Would You Live in Kosovo?

This appeared on my Reuters AlertNet blog on 12 March 2007.

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Anyone who has followed Kosovo over the past decade or so knows that public debate on both the Kosovan and Serbian sides is fairly limited. It can seem like two monotones talking past each other: commentary in the media follows those familiar conflict mentality fall-backs of ancient history lessons and attempts to reinforce "our" victimhood. Only rarely does any local commentator really come up with something new to say, despite -- or perhaps because of -- the fast-approaching final status decision. This weekend in Belgrade was one of those rare moments, when a very refreshing opinion piece appeared in a key Serbian newspaper.

Lessons from Kosovo

This is a piece I wrote from Pristina for TIME magazine. It ran on 12 November 2001. I was reminded of it in early April 2011, when the editor of an American magazine asked me if they could reprint it as part of an examination of international intervention over the past decades in light of current events in Libya.

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Two-and-a-half years after NATO bombers attacked Yugoslavia to force a resolution to the Kosovo conflict, the breakaway region is holding its first general elections on 17 November. The election will lead to a 120-seat assembly and a president, institutions that will hold little power but have great symbolic significance.

Most Kosovars feel they know the outcome of those elections already. Ibrahim Rugova's Democratic League of Kosovo (LDK) is likely to win a majority just as it did in local elections last year, and Rugova will likely be Kosovo's first president. The campaign has mostly been straightforward and without incident, and this lack of excitement is generally seen as a victory for the international community. Being in Kosovo as U.S.-led bombing continues in Afghanistan, I cannot help but think back to 1999 when the same bombers were pelting this country. Like many people here, I find myself wondering what lessons Kosovo holds for the international community and Afghanistan today.

Kosovo Shows What Divides Europe Today

This article appeared in both Czech and English in Britské listy on 19 March 1998, and then it ended up in various forms in Central European outlets like Prostor, Svobodné slovo and the Hungarian magazine Beszélő.

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At London University's School for Slavonic and East European Studies on Wednesday evening, a roundtable discussion was held on the subject of Kosovo. Seated on the panel and in the audience of perhaps 150, were not just dusty academics but also diplomats and activists highly involved in the issue.

Speakers included the Albanian ambassador in London, the director of the London Kosovo Crisis Centre (a lobbying initiative), BBC correspondents, an official from the UK foreign office and the former British ambassador to Belgrade. The panel was admittedly lopsided because the invited Serb representatives declined their invitations, but that hardly prevented the conversation breaking out into a boisterous argument.

Its true that everyone in the room agreed that the situation in Kosovo was desperate, and everyone agreed that Belgrade's intransigence was the major barrier to solving the problem. Everyone in the room who opened his or her mouth noted the parallels between Bosnia in 1990-1 and Kosovo today. Still, a heated argument took place, and several speakers eventually left in a huff.

Right from the beginning, as speaker after speaker made his or her points, the seeds of the disagreement were sown, and it was clear to this observer that two sides were clearly lining up for a strong debate during the following question period.