Jovanka Broz, the last Yugoslav Icon

The death this week in Belgrade of Jovanka Broz, the widow of Yugoslavia’s former communist ruler, Josip Broz Tito, stirred surprising emotions in me, as in many others. Jovanka, a teenaged partisan during the Second World War before becoming Yugoslavia’s First Lady, had been abominably treated after the death of her husband, expelled from her home without most of her belongings, and placed under house arrest in a shabby dwelling. She had been left in poverty on a miserable pension. She had often been the butt of jokes, denigrated by many as a simple peasant girl. Elizabeth Taylor had reportedly felt peeved when, visiting Tito on the island of Brioni with Richard Burton, who had played the dictator in a World War II partisan movie, she was left in the company of Jovanka, while Burton enjoyed the company of the famously charming Tito. But for others, Jovanka was glamorous. A Kosovo Albanian lady told me how women going to the hairdressers had asked for the Jovanka style.

Jovanka Broz in her prime, with Tito

For years, Jovanka had been largely forgotten. Journalists occasionally wrote of how poorly she had been treated. Some in Croatia argued that she should be brought home to her Croatian motherland (she was in origin a Croatian Serb), given a decent pension and treated with the respect she was due.

But in death she was granted a state funeral, and her passing was reported in international media. Serbian Prime Minister Ivica Dačić spoke movingly of her: ‘She was an important part of history, a history we gave up on, a history we forgot… This is the departure of Yugoslavia’s last icon.’ Thousands attended her funeral, many travelling to Belgrade from other parts of former Yugoslavia.

For many who can remember what Yugoslavia was, a serious, if ultimately failed attempt to build a multi-national community with a common identity transcending its peoples’ diversity, Jovanka was perhaps the last link with a past for which some still feel nostalgia. For all its obvious faults and contradictions, Yugoslavia had something. In its cultural diversity there was a richness, a vibrancy that at times produced brilliance. While the successor states may feel unburdened in their independence, and while they are certainly freer, it is hard to argue that the sum of the parts adds up to what Yugoslavia once was. Above all, Yugoslavia represented a dream of a common life for peoples who had once been at each others’ throats. It was surely better than the squalid nationalism and reversion to mutual destruction that followed the state’s demise. For those that mourned her, the death of Jovanka perhaps rekindled a memory of that dream, of hopes for something better.

Venetians, Serbs and others on Corfu

The idea of visiting Corfu in October held many attractions for me, not least the chance to extend summer, cheat the seasons and escape the autumnal weather of northern Europe. Corfu city is a very attractive town, if rather overwhelmed by mass tourism, even outside the main tourist season. Monstrous cruise liners stand off the new harbour, mercifully some distance away from the historic quarter of the town, spewing off their crowds day after day. What do they come for? As I waited for information at a tourism office by the entrance of one of the town’s two massive fortresses, the man behind the desk tried to point out some of the town’s sites to two elderly ladies. Their response? And where do we go for shopping? For some, it seems, tourism is an enhanced shopping opportunity.

Corfu looks quite different to other parts of Greece, reflecting its very different history. Unlike the rest of the country, it never fell to Ottoman rule. For centuries it was a key stronghold of the Venetian Empire, guarding the mouth of the Adriatic. That Venetian heritage is evident in the town’s architecture, with its narrow streets and multi-storied buildings, often with colonnaded fronts. It is said that the Veneto dialect, once spoken alongside Greek, could still be heard in Corfu within living memory, and a small Roman Catholic population remains on the island, some of them descendants of Maltese immigrants and others of the old Venetian families.

The Ottomans tried repeatedly to capture the island, but the Venetian and Corfiot defenders held on. Looking at the two colossal fortresses that stand at either side of the old town, you can see how. At the entrance of the Old Fort stands a statue of Count Johann Matthias von der Schulenburg, a German who led the successful defence against the final Ottoman siege in 1716. Schulenburg had had a distinguished military career, including fighting under Prince Eugene of Savoy and the Duke of Marlborough in the War of the Spanish Succession.

The Old Fort, Corfu

The Old Fort is a bit of an architectural hotchpotch today. Atop the massive bastions of the Venetian citadel stand square, brick 19th century British barracks that would be more at home in Woolwich than on a Mediterranean island. The island was governed by Britain for half a century after the Napoleonic wars, and it too has left a lasting mark. Even more bizarre is the mock classical St. George’s church, built by the British in the fort’s grounds. Several cannon are displayed inside the fort, with information about where they were made and to which armies they belonged. Some are British, some Venetian, and one is Russian, from the brief period when Russian forces occupied the island during the Napoleonic Wars. Some of the mortars, dating from the 17th century and used by the army of the Serene Republic, were also made in England. Behind St. George’s, I came across several other cannon lying around. On closer inspection, there was the crest with ‘G R’ below a crown; George III.

The vast walls of the New Fort loom over the old port. Built by the Venetians, it is in fact only a little newer than the Old Fort, which was originally built during the earlier Byzantine period. Both have been repeatedly restored, enhanced and rebuilt over the centuries. If anything the New Fort is the more impressive, with its huge curving walls. I looked in vain for the Lion of Saint Mark, emblem of Venice, which I had been led to believe could be found in the New Fort. The lady at the ticket office said there were none. However, at the Old Fort, a stone plaque of the Lion was on display, removed from the wall to which it had once been fixed. The Lion, with its mouth curled in a rather odd, friendly smile, can be seen above the entrance to the reconstructed Venetian barracks that had been destroyed in the German bombing in 1943. Under British rule, the building housed the Ionian Academy, the first such institution of higher education in modern Greece. In front of it stands a statue of Ioannis Kapodistrias, the first head of state of modern Greece, and a native of Corfu. In an illustrious career, Kapodistrias had earlier been Russian foreign minister, but he did not do so well as Greek head of state, and was assassinated in 1831.

After Napoleon rubbed out the Venetian Republic in 1797, Corfu passed to French control. It did not last long, and in 1799 the French were ousted by a Russian-Ottoman force, and Corfu became the capital of the autonomous Septinsular (Seven Island) Republic, under Ottoman suzerainty, with Kapodistrias as Chief Minister. The Russian action is commemorated by a plaque on the little island of Vido, just across from Corfu city. The plaque, unveiled in 2011, and flanked by Russian and Greek flags, has a pointed message for the Greece of today, with its troubled relations with the western-dominated European Union, about the historical ties between the two countries,: ‘To the Greeks and Russians who died for the Orthodox faith of their fathers…’ The French returned in 1807, and remained until the arrival of the British, following the defeat of Napoleon. The French tenure was brief, but they left a lasting mark, notably the colonnaded Liston, nowadays crammed with cafes, that gives on to the Esplanade, a large expanse of green, beyond which is the Old Fort.

The British established a protectorate, the United States of the Ionian Islands, with its capital in Corfu, with a British Lord High Commissioner and an advisory parliament. The former parliament building has a stone plaque outside the entrance commemorating the parliament’s vote in in 1863 in favour of the union of the Ionian isles with Greece, ‘by will of the Ionian people and with the consent of the protecting power Great Britain.’ The islands formally united with Greece the following year. Many signs of the British period remain, not least the Ionian Academy and the grand former residence of the British High Commissioners, the Palace of Saints Michael and George, at one end of the Esplanade, now a museum. In front of the palace stands a statue of Sir Fredrick Adam, one of the High Commissioners, while at the other end of the Esplanade, close to the Ionian Academy, is the Maitland Rotunda, commemorating another British High Commissioner, Sir Thomas Maitland. But perhaps the most poignant memento of British influence is a cricket pitch on the Esplanade, in front of the palace on one side and the Liston on another. I watched a group of local youths playing cricket on the pitch, very badly, it must be said.

Among the various foreign rulers and visitors who left their mark on Corfu, in 1916 the Serbian army came, not as conquerors, but as refugees. Defeated by combined Austrian, German and Bulgarian attacks, the Serbian army retreated through Montenegro and Albania in the winter of 1915-16, together with their elderly King and numerous civilians. They died in their thousands during their journey, from cold, disease, exhaustion, starvation, and the attacks of Albanians who harried them all the way. This terrible death march, known to Serbs as the ‘Albanian Golgotha’, ended when allied ships transported them from the Albanian ports of Durres and Vlora to Corfu. Some 150,000 arrived, but their sufferings had not ended. Adequate provision for them had not yet been made in time for their arrival on the island, and they continued to die.

The Serbian Mausoleum, Vido, Corfu

The Serbian House in Corfu city is a museum dedicated to this not widely known episode in the history of the First World War. As well as artefacts from the time, it contains numerous photographs of the retreat and of the time spent on Corfu. Many of the photos are harrowing. Some of the newly arrived soldiers, as well as the corpses, look like mere bags of bones, reminiscent of holocaust photographs from World War II. Thousands ended their lives in a hospital on the island of Vido, from where they were taken in boats for burial at sea, the ‘Blue Graveyard’ commemorated in a poem by Milutin Bojić, who took part in the retreat. A plaque below the Serbian Mausoleum on Vido contains lines from the poem. At the spot where ferries from Corfu now arrive on Vido, another plaque, next to the one commemorating the Russian capture of the island in 1799, marks the place from where boats laden with their grisly cargos put off in 1916. In fact, the coat of arms on the mausoleum is not that of Serbia, but of the pre-World War II Kingdom of Yugoslavia, combining the emblems of Serbia, Croatia and Slovenia. An inscription in large letters over the entrance reads ‘Serbian Heroes Yugoslavia.’ In 1918, when the Serbian army stormed northwards and westwards from the Salonika Front, winning a state more than twice the size of their pre-war kingdom, it might have seemed that the sufferings in 1915-16 had been rewarded.

The tragedy of the retreat across Albania and the arrival on Corfu was not given much attention during the communist decades in Yugoslavia. The communist regime, basing its legitimacy on the partisan struggle against foreign occupation during the Second World War, preferred to avoid discussion of events earlier in the century, beyond damning stereotypes of Great Serbian nationalism and Croatian Fascism. The connection with the elderly King, who comes across as a heroic figure, sharing the sufferings of his troops, whose frailty at times meant he had to be carried over the mountains, was also awkward for the communists. But nowadays Serbia has been rediscovering its past, and has begun to pay greater attention to this both heroic and tragic episode in its history. Serbian leaders regularly visit the island to pay homage to the heroes of the past. Standing on the walls of the New Fort, I watched the little Vido ferry returning with a group of Serbs on a historical tour, a large Serbian flag flying proudly from the mast. Opposite the Serbian House, a Serbian souvenir shop sells mementoes of the Serbian army’s time on Corfu to the numerous Serb tourists who visit the island.

After the first difficult weeks, the Serbs’ stay on Corfu became more tolerable for the survivors, as some of the photos attest. Naked soldiers were photographed frolicking in the sea. Officers stroll in the town, and go on outings with Corfiot friends, many women among them. One photo shows a wedding between a Serbian officer and a Corfiot woman. In the meantime, the troops paraded and trained for their return to the front.

In the spring of 1916, the Serbian army left Corfu, travelling eastwards to re-join the war on the Salonika Front. But the Serbian government and parliament remained on Corfu until 1918, basing themselves in the grand municipal theatre, which was destroyed by the German bombardment in 1943. The theatre was replaced by a nondescript concrete box typical of post-World War II architecture. I walked round the graffiti-covered, crumbling building, its bare concrete colonnades stinking of urine and smothered in pigeon shit. No one cares about such a building, and even the vandals recognise its worthlessness. The local government has considered pulling it down and replacing it with a replica of the old theatre. In any case, they should pull it down.

The signatories of the Corfu declaration,

Nikola Nikola Pašić (with beard) and Ante Trumbić in the middle

In 1917, a key meeting took place on Corfu between representatives of the Serbian government and the Yugoslav Committee, a group of South Slav politicians from the Austro-Hungarian Empire who had been lobbying the western powers in favour of the formation of a united Yugoslav state. The so-called Corfu Declaration was signed by Serbian Prime Minister Nikola Pašić and Ante Trumbić of the Yugoslav Committee, committing to post-war unification. The Serbian House exhibits photographs of the participants in the discussions. But it was a flawed agreement. The Yugoslav Committee had a very tenuous mandate to speak on behalf of the South Slavs in the Austro-Hungarian Empire. And the Serbs were only lukewarm about the idea, preferring the expansion of Serbia to include all Serb-inhabited lands, leaving out Slovenia and rump bits of north-west Croatia in which they were not interested. The idea of a union of equals never attracted most Serbs.

The Serbian army was joined in its retreat to Corfu by several foreign medical staff. One of them was a remarkable lady called Flora Sandes, who became the only British woman to serve as a frontline soldier in the First World War. In 1914, together with numerous other women, she went to Serbia with a St. John’s Ambulance unit. As the retreat got under way, she was enrolled in the Serbian army. The Serbian House exhibition contains a photograph of her, with others, on Corfu. In 1916 she published An English Woman-Sergeant in the Serbian Army, to help raise funds for the army. She was seriously wounded by a grenade during hand-to-hand combat against the Bulgarians defending Bitola, in Macedonia. She was the first ever woman to be made a commissioned officer in the Serbian army, and was awarded Serbia’s highest military decoration, the Karadjordje Star.

Flora Sandes, in Serbian Army uniform

Flora Sandes is one of several extraordinary British women in the early decades of the 20th Century, who travelled through some of the remotest, harshest regions of the world. Among the others were Edith Durham, who travelled through Albania and other regions of the Balkans, and became a heroine of the Albanian national cause during the First World War; Gertrude Bell, whose unmatched experience and knowledge of the Middle East prompted the British foreign policy establishment to overlook her sex and take her on and make use of her expertise; and Rebecca West, who achieved celebrity status, among other achievements, for her accounts of her travels through Yugoslavia. Their experiences and achievements were remarkable by any standards. But for women, in the conservative, misogynist environments of those places and those times, what they did was heroic beyond anything that any man of their times accomplished.

Re-established links: Gjakova and Tropoje

The recently built Kukes highway and tunnel have transformed links between Albania and Kosovo. Old ties among communities on the two sides of the border are being re-established after decades of communist and, in the case of Kosovo, Serbian rule. Travelling to Tropoje, in the northeast corner of Albania, is now quickest and easiest by the new road, passing through Kosovo, via Prizren and Gjakova (Djakovica in Serbian).

Tropoje is a sparsely populated region, neglected by Tirana since the end of communist rule, despite the fact that current Prime Minister Sali Berisha, the dominant figure in Albanian politics for two decades, comes from here. The main town, Bajram Curri, has not fared well. Lacking the frenzy of new construction that characterises more favoured Albanian towns, Bajram Curri is shrinking, its citizens moving away in search of better prospects. The ill-lit streets have an especially forlorn feel at night. Someone in Tirana told me all Albanian towns were similarly dark and unlit in communist times. Bajram Curri seems hardly to have moved on since then. The high number of UK-registered vehicles is evidence of how many people from the region have moved to Britain. Some of them have moved back with cars they bought there, but many are just visiting for the summer holidays. Strolling through Bajram Curri one evening, a boy from Twickenham, with a pronounced London accent, started talking to me, over to visit the town of his birth.

Bajram Curri

Historically, this region had not looked primarily to Tirana or the coast. Rather, its main link was with Gjakova. Indeed, it was formerly known as the Highlands of Gjakova. Tropoje was part of the hinterland of Gjakova, and it may be becoming so again. Gjakova is a fine old Ottoman town, with a large bazaar, much in the style of many others in the Balkans. Unlike some of them, such as those of Sarajevo and Mostar in Bosnia, or Kruje, near Tirana, the Gjakova bazaar is not at all touristy, at least not yet. Instead, the little shops sell ordinary things to local people, clothes, shoes, hardware. The bazaar has the hustle and bustle so typical of Kosovo, where everyone seems to be doing business in a constant hubbub of activity. The bazaar was damaged during the 1999 conflict, some of its wooden buildings burned. The fine old mosque was damaged. But the damage has largely been repaired, and it has been done sensitively, in keeping with the traditional style.

The furgon (minibus) that drove us from Gjakova to Bajram Curri stopped at several places along the way, picking up supplies from various small shops which were piled along the floor. All manner of things: food; soft drinks; electrical goods. The driver had apparently taken orders from people in Bajram Curri. Travelling to remote areas in Albania it is often like that. The furgons are the conduits for trade. And it Tropoje, it now seems that the source for goods and supplies is coming once again to be Gjakova, as it once was. Old links among Albanian-inhabited lands are being re-established. Will these revived social and commercial ties have political consequences as well? Maybe. Certainly the logic of geography says that Tropoje should never have been separated from Gjakova.

Bajram Curri takes its name from an Albanian hero of the same name. His statue stands in the town, rifle in hand, the picture of the rebel outlaw. Bajram Curri hailed from Gjakova. He fought the Turks and, one of the leading members of the Committee for the National Defence of Kosovo, organised resistance to Serbian rule after 1918, as part of the Kachak insurgency. He served as Minister for War in the Albanian government, but fell out with Ahmed Zogu (later King Zog). Pursued by Zog’s troops, Bajram Curri was trapped and killed (some say he killed himself to avoid capture) in the mountains of the Valbona valley, close to the town whose name now commemorates him.

Was international intervention in Kosovo a mistake?

The recent allegations in Dick Marty’s Council of Europe report linking Prime Minister Hashim Thaci with organised crime, including the murder of people for their organs, were shocking. The levels of corruption and organised crime, and the involvement of leading political figures cast doubt on Kosovo’s fitness for inclusion in European integration. They have also added new grist to the mill of those who see the disputed international recognition of Kosovo’s independence, as well as the NATO bombardment and expulsion of Serbian forces that made it possible, as huge mistakes, and one more shameful episode in the record of ill-conceived international interventions.

First to the history. Let us be clear, the KLA was a terrorist organisation. Frustrated with the failure of the peaceful resistance policy of Ibrahim Rugova to bring about the goal of independence, the KLA sought to advance that goal by violent means. Its attacks were not only against Serbian security forces, but against Serb and other non-Albanian civilians and against Albanians who did not agree with their tactics. The KLA was responsible for serious war crimes, in which several of its leading figures were directly implicated. Its terror tactics continued after the departure of Serbian forces, as it carried out indiscriminate revenge against Serb, Roma and other perceived enemies.

And beyond that, facing elections to newly created representative bodies in the couple of years after the establishment of a UN mandate in Kosovo in 1999, the political parties the KLA spawned carried on their terror against Rugova’s Democratic League of Kosovo, with numerous cases of political violence. These were not heroes and liberators as still portrayed by many Albanians and their foreign cheerleaders. Many of them were vicious criminals. That they have continued their criminal activities to the present day, and, having gained political power, have used it to subvert political structures to their criminal ends and to undermine the development of democratic institutions, should surprise no one.

So was NATO wrong to take the KLA’s side in 1999 and bomb Serbian forces out of Kosovo? Given the nature of the KLA, the readiness of NATO forces to treat them as allies was to say the least distasteful. Yet the decision to use force to stop Milosevic in Kosovo was understandable. Whether there was any viable alternative will long be debated. If there had been another government in Belgrade, an international policy of urging restraint in responding to the KLA’s attacks and negotiations with legitimate Kosovo representatives, above all Rugova, would have been reasonable.

But Milosevic did not respond to the KLA with restraint. His forces embarked on a terror policy of their own, with massacres designed to panic Albanians into fleeing. Add to that evidence of a pre-conceived plan to drive out a large part of the Albanian population, and an international policy of standing by looked indefensible. And Milosevic had form, having sparked the earlier wars of ethnic cleansing in Croatia and Bosnia. The international community had indulged him during the Bosnian peace process, treating him as the indispensable factor for peace in the Balkans, despite his earlier warmongering record. But here he was at it again in Kosovo. Any notion of Milosevic as a peacemaker had surely lost whatever little credibility it had ever enjoyed.

Restraint in Kosovo was not on Milosevic’s agenda. Neither were serious negotiations or a fair deal for the Albanian population. Again, Milosevic had form. He was the instigator of the apartheid-like exclusion of Albanians from all public positions during the 1990s. If he had, thanks to Rugova’s pacific policy, largely kept the lid on violence for most of that period, as much of the rest of former Yugoslavia burned, the whole basis of his approach in Kosovo for a decade before the NATO bombardment was to humiliate Albanians and make their life there impossible. The greatest burden of responsibility for the surge in violence at the end of the 1990s lies at the door of Slobodan Milosevic.

The argument made in some quarters that it was NATO’s bombardment itself that sparked the greater conflagration and the flight of Albanians in early 1999 should be dismissed. Given the violence that the Milosevic regime was already employing in Kosovo, and his past record in Croatia and Bosnia, the decision to employ NATO force, rather than standing by and let Milosevic have his way with the Kosovo Albanians, was justifiable (although the liberal definition of legitimate targets for aerial bombardment throughout Serbia and Montenegro was far more questionable).

Once Serbian forces had been expelled from Kosovo, the whole picture was irrevocably altered. If until 1998 talk of negotiations for Kosovo’s autonomy within Serbia might have seemed plausible, after 1999 such ideas were wholly unworkable. Independence was the only possible outcome, as was privately acknowledged even by some wiser heads in Belgrade. Those who continue to dispute Kosovo’s independence should answer the question of how Kosovo’s Albanians would ever be forced back under Serbian rule, and who would force them? The nastiness of the KLA and of several of today’s leading politicians in Kosovo is not the issue here. It is just about what is possible and what is not. Kosovo cannot be made part of Serbia again.

Marty’s report is of great importance. Many things that were already known about the nature of the government in Kosovo, the prevalence of corruption and organised crime, and the involvement of leading figures, have now appeared with great and refreshing clarity in a document bearing the stamp of a credible international organisation. It cannot be ignored, and its findings must be addressed. There is something rotten at the heart of Kosovo that has its origins in the inclusion of unreformed terrorists and criminals in the new state’s public life.

That this came about is not just a result of the NATO bombing campaign. The real blame is with the failure over many years since 1999 of the international community to face up to and confront the real nature of the KLA’s successors, due to its fear of their capacity for violence and terror and its misguided belief that it could tame and control them, and coax them into normal democratic politics. What is needed is a much tougher and less indulgent policy towards Kosovo’s government, but not any wrong-headed notions that international intervention in Kosovo and Kosovo’s independence were mistakes.

What to do about northern Kosovo?

From Balkan Insight, 2 January 2011

http://www.balkaninsight.com/en/article/europe-must-stay-the-course-in-north-kosovo

Europe Must Stay the Course in North Kosovo

The recent past shows EU pressure on Belgrade can deliver results in northern Kosovo. The question is whether Europe has the will to keep it up.

By Peter Palmer

Among the recent WikiLeaks disclosures, cables from Belgrade and Prishtina confirmed the unease US diplomats felt about the support of officials in Belgrade for the partition of Kosovo.

Frustration with the lack of progress in integrating the mainly Serb-inhabited north has led some international commentators to advocate Kosovo’s partition, perhaps as part of a mutually agreed territorial swap with Serbia’s Albanian-inhabited Presevo valley going to Kosovo in exchange.

But what are the prospects for such a solution, and is it necessary, or desirable?

Partition or territorial exchanges are not publicly stated policy in either Belgrade or Prishtina. When Serbia’s President, Boris Tadic, raised partition as a possible solution in September 2008, he faced condemnation in both capitals, leading him to reaffirm the official Serbian line that the whole of Kosovo remains part of Serbia.

Nevertheless, as the WikiLeaks documents show, some Serbian officials are interested in partition. While acknowledging that most of Kosovo is lost, they assert that the government in Prishtina will never rule the north.

Could Prishtina be persuaded to accept such a loss of territory? The answer would seem to be “no”, unless Kosovo were offered something in return. It is here that the idea of a territorial exchange comes into play. While it is certainly not official Kosovo policy, some officials in Prishtina are prepared to entertain the idea.

However, when considering a territorial exchange, problems of principle and practicality present themselves. International acceptance of the break-up of Yugoslavia has since 1991 been based on two principles, affirmed throughout the wars of the Yugoslav succession and the peace implementation process that followed. One is no change to the former internal boundaries between Yugoslavia’s federal units. The other is no acceptance of the logic of ethnic cleansing, or of the idea that multinational states are unworkable.

These principles remain valid and important, not least for Bosnia and Herzegovina, whose unity continues to be questioned. After the International Court of Justice’s opinion in July on the legality of Kosovo’s independence declaration, the Republika Srpska Prime Minister (now President), Milorad Dodik, drew a parallel with the Serbian position in Bosnia.

And in Macedonia, although relations between the majority and the Albanian minority have improved since the 2001 conflict, the relationship of the latter to the Macedonian state is far from settled. And, if we accept an ethnic redrawing of borders between Kosovo and Serbia, why not elsewhere, in the Caucasus, or in Moldova? Some would welcome the precedent.

Since the break-up of Yugoslavia, the international community has insisted that minority rights should be respected within existing borders. Serbia and Kosovo are both multinational states. If Serbs in the north cannot live in Kosovo, what place does that leave for the Serbs in the south? And what about the Albanians who live in the north of Kosovo and ethnically cleansed Albanians who would like to return there?

Then there are the practicalities. If Prishtina won’t give up the north without compensation in southern Serbia, would Belgrade accept such a swap? If it would, where would the new boundary be drawn? As when discussing border changes anywhere in former Yugoslavia, there is no clean ethnic boundary.

Of the three southern Serbian municipalities in question, Presevo is almost entirely Albanian-inhabited, but Bujanovac and Medvedja are ethnically mixed. Wherever the line would be drawn, some would be left on the wrong side.

Such playing with maps does not provide solutions. It just creates more disputes. By sanctioning partition, the problem of the north would not be solved. More likely, it would ignite the tinderbox of frustration felt by many Albanians, that nearly three years after independence their country has yet to establish control over all its territory.

The premise that partition is the only possible solution for the north of Kosovo is flawed. The main point is that the north’s non-integration in Kosovo is only sustained by institutional and financial support from Belgrade. That Serbia provides funding for Kosovo’s Serbs would be fine, if its purpose was legitimate support for Serbian cultural, educational, social and healthcare needs. But not when it is used as a political tool to undermine Kosovo’s integration.

Belgrade’s obstructionist tactics include enfeebling the EU’s rule of law mission in Kosovo, EULEX. Belgrade’s consent in December 2008 to EULEX’s deployment in the north followed EU pressure and its insistence that if Serbia wanted to proceed with EU integration, it should not undermine EULEX’s mission.

EULEX is now present in the north but is barely able to carry out its mandate. The courts are scarcely functional. EULEX police can do little more than sit in the police stations. Serbian interior ministry police, in plain clothes, continue to operate. On the border, EULEX customs officials are not able to collect duties.

Given Serbia’s EU aspirations, the European Union holds leverage over Belgrade to insist that it stop its obstructionism in the north. Following the ICJ’s opinion in July, that Kosovo’s independence declaration did not violate international law, the EU put huge pressure on Serbia, including high-level visits from key member states, to get it to agree to technical talks with Kosovo.

Whether such contacts go ahead has been complicated by the Council of Europe report naming Kosovo’s Prime Minister, Hashim Thaci, as an organised crime boss. But questions about high-level crime and corruption in Kosovo are separate from the issue of the country’s future relations with Serbia.

EU pressure will need to be stepped up anew, both to ensure the talks proceed, and to make sure they have meaningful content. Enabling the courts, police and the customs service to function properly in the north are key technical matters that should be addressed. Brussels should not allow its mission to continue to be humiliated.

If Belgrade were pressurised into taking a more accommodating approach, there is no reason why things should not change in the north. In more than a decade since the UN mandate in Kosovo began, the pattern has been one of gradual progress, with occasional setbacks, as things that had once appeared impossible became possible.

Who would have thought three years ago that one would see the level of Serb participation in Kosovo’s institutions in the south seen today? That was possible because Belgrade did not have the means to control Serbs in the south, whose daily reality is that they live among Albanians and unavoidably come into contact with Kosovo’s authorities.

And in the north, while Kosovo institutions are present only to a very limited extent, pragmatic accommodation by some Serbs there is already greater than many in Belgrade realise. From the contacts between Kosovo Serb police and their counterparts in the south, to the acceptance by many northern municipal officials of Kosovo salaries, some northern Serbs already balance between Serbia and Kosovo.

Such pragmatism should be encouraged. But the prerequisite is that Belgrade cease shoring up the hard-line, obstructionist holdovers from Slobodan Milosevic’s era who continue to hold sway there.

It is no time to despair about the integration of the north into Kosovo, nor to look for the type of solution that has rightly been rejected elsewhere in the Balkans. The EU has the means to secure a change of policy from Belgrade. It is true that the EU is divided over Kosovo’s independence but the five non-recognisers have all lined up behind the call for technical talks. None opposes EULEX’s mission in the north. Spain and Greece have taken a pragmatic line of late, making a more robust EU approach realistic, if the same will that was evident following the ICJ opinion is sustained.

Peter Palmer is a former Kosovo Project Director and Balkans Project Director of the International Crisis Group.

Rucola or not

I love Rucola (Rocket). One of my favourite things to eat. In Albania recently, I ate it (with parmesan, olive oil and balsamico) until I was almost tired of it. That bitter, peppery taste is delicious. Quite a luxury in England, in the Balkans it is almost as readily available as lettuce.

So it was with pleasure that I awaited my Rucola and parmesan salad at the restaurant Opera, just off the Trg Republike (the main square) in Belgrade, next to the Hotel Majestic, the favoured haunt of British spies in the Yugoslav capital in the couple of years before the Germans invaded the country in 1941. The Opera is supposed to be a good place, but today there was a problem. The Rucola was not Rucola. I noticed at once that the leaves were completely the wrong shape, too wide and rounded. I had a taste to confirm, and indeed, there was none of the trademark herby pepperiness. I signalled to the waiter. I am afraid this is not Rucola. Not Rucola? Yes it is. Our Rucola is like that. What? So Rucola at that restaurant is different from Rucola everywhere else? No, I insisted, it is not. He took the plate away. Moments later the manager came over with the plate. She agreed that it looked unusual for Rucola, and that it did not taste like Rucola. But, she insisted, it was Rucola. They had been buying it from the same man for five years, and he had sold it to them as Rucola. Very patronising. When I still maintained it was not Rucola, she raised her eyebrows and grimaced impatiently, as if I were an idiot. At this point I got cross. This was not Rucola. Whatever her man said, she should know it was not Rucola. I had proper Rucola at that restaurant on a previous occasion. This was something else, possibly spinach. She agreed to take the plate away. At least my pasta dish was OK, but the dessert was a disappointment, a soggy cherry pie with not very good ice cream and, worst of all, they put on the plate some of that sweet, sickly red stuff from a tube, that is supposed to taste like strawberry, and is meant to make ice cream look more colourful for children. Awful.

I had a Rucola salad at Trebeca, near Kalamegdan, the next day, just to check I was not crazy. Hooray! Real Rucola. Confidence restored a little.

Archives in Belgrade

I have been having a nostalgia trip, going back to my old days as a graduate student, working in musty archives, poring through documents of times gone by. The last time I worked in archives in Belgrade was in 1994. Ultimately, it was a reasonably fruitful stay, but my word it didn't come easily. At the Arhiv Jugoslavije (Archive of Yugoslavia) the lady in the reading room was appalled that I had entered the building without handing over my passport (the guard at the entrance had waved me through without asking for it). How could they know who I was? I might be a terrorist. I might have a bomb in my bag. I kept a straight face and offered to let her see the contents of my bag.

But those were not normal times in Belgrade. Walking back to the flat where I was staying, in the elite district of Dedinje, I regularly passed the headquarters of the notorious Arkan, the football hooligan turned secret police agent turned gangster and war criminal, who nevertheless never lost his baby-face. It was scary just to pass the place on the street, with the menacing black-clad security guards standing outside. I just looked straight ahead up the street, avoiding looking directly at them or the building, lengthening my stride and hurrying past. One morning there was the news that one of the guards had shot a man dead in the street as he walked past the building. Apparently he had walked back and forth in front of the building, arousing suspicion. The headline was not that Arkan's men had shot a passer-by (who may well have just been trying to find his way, or else had a fatal curiosity), but rather who was this man? It was a warped country at that time.

I eventually got permission to work in the Arhiv Jugoslavije, with the help of a reference from a local historian. Help from a local contact was also crucial to getting into the Arhiv Josipa Broza Tita (Archive of Josip Broz Tito). Initially I was refused permission. But then a friendly local historian who I had earlier met in London, visiting the archive himself, asked if I had been there. They phoned me to tell me I could use the archive after all. Connections mean everything in the Balkans. At the military archive the junior officer who dealt with me was very friendly, and I received a signed and stamped document confirming that "Comrade Palmer" was granted permission to use the archive.

Fifteen years later, this time things were easier at the Arhiv Jugoslavije (I handed my passport in at the gate, as requested), which had by now taken over the Arhiv Josipa Broza Tita as well. All very friendly, the staff helped me find the documents I was looking for. At the Diplomatic Archive, at the foreign ministry, it was another matter. I should have applied to use the archive well in advance, as the approval of the foreign minister himself was required - excessive, surely.

Researching a visit to Yugoslavia by Brezhnev in 1976, I did not find exactly what I was hoping for. But it was fascinating to see the dynamic between these two "brotherly", yet long-estranged and deeply suspicious old dictators, Brezhnev and Tito. Behind the diplomatic niceties, the talking was tough. The Soviets were upset by the criticisms of the Soviet Union by Yugoslav politicians, writers and journalists. They wanted the use of the Adriatic ports and Yugoslav airports. They were reserved about Yugoslavia's prominent role in the non-aligned movement, with its many non-communist members - hob-knobbing with capitalists. They pressed for direct social contacts between Soviet and Yugoslav organisations, bypassing state and party (an opportunity for infiltration, the Yugoslav side clearly thought). The Yugoslavs, who had a good idea what was coming, rejected the requests and reacted defensively to the complaints about anti-Soviet writings. Tito, who talked happily with Brezhnev about hunting, was short and to the point on substantive matters: this is completely unacceptable; we do not work like that. The middle of the Cold War, Tito played Yugoslavia's hand between East and West firmly and skilfully, but communist or no, he knew that his regime's financial backers were in the West.

Wild Strawberry Rakija

I love wild strawberries. One of the most delicious fruits there is. And the pleasure is still greater for the joy of coming upon them during a ramble through the woods, rummaging through the undergrowth in search of the delectable little red berries. And then there are those intimate moments when a companion, having got lucky and stumbled on a rich seam, offers you some of her find - what a sacrifice, it must be love. And then there is the dear friend who showed me the secret little corners of the garden, behind the bushes, where a precious crop of the fruit could be found. Real trust there, that I would not succumb to the temptation to scoff the lot.

So, visiting Belgrade last weekend, how could I turn up the chance to try a Wild Strawberry Rakija (Eau de Vie)? Friends had taken me to a restaurant in the hills out of town (roasted lamb and veal, and lots of salad - I preferred the lamb, nice and succulent - the veal was a bit overdone for my taste). the waitress proposed the Rakija as an aperatif. I have tried a variety of Rakijas, most often plum (Sljivovica) and grape (Lozovaca), as well as Travarica (Lozovaca with herbs) and pear (Viljamovka), as well as mulberry (in Albania). But Wild Strawberries. That sounded interesting. And what was it like? It smelt and tasted just like wild strawberries. How odd! I never before tasted a spirit that tasted exactly like the fruit it is made from. Wild strawberries with an alcohol kick when it hits your throat. Very nice of course. But if I want to taste wild strawberries would I rather just eat wild strawberries or take it as Rakija? Not sure. But an entertaining experience.

Fresh milk in Belgrade

Recently I spent a few days in Belgrade. How different it is from Prishtina. The streets are (more or less) clean. The air is not clogged with smoke. There's water in the tap all of the time.

And, what bliss, there is fresh milk in all the shops, for my tea and for cereal. I take back a litre with me to Prishtina, which lasts me for almost a week. What a difference it makes to my life. Such a simple thing, so easily taken for granted, and so missed when I don't have it. Oh there is fresh milk in Prishtina. It mainly comes in plastic bags that have to be snipped open with scissors. That's how milk came all over Yugoslavia at one time. What a stupid container for a liquid! It's not all that nice, and usually only lasts a day from the time of purchase, if you're lucky - sometimes it is bad when you buy it. Recently cartons of locally produced fresh milk have appeared in a few places, but to me it tastes the same as the long-life milk most people use here. I loathe long-life milk. Tea is still refreshing with it, but the taste is unpleasant. I just gulp it down quickly, no pleasure at all. Most people don't seem to have a concept of fresh milk. They seem to think it means unpasturised milk (you can buy unpasturised milk in the villages). Once a bemused shopkeeper who didn't understand what I meant by fresh milk suddenly understood: "Oh, you mean milk in a bag".

Belgrade was refreshing. So many nice places to go, nice cafes, restaurants, pleasant streets and parks to stroll in. And then it's back to Prishtina. But I mustn't be too down on the place. At least one thing is generally better here - coffee. And that is also important.

Churches and flags

Today I visited Gračanica, a Serb enclave close to Prishtina. Not much goes on on a Sunday. The market traders that line the main Prishtina-Gjilan road on other days are nowhere to be seen. That’s a shame, as the home-grown produce sold by the local Serb peasants is worth visiting for.

I strolled in a graveyard. Most of the tombstones are in a similar big, showy black marble style, with photographs of the dearly departed. It would appear that many older graves have recently been given newer stones. Most are Christian, but one stands out for me, with a five-pointed star in place of a cross. The occupant was a man who had come of age just as the communists came to power, and had presumably risen on the revolutionary tide. In placing the star on his new-looking stone, his relatives had stayed true to his communist faith. One thing that strikes me is that on many of the stones there are two names, and two pictures, but only one giving the year of death, the other left open. I think I would find it depressing to see my name and picture on my tombstone while I am still alive.

Gračanica monastery

At the centre of Gračanica is the 14th Century Orthodox monastery. It has survived fires and the removal of its lead roofing in the Ottoman period, yet still stands, its icons worn and damaged, the eyes poked out in many cases, a typical Muslim desecration. Nowadays its entrance is guarded by a couple of Swedish soldiers, razor wire topping its walls. Standing among the saints and medieval Serbian kings, the biblical scenes, one has a sense of timelessness. Some of the participants in the 1389 Battle of Kosovo, which took place not far from here, are said to have prayed in this church before the fray. It is small and intimate, enclosed, until one looks up to the small dome high above, the face of Christ looking down, as if ones attention is deliberately being drawn upwards to the heavenly.

I’ve never managed to understand the Orthodox Church. With its intense conservatism, it is an alien world. On the one hand is its rich artistic heritage, its icons and churches, its mesmerising chants that seem to connect it to a spirituality largely lost in the modern world, and consciously given up in western Christianity. On the other is the poisonous nationalism that pollutes and discredits it in the eyes of so many outsiders. In a corner of the church at Gračanica is a huge Serbian flag, wound around its wooden pole. How does the pretension to be a universal church, embodying timeless values taught by a God who is said to have created all mankind in his image sit with this narrow, chauvinistic nationalism?

I am tempted to see it as a kind of paganism, worshiping at the altar of the nation. But as I am not a part of it, I really have no idea how its adherents see their Church, their worship, their God. I have no idea what this mystical entwining of a universal faith with the body of a nation means to them. This is one of the features of religious faith. Outsiders see alien faiths largely in political terms, never properly understanding the spiritual element which is generally central for the adherents themselves. It is the same with Islam. Outsiders are scared by the massed ranks of the bowing faithful, seeing them as dangerous, threatening fanatics. Brought up as a Catholic, I am often aware that outside critics generally just don’t get what it is that Catholics are about. Without having ever experienced the simple spirituality, the heart-swelling faith in God, the hope for a better hereafter, seeing only the strange ceremonies and priestly robes, the overtly political, and sometimes discreditable role that the Church has played in history, they cannot understand that, as with other faiths, at its centre is the strange but simple belief in God. Whether or not one continues to share those beliefs, it is only those who have been on the inside who really understand them.

Serbs and bilberry juice

Today I was back in Mitrovica. It is a sad place. At each end of the famous bridge that divides the city between its Albanian south and mainly Serb north there is coiled-up barbed wire, ready to be pulled across at a moment’s notice, should there be trouble. Two NATO armoured personnel carriers sit at the northern end, with their big machine guns on top. Walking along the main road in the north, I pass a patrol of ten or so French soldiers, rifles in hand, who drop into a café on their route.

The bridge, Mitrovica

I’ve come to meet Oliver Ivanovic. He became famous in 1999 when he organised the Serb bridge watchers responsible for dividing the town. After that his image was transformed. Urbane, charming, fluent in English and Albanian, he came to be seen as a leading Kosovo Serb moderate, the favourite interlocutor for the internationals. Now a state secretary in Belgrade’s Ministry for Kosovo, he spends much of his time in the Serbian capital. He’s a busy man nowadays – I had been trying to get a meeting for weeks. Now his main battle is with the hard-line criminal elements that ran the north for years before the present government took over in mid-2008. He promises to root out corruption among the Kosovo Serbs.

Oliver is friendly, gregarious, an open smile ready on his lips. He knows who I am, and who I represent. He knows I argued for Kosovo independence years before it was declared. But he doesn’t seem to hold it against me. This is something I find strange about the Kosovo Serbs. I would expect them to hate us westerners, especially Brits and Americans. Did we not bomb them and support their Albanian enemies? Do they not see us as responsible for their misfortunes, for the loss of the territory at the centre of Serbian history and mythology? I would expect them to. Probably they do. And yet they are almost invariably friendly and hospitable towards us, welcoming us as their guests. How would I feel in their place?

I ate Prebranac (a spicy bean stew) in the restaurant I usually go to in Mitrovica. Quite tasty. I also enjoyed the homemade bilberry juice.

In a way the Kosovo Serbs’ situation is a bit like that of the whites in South Africa. Outnumbered, losing ground, a sense of siege, defensive, aware that they are widely vilified, and probably fighting a losing battle. Yet I’ve almost never found them aggressive. No doubt it would be different if I were an Albanian trying to return to north Mitrovica to reclaim my house.

Serb enclaves

Yesterday I went to Mitrovica. It was grim. After the recent troubles (a Serb youth stabbed, a café bombed, firemen attacked, a journalist beaten, and Albanian shops torched), armoured personnel carriers squat at key points, by the bridge and next to the court building. French and Belgian troops patrol the ethnically mixed Bosniac Mahala district where the trouble was concentrated. Some of the Belgians grin at passers by, trying to impart cheerfulness and good will. The burned out shops down one street are blackened, with broken windows and charred, damp little heaps of destroyed goods outside that once enticed shoppers to stop and buy. The grubby streets, with the filthy slush of the melting snow, spattering legs as cars drive by, are quite enough to depress spirits even without the latest damage the inhabitants have inflicted on their town.

Mitrovica bridge, under guard

Lunch starts with a spicy, greasy fish soup, with hunks of fat that did not come from any fish I am familiar with. It is followed by two trout, grilled according to the menu, but in fact fried and greasy. In the corner of the restaurant, Marko Jakšić, one of Serb north Mitrovica's duo of strongmen, holds court in his track suit. Who would believe that this silver-haired man could inspire such fear? Appearing relaxed, smiling gently, there is no sign that he is nervous at rumours that the Belgrade government is out to get him, or that he is concerned by media stories of corruption. Rather, the speculation has it, it is he and his cronies who have stirred up the recent troubles as a lesson to Belgrade and the internationals that they are still in control, and no one should mess with them.

The day before it was Štrpce, a Serb-majority area in the south, at the foot of mountains, with a ski resort that locals hope will one day bring prosperity. The 1970s hotels, even were they not shabby and broken now, seem a memorial to the shoddiness of that decade. To think that places like this actually made Yugoslavs feel optimistic then. Lunch is roast veal in a mushroom sauce - quite tasty.

I got in trouble with the police, for parking on a little bridge. Well, I couldn't find anywhere else, and there was no sign saying not to. And I was in a hurry to see the top man in the parallel Serb municipal administration. I returned to find a note saying to report to the police station, and that the front registration plate had been taken. They were very strict at first, and I was very contrite. I was in a hurry to meet Mr. Staletović, I stressed several times. They seemed to appreciate the fact that I, a foreigner, could speak Serbian. They let me off.

Štrpce is very different from Mitrovica. Isolated from Serbia, the Serbs here are interested in jobs, and ready to reach an accommodation with the Albanians who live all around them. Bizarrely, the official municipal administration and the Serb parallel one exist side by side in the same building. They rub along uneasily. Surrounded by spectacular mountain scenery, this is perhaps the one place in Kosovo where one can see Serbs having a real perspective. Here it will be possible to live well, so long as politics does not interfere. The locals probably know it.