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  Pristina, Serbia and Montenegro
Saturday, November 24, 2007

Imagine you're at the movies. A spy flick. The lights go down and the show starts. It is night. Our hero dressed all in black approaches a huge chain link fence with rolls of barbed-wire across the top. Along the bottom of the screen, words appear, letter by letter, as if being typed. "Along the Albanian border with Kosovo." There is a pause. "4:42 am" The border between Albania and Kosovo! Stuff goes down on that border! And by the way, the hero was I...only I wasn't dressed in black...an there was no chain linked, bard-wire lined fence. It was 4:42 am, though, and I was on a bus. Had been for eleven hours, performing contortion exercises in the two seats I had scavenged, using all my mental powers to block out the strains of Albanian pop bombarding me from the speaker above my head. Oh what a night to have forgotten my earplugs in my pack beneath the bus! Customs was amazingly brief, though. They didn't even stamp my passport. I'm a little bitter about that.

So, Kosovo. If you're like me, that name means fighting somewhere near Bosnia in the nineties...or maybe that was Chechnya

In front of Skanderbeg

. What's the difference between those two anyway? Well here we go, another brief history. First off, Chechnya is in Russia, Kosovo is in southern Serbia and Serbia borders Bosnia. Both were part of Yugoslavia. The mess in Kosovo goes back to 1389, when the area was conquered by the Turks. At this point, the Christian Serbs abandoned the region to the Muslim Albanians. In 1913, the Turks were ousted, half a million Albanians emigrated, and Serbs moved into the vacant land. Today, they account for 7.5% of the population. So while the vast majority of Kosovo is ethnically Albanian, for the last century, they have been governed by Serbs. Kosovo did manage to become an autonomous region in 1974, but in 1989, a series of protests and strikes brought on by the sacking of local officials let to the suspension of Kosovo's autonomy and serious riots ensued. A 1990 referendum produced a 98% vote for independence, but with a Serbian government, nothing happened. In 1996, the Kosovo Liberation Army was formed out of frustration and began guerrilla attacks against the Serbs, escalating it full-out violence by 1998. When a US-backed peace plan failed in 1999, Serbia moved to rid the province of its Albanian population through ethnic cleansing. Nearly 850,000 ethnic Albanians fled to Albania and Macedonia as Serbia refused the international community's calls to desist. On March 24, NATO unleashed a 78-day bombing campaign and on June 2, the Serbian president, Milosevic agreed to a UN settlement

Prishtina Apartment Blocks

. Since that time, the area has been governed as a UN-NATO protectorate with the Kosovo Force (KFOR) taking over military operations from Serbia. An incident in 2004 led to the deaths of 19 people and the burning of 600 homes by angry Albanians, but though tensions in some areas remain high, life has adopted a certain normalcy, though most Serbs live in ghettos protected by KFOR. Elections were held just under a week ago with a pro-independence party claiming victory with 34% or so of the vote. There is a December 10 deadline for talks with Serbia, but it is my understand that after that, another referendum on independence could be held, with the idea of an independent Kosovo making many European countries nervous. I'll be long gone by then.

Prishtina, the capital of Kosovo, sure isn't Albania. For starters, there's snow on the ground and no hint of Mediterranean-ness. There's also a street named Bil Klinton. It's a slushy, grey walk to my pensione, aided by three men who at least exude Albanian friendliness, albeit in German. I had rather expected Kosovars to speak German, perhaps because I remember so many former Yugoslav refugees in Germany from my childhood, though I had thought most of them were Bosnians and Serbs.

The roads of Prishtina are filled with SUVs bearing official plates and the streets lined with offices of various government and non-government organizations. Every second person I pass is wearing a thick jacket saying "police" or "security" and every public area has been funded by someone, like the "Park for the Rehabilitation of the City" outside my guesthouse, funded by the Italian government.

The big kids in town are UNMIK, the United Nations Interim Administration Mission in Kosovo, whose headquarters occupy an entire block

Bush's Dream Come True

. I meet two Philippino UN officers down by the main square taking pictures of a statue of Skanderbeg. Albanian nationalism is strong here. They ask what agency I'm with. I explain that I'm a tourist. I'm pretty sure they think I'm crazy.

Later at an internet cafe, I discover that Kosovo has the same power problems as Albania. Suddenly, the screens go black, causing the British NGO employee next to me to mutter a whole string of explicatives, but soon the power is back, thanks to a generator. The bonus? I don't have to pay for the time before the outage. They have no way of knowing how long I was there. After eight years as a protectorate, all the service personnel in Prishtina speak perfect English. I order a mushroom pizza and coke (again) for my Thanksgiving dinner in my best American accent. No effort at diction required. At the restaurant are myself, another girl, and two tables of policemen. Safest meal I've ever had.

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