Day 1

By Tanmaya Chawla

15 June 2022*

 

On the bright morning of 15th June, our first day, a couple of us were walking to the oh-so-famous Newborn sign from our hostel. Over the coming days, the Newborn sign became sort-of a rally point where all of us, like soldiers, would gather before every meeting, as if we were conducting a dispersed unit maneuver. We had arrived in Prishtina around 1am the night before. Since we were too late to explore the city at night, a few of us decided to get a beer at the bar right outside the hostel. This quickly turned into 5 beers when we learned about the unbelievably low price.

 

Owing to my ill-timed response on the sign-up sheet for the pre-meeting presentations, I had to give the first presentation of the trip. This is something I only remembered after my last beer. After researching and preparing notes, I finally went to bed at 5am on the first night. At 9am I remember walking to Newborn with Matt, Tal and Finn. This was my squadron for the rest of the trip. While we walked, my non-caffeinated and sleep-deprived brain juggled everything it had to mentally revise--whatever I had researched the night before. But all I could think about was the date. The 15th of June. Although contested, that is the day when the famous Battle of Kosovo in 1389 took place, where the great King Lazar of Serbia was defeated by Ottoman Sultan Murad, which became an elemental part of Serbian national memory. Among the cacophony of noises, somewhere in my head I wondered, had the Kosovo war ended in Serbia’s favor, would we have seen commemorations of the battle in the streets of Prishtina?

 

We reached our rally point to see everyone from Peace Lab spread out over the tables at the cafe right behind the Newborn sign. I was scavenging for coffee when Anne, our professor,  walked up behind me and requested that I present to everyone what I had found out about the International Organization for Migration (IOM) Kosovo. The International Organization for Migration (IOM) established its operations in Kosovo in 1999. IOM allegedly provides a comprehensive response to the humanitarian needs of migrants, internally displaced persons, returnees and host communities “through humanitarian direct assistance, recreational activities, and a variety of other efforts”.

 

Once at their offices, after briefly being introduced to the work of the organization and its foundations, I only had one question, why are you still here? The number of refugees and IDPs over the last two decades has reduced drastically with an estimated 15,000 people who need assistance, a job fit for the state administration. It seemed like a job well done on part of IOM. So why keep operations going? 

 

I don’t think I found a satisfactory answer to my question. Beyond a sense of obvious indignation about their presence in Kosovo, the representatives gave a very impressive presentation on their current operations. They are funded by the EU, the US,  and other such international actors who have interest in influencing the political and economic conditions of Kosovo in specific, and the world in general. IOM has diverted its attention towards “community stabilization” programmes, preventing “violent extremism”, gathering data on migration flows and other such operations in line with neoliberal agendas of the powerful states. Their work now has nothing to do with humanitarian assistance beyond a mere referral of the state administrative bodies to undocumented people. IOM’s model of peacebuilding is economic peace. Get people to buy and sell from each other and we will attain peace. This has a modicum of truth in it. But what seems to go unacknowledged is the implicit neoliberal values of economic relationality in their models, which is inherently violent and may not hold in Kosovo as neatly as it does in other parts of the world.

After a very mild dialogical bout with the head of counterterrorism at IOM, formerly the Chief of police in Kosovo, I still left the building very hopeful. The people at IOM were an impressive bunch, very well educated and local. Unlike most of the people who head missions for international organizations in Kosovo, they were born and raised in the country. As much as I may disagree with them, I felt like they were trustworthy people.

The rest of our day was filled with meeting different people, a youth organization called Prishtina Shapers, going to local restaurants and bars, and enjoying our first group dinner in the evening. My night ended where my day began: At the bar outside the hostel, drinking € 1 beer, chatting about how beautiful our day had been. My “battle” in Kosovo with international organizations had just begun. 15th June, 2022.

 *Please note that the blogposts are not appearing in chronological order of the days of the trip.

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