Friday June 12th
(Henriette)
The perspectives, sights and roadblocks that confronted me and the group
on Thursday have impressed me deeply and where still on my mind when we left for
Mitrovica on Friday. My initial optimism and positivism towards the necessity
of the independence of Kosovo had me thinking and I almost felt a shame for not
realizing that an independent Kosovo meant that the Serbians living in the North
or the enclaves had to renounce a nation that they had been part of for centuries,
thereby “abandoning” their national and cultural heritage, basically a nation that
their family was part of. As you might read through the lines, Thursday and Friday
we were confronted by how “real” the conflict still was in Mitrovica. For one
thing, the bus had to cross a physical road block (dirt & trash on the
road) to go from the Albanian side to the Serbian side. Slowly, but surely I
feel that I am starting to understand how deep the conflict is rooted. Of
course we learned about the conflict in class and you “know” what is going on,
but knowing and understanding are two different things.
With these confrontational
encounters it was refreshing to walk into the first meeting on Friday. Just about
100 or so meters from the bridge that split the North and South (on the Albanian
side) was the Community Building Mitrovica
located. A community project aiming to reunite Mitrovica and bring it back to “the
great city it was before the war.” The project director, Milos Golubovic who
defined himself as Kosovar Serb, wanted the city to reunite. It was refreshing
to hear him speak about the city with certain nostalgia. As a citizen of
Mitrovica his aims were to unite the city through the projects of Community
Building Mitrovica. These projects do so by focusing on young and teenage
children. They have a total of 17 projects, some successful ones are the English
language and IT courses where high school and University students work together
and the School of Rock. The School of Rock is a music institute where teenagers
can make music. The impressive aspect of the School of Rock is that the
Northern and Southern school join together in field trips to Macedonia, thereby
bringing Serbian and Albanian students together.
Nevertheless, they have
a school in the Northern and the Southern part of Mitrovica which means that in
the city the children do not mix a lot. The division between the North and
South is still very strong. This statement was confirmed, not only by the physical
roadblocks but also by an official at OSCE, the institution that we visited Friday
afternoon. OSCE an international organization monitoring the region and trying
to facilitate communication between the Serbian and Albanians in Mitrovica.
Striking was what an Italian employee at OSCE said: “I am saying this not in
function, but for me personally. I’ve been here for the past two years and I
have not seen any improvement [in the relation between the Serbian North &
Albanian South]. Therefore, to the question what would your solution be, I
would say: draw the boarder through the city and give the North to Serbia. That
is what they want.” This statement was of somehow understandable due to the intense
stories we have heard yet felt strange to hear from a professional who had
worked in the region for two years.
Therefore, I felt that it
was good to hear the positive attitude of the head of the UNMIK which is the
United Nations mission in Kosovo. I felt as if he had a positive and energetic attitude
towards the future of Kosovo, which was refreshing to hear. However, as was to
be expected, he did not inform us on anything new. He stuck to the mandate of
the UNMIK and the information he gave was what one could have known reading
into the UN mission in Kosovo. However, on a side note I need to say that I
received my capstone grade just before the meeting so I zoomed out for parts of
it. Nonetheless, it was a very interesting experience. Afterwards many of the
group where rather critical of the UN mission in Kosovo, which is
understandable because we learned about its flaws in class. However, as Eric
pointed out, who knows what the region would have looked like without the
mission.
All in all it was a
rather long and intense day of meetings and impressions. In the evening we
visited a beautiful lake near the Serbian border where we had dinner. Some of
us went swimming and all of us had a wonderful bbq/grill dinner with a lake
view. In the end we were driven home by a UN bus that had been taking us around
all day and as a present we received some raki for our way home. Believe me, with
the raki flowing it wasn’t a quite bus ride, but hey who can say that they
drove around in a UN buss, drinking raki and singing songs.
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