Kosovo Independence 2008

About ten years after the war began, Serbia’s tiny province of Kosovo broke away and declared its independence on 17 February this year. 33 countries have so far recognised the state of Kosovo – most of the EU as well as the United States.

Administrated by the UN since 1999 and supervised by NATO troops, Kosovo is not a country likely to stabilise any time soon.

The Serbian minority, especially prevalent in Kosovo’s north, desperately refuses to accept the new reality. What they really want is for this northern tip of Kosovo to break away and join Serbia.

Kosovo is seen by most Serbs as the cradle of their culture and history. This is where they lost the battle of Kosovo Polje to the Ottomans in 1389, which explains some of the mythological trauma and emotional attachment to the region now populated largely by ethnic Albanians.

Violence escalated on 17 March in the Serbian part of the town of Mitrovica, plunging it into what seemed like a state of war for several hours: a mob armed with machineguns and hand grenades attacked a large group of UN troops in the process of vacating an occupied courthouse. One UN soldier was killed and more than a hundred injured, some seriously.

Across all of Kosovo’s Serbian enclaves, there have since been nearly daily clashes between NATO troops and the Serbian population. And the unresolved conflict between Albanians and Serbs may re-escalate at any moment. An amicable solution seems further away than ever.

And in other ways the country has enormous problems to tackle: according to Transparency International, Kosovo is among the four most corrupt countries in the world, following Cameroon, Cambodia and Albania. Unemployment at around 50% as well as an ailing economy and infrastructure will see that Kosovo remains dependent on international aids from the EU and UN for years to come.

© Benjamin Haselberger, 2008