The Nato-led peacekeeping mission is scaling back, writes DANIEL MCLAUGHLINin Dobrotin
ZIVOJIN MIHAJLOVIC welcomes the Irishmen into his house with a clinking tray of drinks. But there is none of the sweetness of the coffee or the warmth of the plum brandy in his description of life in Kosovo.
“We need jobs, we need electricity, we need water,” he says. “We have huge problems with these basic things. We don’t trust the politicians or the police, and there is so much crime and corruption. And it’s only got worse since independence.”
Mihajlovic has nothing good to say about life for Serbs in Kosovo, the 90 per cent ethnic Albanian state that declared independence from Belgrade in February 2008, after nine years under UN administration.
But he is full of praise for his guests, two of Ireland’s peacekeepers in Kosovo, even though their loaded guns and four-wheel drive oblige them to forego his pungent home brew.
It is 10 years since Irish troops first deployed to Kosovo as part of Kfor, the Nato-led, UN-mandated mission to provide security in the ex-Yugoslav province following the withdrawal of Slobodan Milosevic’s Serb forces and the end of his war with ethnic-Albanian rebels.
At its height, Kfor boasted 50,000 soldiers, and about 4,000 Irish men and women have served in Kosovo since 1999. Now, a reduction in violence and the transfer of some security duties to local police are allowing a gradual drawdown of Kfor troops, leaving Ireland’s current 239 personnel with an expanded role in the 12,600-strong peacekeeping force.
The importance of that role is one of the few things on which Kosovo Albanians and Serbs agree. “We trust Kfor. For 10 years they have been the only ones that guaranteed our freedom of movement and looked after our needs. It is the only institution that is not biased against us,” says Mihajlovic. “We don’t want the Kosovo police to take over. We report thefts and other problems but they do nothing. For as long as Kfor is here, at least we feel that nothing terrible can happen to us.”
Mihajlovic’s fears are not unfounded. Albanian reprisals for atrocities committed during the 1998 to 1999 war drove some 200,000 Serbs and Roma from their homes and, though subsequent clashes have been much smaller, the potential for violence remains.
In March 2004, Irish troops helped quell Albanian attacks on Serb enclaves, in which 19 people were killed, hundreds of Serb homes were destroyed and several medieval Serb Orthodox churches razed.
Serbs denounce the policy of western powers in Kosovo, from the Nato bombing campaign that ended the war to US and EU support for Kosovo’s independence. But in these isolated enclaves, Kfor soothes Serb fears of a repeat of March 2004, or worse.
Confident in their newly won independence, Kosovo Albanians now have little to fear from their Serb neighbours. While some are sceptical of the EU’s “rule of law” mission in Kosovo, most still welcome the international security guarantee represented by Kfor.
Just a couple of kilometres down the road from Dobrotin, Uke Kryeziu chats with Cpl Brian Kelly from Dublin and Capt John Aherne from Roscommon.
Kryeziu fought against the Serbs with the Kosovo Liberation Army, and is now a doctor in the Albanian village of Sllovi.
He was not in the village when Serb paramilitaries massacred 45 of his relatives and neighbours in April 1999. The dead lie in a cemetery on a hillside above the village, overlooked by a cluster of Kfor communication aerials.
Kryeziu claims the killers were accompanied by Serbs from Sllovi, some of whom now live in Dobrotin. “This was an ethnically mixed village but, if we are to live together now, the Serbs must admit their atrocities and try those who committed them. Until then we will have problems,” he says.
“Seeing the Irish Kfor troops every day makes us feel secure. But it is good that Kfor is downsizing, because it means that things are improving here.”
This is a judgment that Serbs dispute, and a prospect that they dread. As thousands of Ireland’s troops know after serving in Kosovo, a great gulf separates near neighbours in this tiny new state.