Ruairi O'Connell

The Dog that Didn't Bark

A weekend trip to the Albanian coast - nine hours, but worth it to find a beautiful, and genuinely unspoiled, beach at the end.

A chance piece of graffiti, however, set me thinking. By the main road in Fier, a town in Southern Albania, someone had written a slogan, roughly translated as 'Long Live Ethnic Albania!'

It occurred to me that 'Greater Albania' was the dog that didn't - and still doesn't - bark. The graffiti was striking because, living in Kosovo, I had never seen the slogan before. Whilst it is possible to meet people who long for a union with Albania, they are a tiny minority in Kosovo (and, I suspect, in Albania too). The graffiti was notable for its rarity.

What are not rare, however, are the Albanian flags which are still common throughout Kosovo (especially during wedding season, when they are waved from cars in the bridal procession). The Kosovo Albanian community still maintains a strong sense of being 'Albanian' - much as Kosovo's Serbs, Roma, Turks, Bosniaks seem themselves as Serbian, Roma, Turkish and Bosniak, in the 'ethnic' sense of the word. It is interesting, however, that for Kosovo Albanians especially, the strong sense of ethnic identity has not translated into a movement for political unification.

There are various reasons for this. The Albanian language spoken in Kosovo is different from that spoken in much of Albania (but all Albanian speakers would claim to speak a common language). Moreover, the experience of the Albanian communities in Albania and Kosovo has diverged greatly since the First World War, most obviously with the Kosovo Albanians' experience under Milosevic. The experience of autonomy in Socialist Yugoslavia (and its withdrawal under Milosevic) cast the political question in very Kosovo-centric terms, as well as creating a "Kosovar" identity (albeit a fluid one which overlaps with other layers). In similar terms, the Kosovo Serb experience under Yugoslavia, forming much of the administrative and military elite for the whole country, mitigated against the formation of a separate Kosovo Serb identity, and towards identification with Serbia (of which Kosovo was a province).

Of course, identity, by its nature, is fluid, and often defies exact definition (and for this reason, I hope to see lots of comments on the blog - and expect most of them to disagree vehemently with me!) But in any case, there has been very limited political activism (in my experience) for a 'Greater Albania'. Of all the provisions in the Comprehensive Settlement Proposal , the prohibition on union with other countries was the easiest to sell to the Kosovo Albanians.

Posted at 16:50 01 July 2008 by Ruairi O'Connell  | 

Clash of Cultures?

A friend's birthday on Friday provided a perfect counterpoint to a busy, and heavily political, week.

With typical creativity, he chose to celebrate it in the Pristina Hammam (a traditional bathhouse -  some images on Agron Islami's website at http://www.pbase.com/agroni/kosova), to show support for efforts to protect and restore some of Kosovo's cultural treasures.

The Hammam was built whilst Kosovo was under Ottoman rule. SInce, then, it has fallen on hard times. Under the socialist Yugoslavia, historical heritage suffered  at the hands of the modernisers (much of Pristina's old town was cleared to make way, so it seems, for a road junction, and a slightly tatty open space by the Kosovo municipal building) . The hammam now is little more than a shell. However, a project has begun to restore it to former glories, (see chwbkosovo)  financed by the Pristina municipality and the Swedish government; good luck to them.

The protection of cultural heritage was a key part of the UN Special Envoy  Ahtisaari's plan for Kosovo (see UNOSEK), because cultural heritage, and its protection, gives a real foundation to people's identity in this part of the world. It can be hard to understand from a British perspective. I understand it thus; the presence of churches, mosques, kulla (traditional Albanian fortified farmhouses, essentially) and hammams serves as physical proof that the communities who built these monuments and structures have historical roots and a living presence in Kosovo, in a region where both have, historically, been called into question.

Sadly, this can mean that culture becomes yet another area of political competition - and worse.  For example,  I talked on Friday to someone claiming that the Decani monastery ( see Decani monastery link), a UNESCO-listed Serbian Orthodox Monastery, was somehow equally Serb and Albanian and that the Serbs had made exclusive claims to it through historical revisionism. It's pretty uncontroversial to acknowledge that in past times Albanians would have visited the monastery, but I've yet to hear a convincing account of how the Albanians in the region built the Church, and  I have little doubt that the Monstary was built by Serbian Kings

 More worrying, however, are the attacks  aimed at removing  the physical evidence of the 'other' community's existence.  Both Albanians and Serbs suffered; during the war, Albanian Kullas were targetted, as were Mosques across Kosovo, and the house in Prizren where the pan-Albanian autonomy movement met was blown up and bulldozed over by Serbian forces. Kosovo Albanians  contrast this with their protection of  Churches during the Ottoman times. There is evidence for this, but it rings  pretty hollow following the events of March 2004 where Serbian Churches were deliberately targetted by extremists (leaving 35 damaged or destroyed).

From the contacts I have with both communities, it seems clear that, to the mainstream on both sides, this cycle is abhorent. But is is clear that, on the extremist fringes, there are groups who see cultural sites as fair game (and I don't think this is a question of religion - it is, instead, a battle of ethnic identities).

The challenge now is to break this cycle. The Kosovo government has to take the lead on this. The approach that they have taken so far makes sense; "these sites are part of everyone's heritage in Kosovo, and we should protect them". This, however, isn't so far from "these sites are ours, and we should protect them" - a line that, again, raises fears of cultural appropriation and assymilation, and has been used by, for example, the radical 'Self-Determination Movement' (or Vetevendosja in Albanian) to that end.

It will also take a degree of hard work and dedication (and not just positive rhetoric) to put in place the kind of protection foreseen in Ahtisaari when , historically, cultural sites have suffered not only from political competition, but also from simple neglect (as with the hammam). This offers a new way to deal with the problem, in a technical way (the British government has provided a grant to the Kosovo government to establish a system to monitor and protect cultural sites).  Most importantly, the Kosovo government, who have funded the repair and reconstruction of the Churches damaged and destroyed in 2004 , need to keep on putting their money where their mouth is.

Posted at 17:04 25 February 2008 by Ruairi O'Connell  |