Reuters World News - Special episode: Growing pains for Europe's youngest country

Episode Date: June 10, 2023

Listen to special episode with host Kim Vinnell in Kosovo, where Europe's youngest country is trying to move past the ravages of war. We sit down with leaders of both Kosovo and Serbia to discuss the conflict 15 years after Pristina declared independence.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

As the war in Ukraine continues to decimate lives and livelihoods, I travel to Kosovo, where the ravages of war in the late 90s have been left behind in the hope of prosperity. But tensions between ethnic Albanians and Serbs continue to hold it back and draw scrutiny from an international community on the hook for peacekeepers and diplomatic bartering between Belgrade and the country it still will. refuses to recognize. This is a special episode of Reuters World News, from the ground of Europe's youngest country.

I'm Kim Vinal in Pristina. And I'm Alexander Vaso, which in Belgrade. I'm standing in the center of the city underneath a giant statue of Bill Clinton. There's an American flag, flying in the wind, and the entire street is actually called Bill Clinton Boulevard. There's a local market. People are out picking up punnets of strawberries or fresh lettuce.

All over Pristina, there are signs of vitality. Can I just get your name? My name is Cristale. Crystala, and moved to Pristina last year from London. My parents are Albanians from North Albania and Montenegro. Ah. So I've never, I'm like the second generation because my grandparents migrated. My parents were raised abroad.

I'm the first to move back to the Balkans in like two generations. Are there any things that like that have stood out to you moving here? You're like, oh, okay. Cheaper. And even, you know, you're getting your hair done, getting a blow dryer, hair wash, five euros, you know, a haircut. It's a lot more affordable. The food, the price of the cost of food, the cost of living.

There are a lot of young people in Kosovo. The nation's median age is just 30. and a half, the youngest of any European country. But it can be a challenge getting young people to stay. Unemployment in Kosovo is at 25%. So what's your name? Albulena. And tell me about you.

I study. I'm in high school right now. I'm in the first year. And I studied. How old are you? I'm 60. 60. What do you want to be? Like, what do you want to do when you finish school? What's your plan?

I'm thinking to go as economists to study and I think to go to Germany. And while young people look abroad for opportunities, those who lived through the war with Serbia still remember the devastation that killed 13,000 people, mostly ethnic Albanians. NATO forces led by the US helped liberate Kosovo in 1999, including bombing Serbia's capital, Belgrade. I spoke to Raza Demol, who remembers living through what many see

as the last war in Europe before the war in Ukraine. She says she fled to the mountains during the war with Serbia and remembers the daily bombings. She had high hopes that things would change after NATO and the US came, but fears that if,

NATO leaves Kosovo, Serbia would once again cross over and, as she puts it, destroy everything. Today in the square, the capital is peaceful, it's bustling, but in the north it's a different story. The politics in northern Kosovo are complicated. After years of demanding more autonomy from Pistina, many locals, ethnic Serbs, don't recognise the Kosova government. Alexander, what is life like for ethnic Serbs in the north? Most of them are living peaceful lives, except for occasional flares up for violence. But many Serbs in Kosovo are still receiving benefits from the Serbian state.

And Belgrade is also involved in the financing of schools, public health, local infrastructure and so on. They have daily uninterrupted communication with Serbia. They're receiving goods from Serbia proper. Many of them even work there and so on. So when Kosovo held local elections, Serbs boycotted the polls. Less than 4% of voters turned out. And when ethnic Albanians, sympathetic to Pristina, were installed as mayors in the region,

protests, then violence erupted. 30 NATO troops have been injured as well as 52 Serbian protesters. Igor Simich, the deputy head of the biggest Kosovo Serb party, says they want Kosovo police and NATO forces out of the region. ... they send special units with long rifles to provoke Serbs and with force they enter in all municipalities in the north. In that moment, people just want to protect their own rights. My colleague Fados Petitsi traveled to the north as soon as tensions began to escalate. You were there in the north, in the north when all of these tensions spiraled into violence.

How did you know that was going to happen? Well, the thing is when we saw first news in local press that these mayors, these elected mayors, are going at the municipality. Then we just move and we just go there because we know that Serbs will not accept this and they will go out and protest. And if you see the history of since Kosovo declared independence,

actually since the war ended in the night, There was always this kind of tensions. Kosovo's long wanted to join the European Union and NATO, but this northern region remains a stumbling block. The EU and US allies have told Pristina it must give local Serbs in the area greater autonomy. A 2013 formal plan to create an association of Serb municipalities was rejected by Kosovo's highest court,

saying it violates the country's constitution. If Kosovo wants to move forward in its integration, in its Euro-Atlantic integration, it's going to have to form the association. That's U.S. Deputy Assistant Secretary of State, Gabriel Escobar, this week, after meeting with Kosovo and Serbia. Turning their back on the process would be turning their back on Europe, with all the consequences that it entails in the failure of closer integration and closer relationship with Europe. That by itself is a very serious consequence. The leaders of Serbia and Kosovo remain at odds. I sat down with Kosovo's president, Vyosa Osmani. We mentioned the elections a bit earlier, which led to the recent violence.

Kosovo's president told me Kosovo is open to new elections, but would need a guarantee that Serbia won't intervene. And of course, last time when they forced candidates to withdraw from running for elections, then the Serbs who lived there had none of their candidates on the list. So obviously they did not participate. So the result was not a voluntary boycott. It was non-voluntary. It was a result of illegal foreign interference by another country, by Serbia.

But Alexander, President Vuchitchtich denies any meddling? Wuchich has always maintained that Serbia is not pressuring Kosovo Serbs into anything. and he said that serves in the north of Koso in particular, but basically all the Serbs in Koso are saying Serbia as their country and Belgrade as their capital, which is also very much in line with Serbia's official position that Koso is still Serbia's southern province. Alexander, what did Vuchich say about giving the region greater autonomy?

Voucher has been maintaining the position that the greater autonomy, meaning the association of the Serb municipalities, which is expected to give Serbs a degree of autonomy within Kosovo, and it has to be implemented to the letter, which is very much in line what the US envoys and the EU envoys have been saying for the past couple of weeks. As to when Kosovo might make that happen, President Osmani didn't really have a clear answer.

When is the Association of Serb municipalities going to be set up? So that also depends on the process of the dialogue in Brussels. I do hope that there will be meetings very soon and that the dialogue will become even more intensive. What is extremely important for us and what we've been extremely honest with our partners is that that needs to be done in line with Kosovo's constitutional court decision of 2015 as well as our constitution. I believe that we can move on as fast as the EU wants us to move on. They need to call for these meetings.

It's hard to see a resolution in this standoff. Ethnically, Albanian mayors remain in their roles, and NATO forces are still on the ground trying to keep the peace. Kosovo's Western allies are pushing for new elections, but it is unclear that ethnic Serbs would participate in another Kosovo-led vote. Breitina claims Serbia is behind the violence. against its police and NATO, but seems non-committal in moving forward with the 2013 autonomy plan.

The war in Kosovo was more than 20 years ago, yet the wounds continue to fester. It's a stark reminder of the lasting legacy of war, as the bloodshed continues in Ukraine. That's it for this special episode of Reuters World News. Special thanks to Fatos Patici, Alexander Vasevich, Avana Securelak, Branko Filopovich and Dragon Kastrotovic. We'll be back on Monday with our daily weekday news show,

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