Borders and Barriers
It’s odd how we’re in mid-June and the weather still has not warmed up and it rains constantly. According to the locals, this weather isn’t typical of the area. I joke with my colleagues that I must’ve arrived in London instead of Pristina with how much it’s been raining. Fortunately, I work in an office, but this rain doesn't’t stop people from working outside as I can hear construction sites buzzing with activity despite the rain.
I was assigned to research further into Kosovo’s extradition process which required me to go to the Rilindja Tower in downtown Pristina as that was where the Ministry of Justice was located. Kosovo has two real problems with extradition; many countries still do not recognize it as a country and since it is a new country, they have few up to date extradition treaties. Kosovo currently has extradition treaties with countries where Kosovars are most likely to immigrate to or visit such as Switzerland, Turkey, the United States, and others. Even though Serbia is right on the border of Kosovo, they have not extradition treaties with Kosovo as they still do not recognize it as a country. In their view, the KLA liberation was a terrorist insurgency and NATO had bullied them to let go of Kosovo with their bombing campaign. The lack of an extradition treaty with Serbia creates major problems as there have been instances of Serbian citizens who had committed a crime in Kosovo and fled to Serbia and Serbia refuses to hand them over. To make matters more confusing, many of these Serbian citizens are ethnic Albanians, they are just officially citizens of Serbia. They may have lived in Kosovo for a long time but are Serbian citizens and they can escape to Serbia to avoid prosecution.
Kosovo seems to have a noose tightened around its neck by Serbia and it seems like the Kosovar people are used to it. Speaking to locals, I haven’t gotten a sense of anxiety despite two major events that happened recently which strained Kosovo’s relationship with Serbia. A few weeks ago, elections were held in some towns in the north of the country and the Serbian Prime Minister told Serbians living in Kosovo to boycott the elections. The voter turnout was abysmal and naturally an unpopular politician was elected, and the Kosovar Serbian population was not happy. In addition, within this week of me writing this post, three Kosovar policemen were captured by Serbian police. Kosovo states that the Serbian police illegally crossed into Kosovo and captured them, while Serbia claims that the Kosovar police were deep in Serbian territory when they were captured. In other countries, this would cause great anxiety among the populace and people would fear some sort of violent confrontation between both countries. Here? It feels like it’s business as usual. I rarely hear people talking about it on the street – it’s just normal. On one hand, it’s nice that people don’t let fear consume them in their day-to-day lives, but on the other hand, this type of relationship between two countries should not be normal. But alas, this is just another day in the Balkans.
To really get a better understanding of the Serbian minority, I recently started Serbo-Croatian language lessons. We work with Serbian attorneys and almost all of them do not speak English or Albanian, so my colleagues must do all the talking since they learned Serbian under Yugoslavia. Every student in my class is a professional, and they all tell the same old story; Serbians refuse to speak Albanian, and they need to learn Serbian to communicate with clients. Many Albanians here claim that Serbians know Albanian and they just refuse to speak it, and I think there is some truth to that given my experience, but at the same time, Serbian villages end up as ethnic enclaves where the only Albanian you’ll ever see is on a government building or sign because both languages must be shown on government property. And depending on where you go, someone has blacked out the language that they don’t like. Many times I have walked through Pristina and I noticed Serbian on a road sign blacked out. It’s easy to just say that both sides should just get along, but that is foolish given that the scars of the war are still fresh. I just can’t see a realistic solution to this problem unless Serbia gives in and recognizes Kosovo’s independence, but that is essentially political suicide for a Serbian Prime Minister.
It’s a real shame, because for a country this small and economically weak, Kosovo has incredibly strong political and legal structures. Comparatively, Albania is significantly richer with over twice Kosovo’s GDP, which is largely owed due to its booming tourism industry. But there is rampant political corruption and organized crime in Albania. Kosovo had problems with corruption and organized crime during the chaos the country suffered after 1999, but they eliminated most of it with anti-corruption policies and significant judicial reforms. Its political and judicial structures are comparable to many Western democracies, which is something Kosovo should take great pride in. Despite its modest economic situation, and new country status, the biggest obstacle for Kosovo in its development as an advanced Western democracy is Serbia. It's an odd thing, in denying Kosovo's existence as a sovereign state, it impedes Kosovo's ability to become a part of the EU, and in turn, Serbia is unable to get EU membership by denying Kosovo's existence. In the long run, they both suffer.