OpinionInterviews
Turpin: The Black Sheep, the Scapegoat, and Democracy’s Slaughtered Lamb
Life in Postwar Kosovo as the U.S.’s ‘Burek Republic’
PRISTINA, Kosovo (A.W.)—On March 19, a snowy day and a month after the Republic of Kosovo’s second anniversary of its independence from Serbia, I sat and talked in Kosovo’s capital with artist and local unemployed folk musician Atjem Gashi, 27, about the state of Kosovo’s youth unemployment problem, the legitimacy of Kosovo’s government through the eyes of Kosovar youth, and solutions to the new republic’s plights.
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Very nice article. But I think you missed a few things on the march 2004 riots:
– the murder of the Serb kid happened they day before the drownings. The kid was shot in Caglavica on the road from Pristina to Macedonia from a passing car. Serbs reacted by blocking the road. It led to increased ethnic tensions that were exploited in the drownings hysteria where it sometimes was suggested that it was Serb revenge for this killing.
– the kids were nearly certainly not chased into the water by Serbs. This is the international consensus. At that time the Albanian media published a lot of conflicting stories about what had happened. Albanian poiticians only contributed to the national hysteria. One version held it that the kids had been driven in the water by a Serb with a dog. It may be that they just panicked: their village is an Albanian enclave in the Serb dominated north and they were on the other side of the Ibar river near a Serb village. It may also be that the kids were just naughty and the surviving kid found bad Serbs the best excuse. A final possibility is that it was an accident that has been deliberately exploited to start widespread anti-Serb violence. Actually I think that is the most probably version. There was a lot of hearsay, but no clear statements. The UN incomprehensibly decided not to start an immediate investigation but instead to wait “until the moods were calmed”. There was never a follow-up on the drownings in the form of police investigations and arrests. Many of the stories appeared to be false. And the father was a KLA activist.
– the 8 Albanians killed in Mitrovica were killed while trying to enter Northern Mitrovica. Had they succeeded Northern Mitrovica now would be 100% Albanian and Serb-free.
– many hundreds of Serb houses were destroyed – not a single church. Thousands ended in exile.
The UN said the story of a Serbian dog chasing the kids to the river was unfounded. The kids were likely playing in a swollen, thawing creek and slipped. The alleged survivor boy wasn’t even injured or hospitalized for hypothermia, and his was a KLA soldiers son. He was big on the news inflaming and blaming the Serbs.
Some in the UN said that attacks on Serbs were being prepared, so this gave them an excuse to do it earlier. The attacks were on key areas and were systematic. Albanians were bused in and the UN and NATO mostly didn’t stop them.
The Greek soldiers did try to prevent the burning of a Serbian monastery, but they were severely injured (burned) and were unsuccessful.
At least one Albanian was killed by a policewoman working for the international community because the Albanian was shooting at them. There were injuries among some American policewomen and they wrote about it in local articles when they got back. Much what happened was covered up.
Also, you make no mention of the Roma which were systematically burned out of southern Mitrovica after the war and now still live in camps in Kosovo. The Roma were also attacked, along with Serbs, during the 2004 riots.
They all left Serbia: Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia, Macedonia, Montenegro, Kosovo, but still Serbs are not ready to ask themselves why nobody want to live together with them. Reality seem to be too hurting for them to be honest and confess their wrongdoings in all of these countries that left Serbia for a good reason.
A very interesting article. Where else is Andy Turpin going to be writing from?