Adventures in Deutschland: The Balkans: Part IV: Kosovo!

Huzzah! The last leg of our trip was Kosovo! We arrived in Pristina at about 11pm to the best hotel I think I've ever stayed in (Hotel Afa - go there. Be amazed). Everyone was super friendly, they even kept the kitchen open a little longer just for us to have some excellent veal soup, there were massage chairs in the lobbies of two of the floors (for free!), showers that looked like space shuttles (with jets on the sides, a shower radio, lights inside the shower, and some of them doubled as a sauna and jacuzzi), a beautiful garden, and the best breakfast buffet ever. I made myself multiple chocolate crepes every morning. That's right. Crepes. With chocolate and bananas. They also had breakfast pizza, way too many varieties of cheese and meats and bread to choose from, eggs, and delicious fruit. Apart from the amazing hotel, Pristina was also pretty cool. A few pictures to start things off:

the view from our room

couldn't resist a picture of this!

A fountain dating back to the Ottoman Empire!

That's right, they have a statue of Bill Clinton

The Newborn Monument (unfortunately the street prevented me from backing up to get the whole thing)

One of the teachers at the IES center is actually from Pristina, Kosovo, so she knew exactly what to show us, and also speaks Albanian, so things were a little less stressful with her there to translate!

Time for a quick history lesson again: In the 90s, the Kosovo Liberation Army took up arms against Serbia, but it wasn't until there was a massacre of more than 70 Kosovars that an intervention was triggered. Serbia refused a proposal for peace, even though the Albanians accepted, so the United States bombed military points in Serbia and Kosovo for three months. Although Kosovo had been almost completely cleansed of Albanians, they came back very quickly once the UN troops arrived. The UN ruled until 2008, when the EU came in as a supervising mission. There are still international troops in Kosovo, but a lot fewer, and EULEX is there Today, Kosovo is still not recognized as a sovereign state by all countries.

Our first day, we visited EULEX; because 5 member states of the EU do not recognize Kosovo as a state, their Pristina office has to be careful of the language they use in their reporting so as not to upset those 5. Other than that, though, they said that everything runs fairly smoothly. The goal is to keep the rule of law and enforce the actions of EULEX, so they look past the issue of sovereignty to work together. Their goal is to give an example of how investigations should be done, and to implement the message that no one is above the law, but the mafia/organized crime circuit present a problem, because prosecutors are often threatened if they go after big targets.

We also talked to a political party leader, Albin Kurti. His opinion on EULEX was that they are focused on short term stability, which is in spite of injustice, rather than on long term stability. He also talked about the problem of "Brain Drain." Students go to college, get diplomas, and wait for foreign investment, but it doesn't come and there are no jobs, so the best and the brightest leave the country.

Finally, we went to KFOR Kosovo. Their view was that EULEX is a police mission and a judiciary; the institutions of Kosovo don't have the ability to go into northern Kosovo, so EULEX acts as a first responder there. In the south, there is "dynamic stability" - democracy in action. KFOR sits back and lets the institutions figure out for themselves how to deal with problems like protests or demonstrations; once the institutions can no longer handle the situation, they bring in EULEX, and if the situation is still not resolved, they call in KFOR. KFOR is there to support the peace, so as to enable dialogue; their two biggest concerns are SASE (safe and secure environment) and FOM (freedom of movement).

Okay, so those were the main highlights of things, but again, feel free to ask any questions! I have a lot more notes on most of the meetings, so I just tried to touch on the big topics. Now for some more pictures! We visited a culture museum: