Realisations

By Nathan Luetchford

This blog post is not going to be well structured; I merely aim to express the things that linger in my mind as I arrive at my final assignment of Peace Lab and by default this academic year. Overall this course has been an incredible experience for me, both in terms of what I have learnt and seen, but also personally. I got to the end of the sixteen-week period in something of a motivational slump. For reasons that I won’t dwell on, I was feeling pretty apathetic about many things, not least my current path of academia. I feel a renewed motivation to achieve and I think this is because Peace Lab put into practice what I was trying to grasp in theory. I am also very grateful for the group dynamic that developed over the course of the trip. I had so much fun and I would love to do it all again.

Kosovo clearly has its own unique set of challenges, ranging from a lack of visa liberalisation for its citizens, to a lack of recognition from many other countries (most significant of all being China and Russia). Aspirations of becoming a European Union member state are stalled by continued allegations of corruption and unrelenting organised crime. The current political elite is divisive and it is clear that no progress will come as long as they remain in power. The remnants of the UN Resolution 1244 remain, despite continued efforts to transition custody of social order to the local Kosovars. Nonetheless, in the midst of all these struggles I see a recurring commonality. Politics is both a curse word and at the same time the only means through which society can improve (at least in my opinion).

The reality of modern civilisation is that large groups of people living together need legitimate organisation and leadership. People are angry and frustrated at politicians, and rightly so. However, I think we go wrong when we reject the political order altogether. “What about civil society!?” I hear you cry. Well, I agree that civil society should play an important role in pushing for the things that people need and want. However the point is that we need politics and government to deliver it. Civil society is not centrally organized enough to ensure stability in the long term. It should push for these things, but cannot be counted on to provide them in itself.

At the end of this course I have realized the following: 1) The people of Kosovo deserve better. There is an undeniable will to progress and become an advanced nation. We just need to work out how to remove the obstacles in the way of this. 2) The expectations you have about a place are more likely to be wrong than right, and the only way of verifying is to go there and see it for yourself. Despite the struggles (of which some I have described above), Kosovo functions very well, especially considering the lack of resources it has at its disposal. 3) My passport holds so much value compared to that of other people. Okay, we can drop the Brexit joke here, but regardless, I am extremely lucky to be born on the particular area of the earth’s soil that I was, as opposed to another patch of ground on the other side of a socially constructed border.

Thanks for reading and I will leave you with a photo I took when we were in the Roma, Ashkali and Egyptian community on the outskirts of Prishtina.