APRIL-MAY2008

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/7311534.stm

BBC NEWS (UK)
Monday, 24 March 2008, 16:52 GMT

Icy mood grips Kosovo ski resort

Business has dried up at a once bustling ski resort in Kosovo since the territory's ethnic Albanians declared independence, the BBC's Martha Dixon reports.

As we head towards the mountains, we pass banner after
banner.

The red and black eagle of the Albanian flag lines the roads along with American and British flags - signs that this province is still rejoicing in its hard-won independence.

But as we climb higher, the mood suddenly changes dramatically.

On the side of the winding roads, Nato-led K-For troops watch for trouble behind tanks and armoured cars.

Isolated Serbs

Then an eerie silence greets us as we pull into one of the best-known ski resorts in the Balkans - Brezovica.

These slopes are inhabited by Kosovo's minority Serbs.

The 12,000 Serbs here are now in an isolated mountain
enclave, surrounded by a place calling itself a different country.

Authorities here shut the ski lifts when Kosovo declared independence from Serbia in February. The move was done partly in protest, partly because of security worries. For nearly 50 years, Serbs and Kosovo Albanians have skied together in this resort.

Brezovica has survived all of former Yugoslavia's
turbulent history. It was one of the few places where politics were left behind.

Serb restaurants at the resort took pork off the menu to accommodate their Muslim guests, and the resort was recovering well after the downturn during the 1998-99
Kosovo war.

Empty restaurant

But that friendship appears to be over for now. And the situation calls into question whether the two communities can ever live together in an independent Kosovo.

In his empty restaurant Orle Jovanovic, head of the local business association, says the resort's closure has spelled economic disaster for Serbs. There is talk of shutting down the ski businesses to make cheese instead, or other local specialities.

"Serbs and Albanians have always got along on this mountain," he says. "But since independence we have felt cut off. The EU needs to sort out this situation."

Before Kosovo declared independence, Brezovica hosted
10,000 skiers every winter weekend, many of them middle-class Kosovo Albanians. On the slopes we find just one dedicated family - here to ski.

Main feature

Gani Mehmeti and his three children are all forced to walk up the hill with their skis, the old-fashioned way. Gani, a construction worker from nearby Pristina, has been coming to this mountain for more than 30 years. As a Kosovo Albanian he has never had any trouble with the Serbs here.

"Every year everything has been OK," he says. "We had
great pleasure from this mountain. Today I came with my family and I see that the lifts are not working. It's not a good feeling."

Brezovica is one of the main features in Kosovo's first ever tourist guide, which has just been published.

brezovica in The Handstand december last:
THIS PEAK IS CIVILIZATION; DOWN BELOW A POLITICAL JUNGLE.

BREZOVICA, Kosovo: War is not forgotten here, but there is at least one place in this ski resort - 1,700 meters high, above a mountain blanketed with snow during winter - where Albanians and Serbs try, however uneasily,to get along.

"I don't care who owns Kosovo as long as I can make a living," Ivan
Milosavljevic, the Serbian owner of a ski lodge, said on a recent day as hedowned a shot of slivovitz and watched Serbian music videos with two
Albanian friends. "I hardly ever go down from here because this peak is
civilization. Down below is a political jungle."

His Albanian friend Lutfi Alozi, who comes to ski with his family, nodded
agreement. "We love to ski more than we love to hate," he said, in fluent
Serbian. "We just want to have a good time," he added, before kissing
Milosavljevic on the cheek and saying goodbye.

The sight of Serbs and Albanians drunkenly laughing together is a fragile
sign of optimism in this predominantly Serb-inhabited skiing village,
harking back to its heyday when the rugged natural beauty, powdery snow and Olympic-level ski runs attracted the likes of the former Yugoslav leader Josip Broz Tito.

Today, NATO peacekeepers in camouflage patrol the slopes and Strpce, about 61 kilometers, or 40 miles, from Belgrade, is under the UN protection that followed the 1999 NATO bombing campaign which halted the former Serbian strongman Slobodan Milosevic in his attack on the majority ethnic Albanians of Kosovo.

Eight years later, as the Albanians threaten to declare independence from
Serbia in December, the effects of the war are plain. UN police officers
stand guard at a giant monument to the Kosovo Liberation Army that flanks the entry to town. Serbs displaced during the war now hang laundry from the balconies of abandoned Albanian weekend retreats.

"Sometimes I stand here and can't believe this is Europe," said one UN
officer, throwing up his hands in exasperation.

Many Serbs struggle to stay in business until the ski season brings in
100,000 middle-class Kosovar Albanians who patronize Serb-run restaurants, hotels and shops. Then both sides are forced to put aside differences, if only temporarily.

As divided communities across the world struggle to co-exist - Shiites and
Sunnis in Iraq, Jews and Palestinians in Israel - the case of Brezovica
shows how force of circumstances, economics and even the joy of skiing, can overcome divisions and, however fleetingly, bury the grievances of former foes.

Only in the past two years have Albanian skiers begun to return, and some Serbian businesses are thrilled. Orlo Jovanovic, 58, the Serbian head of Brezovica's local business association and owner of a restaurant called Rok, says the local economy is dependent on middle-class Albanians, and he is determined to draw them back.

It is not easy. He says many Serb-owned restaurants and hotels sit empty
during ski season because Albanian tourists come under pressure to boycott Serb establishments. When his Albanian friends do come to his restaurant, he says, they try to hide their identity from fellow Serbs. He is nostalgic for the days of the former Yugoslavia when he went to the movies with Albanian friends and the restaurant was so full he had to turn people away.

Still, in an effort to draw more Albanian customers, Jovanovic has taken
pork off Rok's menu and is serving veal instead to respect Muslim dietary
laws. Ignoring the concerns of friends about his safety, he recently traveled to Kosovo's capital, Pristina, to try to convince Albanian-owned
travel agents to bring Albanian tour groups to town.

"We used to live very well with Albanians," he said, surveying Rok's empty tables. "Now, my Albanian friends say that they can't come to a Serbian place even to drink a glass of water."

But several Albanians here say that skiing is more important to them than
any residual ethnic tensions. Shkelzen Domi, an Albanian and self-described ski fanatic who has been visiting Brezovica for 30 years, says his friends tell him he is "crazy" after he recently decided to rebuild his weekend home, which was burned down by Serbian officers in 1998. But Domi, who works for an international organization in Pristina, says he wants to put the past behind him.

He says the town's frequent power failures, which leave skiers stranded on chairlifts, are more of a concern than hostile Serbs. He recently found
himself stuck for an hour on a chairlift with a Serb; rather than talking
about the future of Kosovo, he said, the two discussed which was the most
challenging run - before skiing down the mountain together.

He said commercial transactions between Serbs and Albanians can help
overcome past resentments. When his 13-year-old son was recently
apprehensive about buying a Coca-Cola from a 10-year-old Serb, Domi said he taught his son to say "please" and "thank you" in Serbian.

"Every ski season, everyone says there will be a problem, a provocation, a war. But people are fed up with war. They just want to live in peace, and to ski."

Yet, as the new ski season approaches, Kosovo's plan to declare independence is on everybody's mind. Local Serbs are understandably worried, fearing they would be left in a hostile country dominated in all but four districts by ethnic Albanians. Local business people also fear that the authorities of an independent Kosovo would act to take over the resort, costing some of Brezovica's 15,000 Serbs their jobs.

For their part, Albanians worry that the Serb district of Strpce could break away and join with Belgrade. Their favorite ski resort would be lost forever.

Jovica Budovic, director of Hotel Narcis, one of the grandest hotels in
Brezovica, lamented that it limps along with only 5 percent occupancy. He
said the creaking infrastructure at the resort - which can accommodate 5,000 skiers an hour on 10 ski lifts - was in dire need of investment. Few Serbs are willing to invest in a resort that could fall into Albanian hands.

"This used to be a four-star hotel, but now because of the politics here, we are empty and everything is frozen," he said. "Making money is more
important than divisions. It is the politicians who are making the problems."

Such is the mistrust on Strpce's multiethnic assembly that Albanian welfare officials refused to work in the same building with Serbian counterparts. Every time an Albanian welfare officer needs the stamp of a Serbian official, a messenger comes from the Albanian office five kilometers away.

Radica Grbic, the Serbian chief executive of the municipality, punctured the idea that Serbs and Albanians could be happy together. She complained that those Albanians who do come to ski litter the mountain and don't spend enough at Serbian establishments.

Local Serbs, she said in a familiar complaint, live in fear of a recurrence
of March 2004, when rioting broke out and Albanian mobs attacked Serbian minorities in their enclaves, killing 19 people and wounding hundreds of others.

She herself is ready to move to Belgrade if the situation does not improve
and trust is not restored.

"The situation is O.K. now because of the tolerance of Serbs toward
Albanians," Grbic said. "But it's an illusion that things function well
here. I will work with my Albanian colleagues, but our friendship ends
there."