Prishtina

The scars of the conflict, years of repression and under-development, the immense reconstruction effort – all are themes that permeate life in Kosovo in general and Prishtina in particular. A visit to the city provides a textbook example of how the international community is trying to rebuild an entire country from the ground up.

The first sign that this newly independent state is still dependent on other countries is on arrival at the airport, where you are greeted by the fluttering blue flag … of Iceland.  Like most of the country’s infrastructure the running of Kosovo’s airspace has been outsourced. Everything from the running of the government to brewing the nation’s beer is done with the help – and the investment – of a bewildering number of other states and organisations. The two mobile phone networks, for example, are run by Slovenia and Monaco.

It doesn’t take long to find examples of Kosovo’s own flag – they’re for sale everywhere on the streets – but they jostle for space with those of  NATO, the UN, the EU, the United States and the ubiquitous double-headed Albanian eagle. As you drive from the airport to the city, it’s impossible to miss a 30 foot banner depicting a smiling Bill Clinton greeting visitors – the road is even named after the ex-president. Other Western figures instrumental in NATO’s 1999 bombing campaign are immortalised across the country with streets named after Tony Blair, Madeline Albright and (US diplomat) William Walker. There is a sense of gratitude towards those politicians who pushed for intervention from the international community – Prishtina is surely the only city in the world where Robin Cook is immortalized in graffiti art.

A more sober reminder of the conflict is found at the glass fronted Kosovan parliament building. Pinned to the railings are the photographs and names of hundreds of the missing men, women and children, their fates uncertain after they were driven from their towns and villages by Serbian militia in a campaign that escalated after the NATO bombs began to fall. Over 800,000 people joined the refugee columns and headed towards Albania, Macedonia, Montenegro or the West. The majority were to return to their homes eventually – but the conflict left 12,000 dead and more than 2,000 missing.

Almost ten years later Prishtina is a city in a state of flux as the tenure of the United Nation’s Mission in Kosovo (UNMIK) draws to a close. UNMIK was set up in June 1999 under United Nations Resolution 1244 after the NATO campaign was suspended. The remit was huge. In addition to overseeing the return of hundreds of thousands of people, an entire civilian administration had to be built.

Under the UNMIK umbrella, the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) assumed responsibility for building democratic institutions and the EU was tasked with rebuilding the economy. UNMIK and its partner organisations are deeply entrenched in the city. The main headquarter sprawl along the highway behind a segmented concrete barrier. In an effort to appear more friendly the UN had the barricades painted by local schoolchildren – the final effect is not unlike the Berlin Wall.

Dotted around the city are dozens of smaller UN buildings – the department for refugees and returns, the department for migrations and foreigners, the department of justice. In theory all this will soon go as the UN’s mandate in Kosovo comes to an end, to be replaced by a European Union mission (EULUX). The EU mission is presented as being in a more advisory, less hands on capacity, although not everyone is convinced. But at the least their HQ will be away from the city centre, with the Kosovo government set to take over the UN buildings.

Everyone here has his or her own views on UNMIK and EULUX, but the consensus seems to be that foreign intervention was a necessary evil, an unavoidable step in transforming a breakaway province emerging from a bloody conflict to a fully functioning independent democratic state. Some would like to see the pace of change go faster. The group ‘Self Determination, No Negotiation’ are a vocal minority and difficult to miss – not least their logos stencilled on the side of every official building and institution in the capital. One of these refers to the settlement proposed by the UN Contact group in 2007, led by former Finnish President Martti Ahtisaari. After months of negotiations with Belgrade the ‘Ahtisaari Plan’ for Kosovo’s final status promised everything from a national army to a flag, without actually promising independence. ‘Property of Ahtisaari’ was duly sprayed on the sides of rubbish bins across the city.

For some the main frustration with UNMIK is on purely practical grounds. It’s now almost ten years since the majority of Kosovan Albanians were able to return to their homes after being driven away by the Serbs, yet there is still no reliable running water. The electricity supplied by Kosovo A and Kosovo B – hulking soviet era power stations that mar the horizon and belch out clouds of pollution – is erratic at best. Petrol powered generators are a common sight on the streets outside shops and restaurants to cope with the frequent power cuts. Only one of the country’s few train lines is running and during my visit even this had ground to a halt due to the actions of Serb railway workers in the North of the country. The economy is still the single biggest problem with high unemployment – in the villages surrounding the capital school teachers still earn as little as 150 euros a month.

Despite these daily frustrations, there is a sense of opportunity and optimism amongst Prishtina’s middle classes. In a leafy area of the city named Pejton Town (allegedly for its similarity to US soap ‘Peyton Place’) bars and cafes with names like Bamboo and Oddyssea line the streets, packed with a glamorous international and local crowd. On my first night out there I find myself talking to a group including an assistant professor at one of the city’s many private universities, an advisor to the Albanian president and the head of a major NGO. Every one of them is under thirty years old and many have degrees in political science or economics from the UK. The talk is of party politics and business deals and tasteless jokes about UN monitors during the war. Between bars we pass gated complexes housing the British Council, prominent NGOs and various embassies.

While the political structures are in transition, there is little doubt the city – and country – is experiencing massive amounts of physical reconstruction. The roads into Prishtina are lined with newly built houses, many of them unfinished brick shells with gaping holes where doors and windows should be. While foreign investment is trickling into the country very slowly this construction boom is fuelled by other channels, namely the Kosovan diaspora. It seems as though every family has members living and working abroad – in Germany, Switzerland, the UK. The money they send back is being used to build the new family homes as and when it arrives. In some cases the ground floor is finished and the family moves in – with the upper floors to be finished in years or decades to come for children and grandchildren to occupy.

On a visit to a friend at the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE), in a gleaming chrome and glass building formerly home to a Serbian bank, I get a bird’s eye view of the city. The cityscape is dominated by two kinds of structure – the decaying socialist apartment blocks, with yellowing paint and washing hanging from cracked windows, and more modern blocks housing official institutions or luxury flats. The surprising thing about many of the modern buildings is that they have been built entirely illegally. Prishtina’s planning laws are virtually unenforceable by the weak state when there is so much money to be made from property development. Several government departments are housed in illegal buildings. There is concern that the lack of regulations means that water, sewage, and utility supplies to these buildings will not be able to cope with their capacity. But most Kosovans seem happy to turn a blind eye as long as new offices, luxury apartments, cafes, bars and restaurants keep appearing.

A few years ago Fehmi Agani street was a non-descript residential street, but now it has the feel of a Parisian boulevard with cafes crowding the pavements. Allegedly the town planners tried to crack down on them once by carving up the terraces with bulldozers, but the enterprising café owners found some nearby workmen and had the holes filled back in the same day. It’s not difficult to believe here. While many new buildings are springing up, others are disappearing overnight. People are happy to see many of these go. Round the corner from the OSCE the old headquarters of the Yugoslav National Army is being demolished from the top down. No-one will miss it – it has been a derelict eyesore ever since the NATO bombs fell on it in 1999.

But elsewhere the rush to modernise the city is claiming some of the few historic buildings that survived decades of brutal communist town planning. The yellow-painted Union Hotel, built in 1927, is virtually the only early 20th century structure in the whole of the city centre. This too is earmarked for demolition. Neighbouring buildings have already been levelled and the abandoned hotel has been kept standing only through public pressure. In the meantime it’s fallen into disrepair.

Away from the centre a handful of Ottoman era houses can be found tucked away down back streets. One of these, the Emin Gjiku complex, is open to the public. It’s worth visiting this handful of timbered buildings to get a sense of how the city has changed beyond all recognition in the past 100 years. A similar sense of tranquility can be found in the grassy courtyard of the Mberit (also known as the Fatih) Mosque, where elderly men wearing the traditional Albanian pliss sit by the fountains. This used to be the heart of Prishtina’s old bazaar district until it was largely demolished by the communist regime. Only a small market now remains but efforts are being made to preserve this historic quarter. The great Hammam (Baths), built by Sultan Mehmet in the 15th century, is now undergoing UN funded restoration.

The area around the University campus is dominated by two monumental buildings, reflecting two very different periods. The first of these is the frankly bizarre National Library, a communist folly topped with white domes and wrapped in a giant wire mesh (legend has it that at its official opening the visiting party apparatchik asked why the scaffolding hadn’t been taken off).

Not far from this stands an unfinished Orthodox cathedral. The sheer scale and heft of this was intended by Milosevic to mark the campus as Serbian territory during a period when Albanian students and teachers were barred from even entering the University buildings. The cathedral was never completed and now stands surrounded by barbed wire, ignored by passers-by, its future uncertain.

Far less obvious but of equal historic significance is the student canteen, which sits just off the campus on Agim Ramadani. For many people this spot marks the place where Yugolslavia first set out on the road to fragmentation, as far back as 1981. What began as  protests over conditions at the University (popularly said to have been triggered by a student finding a cockroach in soup) soon widened to include workers protesting at Serbian dominance of Kosovo. Despite nominal autonomy with Yugolslavia many were angry that key positions were held by pro-Serb figures. Some demonstrators demanded Kosovo be declared a republic, others called for unification with Albania. After several weeks of escalating clashes the authorities sent in tanks and a state of emergency was declared. The protests culminated in several deaths (hundreds by some estimates), long prison sentences for thousands of others and the purging of the Kosovan communist leadership. A plaque now stands outside the building to commemorate the beginnings of a distinct Kosovan nationalist movement. The demands which crystallised during those 1981 demonstrations were to lead two and a half decades later to the unilateral decleration of independence.

On the night the government declared Kosovo an independent state they unveiled a new monument in front of the Boro Ramiz sports and culture building. It stands there covered with thousands of signatures after revellers were allowed to sign their names on it for one night only. In 10 foot high letters a single English word symbolises Kosovan hopes for the future: ’NEWBORN’.