TOLERANCE, KOSOVO STYLE
BOSCO, DAVID
TOLERANCE, KOSOVO STYLE by David Bosco Pristina, Kosovo GRILLS ON THE WINDOWS keep out the hand grenades. British soldiers keep out the Albanians. This is the nongovernmental Center for Peace and...
...At night, helicopters hover over the city, lashing streets and apartment buildings with high intensity searchlights...
...His defiant 1987 speech to a crowd of Serbs in the town of Kosovo Polje (near the site of the famous 1389 battle) launched the nationalist revival on which he built his power...
...The spirits of Serbs are bolstered by the presence of a Russian army contingent that has garrisoned the House of Culture and a few other spots in the town...
...Here, in cooperation with British troops, young serbs provide assistance to the predominantly old and scared serbs who remain...
...it is in large part because of its history that Kosovo Polje today holds one of the biggest concentrations of Serbs left in Kosovo...
...Today, Albanian political power is contested by several power centers, most prominently the Kosovo Liberation Army and the political party headed by Ibrahim Rugova, the pacifist who led Kosovo's Albanians for much of the past decade...
...Faced with this grim possibility, NATO and the Milosevic regime tacitly cooperated in encouraging Serbs to remain...
...The pleas have worked, for the moment...
...The effect of the violence has been predictable: The United Nations estimates that no more than 2,000 Serbs remain in a city once home to 30,000...
...Just down the road, across some invisible dividing line, are Kosovo Polje's Albanians...
...soldiers vigorously patrol high-risk areas, even stationing guards near vulnerable homes and apartments...
...NATO will stay only a year, and then "we will take care of things our own way...
...I've asked them several times why they bother staying," she explains, puzzled at their obstinacy...
...in the days after NATO's arrival, it was thought that if the Serbs left Kosovo Polje they would leave the province altogether...
...On the street in front of the House of Culture—site of Milosevic's speech—old Serb women still peddle fresh vegetables and bitter defiance...
...In Serbia, Kosovo's Serbs are human reminders of defeat and political liabilities for the regime...
...Lieutenant General Mike Jackson, commander of KFOR, made several speeches in the town, and ministers in the Serb government (unindicted ones) made the trek from Belgrade to plead for persistence...
...These local representatives will, it is hoped, someday form the basis for a new multiethnic town government...
...This is not democracy...
...In the absence of any other authority, however, KFOR picks up the trash, provides security, and invests in the town's crumbling infrastructure...
...Whether and when tolerance develops in Kosovo may also depend in part on the nature of the leadership that emerges in the Albanian community...
...On the cluttered desks in the Center can be found titles like Kosovo Dossier: From Terrorism to Independence and other glossy propaganda that Belgrade has produced in profusion...
...The apparently unreconstructed nationalism of the Serbs who remain makes long-term coexistence difficult to imagine...
...instead of patrolling smartly like the British, they lounge desultorily in their trucks or wander the markets...
...But the Russians, according to British troops, are as much burden as ally, relying on the townspeople for fuel and food and drinking heavily in the dusty watering holes...
...reports that Kosovo Serbs receive a cold shoulder on arrival in Serbia proper—no health care, no jobs, and little humanitarian assistance...
...in Kosovo, they are a powerful claim on international attention and a means of dividing the regime's domestic opposition...
...official assigned to Kosovo Polje...
...Naili Ferizi came home and found, to her surprise, that her Serb neighbors still lived in the town...
...The same may soon be said of the effort to keep Serbs in Kosovo...
...flag and a NATO tank ornament the town's municipal building, providing the symbol and substance of the international effort here...
...A telephone hotline allows serbs to pass calls for help to the NATo troops who continuously patrol the city...
...Guarding it is a symbolic act that, however right, will be futile in the end...
...The Kosovo card is, of course, what transformed Serbian president Slobodan Milosevic from apparatchik to autocrat...
...The local KFOR commander and a U.N...
...One of the last gasps of the Serb colonization effort in Kosovo, the church will likely never be completed...
...The U.N...
...on what have become known here as "granny patrols," troops and U.N...
...Flush with victory and outraged at the destruction of their homes, they are eager to press their advantage against the Serbs...
...It is not a basis for dialogue...
...The war was fought for human rights, and the politicians and generals who won it are loath to see the peace endorse anything less...
...The irony is that defeat in Kosovo has given the serbs what they claimed for years, even while they were the ruling minority here: true victimhood...
...But it is not clear that either group will be able to foster tolerance in the near future...
...Agron Bajrami, an editor at the daily Koha Ditore, argues that the tolerance and multiethnicity the international community seeks are "something the population is not prepared for" after the ethnic cleansing and more than a decade of oppression...
...Milosevic will come again, they tell me...
...A staffer at the center hands me a rap sheet for August 17 that includes a kidnapping, several beatings, an attempted rape, and a hand grenade attack that day alone...
...Near the center of Pristina, on a rise that overlooks the main street, barbed wire and NATO armored vehicles guard a partially constructed Serbian Orthodox church...
...It has no worshippers and no priest...
...The great majority of these left in a rush as NATo troops arrived in the province...
...Since an explosion damaged the structure last month, NATO has maintained a round-the-clock presence...
...At the Center for Peace and Tolerance, there seems precious little of the latter among the Serb staff, who are unapologetic about the Serbian reign of terror that led directly to the cataclysm whose results they now face...
...The Serbs remaining in Kosovo and bearing the brunt of Albanian anger are those least responsible for the recent crimes, and Belgrade has spared no effort to milk their plight...
...More than a decade of Serb-imposed near-apartheid in the province, three months of brutal ethnic cleansing of Albanians, and now the Albanians' return under the protection of a U.N.-authorized NATO force called KFOR have produced the state of siege that the Serbs always claimed existed...
...Accustomed to running the province, he says, Serbs hardly recognize equal rights when they see them...
...The violence that has plagued the city in the past weeks has reduced the number further...
...This is the nongovernmental Center for Peace and Tolerance in Kosovo's capital city, and it is one of the last refuges for the city's dwindling serb population...
...official act as virtual mayors, and on six occasions they have gathered Serb and Albanian representatives to hash out the running of the town...
...in several cases, the message has come in the form of a bullet through the door...
...He has a measure of international legitimacy, they have the guns (though NATO is doing what it can to lighten their load...
...The tactics are fairly standard: A serb household will receive a threatening letter or visit, which is followed by a more forceful message a few days later...
...We give them homework," says the U.N...
...They have been streaming back ever since NATO's arrival and now constitute almost half the town's population...
...A U.N...
...David Bosco worked in Bosnia from 1996 to 1998 as a journalist and political analyst...
...One of the biggest problems, says KFOR's Major Simon Fovargue, is psychological...
...workers distribute food and provide medical care to elderly serbs afraid to leave their homes...
...The measures the British army has taken in Pristina—including cooperation with the Center— are impressive...
...Nobody should dare to beat you again," he told the Serb crowd that day...
...The international community has not been idle in the face of the violence...
...This policy even extends to pushing back Serbs who leave Kosovo...
...There has been no shortage of business...
Vol. 4 • August 1999 • No. 47
