Elation and Dread as Kosovo Declaration Nears
Serbs Fear 'Something Difficult and Horrible' After Majority-Albanian Province Breaks Away

By Peter Finn
Washington Post Foreign Service
Sunday, February 17, 2008; A16

PRISTINA, Serbia, Feb. 16 -- A new line of T-shirts here bears the words "Uncle, It's Over" and a portrait of Adem Jashari, a founder of the Kosovo Liberation Army. His killing by Serb forces in 1998, along with at least 50 other people, many of them his relatives, brought the little-known guerrilla organization into the open.

The self-styled army, once condemned as a terrorist organization by its critics, mounted a classic hit-and-run insurgency against Serb authorities in the province of Kosovo before retreating into mountain redoubts.

What was then Yugoslavia responded viciously, instituting a campaign of ethnic cleansing against the Albanian majority that led NATO to bomb the country in 1999. After 78 days of sorties by as many as 1,000 aircraft, President Slobodan Milosevic withdrew his forces from Kosovo, and the military alliance, greeted as liberators by ethnic Albanians, marched in.

Nearly nine years later, Jashari's unlikely dream of an independent Kosovo is about to become reality. The frigid, snow-dusted provincial capital of Pristina is brimming with excited crowds anticipating that Kosovo's prime minister, Hashim Thaci, will declare independence from Serbia on Sunday afternoon.

For most ethnic Albanians, including many in the diaspora who have returned here, the party has already begun. Fireworks lighted the sky Saturday night, drivers honked their horns and the beer flowed freely in this Muslim-majority but not very observant corner of Europe.

"I lived through the worst times in the war, and now I want to share this special moment," said Mimoza Rushiti, 30, a filmmaker who returned from New York, where she has lived for the past seven years.

The move is expected to be quickly followed by formal recognition by the United States and many, but not all, of the European Union's member states. Some E.U. countries, including Spain, fear that Kosovo's independence will embolden separatists elsewhere on the continent.

Kosovo's Serb minority, which makes up about 10 percent of the province's population of 2 million, has resisted the independence move, and Russia and its ally Serbia, which regards Kosovo as an integral and historically precious part of its territory, are expected to swiftly condemn Thaci's declaration.

"We are all expecting something difficult and horrible," Bishop Artemije, the head of the Serbian Orthodox Church, said Saturday in Mitrovica, a city in northern Kosovo. "Our message to you, all Serbs in Kosovo, is to remain in your homes and around your monasteries, regardless of what God allows or our enemies do."

Pristina, like much of Kosovo, is festooned with the Stars and Stripes, a recognition of the leading role the United States took in the 1999 bombing campaign and in the drive toward independence. A street here is named after former president Bill Clinton. And a man pushing a wheelbarrow full of empty bottles along a Pristina street Saturday morning had stuck the U.S. flag on the front of his cart.

"Finally, finally, our time has come," said Elora Namadi, 21, one of several women baking a 3,300-pound cake that they expect to serve to 30,000 people in the center of Pristina on Sunday afternoon. "We are very happy."

But T-shirts and flags aside, the formal celebration plans, reportedly vetted by U.S. officials, are to be stripped of any of nationalist triumphalism, especially rousing anthems that praise the violent struggle of figures such as Jashari.

Thaci, the former political leader of the KLA, has attempted to soothe the fearful Serb community, assuring his isolated neighbors that they have a place in the new state.

"In an independent Kosovo, no citizen of Kosovo will be discriminated against or pushed aside," said Thaci, who visited Jashari's grave site Saturday. "Kosovo is the mother of all its citizens."

To some here, such words carry little weight. About 250,000 Serbs, Roma and other minorities fled Kosovo in the wake of a campaign of intimidation by the ethnic Albanians that both NATO and the United Nations seemed powerless to stop. Most of the remaining 120,000 Serbs live in enclaves protected by NATO troops and barbed wire. Parts of Kosovo's north, which border Serbia, and some communities in the eastern part of the province are enclosed, Serb-only areas seething with resentment.

"We will remain part of Serbia," said Oliver Ivanovich, a Serb leader in Mitrovica, which is divided by the Ibar River into Serb and ethnic Albanian sectors. "We will have Serbian passports. We will use Serbian currency. Belgrade will continue to support us. Everything will continue in the same way."

What remains unclear is whether the Serb-populated areas around Mitrovica will attempt to secede from Kosovo and how much the authorities in the Serbian capital of Belgrade might encourage such an effort. Moreover, it is also not clear whether Serbs who have worked with the U.N. administration that has run the province for the past nine years, including some politicians, civil servants and policemen, will simply quit.

"Some people have a backup plan to get out," said Jelena Bjelica, the editor of a Serb newspaper in Kosovo. "But how many will leave, we don't know."

Any attempt by Serbs in the north to formally break away from Kosovo would inflame ethnic Albanians and further isolate Serb areas surrounded by ethnic Albanians.

In those enclaves, fatalism has often replaced the defiance expressed in Mitrovica.

"What can we do? They are the majority and they can do what they want," said one Serb who lives in a cluster of houses above a Serbian Orthodox Church in the western city of Pec, called Peja by ethnic Albanians. "If they come to murder me in my bed, what can I do?"

The man, a farmer, declined to give his name, and many other Serbs this weekend declined to be interviewed.

Kosovo's independence is constrained by the continuing role of the European Union, which is overseeing the adoption of a constitution that respects minority rights. The E.U. will also appoint a top diplomat who will have the authority to reject laws deemed discriminatory. Recognition of Kosovo by some E.U. countries, such as Britain, France and Germany, is contingent on the province's leaders inviting the E.U. to exercise a supervisory role in the new country.

For some ethnic Albanians, the change in status means only that their U.N. overseers will be replaced by European ones.

"The European Union doesn't speak the language of liberty," said Albin Kurti, head of an organization called Self-Determination. "The European Union can monitor minority rights, but not rule over us. This declaration will not establish an independent Kosovo. It is just an affirmation of our continuing dependence."

U.N. administration of Kosovo has brought little economic development, and as much as 45 percent of the population is unemployed.

"There is a lot of joy and emotion, but also a lot of expectations that everything will now be solved," said Shpend Ahmeti, executive director of the Institute for Advanced Studies in Kosovo. "We have linked every problem to our status and used it as an excuse for everything. With independence, people will expect results. No more excuses."