DECEMBER 2007
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."
Kingdom of Illyria
Statue of Illyrian soldiers in Dyrrachium (Durrės).
Most historians believe that the Albanian people are in large part descendants of the ancient Illyrians, who, like other Balkan peoples, were subdivided into tribes and clans.[5] The name Albania is derived from the name of an Illyrian tribe called the Arbėr, or Arbėresh, and later Albanoi, that lived near Durrės. The kingdom of Illyria grew from the general area of modern-day Albania and eventually controlled much of the eastern Adriatic coastline. Scodra was its capital, just as the city is now the most important urban center of northern Albania. The earliest known king of Illyria was Hyllus (Albanian: Ylli, English translation: "Star") who was recorded to have died in the year 1225 BC. The kingdom, however, reached the zenith of its expansion and development in the 4th century BC, when King Bardhyllus (Albanian: Bardhyli, English translation: "White Star"), one of the most prominent of the Illyrian kings, united the kingdoms of Illyria, Molossia and a good part of Macedon under his control. Its decay began under the same ruler as a result of the attacks made by Philip II of Macedon, father of Alexander the Great.
The Illyrians created and developed their culture and language in the western part of the Balkans, where ancient writers mentioned them in their works. The regions that the Illyrians inhabited were expansive, encompassing the western Balkan peninsula, north to central Europe, and east around the Lyhind Lake (Ohrid Lake). Other Illyrian tribes also migrated and developed in Italy. Among them were the Messapii and Iapyges. The name Illyria is mentioned in works since the 5th century BC while some tribes are mentioned as early as the 12th century BC by Homer.
The beginning of Illyrian origins date to the 15th
century BC, during the mid-Bronze Age, when distinct
Illyrian ethnic features began to form. By the Iron Age, the
Illyrians were fully distinct and had inherited their
developing anthropological features and language from the
Neolithic and Bronze Ages. The old theory that the
Illyrians came from Central Europe during the
seventh to ninth centuries has been disproved by studies
performed following World War II. The fact that graves
with urns, characteristic of Central Europe, are not
found in Illyrian settlements severely damages the
theory. Central European influence on the Illyrians is a
result of cultural exchanges and movement of artisans.
RAP
STAR KRASNIQI, 27 YRS., LEADS THE ELECTION BETS
PRISTINA, Kosovo: It is perhaps a sign of the changes
under way in this breakaway province of Serbia that Memli
Krasniqi, Kosovo's most famous rap star, is trading in
his baggy jeans for a pinstripe suit, and his
anti-establishment lyrics for a political career.
Krasniqi, 27, who is running in Kosovo parliamentary
elections, which are being held Saturday, used to rap
about the horrors of ethnic cleansing, communal violence
and his irritation with the international community. But
today, the visceral frustration of his songs is being
directed at his own
government, which he accuses of failing Kosovo in the
eight years since the territory came under United Nations
protection and the last NATO bomb fell over Pristina.
"We've waited so long for freedom, but somehow I
don't feel free," Krasniqi raps in a recent song.
"Something's not right; I see the same since eight
years. The offices are full of crooks that sell lies to
us. And in the back
of the people fill their pockets full."
The soft-spoken Krasniqi, who managed to take a break
from the recording studio to study at the London School
of Economics, says he is just as concerned about Kosovo's
60 percent unemployment rate and its rampant corruption
as he is about Kosovo's aspiration for independence - the
one issue upon which all the ethnic Albanian parties here
agree. "My biggest frustration is with the
incompetence of our government," he said on a recent
day at a hip café in Pristina, as tables of young fans
pointed at him and stared. "It's a joke. More than
40 percent of Kosovars are living
in poverty. There are constant power cuts. The ministry
of trade is run by a historian. And the government
recently spent €1.7 million to refurbish a boulevard
in Pristina with marble sidewalks."
Yet even as he recited his litany, Krasniqi acknowledged
that the situation was "10 times" better than
when he was a teenager. It was then that he discovered
the subversive lyrics of rappers - N.W.A., Ice Cube and
Ice-T, and saw parallels between the angry
disenfranchisement of young African Americans living in
inner-city America and the desperate isolation of young
Albanians living under Slobodan Milosevic. "Back
then, we were occupied, we had no radio station, no TV
station, and the opportunity to express yourself was
limited," he said. "Rap provided an
answer." He is running for Parliament with the
Democratic Party of Kosovo, a group led by a former
Kosovo Liberation Army warrior-turned-
still legally a part of Serbia and under the control of
the United Nations.
Krasniqi says people are drawn to his
party because of its "street cred" as a group
of former guerrilla fighters "who were ready to give
their lives for Kosovo." Krasniqi's star status has
helped galvanize young people, including nearly 100,000
fans who showed up at 15 concerts the party sponsored
across the country. Recent polls show his Democratic
Party of Kosovo in the lead, followed by the Democratic
League of Kosovo, and many analysts expect the two to
form a
coalition government. While he has focused his campaign
on domestic issues, Krasniqi says he is getting impatient
over Kosovo's future status. "When George Bush
recently went to Tirana and said we would get our
independence sooner rather than later, I said, 'No -
sooner or later doesn't have a date.' "
He also says he remains deeply disturbed by the ethnic
divisions in Kosovo. In 2000, a hit on his debut Album,
"It's a Shame," expressed his despair that the
end of the war had not altered the situation in
Mitrovica, a city where a bridge across the Ibar River
separates ethnic Albanians in the south and Serbs in the
north. "The future's gonna be the same as the past,
if you don't change your ways very fast," Krasniqi
rapped. "Just another thing, mister politicians,
and a journalism professor, rose to international fame
when the BBC played one of his songs, "All Bad
Things Around Us," in a 1995 broadcast. During the
NATO bombings in Pristina, his recording studio was
bombed and he lost many of his songs. After the war in
1999, he joined the Democratic Party of Kosovo and became
its youth chairman.
Some of his fans complain that he has become too
mainstream. "There is no more fire and anger in
him," said Linda Gusia, a radio host. "Now he
is just another politician in a suit." But Krasniqi
retorts that his journey from angry young rapper to
tie-wearing politician reflects Kosovo's own maturation.
"You can effect change more through politics than
through rap," he says, though quickly adding:
"Even as a rapper, I was never into gold chains,
fast cars and bling."