Kosovo and Belgium

By Noé Petitjean

Peace Lab has come to an end, it was an amazing journey full of surprises and teachings that have changed me for life. When I look in retrospective; there are several events and discussions that have changed me and made me evolve. 

One of the first big changes is that Peace Lab opened me to a different kind of complexity, or should I say different kinds of complexities. I imagined that when looking at Kosovo I wouldn’t find an environment easy to understand and easy to navigate. More precisely, it is via my various personal verbal exchanges with organizations and members of our host family, that I realized that there were numerous personal narratives of Kosovo which may or may not differ from what I had learned in class but surely provided me with a different insight compared to the one available in a history book and the media outlets. 

So, I would say that the first complexity I discovered was the complexity of personal narratives, how they contradict each other, but nevertheless contribute in establishing an authentic picture of Kosovo. 

The second complexity I faced comes up when I compare Kosovo to one of my countries (Belgium). In many ways Kosovo and Belgium are different and it might not make sense initially to put both within the same perspective. However, I believe that some of the struggles that people face in Kosovo are to a certain extent similar to a series of troubles which Belgians have to face. The most obvious one to me is the language issue. From the meetings and discussions, I participated in, in addition to the interviews I conducted in Kosovo, one theme that kept coming back was that Kosovar-Serbs and Kosovar-Albanians expressed difficulties communicating together because of the language barrier. As you look through the history of Kosovo you might realize that language has often been an issue and a key identity marker (particularly for the Albanian community). 

An example of such is how after the student protests in Pris(h)tina in 1981 the Presidency of Yugoslavia forbade the use of Albanian language at the University and in other educational institutions. Still today the two universities of Pris(h)tina (University of Prishtina and University of Prisitina temporarily settled in Kosova Mitrovica) each teach only in Albanian or only in Serbian. As such, the people I interviewed also mentioned that one way to build bridges between the different “ethnical” communities would be to learn each other’s language. 

In Belgium, it is very common for a Dutch speaker to speak French, however less common for a French speaker to speak Dutch. When in high school I was offered the choice of learning either Dutch or English. I chose English. Nowadays my Dutch is fair, which means that I cannot have a conversation with more than half of the population in their native language. Is that not bizarre? Belgium, I’d see it as a peaceful country, however a percentage of the population can’t even have a dialogue together. Are we better at peace separated, each in our linguistical region? This made me realize that on the language issue, Belgium and particularly Wallonia must learn from Kosovo. So here I find myself after Peace Lab with a personal struggle about my own country; Really not what I expected!

Moving on to petty Belgian politics, I would like to talk to you about peace-building and peace-making in Kosovo. Before going “in the field” as we say, Anne introduced us to peace-building and peace-making via a crash course. We learned and heard about beautiful concepts such as positive and negative peace, sustainable peace, peace-making, peace-building, peace-keeping, … To me it was simple; I naively thought that the parties must get in a room and discuss. That has been in my opinion what 20 years of UN presence did not achieve. 

But once there I started to realize that before anything else happens, one needs to listen to many, many different narratives of the situation. And, the more you listen the more you get lost and confused. Indeed, communication is key to moving forward but communication is only what I could see. Behind there is history, perspectives (radical and moderate), daily struggles, misunderstandings, manipulation of information, insecurity (physical, social, economic, …) and trust. 

I understood that individual narratives were sentimentally rooted and that the scars of the conflict were passed on from one generation to another. The healing process seemed far down the road. But don’t let this last observation dampen your mood about Kosovo. It is a lovely place with lovely people. I observed that as with my 4 of my classmates I worked on a project aiming to collect Kosovo’s dreams. We would interview people and ask them about their daily struggles but also about their ideal futures and how (via which specific actions) shall this future happen. Indeed, the narratives and answers we collected were contradictory but nevertheless they all shared a common goal and hope for stability, predictability. 

The new generation whether Albanian-Kosovar or Serb-Kosovar doesn’t live for conflict but for opportunities, traveling and a better future. With this common goal in mind it seemed to me that the Kosovo of today has politics clocked in the past and a youth that wishes to move on and if given the means, is ready to rock the outdated status-quo.