Kosova
I spent a couple of weeks running around that place, with a couple of Kosovar families and with some U.S. paratroopers. It was parachute journalism, in and out job. Part of that time was spent in the city of Urosevac. That’s what the Serbs call it. One of the Serb soldiers who had occupied my host’s house painted on its side as they departed the wistful graffiti, “Bye Bye Ferizai.” In English. There was apparently a sophisticated, maybe even poetic conscript in the bunch. Ferizai is what the Albs call that city. That is where I learned quick ethnic conflict lesson No. 1: When you have people living in the same place who have two different names for it, sooner or later you’re going to have trouble. In Kosovo/Kosova’s case, that’s been just about once a decade for most of the past century, and probably about the same for most of the prior ten centuries. AFP:
PRISTINA, Feb 17, 2008 (AFP) - Kosovo on Sunday declared its independence from an angry and anxious Serbia in the final fallout from the conflict-strewn breakup of the former Yugoslavia.
Tens of thousands of flag waving people packed the capital, Pristina, as the Kosovo parliament voted a declaration of independence which insisted that the world’s newest state would be “dedicated to peace and stability.”
The parliament also approved a new flag for the landlocked state of about two million people.
While the United States and European Union are quickly expected to recognise the new state, Serbia is infuriated by the move and has been given strong support by Russia.
Serbia’s President Boris Tadic said his country would never accept the move.
Kosovo police had to stop several hundred former Serbian army reservists — veterans of the 1998-99 Kosovo war — from crossing into the territory ahead of the independence declaration.
…
Belgrade, which insists it retains sovereignty over what it considers the cradle of Serbian culture and religion, has branded independence an illegal act and a geopolitical land grab by the European Union.
“Whatever happens in Pristina tonight it will not be the end of a part of our history, but just the beginning,” said the influential Politika newspaper, summing up the mood in Belgrade.
Kosovo is what the Serbs call it. Kosova is what the Albs call it. Apparently, it isn’t Kosovo anymore. I learned a few other things in that place. If you need to piss, do it in the road. Don’t touch anything that looks like it might explode. It might explode. History is something everyone is proud of, but no one has a pure one. What’s up this week might be down next week, and vice versa. Kosovo/Kosova had a lot of quick lessons to offer.
It’s a beautiful place, by the way. Green valleys nestled in the mountains, white stucco chalets with red tile roofs down lanes of poplars, lovely when the tiles aren’t collapsed into the house and the stucco blackened by ethnic cleansing operations. Along with both selective and indiscriminate killing, one of the primary Balkan ethnic cleansing tactics is house burning. Drive them out. In the afternoons, sometimes you’d see a column of grayish smoke rising across town. Go to check it out, ask the locals what’s happening, they’d say it’s a Serb’s house, or an Alb collaborator’s house, someone set it on fire. I asked a Kosovar kid, when he was a refugee in New England, what was the strangest thing you saw here?
“Houses made of vood!”
He laughed. You can rebuild a stucco house, lay new roof poles and tile. What kind of moron would make his house out of wood?
House burning hasn’t been an issue where I live.
Let’s see, what else did I learn there … this morning’s death splattered on the ceiling and walls, and old death coming out of a mass grave smell entirely different, yet exactly the same. Maybe that’s why history and the present in Kosovo/Kosova are never far apart.
The Serbs, who claim the place as part of their heritage, were done in by math. They’re outnumbered 10 to 1. Then, after Kosovars, as the Albs are called, had been allowed education and advancement under Tito, Slobodan Milosevic turned the clock back. He used the ancient symbolism of the 1389 Serb defeat at Kosovo Polje (Push Kosova, if you’re an Alb) to get the Serbs in the mood for war as Yugoslavia was breaking up. He made a big speech there, told the Serbs no one was going to push them around anymore, then took that show on the road. Kosovo itself was the last field of conflict in the latest bloody Balkan war, adding maybe 10,000 to the larger war’s toll of about 100,000. The Kosovars reacted to renewed Serb repression with a violent insurgency in 1996, and in 1999 Milosevic showed them the border. It was his undoing.
One other quick Balkan story. When I arrived at that house in Ferizai with my host, himself coming back from being a refugee, a Balkan ax had been stuck in the door. It was a calling card, meant to send a message. It looked like a medieval battle ax, with a long blade jutting out from the shaft and hanging down, not like our ax blades that stick straight out from the shaft. It probably was a modified medieval battle ax design, because that’s how they do things in the Balkans. The way their grandfathers and great-grandfathers and great-great-grandfathers did it, all the way back.
The Kosovars are low-key as Muslims go. They’re drinking Muslims. The women don’t cover up. They are Muslims who like America. They’re also Europeans who like America. Pretty rare combo. I liked them.
OK, one more Kosovo story. My favorite thing to do in Kovoso. In the villages, when they aren’t working, when people come to visit, the men will spend the afternoon sitting on mats around the walls of a big room, smoking, drinking heavily sweetened tea in little glasses, Turkish style. When you come in and sit down, the men will pronounce, semi-formally, “Burim ni sigori!” … “I give you a cigarette” … and flick a Marlboro across the room. They are pretty good at this and can land them right in front of you where you’re sitting cross-legged on the mat. You can smoke them, or when other men come in, you do the same thing. “Burim ni sigori.” Cigarettes flying across the room. The women generally hang in the kitchen, especially in the villages, though not exclusively by any means. But there’s always one on tea duty, watching like a hawk to see whose tea glass is running low, to move in with the thick cold tea, the hot water and the three or four spoons of sugar. Because while it isn’t an oppressive Middle Eastern kind of Islam, and women get to have careers and talk to men and wear low-cut blouses and all that, it still tends to be a traditional male-dominated society. At least, that’s how it was nine years ago. Anyway, by the end of the afternoon you have a pretty good nicotine and tea buzz going. Then, if you’re in the villages, one of the women comes around with a ewer, bowl and towel so you can wash your hands. The women roll out the low table, bring out the platters of bread and roast chicken, and you take it and slap it on the table top and eat it with your hands. They’ll give you a plate and utensils if you like, but they like it when you “eat like a man.”
Good luck, Kosova. It’s bad luck for the Kosovo Serbs. I met a few of them as well, in a pathetic state and frightened at that point, and I felt bad for them, screwed by their leaders and by maybe their own choices and actions, as well as by the history and the math. But apparently this ugly history isn’t quite over yet.
Prior, indirectly related to Kosovo/Kosova: It Breaks My Heart Every Time
Topics: Balkans, Kosovo/Kosova
Posted by Jules Crittenden at 10:46 pm on Sunday, February 17, 2008
8 Responses to “Kosova”
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February 17th, 2008 at 11:49 pm
You gotta admit that the Serbian rationale for claiming sovereignty over Kosovo: “We lost a battle here 600 years ago”, is pretty lame.
February 18th, 2008 at 8:21 am
[...] Answer: The Balkanization of the Balkans, as humorous as it may be, is discomforting to those of us who studied World War I. I am kicking this one over to Jules Crittenden, who has actually been there. [...]
February 18th, 2008 at 9:26 am
“It’s bad luck for the Kosovo Serbs.”
No kidding. About half the Serbian population of Kosovo seems to have vanished in the last few years. Guess ethnic cleansing is o.k. as long as its not on the front page of the newspapers.
February 18th, 2008 at 10:28 am
This is exactly why I have such a problem with the multiculturalism fetish. Like communism it bucks human nature, and for that reason is doomed to failure. History shows that where distinct cultures overlap, they will almost certainly end up in conflict at some point. There needs to be an allegiance to a greater authority (whether willing or forced) to tamp down the conflict. Especially in the case of force, sudden violence will likely erupt when that authority is removed.
February 18th, 2008 at 5:14 pm
You are the first site that I think agrees with me.
Most of the Serb defenders make it out that the Muslims just recently and illegally entered Kosovo and thus outnumbered the Serbs.
From everything I can find, Muslims have outnumbered Christians in that area for the last couple hundred of years and the process was expedited as Christians converted to Islam to gain benefits under the Ottomans.
Right now, there are 2 million Muslims and 200,000 Serbs in Kosovo.
Why would a Christian Serbia want 2 million Muslims in their midst anyway?
February 20th, 2008 at 7:19 am
El Secretario General de la OIC se “alegra de la independencia de Kosovo porque será un as en la manga para el mundo islámico”
February 21st, 2008 at 12:52 am
Well, grumpy, judging by what went on in Bosnia there wouldn’t be 2 million Kosovar Muslims in Kosovo for long if the Serbs had their way. That, as I understood it correctly, was the reason for intervening when we did. On the other hand, it does not seem that there will be any Serbs there at all soon if the Muslims have their way.
March 22nd, 2008 at 8:42 pm
[...] Jules Crittenden It’s a beautiful place, by the way. Green valleys nestled in the mountains, white stucco chalets with red tile roofs down lanes of poplars, lovely when the tiles aren’t collapsed into the house and the stucco blackened by ethnic cleansing operations. Along with both selective and indiscriminate killing, one of the primary Balkan ethnic cleansing tactics is house burning. Drive them out. In the afternoons, sometimes you’d see a column of grayish smoke rising across town. Go to check it out, ask the locals what’s happening, they’d say it’s a Serb’s house, or an Alb collaborator’s house, someone set it on fire. I asked a Kosovar kid, when he was a refugee in New England, what was the strangest thing you saw here? “Houses made of vood!” [...]