Kosovo Travel Report

[anna balint]

[article published in the Moldavian art magazine, Art Hoc nr. 22-23]

Kosova from Inside
by Iulian Robu (Moldova)


As we approached the bridge dividing Kosovska Mitrovica in two—the Serb and the 
Albanian part—we started feeling as “in the movies”: barriers of barbed wire, 
soldiers in full combat uniform with massive guns hanging across the chest. After the 
passport control—a formality that keeps the Serbs in their part of the town and the 
Albanians in theirs—we walked on across the bridge to the Albanian side. The feeling 
of being on a film set continued—armored vehicles with soldiers perched on top, who 
scrutinized the town’s busy streets; uncovered military jeeps equipped with machine 
guns and soldiers with their hands on the guns’ handles. From the Serb side, with its 
European architecture and a rarefied, somewhat deserted and stale social atmosphere, 
we passed into a busy Oriental town that felt like an Arab bazaar—people hastily 
pushing carts loaded with fruits and vegetables, sacks full of all sorts of 
merchandise, shops stuffed with goods, old men wearing plis (the white Muslim cap). 
We were a group of 11 Romanians, carrying big travel bags and rucksacks, going to a 
summer school organized by the Prishtina University (Kosova) and funded by the Dutch 
government. We were immediately approached by a swarm of drivers offering rides to 
Prishtina. This marketing attack scared us—activating the prejudices of our 
“European” culture—as we didn’t trust the good intentions of those bazaar shuttle 
drivers, who were too insistent to boot. But after three weeks of living in Kosova 
and imbibing the local atmosphere and communicating with local Albanians we saw a 
totally different picture on our return—the expression “Arab bazaar” had gained for 
us a positive, even nostalgic meaning, in which the locals were just trying to make a 
living in a country with 60% unemployment; we saw people of a disarming sincerity for 
whom the price negotiated was less important than the communication with the client 
(either by negotiating the price just for the sake of negotiation or trying to 
develop a discussion in sign language just for the sake of communication, 
understanding per se having a secondary importance).

Three years after the war in Kosova had finished, few physical signs of violence 
remained. In Prishtina, the capital of the region, we saw only one bombed building 
left untouched by the reconstruction effort invested in the region by EU, UN and 
other international organizations. But the effect of the war on people’s morale could 
be seen clearly in the physical separation of Serbs from Albanians operated by NATO’s 
Kosova Force (KFOR) and by the massive presence of KFOR soldiers and internationals 
governing the region—UN civilians and police. The supreme law of the region is UN 
Resolution no.1.244. The UN Mission in Kosova (UNMIK), headed by Rudolf Steiner, 
oversees closely all legislative and executive decisions taken by the local 
government trying to “raise” it to a level when it could operate independently. But 
the region’s future status remains uncertain.

The situation in Kosova resembles very much the situation in Moldova—an autonomous 
region in an artificial multi-national country, with an ethnic correspondent across 
the border (Albania) and a filtration of national identity signs through the prism of 
the dominant Serb ethnicity. Just as Moldova raises brows in the rest of the world 
due to its ambiguous identity—Moldova/Moldavia, Chi?in?u/Kishiniov, etc.—so does the 
Albanian region of the former Yugoslavia— Kosovo (in Serbian)/Kosova (in Albanian), 
Priština (Serbian)/Prishtinë (Albanian).

The landscapes of Kosova are not much different from the ones in Moldova, while 
architecturally Prishtina is as “communist” as Chisinau. Only the spirit of this 
place is different, which has the longest ethnic continuity in the history of the 
Balkans; the Illirians, the forefathers of today’s Albanians, had populated this part 
of the Balkans for thousands of years, eschewing assimilation by various invaders due 
to hardly accessible mountains in that region.

On a Muslim religious and cultural foundation, characterized by numerous mosques and 
minarets dating back to the beginning of the 14th century, elderly men wearing plis 
and the traditional absence of women from many social events, the walls of a European 
tradition are being built gradually—from the libertine style of clothing and behavior 
of the younger generation to a West European taste for colors and shapes which can be 
seen in the cafes strewn all over the city. A juicy, vibrant, well-rooted taste. The 
plastic kitsch which is so characteristic of Chisinau (or other bad imitations of 
“good taste”) is completely absent here. The coffee in Kosova seemed the best of all 
coffees ever tasted and the colors seemed the most expressive of all colors ever 
seen, because the people here approach life with the soul magic of Marquez’s 
characters. They are generous and impulsive, just like all southern peoples. The 
negative image associated with Albanians—and with Muslim nations in general—is the 
result of the selective dissemination of information that has been heavily criticized 
in recent decades, especially with reference to the mass media, whereby only negative 
information is disseminated and the positive one is omitted. The more so since we 
usually inform ourselves from secondary and tertiary and zilliary sources—without 
deigning to listen directly to the ones spoken about.

When we reached Prishtina, the city was covered by posters in which a young Serb was 
slitting the throat of an Albanian boy. This is what the caption said in Albanian and 
English, calling for a prevention of the return of “Serb criminals” to Kosova and 
identifying the soldier in the photograph by name. The picture was obviously tricked. 
Throughout the city the poster covered walls, light posts, kiosks like wallpaper. 
During the three weeks we spent in Kosova we also saw brochures meant to expose the 
slaughter initiated by Serb soldiers—disfigured, decapitated, burnt, gutted human 
bodies. During our short visits to the Serb side of Mitrovica and a day spent in 
Belgrade we didn’t see any anti-Albanian material. The Serbs’ feelings regarding the 
war were directed only against NATO and USA—in souvenir shops and kiosks one could 
buy postcards disparaging of the Western victors. One such card showed a caricature 
NATO soldier standing between a caricature Albanian and a caricature Serb awkwardly 
brandishing knives at each other. In Kosova we heard many young people saying that 
they had nothing against Serbs as a nation and could live with them peacefully; their 
hatred was directed only against Milosevic and his acolytes. But some young men who 
had fought in UCK (or KLA, Kosova Liberation Army) were less friendly towards Serbs 
as a nation. Milan Kundera summarizes very vividly (in The Joke) this constant of 
history, when personal, greedy vanities cause suffering to hundreds of thousands of 
people: “Youth is terrible: it is a stage trod by children in buskins and a variety 
of costumes mouthing speeches they’ve memorized and fanatically believe but only half 
understand. And history is terrible because it so often ends up a playground for the 
immature; a playground for the young Nero, a playground for the young Bonaparte, a 
playground for easily roused mobs of children whose simulated passions and simplistic 
poses suddenly metamorphose into a catastrophically real reality.” Milosevic too 
mouthed his speech in 1989 from the top of the 20-meter high tower on the Kosova 
Field, which has for the Serb nation an emotional significance as strong as the 
Statue of Liberty does for Americans. The Kosova battle of 1389 is a defining factor 
in the identity narrative of the Serb nation. 1989 was the 600th anniversary of the 
Kosova battle, in which the Serbs wrought a devastating victory on the Ottomans 
(according to some sources, while others maintain that the battle was one of 
exhaustion, without a clear victory). Milosevic crystallized this symbol of Serb 
nationalism and thus unleashed a catastrophically real reality in the Balkans, both 
for Muslims as well as Orthodoxs, since both groups suffered equally much.

Now the Kosova Tower is being guarded round the clock by KFOR soldiers, as are all 
other Serb objects in Kosova—Orthodox churches and historic Serb monuments. The few 
Serb families which have remained in Kosova after the exodus associated with the 
1998-99 atrocities, live in enclaves guarded by KFOR. All those objects are 
surrounded by barbed wire and a board warns against trespassing under the threat of 
authorized use of firearms. There is so much barbed wire in Kosova that even some 
flowerbeds in Prishtina are surrounded by this invention which comes in so handy in 
our real world.

After Milosevic’s discourse of 1989, the autonomy of Kosova was abolished, Albanians 
were fired from key decision-making positions and replaced by Serbs. A process of 
denationalization started in the best Slav tradition. Ibrahim Rugova, then and 
currently president of the region tried for 8 years to regain the autonomy and, 
hence, the region’s identity peacefully by asking the great powers for help, and 
after as many years of being turned down by them, in 1997 he started to create the 
KLA. For the West the suppression of an ethnic population of 2.5 million was too 
insignificant a problem to bother, and it became involved only when the armed 
conflict broke out in the spring of 1998.

Being in love with the Balkans, a region so captivating by its ethnic and cultural 
diversity but which at the same time congeals around a common core into one unit, 
what could make me more enthused than a university course in Balkan history taken in 
situ, in the very heart of the Balkans? Just like a gourmand’s enthusiasm for French 
cuisine. During optional classes of Albanian I found out, with a kind of relish, that 
the letter “q” is pronounced “ch”. I felt very excited about this phonetic fact, but 
not as one becomes excited with an encyclopedic trinket that one can proudly show off 
to friends and parents, but rather as the particular smell of a dear place makes one 
delighted, which by that olfactory, almost intimate peculiarity seems to establish 
even more strongly its special, genuine character, thus enhancing one’s enthusiasm—or 
even triggering a sort of moderate infatuation—towards it.

Many of the 150 foreign students of the Prishtina summer university left the region 
infected by the spirit of that place. Later we lamented to each other by e-mail that 
nobody at home to whom we told how we had felt would understand. “Is that Kosova? 
Yeah...”