99 war in Kosovo between Serbia and the KLA over who would control the region, Serbia was still recovering, in no position to solve the Kosovo problem through force. The ethnic Albanians had played their hand perfectly. Overnight, Kosovo became the self-proclaimed youngest nation in Europe. It had the support of major powers, such as the United States and Britain. There was talk of becoming an EU member state at some point. The future seemed bright, if not entirely secure.
Two-and-a-half years later, Kosovo is a mess. Despite its location and European aspirations, much of the region is planted in the third world. The economy limps along, unable to sustain itself. Kosovo’s citizens are the poorest in Europe, with an average per capita income of approximately $2,450. Half of all Kosovars live on less than €3 a day. Aid from the international community accounts for roughly 7.5 percent of Kosovo’s GDP, and remittances from Kosovar Albanians who are living abroad—mainly in Germany and Switzerland—account for another roughly 14 percent. Without this money, and the money spent by the tens of thousands of international aid workers and peacekeepers stationed in Kosovo, the economy would grind to a halt entirely. And the economy is not Kosovo’s only problem. Corruption corrodes national and local government. Partly as a result, organized crime predominates and has transformed Kosovo into a transit point in the trafficking of heroin, women, and stolen jewels.
The backdrop—and one of the causes—of this dysfunction is Kosovo’s uncertain political status. Since the 2008 declaration, the United States and twenty-two of twenty-seven EU states have recognized Kosovo’s independence. International institutions such as the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund have, too. But the status of Kosovo is far from settled. The UN has refused to recognize it, and only sixty-seven of the UN’s 192 member states have accepted it as a nation-state. A number of countries confronting separatist movements within their own borders, including Russia, China, Spain, and India, have actively backed Serbia, which, after years of war in Kosovo and elsewhere, chose to fight the declaration in a way no country ever has before: by litigating it before the International Court of Justice (ICJ). Serbia’s decision to litigate elevated the question of Kosovo from one of regional import to one of international, precedential significance. A record thirty-six countries, including China, which had never before engaged the ICJ, submitted briefs addressing the legality of the declaration. In December, twenty-eight of those countries participated in oral argument at the Hague—again, a record.
Nowhere is the weight of the uncertainty about Kosovo’s status heavier than in Mitrovica, the last city in Kosovo with a significant Serbian population, and the de facto border with Serbia. Together, Albanians and Serbs make up 96 percent of the city’s population. Before the 1998-99 war, they lived on both sides of the Ibar River. Since then—in the wake of periodic reprisals, a severe outbreak of violence in 2004 that left nineteen dead and more than 3,000 displaced, and the 2008 declaration—they have split along ethnic lines. Almost all of the estimated 66,000 Albanians in Mitrovica live on the south side of the river. The roughly 16,000 Serbs in the city live on the north side. In practice, the two groups live in separate countries, the south with its own municipal institutions, relying on Pristina for guidance and funding, and the north, with its own municipal institutions, relying on Belgrade for guidance and funding. In total, roughly 50,000 of Kosovo’s estimated 100,000 Serbs live north of the Ibar River, in a region that stretches to what Kosovo considers its border with Serbia. International peacekeepers, who patrol both sides of the river, ensure the physical safety of each group and lock the status quo into place; though Pristina claims sovereignty over the area north of the river, it has no control over the Serbs who live there. The river is the divide, and few of either group are willing to cross it.
BECAUSE THE two communities have split, the northern and southern halves of Mitrovica have evolved into distinct places. In the south, a sense of calm pervades, if only on the surface. In May, when the temperature rises, the dust follows, and the poplar trees begin to rain down soft, white seeds that look like snow, giving the city a sleepy feel. In the city center, old men wearing skull caps sit before the large, white mosque that dominates the square, shading themselves from the sun with small umbrellas. A few streets over, teenagers play pool in dark, ten-by-ten, one-table halls. Cafes and bars populate an area just five minutes from the bridge, where the sundry international missions with acronyms for names are located in a cluster. Young Albanians with enough money to afford a fifty-cent cappuccino pass the day at bars and cafes, paying scant attention to the legion of armed, three-man peacekeeping units that patrol the streets.
From the moment I stepped off of the bus from Belgrade, one member of the ubiquitous three-man units stood out. Still young—in his late twenties or early thirties—Hector was ever-present and eager to talk. On my first day in Mitrovica, after seeing him three times around town in the span of three hours, I walked over and introduced myself as an American lawyer hoping to use Mitrovica as a lens through which to view the ICJ’s ruling. He nodded, taking my story in, and then commented on my Irish last name. “I’m from Switzerland,” he said, “but my father is from Dublin.” His mission was eerily familiar to my American ears. “We are here to win hearts and minds,” he declared, with his welkin blue eyes focused earnestly on mine, and with enough cheery bonhomie to suggest that he was up to a challenge. “We are not here to judge. Our goal is to listen to the people and to keep the peace.” When I asked him how the mission was going, he first shrugged and then replied vaguely.
“On the surface, it is peaceful,” I said, trying to prompt a further response.
He nodded. “It does look relaxed, but violence can explode just like that.” He snapped his fingers to punctuate his point. After a pause he continued, again meeting my eyes directly. “Think of Mitrovica as an apple. You pick it up, and it looks good. The outside is all shiny. But when you bite into it, you realize that it is rotten. Rotten to the core.”
Indeed, the more one learns of Mitrovica, the more layered it reveals itself to be. Until the late 1980s, Mitrovica’s economy was supported by the Trepca mining complex, a vast web of factories and mines that employed more than 20,000 people—Albanian and Serbian alike—at the height of its production. The last factory in the complex was closed in 2000, however, leaving the region without an economic engine. Now unemployment is staggeringly high; almost 80 percent of the working-age population is without a job. Eleven years after the war, the city still does not have reliable electricity or water. Trash litters the streets. A number of new buildings have risen in recent years, but many structures stand half-finished, construction stopped, without hope of continuation in the near future. Outside of the southern city center, rubble from buildings damaged in the war lies by the side of reddish-brown dirt roads, exactly where it fell when Serbian bombs blasted the city over a decade ago.
Corruption burdens the city as it does the rest of the country, sparking cynicism, or worse, apathy. Most residents reluctantly accept the payment of bribes as a way of life. Some, like a thirty-two year old technician I met named Buerim, do not. A resident of Pristina, he was in town for the week to oversee the audio for the conference. In discussing the state of Kosovo while walking to a meeting we were attending, he touched on the Serbs, and how difficult the war had been for Albanians, but he quickly focused on what he perceived to be the twin evils of his new country—corruption and nepotism. It was impossible, he argued, for anyone who had professional ambitions to fulfill them in Kosovo unless they knew the right people, or were willing to pay. He shook his head, angered by the memory of opportunities squandered because he refused to play by these rules. “I respect the Serbs,” he concluded, though we had not talked of Serbs for some time at that point. “When they find someone who is smart, they raise him up and follow him. Albanians tear down their best people and give jobs to their cousins.”
Despite its problems, there is an undeniable bounce to the southern part of the Mitrovica, which has been buoyed by the declaration of independence. With Buerim and others, I visited a primary school and met with the principal, a short man dressed formally in a jacket and tie, despite the heat. He offered me and others soda and small wrapped chocolates as a welcoming treat. “We are writing our own history,” he stated, as he discussed the changes in the school since the declaration. But it was the halls of the school that spoke most clearly to how different the environment these children were learning in was from that of just years before. Pictures of Adem Jashari, the famed KLA leader who, along with fifty-two of his family members, was killed by Serbian forces in 1998, and who is widely considered by Albanians to be one of the founders of the KLA and the movement’s greatest martyr, adorn the walls. There is little question about Jahsari’s importance in this school or any other in southern Mitrovica. A freedom fighter, he is part of the Kosovar Albanians’ creation story, a lens through which to judge the past and view the future.
Gabriel O’Malley lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts. He is a lawyer and a writer. His writing has appeared in The Best Travel Writing 2009, the New England Journal of Public Policy, and Law, Democracy & Development, among other publications.
All photos courtesy of Vedat Xhymshiti, 2010
