A Legacy of Hate

For the past three years, Lindita Rexhepi, an ethnic Albanian high school student from the mining city of Mitrovica in northern Kosovo, has not been able to go home. She was 14 when Serb troops expelled her and her family from their small cement-block home as part of their offensive against ethnic Albanian rebels and forced them across the border into Montenegro. When the war ended in 1999, they returned to find the narrow road into their hillside neighborhood blocked by Serbs, many of whom had fled here from Albanian-dominated areas elsewhere in Kosovo. The last time Lindita tried to visit was nearly a year ago. Riding in a police car under the protection of French troops from the NATO-led peacekeeping force KFOR, she and her family were attacked by a gang of men who lobbed a tear-gas canister through the front window. “I froze,” Lindita says of the incident. “I couldn’t even move my legs. Now, we don’t even try anymore.”

When the Balkan wars started in 1991, Mitrovica, or Kosovska Mitrovica as it is known in Serbia, was just another ethnically mixed city in Slobodan Milosevic’s Yugoslavia. But, as the Serb strongman stepped up his campaign against ethnic Albanians and the rebel Kosovo Liberation Army, old neighborly ties began to fray. One night the body of Lindita’s father was found in a back street on another side of town. A restaurant owner, he had been accused of giving food to the rebels. The Rexhepi family believe he was murdered by Serbs.

Then came the Kosovo war. When Serb forces withdrew in late June 1999 under NATO bombardment and peacekeeping forces arrived to establish a U.N. administration, Serbs who had been expelled from other parts of Kosovo made a last stand in the city. Mitrovica, which lies only two dozen kilometers from Serbia, is highly prized because of its massive Trepca coal mine. Clashes between Albanians and Serbs have left dozens killed and many more wounded. Former U.N. Ambassador Richard Holbrooke once called Mitrovica “the most dangerous place in Europe.” In many ways, it still is.

The Ibar River, a shallow, polluted stream running between high banks through the center of Mitrovica, has become the city’s main demarcation line. To the north is Serb territory; to the south, ethnic Albanians dominate. But there are some notable exceptions. In the Albanian zone, for example, 17 Serbs have refused to leave and are now under 24-hour protection in compounds ringed with razor wire. In the north, a few hundred Albanians live in equally fortified “confidence zones” established by the U.N. and kfor.

Thanks to the heavy peacekeeping presence, clashes between the rival groups have fallen off and an uneasy normalcy has settled in. At Mitrovica’s Serbian Orthodox church, for example, Father Svetislav Nojic, 64, continues to hold sparsely attended Sunday liturgies, though worshipers must travel under armed guard to get there from the Serb side of town. Nojic says he needs an escort just to take a walk in his tiny garden. Still, most days he ventures out to tend his congregation north of the Ibar, hunkered down in an armored personnel carrier. “I have been a priest for 47 years,” he says. “I plan to stay here and die here.”

Though violence has tapered off, the conflict has taken on other forms. Mitrovica’s largest Serbian Orthodox cemetery, like the church, is located on the Albanian side of town. Every few months, Serbs who want to tend the graves of their loved ones travel in a KFOR armored convoy to the site. After they leave, Father Nojic says, the recently tended graves are defaced by Albanian vandals. As a result, some parishioners have taken to burying their dead in their backyards. The largest ethnic Albanian cemetery is also on the wrong side of town, and it gets even fewer visitors. Block letters on a strip of orange tape encircling the untended tombs explains why. “Mines,” it reads in Albanian.

While extremists operate on both sides, they are most visible in the north, where Serbs have violently resisted efforts by the U.N. to return Albanians and impose “multiethnic” rule. At the first sign of an Albanian intruder, or an effort by the U.N. to return refugees, self-appointed vigilantes known as bridge watchers use radios, mobile phones and even car horns to summon hundreds of supporters within minutes. At one clash last year, Agim Ibrahimi, 42, lost his 17-year-old son when someone from the Serb side lobbed a grenade. KFOR estimates there are around 300 bridge watchers, while human-rights workers say ex-police and convicts have joined their ranks.

But at the main hospital in northern Mitrovica, Marijan Ilincic, a 51-year-old bridge watcher and former judo instructor, denies this. He called his group a “civic organization” formed after the war when Yugoslav troops withdrew. “We decided we could either run to Serbia or stay and defend ourselves,” he says. “We decided to stay. We know the Albanians. They are prone to terrorism. We have to protect ourselves.” Down the corridor, in an office that boasts one of the biggest security details in the city, hospital director Milan Ivanovic, a lung specialist who is also one of the city’s most prominent hard-liners, vowed that Mitrovica’s Serbs would give no ground. “The only solution is ethnic separation,” he says. “Albanians have only one goal: to expand their state by fascist means.”

For just under three years, the U.N. administration in Kosovo has tried to establish its authority in the north of Mitrovica — and failed. A new attempt is now under way, spearheaded by Nebojsa Covic, Serbia’s Vice Premier and the minister responsible for Kosovo. The province is still legally part of Serbia and Belgrade continues to pay the salaries of northern Mitrovica’s civil servants, though elsewhere in Kosovo the U.N. is in charge. Covic hopes to persuade Ivanovic and others to play along with the U.N. in exchange for assurances about Serbs’ long-term security. “They have to face reality,” Covic says. “The old days are over.” One of Covic’s proposals is to subsume the bridge watchers into a multi-ethnic U.N.-led police force. But Ivanovic says he would agree to that only if his men got their own operating budget and separate uniforms with Serb insignia.

Most longtime residents of Mitrovica insist that what has happened to their home town is the fault of a few extremists and outsiders. “The only thing worse than a Serb at war is a free Albanian,” says Beke Abazi, 50, an Albanian magazine editor who is investigating the illegal seizure of property by organized gangs from both sides. “This is not a problem of neighbor-against-neighbor,” he insists. “It’s criminal gangs who are operating with impunity on both sides. All the good people have gone silent.” With Milosevic on trial in the Hague, now may be the time for the good people of Mitrovica to speak up.