An insight into Kosovo

So today I got out of Prishtina (the capital) a bit for a meeting with one of Care's partner organizations. One of the guys from the partner organization spoke pretty good English so as we were drinking coffee after our meeting I was chatting to him about his community, etc. He told me his story about during the war and according to everyone I have talked to here, this was not out of character.

Let me give you a little background before going into it. In Kosovo there are two main ethnic groups: Albanians and Serbians. Albanians are the majority and Serbians are the minority. In addition, there are other smaller minority groups like Roma (gypsy) and Eqyptians. Under Milosovec and up until Februrary of this year, Kosovo was part of Serbia but considered an autonomous state. So essentially, they ran their own affairs but were part of Serbia. Under Milosevec this started to change and Albanias began to be discriminated against. Think of apartheid in South Africa - the minority discriminating against the majority. Anyway, many communities in Kosovo were (and still are) divided ethnically. So there are all-Albanian towns or all-Serbian towns. In the late 90s, the situation escalated to violence - which many of us know about from the NATO bombings, Kosovar refugees, etc. There were "freedom fighters" or a "terrorist organization" depending on who you believe called the Kosovo Liberation Army.

When this violence started by the freedom fighters/terrorists, it also began on a small scale. Serbians tried to demonstrate the power of Serbia by destroying people's homes and property...and here comes the story. This man I was talking to was about ten at the time that all of this started happening. He lived in a village that was part-Serb and part-Albanian. His Serbian neighbor came into his house and lit it on fire, burning it to the ground and causing he and his family to flee to the mountains for the remainder of the violence. He says now that Kosovo has declared independence, Serbs will not return to his community because they know there will be retalliation.

All of this said, the Albanias are not without fault. Their freedom fighters/terrorists provoked some of the violence, and after Serbians began returning to the communities (even some Serbians who had not committed any acts of violence) some Albanians did the same thing to their homes.

I'm not making a judgment here. I'm just trying to provide you with a personal perspective that we may have missed when we were following the politics of the situation or the US involvement. It's not always easy to figure out exactly what's happening on the ground from the US news media after the US has picked sides.

While there are not that many Serbians around (although a few work in the office here) I will try to talk to them as well and get a different perspective.