Distant War Zones Lure Jobless Kosovo Serbs 07 July 2008 .. Nikola Krstic in Strpce
Insert from previous .. Kosovo’s Albanians and Serbs live almost entirely separate lives .. its 100,000 Serbs are expected to hunker down in their isolated enclaves dotted around central and southern Kosovo .. and protest against the very existence of this new country .. fuagf, as Palestine ..
Kosovo’s sovereignty has been recognised by 54 countries, (fuagf, Note: the US was the first to recognize Israel in 1948 and the first i think to recognize Kosovo in Feb. 2008)
..still overseen by a Nato-led force of almost 15,000 and by 3,000 of EUlex, a European Union mission which has adopted many of the powers of the United Nations administration that ran Kosovo from 1999 until last year. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ “But the international community should do more to make the police and justice system fairer here,” added Bojan. “Everything is corrupt and Serbs get no protection from the police, who are nearly all Albanian.”
Bojan claims a friend of his is now serving a jail sentence for a murder he did not commit, because a powerful Albanian had wanted to take over his apartment. And Velibor, an older Serb, scoffed at Pristina’s claim it is running a fully functioning, multiethnic democracy.
“There isn’t even the ‘d’ of ‘democracy’ here,” he said. Such claims rile many Kosovo Albanians, ..... http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/world/2009/0217/1224241279284.html ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Distant War Zones Lure Jobless Kosovo Serbs 07 July 2008 .. Nikola Krstic in Strpce
Desperate to escape unemployment in their isolated enclaves, Kosovo Serbs are journeying as far as Iraq and Afghanistan to make a living.
Branislav Nikolic has returned home from Afghanistan after two years’ working in a US army base.
Sitting in his family home in Strpce, a small Serbian enclave in southern Kosovo, he explains how he decided to go to Afghanistan via a company that hails from a country that many Kosovo Serbs see as a foe.
“I couldn’t make a living here, so I decided to go to a war zone,” he said. “I think everybody here would do the same if they could,” Nikolic added, sipping coffee.
Joblessness is the fate of the majority of the 120,000 or so Serbs in Kosovo, about half of whom live in isolated enclaves in the south and centre of the country, surrounded by Albanians.
While estimates of the numbers of unemployed in Kosovo varies, according to some figures, about 45 per cent of the working population are jobless.
While most Serbs look on the presence of US soldiers in Kosovo with resentment and fiercely oppose Washington’s support for the country’s independence, Nikolic made a US company with a base in Kosovo the solution to his troubles.
Dozens of Kosovo Serbs have done the same, applying to US companies in Kosovo to work with US forces in Afghanistan and Iraq.
“I know most [Serbian] people don’t even want to hear the name of this country but that’s how I got the opportunity to earn a decent living and I’m extremely grateful,” Nikolic told Balkan Insight.
The recent downturn in the fortunes of the Kosovo Serbs dates back to 1999, when after 78 days of NATO bombing of Serbian forces, Serbia’s authorities agreed to withdraw from Kosovo.
More than 200,000 Serbs and other non-Albanians left Kosovo in their wake. The remainder live in isolated enclaves with limited possibilities of movement and normal life.
Life in the enclaves depends on aid from Belgrade, while young people have almost no chance of earning a living because work possibilities are so limited.
Bojan Tomic is another Kosovo Serb who took the same path. After the war, he fled from his hometown of Urosevac – Ferizaj in Albanian - and tried to start a new life in Strpce.
But two years ago, he, too, decided to go abroad and seek a job with the US-led coalition forces in Iraq.
“The real reason I left was the situation in which my family and I found ourselves,” he said.
“We couldn’t make a living, no matter how hard we tried; the conditions were not there for me to stay in Kosovo and survive.”
Most local people in Strpce used to work in agriculture or in the nearby ski resort at Brezovica.
But those possibilities disappeared after the war, when it was no longer safe to leave urban settlements for the fields. The ski centre lost most of its visitors thanks to the overall situation.
Vanja Boskovic, who also went to Iraq from Strpce two years ago, and is still working there said the salary was only one motive for going. More important than that was the possibility to learn skills he could not acquire at home.
“The important reason for my leaving was to gain experience,” he told Balkan Insight. “Although before I left I had worked in management, gaining experience in a different atmosphere, culture and environment seemed a precious opportunity.”
All the Kosovo Serbs who had gone to these far-off war zones agreed they took risks with their personal safety but none felt a dilemma over getting work through US companies.
Indeed, Branislav Nikolic was decorated by the US in Iraq for the courage he showed under fire. After an attack on the US base in which worked, he moved wounded US soldiers to an infirmary.
“I was employee of the month on several occasions and reached the position of head of an administrative department,” he recalled.
Vanja Boskovic contrasted his experience of work in Afghanistan favourably with the ambiance from which he came, where nepotism appears to rule and employment without “connections” is almost impossible.
“Not all the experiences in my stay were positive but it was easy to get used to a system in which everyone knew what their job was and where work, knowledge and effort were valued,” he said.
The return home to Kosovo brought relief because the men were reunited with their families. But the reality of modern Kosovo is too bleak for them to feel much certainty about the future. Since Kosovo declared independence in February, tensions are on the rise again.
Nikolic feels dissatisfied with what he encountered on his return. “In Kosovo and Strpce it’s almost impossible to get a job without strong connections,” he said. “I will have a difficult time also because everyone thinks I earned enough money in Afghanistan not to need to work.”
Boskovic also says he cannot start living an ordinary life back in Kosovo following his sojourn in Iraq. “I can only imagine how I would feel if I started working in a company in Kosovo where you advanced only if you were well-connected through your relative, best man, friend or political party,” he said, resignedly.
Instead, he plans to resume his education at a university in England.
“My life’s dream is to go to Oxford,” he said, talking of the historic university town whose “dreaming spires” have fired the imaginations of countless students over the centuries.
“But I think Sheffield or London universities are something I can achieve and be admitted for a Masters in management.”
Nikolic has no game plan over what to do in the following months. He and his family currently live on their savings and on the humble salaries of his parents. “No one here wants to know if I’m a tested worker,” he said. “It’s even crossed my mind to leave all this and return to Afghanistan.”
Nikola Krstic is a journalist from Strpce and BI correspondant. Balkan Insight is BIRN's on line publication.
This article was published with the support of the National Endowment for Democracy - NED, as part of BIRN's Minority Media Training and Reporting Project. http://balkaninsight.com/en/main/features/11613/
Published 17 February, 2010, 12:28 Edited 19 February, 2010, 22:22
The second anniversary of Kosovo's self-proclaimed independence comes amid concerns over its legal status.
Pristina, its capital, has launched a campaign to boost its international recognition. Meanwhile, in the Serb-dominated northern region of Mitrovica, divisions are as great as ever.
Two years after Kosovo’s declaration of independence, the region still looks like a playing field for the world powers. On one bank of the Ibar River the Albanian black eagle is propped up by the West, on the other side – Serbian defiance rests on Russia's tricolor and the omnipresent portraits of its prime minister.
Kosovska Mitrovica: A city in northern Kosovo, divided between ethic-Albanians in the south and ethnic-Serbs in the north after the end of Kosovo war in 1999
“Instead of Serbs and Albanians deciding on their future, the fate of Kosovo is being determined thousands of kilometers away. And if we could choose, we'd prefer the decision to be made at the UN, rather than Washington; or in the Hague, rather than in Brussels,” notes Zdravko Vitosevic from the University of Pristina in Mitrovica.
Day after day there is the same scene in the town of Mitrovica – vehicles stop to change number plates before crossing over to the Albanian side. When Kosovo Albanians gained independence, Kosovo Serbs lost their freedom of movement.
“This road is very dangerous. When they see cars from the Serbian part, Albanians honk their horns and even hurl stones at us,” Verolub Miletic, Mitrovica resident, told RT.
Verolub couldn't visit his home village for 10 years. To get there, he has to pass through many Albanian settlements – a risky undertaking – but as he drives through the land his family owned for generations, he forgets about security.
“We had to leave our house when NATO forces [came] in 1999 – it was a nightmare,” Verolub observes.
His father's home was looted and destroyed; his former Albanian neighbors took over the farm.
A few miles further lies Osojane village, which is the only Serbian settlement left in the area where neighbors cling together in order to survive. Like many Serbian villages, it has a patron saint and a day to worship him.
Tables overflow with food, but what the villagers there are really hungry for is some form of official dialogue. The families’ resolve to live on their land comes at a high price.
“Our village is a prison with a handful of inmates… People who used to live here are afraid of returning. And we are afraid to send our kids to school, afraid to go to a nearby village,” said Lubisa Dosic, resident of Osojane village.
Intimidation by Albanian neighbors and police negligence are their chief complaints. They believe the Kosovo authorities are trying to push them out. Yet, they are bent on staying, even if it means the pursuit of their own independence – this time from Kosovo.
Zivadin Jovanovic, the last Yugoslavian Foreign Minister (1998-2000), believes Kosovo is the most serious security issue today in Europe and one of the most serious problems in the world.
“This NATO creation can not survive without finding a compromise,” he said. “And a compromise is possible, but there’s need to respect resolution 1244 of Security Council from 1999, which guarantees substantially autonomy for Kosovo, but the integrity and sovereignty of Serbia.”
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