Sport as a peacebuilding tool

By Oscar Brown

Well, Peace Lab is officially over. I’m writing this in New York City, a day before the start of my summer internship with the NYC Parks Department. It’s hard to believe that it’s only been a few days since we were in Kosovo, learning about peacebuilding from a wide variety of organizations, swimming in beautiful lakes, bouncing around on the bus, and working on our various group research projects. Speaking of the projects, I had the pleasure of working with Ben and Júlia on a project focused on football’s potential as a peacebuilding tool in Kosovo.

The idea for this topic emerged from our shared love of the sport, as well as the realization that the European Championship (Euros) would be starting during our time in Kosovo. We also thought sports would be an easy way to connect with the Kosovar locals. Initially, we planned on having our final product be a multimedia article, along similar lines as what you might see in publications such as the Athletic. Our idea shifted, however, after we met with the journalistic outlet Kosovo 2.0. There, we learned about photo stories and realized that such a method might make more sense for our project.

During the first few days in Pristina, we began to notice that all over the city, Albanian symbols and flags were mixed in with Kosovar symbols. These were mainly impermanent symbols raised specifically for the Euros. Seeing these symbols was a key reason for our decision to lean into photography for our final product, as we felt it was important not only to explain, but also to show the experience of the Euros in Kosovo. Of course, text would still be very important in explaining and analyzing the meaning of the photographs, as well as to present what people told us during our semi-structured interviews and explain how we interpreted those responses. 

In those conversations, we quickly settled on a central question that emerged from the symbols we were seeing —  "Who would you support in a game between Albania and Kosovo?" The responses were mixed and not always entirely clear. We ultimately identified the common theme that, while the older generations identified much more with the Albanian national team, young people tended to be more conflicted about who they would support, indicating the rise of a distinct Kosovar identity within a broader Albanian identity.

In our research, we were also curious to here how Kosovo Albanians would feel if Kosovo were to play Serbia. Due to the violent and traumatic history between the two nations, asking such a question included some risk. For this reason, we tended to steer clear of this question and focused rather, on examining the changing Kosovar identity. There was one conversation, however, where asking this question seemed appropriate — we had just played basketball with three locals (two teenagers and one slightly older) with whom we had built a solid rapport. 

After asking our central question about Albania and Kosovo, I asked the slightly older one about how he would feel if Kosovo played Serbia. Without skipping a beat, he jumped into a tirade about his hatred for Serbs without once even referencing football. I won’t repeat his exact response here so as not to reproduce the sentiment. Later in the conversation, he told us how he was born in Germany after a number of his relatives were killed during the war and his mother was forced to flee Kosovo. This was exactly why we were worried about asking others this question and revealed how easily those who have experienced traumatic violence in the past revert to violence or at least violent rhetoric themselves. This response also illustrates how football, at least on a national level, is unable to help heal a society suffering from shared trauma. 

Ultimately, what resonated most with me throughout the making of this project is this idea that Kosovo’s present continues to be influenced, if not defined, by its unstable past. Each person’s personal history, combined with collective memory leads to a reproduction of hatred and instability. International football is unable to solve this equation, serving, at best, as a reflection of societal anxieties. As a generation of educated young people without personal memory of the war grow into adulthood, it will be up to them to redefine what it means to be Kosovar and find a way towards sustainable peace with Serbia. Any peacebuilding and reconciliation efforts should thus be focused on the youth. At a local level, football may thus be a useful tool to begin this process.

Go ahead and check out our final article to see more pictures and read a more in-depth analysis of football in Kosovo: https://peace037.wordpress.com/2024/06/28/passion-peace-and-politics-the-euros-in-kosovo/

I am unbelievably grateful to Anne de Graaf for her dedication to this course and for guiding us through this amazing experience. I am also thankful to my fellow students for their kindness and camaraderie — I could not have asked for a better group <3.