Pristina - A Few Weeks After

AIM Skopje, 15 July, 1999

Anyone who had visited Kosovo in the first days after entrance of KFOR and then went there again after few weeks could see the difference. The crowd at Blace border crossing which is on one side held by Macedonian customs and police, and on the other by just American soldiers (in both capacities, I guess), is bigger than ever. All the ones and the others are interested in is whether those who are crossing the border without standing in long queues in both directions have KFOR passes (a very important document for speedy exit from and entrance into Kosovo). The others, especially truck drivers, are waiting for hours.

In Pristina, changes for the better are more than obvious. There are a lot of people on the pavements, a lot of cars in the streets and on the roads. There are much fewer taxi drivers with Macedonian licence plates on their cars, local taxi drivers, both in duly marked and in cars without "Taxi" signs, are practically working illegally. Almost all the cafes and resaurants which have not been set on fire are opened and working at full steam. Downtown, the cafes that are popular are "Korzo", "23" and "Brooklyn", the renowned restaurants are "Papillon", "Monako", pizza parlour "Leo"... Parties everywhere, night life in full swing.

At the market places and the wholesale market there is an abundance of goods - vegetables from Macedonia (luckily for the vegetable growers there who have saved their this year's crop by export to Kosovo). Although production of the famous beer from Pec has begun, canned beer from Prilep (Macedonia) prevails, there is also beer from Skopje, as well as Heineken and Amstel, also from Macedonia. It is assumed that a large part of smuggled cigarettes also arrive from there, because it is an open secret that certain Macedonian companies have in the meantime become experts in this kind of activity. A part of the demand for textiles are "covered" by manufacturers from Sandzak.

Vehicles of KFOR, UNMIK (oops!- if pronounced according to the rules of Serbo-Croat, it means "enemy" in Albanian!), OSCE, Red Cross, and others, are still on the move, as if moving is the very sense of their existence. But the British tanks and patrols are rare. This is supposed to mean that the situation is kept under control.

And it is under control, at least when KFOR is concerned. But there are practically no civilian authorities, although you can meet brand new white jeeps with the sign UN on them practically everywhere. Although at first sight the team of Sergio de Mello is working at full steam preparing the ground for Bernard Kouchner whose mandate is establishment of the administration on all levels. The best examples of how things are getting "better" is water supply. During the first visit running water in Pristina was equal to the main prize in lottery. It still is. In the beginning the telephones worked - the ordinary ones not all the time, mobile ones perfectly. In the days of our second visit after the telephone company had been taken over by UNMIK, ordinary phones usually did not work at all and the mobile ones had "No network" on their displays most of the time. It is not in the interest of the Karic brothers mobile phone company not to work, because those who use roaming phones, and they are mostly foreigners, pay 10 German marks for every minute they talk.

And nothing to say about "everyday" problems, such as dying, for instance. Who establishes that a person is dead, who issues a permit for a funeral, who performs funeral services - who digs graves, who buries, and similar are just some of the questions which it is difficult to find an answer to. And the municipal services - like keeping the city clean and collecting garbage (which is most frequently burned in containers, and not collected and taken away)...

The small things life consists of are also open questions, like traffic - from its regulation (driving permits, vehicle registration...), traffic accidents (who is in charge of investigation, who establishes who caused them etc.), crimes and similar. Or, for example, despite allegations of UNMIK that it controls all socially-owned facilities, state-owned stores have been seized and kiosks are being put up downtown Pristina, which have obviously been picked up somewhere else by their new owners who decided to put them up wherever they pleased.

Media are a special issue. There are practically none. There is no place to print newspapers - private ones have been destroyed, state Rilindja is in the hands of UNMIK which has not decided yet what it wants to do with it. Its building has been ruined to such an extent that it is not safe to work in it, and at least six months would be necessary for its reconstruction. The printing works may be operational, but there is the dilemma what would be the best way to exploit them. Similar is the case with Radio and TV Pristina. They are held by UNMIK but it does not know how to solve the problem which is equally valid for other sectors, such as health, education, "state services"...

It is no secret that all these sectors had been cleansed, that all ethnic Allbanians had been removed from them, and Serbs employed in their stead. The problem UNMIK is faced with is how to bring back the former employees removed for political reasons without doing the same injustice by sacking all the Serbs from work.

A change is also evident at the promenade where the Serbs still walk but talk in low voices, in apartment buildings the gates of which are locked, in houses and facilities which are marked by pieces of paper which say that they are under protection of KFOR. An indicator is also the fact that the Albanians put up data on the owners on entrances of their houses and apartments and in windows of their shops, just as it is no secret that certain unidentified people control who is living in apartments, whether homes are vacant and similar.

A few days ago, UN Secretary General Kofi Annan presented five phases of the strategy on Kosovo. The first is defined as "consolidation of the authorities and the administrative structure, including deployemnt of civilian police and the plan of economic reconstruction and development". As matters stand now, it will be a Sisyphean task.

Among the local Albanian politicians, absolutely the most active one is Hashim Thaci. Foreigners arrive and put photographs with him in their albums because he is simply "in". Many of the negotiators from Rambouillet are standing aloof from politics. Some Albanian politicians from Macedonia believe that it is not alright that Thaci is left all alone, with no political support of the others. It could be heard in Pristina that the influence of the Democratic Party of the Albanians (DPA) headed by Arben Xhaferi on Thaci was big. As evidence his recent stay in Tetovo is offered, or his meeting with Macedonian prime minister, but also the assistance given by DPA to Thaci and the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) during the armed conflicts.

We are going back from Pristina to Skopje in a vehicle with foreign licence plates and a conspicuous sign of a Macedonian private village radio station on its doors. The owner and driver has a KFOR press card but he does not even try to conceal that he is not coming to Kosovo to work as a journalist. Every day he brings something from Macedonia to sell. This time he brought 150 plastic bottles of table oil. For tomorrow he is planning to bring "some cigarettes". He needs the KFOR press card just to speed up his way in and out of Kosovo. Simply for business across borders.

AIM Skopje

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