Trading with the enemy in Mitrovica, Kosovo. - RUhosting

decreased (respondent #2, #3 & #17) Respondent #2 jokes that he has more contact with Albanians now after
the war then before the war because of his work in an international NGO. He concludes about Mitrovica
before the war: “Although there were no big incidents there was always tension.”
During the 90's the situation became a lot worse, especially for Albanians. “After 1991 the situation grew
worse, because the removal of the autonomy of Kosovo by Milošević forced Albanians to create their own
parallel state. By the creation of the parallel state the Serbs got even more afraid. Everything was Serbian,
the police was Serbian, all institutions were in Serbian even though 80% of the population was Albanian”,
an Albanian law graduate from Pristina explained (respondent #1). Regular beatings by the Serbian police in
Pristina were no exception then, making some Albanians too afraid to talk at all on the streets out of fear for
being recognised as an Albanian (field notes & respondent #1). Many Albanians also reported that their
Serbian friends and neighbours started to break off any contact in the years before the war (field notes,
respondent #1 & #17). An Albanian from Mitrovica North remembers that even his Serbian friends started
turning their backs on him, he calls it a “politicization like with the Jews in Germany before the second
world war” (respondent #17).
It must be noted however that although these interviews paint a picture a picture of segregation and lack of
contact even before the war this is not entirely conclusive. Traders especially mentioned that their trade
started happening through their (many) contacts from before the war (respondent #5 & #7). An explanation
an OSCE advisor gave me was that many people in Kosovo tend to exaggerate the extent to which they had
bad relations. This is done in order to fit their present day picture of inter-ethnic relations or even as an
political argument (field notes). From CARE's research in 2006 it becomes clear that these relations also
really depended on the different areas in Kosovo (CARE, 2006).
By the end of the 90s the ethnic tensions had developed into an armed conflict. People did not talk much
about the war or bombings during my interviews though. Especially Serbs seemed to have very negative
memories of it. “You would not wish this experience for your worst enemy” is what a Serbian student once
told me in Mitrovica North (field notes). Albanian respondent #1 said something completely different: he
remembers the bombings as being “quite cool”. He was happy but also scared, mainly of Serb counterattacks.
It has been discussed earlier in this thesis how after the armed conflict ended and Albanian refugees started
returning home a wave of revenge killings and lootings took place, mainly aimed at the Serbian and Roma
population. Respondent #1 explains this in his own words: “After the war Albanians were euphoric, they
wanted to hit every Serb but too late realized this was wrong. Wrong because then Serbs became the victims
and Albanians the aggressors. Which was opposite of before the war. Serbs left Pristina because they were
afraid.” He mentions that during and especially after the war his father, despite being “extremely pro
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