Timothy Kenny writes for Tirana Times
PRISTINA, Kosovo – What to do about this dusty Balkan backwater is a problem that’s nearing the end of its diplomatic rope in European talks.
Kosovo remains a difficult, ungainly issue for the West. I lived there from May 2002 to March 2003, training journalists. I have returned to Pristina since then and kept up with friends and developments.
UN diplomat Martii Ahtisaari, the former Finnish president who has arrived at an impasse in talks between Serbs and Kosovo’s ethnic Albanians, is expected to begin shuttle diplomacy between Belgrade and Pristina, Kosovo’s capital, in February 2007. He’d like to kickstart into action 10 months of talks about Kosovo independence.
But Ahrisaari’s diplomatic woes – which may eventually force him to drop the problem of Kosovo independence into the lap of the UN Security Council – is not the real worry that lies ahead for the province. Clearly, some form of independence for Kosovo will come eventually.
What’s more troubling is whether Kosovo’s cultural mindset, weighed down by tradition and family alliances, will allow democracy to take root in the near term or decades from now. Kosovo is a secular Muslim society where few but the elderly regularly visit the mosque. Religion or government are not the glue that binds this place together; extended family does.
What does democracy and self-rule mean for a society in which the clan holds more importance than city government, where room for compromise is constrained by social order and an unforgiving past?
Consider the following:
* Seven years after NATO bombing put an end to Serbian rule in Kosovo, cuts in electricity and water remain common. In Pristina, a city of some 300,000, people continue to put up with the inconvenience of intermittent electrical power as if it were no more important than a missed newspaper delivery. In Western Europe or the United States – even in Romania where I lived as a Fulbright scholar in 1991 – the public outcry over such bureaucratic incompetence would force a resolution of the problem. Kosovars grouse but take no action.
* During my first winter in Pristina, with snow falling and the temperature hovering around 20 degrees one January day, I asked the office maintenance man at if he was going to sprinkle salt on our icy steps and sidewalk. I had managed to safely get inside without falling, but barely.
“Salt?” he said. “Is that what you do in America? Put salt outside on the steps?”
“Yes,” I said, “so people don’t fall down and hurt themselves.”
“I see,” the maintenance man said. “But why?” he asked, shrugging his shoulders. It made no sense to him to salt a community walkway. It was outside the bounds of his property and sense of responsibility.
*In Taslixhe, the upper-middle class section of Pristina where I lived, mothers scolded their children to stay away from an open sewer pipe that spewed foul-smelling waste onto cobblestone streets. The pipe remained broken for several months before a road crew patched it; the fix lasted five weeks before the problem returned.
The health hazard was still in evidence two years later when I returned to my former neighborhood of late model cars, well dressed residents and elaborate brick houses overlooking distant mountains.
Citizens of successfully emerging democracies in Eastern Europe – and I know scores of them – have bought into the notion that civil society is crucial to nationhood. Kosovo has not yet done so.
Kosovars are certainly capable of eventually fashioning an independent future free from oversight by the European Union or the UN. But Kosovo can expect tough going in its transition to democracy. Until it establishes a broader sense of itself, an identity that can overcome the population’s inherent suspicion of outsiders and its staunch reluctance to abandon traditional thinking mired in retaliation, Kosovo will struggle with the demands of democracy.
What it means to be a Kosovar today does not hold out the best hope for democratic success. Kosovars are capable, intelligent and hard working. Their commitment and generosity to family is widely known. Their way forward to true independence is not yet clear, however.
The province’s successful future will emerge when ordinary Kosovars begin to live as if their country shares common goals, a place where being responsible for constructing the greater good starts by demanding the repair of a broken sewer line or salting an icy winter sidewalk.
[Timothy Kenny, a former newsman, non-profit foundation executive and Fulbright scholar, is an associate professor of journalism at the University of Connecticut.]
