Out of Iraq

It is estimated that there are between 1 million and 1.5 million Iraqi refugees in Syria. Although some people fled from Iraq in the immediate aftermath of the 2003 invasion by US-UK coalition forces, the vast majority of Iraqi refugees in Syria left their homes after the Golden Mosque of Samara was bombed in 2006. The damage done to the Mosque, a site of great religious importance to Shia Muslims, triggered the outbreak of extreme sectarian violence throughout Iraq. In the week following the bombing around 300 people were killed in retaliatory violence. Over the next year fighting, intimidation, torture, kidnap and murder swept across the country as armed Sunni and Shia groups fought each other – as well as the coalition forces – for rule of the streets. Millions fled the country, many into neighbouring Syria. According to UNHCR figures between 30,000 and 60,000 people were entering Syria each month, until the Syrian government, struggling to cope with such a sudden influx of people, changed visa regulations in October 2007.

Such huge numbers of refugees may conjure up images of large camps sprawling out over inhospitable parts of arid Syrian land. However, the Iraqi refugee population in Syria is largely dispersed throughout the country’s urban centres. They live, or try to live, what you might call normal lives. They have to pay rent, bills and buy food. They have children who go to school. They need to buy books, stationary and uniforms. In other words they have exactly the same expenditure as any other Syrian. However, they are not legally allowed to work. Before 2005 getting a licence to work was no problem, but the arrival of so many Iraqi people in 2006-2007 prompted the government to stop issuing Iraqi’s work permits. Some people have family members abroad who are able to give financial assistance. Some refugees are wealthy enough to live in relative comfort. The vast majority, however, have to survive on their life savings, an often inadequate sum of money for the subsistence of a whole family for more than a few months, and one which is gradually diminishing without any regular source of income.

For some there is the option to work illegally in low-paid jobs such as waiting and cleaning. Many of the refugees are from the professional classes but work in restaurants as they unable to practice their profession in Syria. Most refugees of school age can receive free education in Syrian schools. However, the increasing financial strain on their families is forcing significant numbers of young people to work in low-paid jobs – such as street-sellers or domestic cleaners – instead of going to school. Despite the bad pay, menial nature and illegality of these jobs, they offer some of the less dangerous money-making opportunities for Iraqi refugees. There are many cases of mothers or fathers returning to work in Iraq so they can earn enough to keep the rest of their family in Syria. Some women have resorted to working as prostitutes in Syria rather than return to Iraq to find work. There are cases of girls and young women being forced into prostitution. The kind of humiliation, abuse and trauma this opens people up to is made doubly dangerous by the fact that those Iraqi’s found to have engaged in criminal activities are likely to be threatened with deportation. It also shows you just how desperate to stay out of the Iraq some refugees are.

Aid workers in a UNHCR distribution, Fahad

The United Nations Higher Commission for Refugees is the main organisation working to protect and support Iraqi refugees in Syria. It is in partnership with the World Food Programme and the Syrian Arab Red Cross and other smaller organisations. Together they provide food and financial aid, medical assistance, legal protection and social counselling. Although the fact that most Iraqis live in rented homes is much better than in the crowded camps you may associate with such a large refugee population, it makes finding and targeting those in need of aid and assistance much harder. Only 203,000 Iraqi refugees have registered with the UNHCR – around 16% of the estimated total population.

Registration begins the process by which the UNHCR can asses what kind of support individuals or families need. If refugees don’t register then the UNHCR cannot support them. This leaves around 84% of refugees coping with their exile on their own.
Pride, I was told by an UNHCR outreach worker, is the main reason Iraqis do not register. Many would rather run their savings dry than depend on handouts. Lack of awareness might be another reason. It is the outreach workers’ job to identify the most vulnerable refugees. However, with only 47 outreach workers for 1.5 million refugees, they have their work cut out. Some of the more fortunate Iraqis do not need financial help, but the threat of deportation and trauma of enduring the foreign invasion and civil war can affect refugees no matter how financially stable they may be. They may need help from the UNHCR’s counselling services, legal advice and protection, but, as they are unregistered they must cope alone.

We visited the registration and distribution centre in Damascus. It is large, permanent-looking site, ready to function for years rather than months. This is just as well. Although the Iraqi refugee population in Syria has stabilised (the number of people entering Syria each month is the same as the number returning to Iraq), there seems to be no evidence that it is going to significantly decrease anytime soon. Not only are most people unwilling to return to their divided and volatile homeland, but the numbers of Iraqis being permanently resettled is pathetically low. The UK has allowed the resettlement of just 4 Iraqi refugees from Syria in the last 18 months. This statistic is made even crueller by the fact that the British government is turning down resettlement to those Iraqis whose lives are under threat after working as interpreters for the British armed forces. The USA has resettled 871 individuals, a much higher number, but still only 11% of those who applied. Considering the UNHCR submitted only 7852 individuals for resettlement, 4% of the total number Iraqi refugees registered with the organisation, you can see just how insignificant this figure is.

Resettlement is not, however, the answer. Most people hold out hope of being able to return to Iraq. They don’t all want new lives in foreign countries, especially in countries which are responsible for the blundering invasion and lethal anarchy which forced them to flee. But the miserly number of Iraqis being allowed to resettle, people who are the most vulnerable of an increasingly vulnerable population, is just another statistic which demonstrates how trapped into their refugee status these people are. Every person interviewed in a recent UNHCR-commissioned survey had experienced a traumatic event in Iraq. 72% had seen a car bombing, 75% knew someone who had been killed, 68% had experienced interrogation or harassment by militias and 16% had been tortured.

The numbers paint a brutally clear picture of why many Iraqi’s do not want to return home. Their choice is either to stay in Syria and live off the dwindling savings, money from relatives or UN aid – all of which offer a poor quality and highly dependant life – or to return home where they can work, but risk intimidation, kidnap or worse.
Even in Syria Iraqi refugees do not feel completely safe from the deadly energies at work in Iraq. This has been made all too clear in our project. We have been teaching a group of 10 young Iraqi refugees the basics of photojournalism. We wanted them to compile a photostory which documents their lives – pictures of their families and friends – but many people are anxious of being identified in photographs by people back in Iraq and fear they may target friends and family still living there. One student wanted to take pictures of her Iraqi friends in Syria, but the parents of those friends would not allow it. The reason, she told us, was that they did not trust her with the photographs, despite her being their friend.

This lack of trust between Iraqi refugees is not something you would notice on the surface. None of our students knew each other before they came to our first session two weeks ago, but almost instantly they got on like good friends. However, before we began the project we were asked not to talk about the students’ religious or ethnic differences, in case, I assumed, it would result in bringing suspicion and fear they developed in Iraq into the classroom. Another of our students told me that he would never trust anyone again after a life-long friend in Iraq was responsible for having him kidnapped 18 months ago. He was a Sunni, but his friend was a Shia, something that never affected their friendship until the sectarian violence preyed upon such differences with appalling and tragic consequences. And so you can see the kind of damage so many refugees will have to carry with them however far they flee.

There is an uncertain future for the Iraqi refugees of Syria. Currently the UNHCR is facing a serious shortage of funds. This year it has only received half the money it says it needs to continue its work and is considering scaling down its operations if it does not receive more. This is going to hit the most vulnerable of the Iraqi refugees the hardest. The dependency of many families on food aid was made painfully clear when the UNHCR had to halt distribution for two months after the Syrian government claimed use of the land on which the old distribution site stood. Furthermore, it looks like the number of refugees who are dependant on UNHCR financial support and food aid is likely to increase. With no sign of large-scale immediate returns to Iraq, and with increasing numbers of families running out of money, it seems likely more and more will be forced to register and claim financial assistance and food aid, putting greater strain on the UNHCR’s resources.

The other option, of course, is to return to Iraq. There has been a slight improvement in the security situation. The fierce sectarian violence which most people fled is not as widespread as a year ago. Next week one of our students is returning to Baghdad. He said that he would be sad to leave Syria, especially the friends he has made here, but that he is very happy to be returning home. He does not feel anxious and is confident that the area he is moving to is safe. But his family’s decision to return was not based entirely on the security situation. He has been unable to go to school in Syria because he does not have the correct papers and the family cannot afford to send his elder brothers to university in Syria without an income.

Ameer's Mother in their flat in Syria.

A year ago his father was murdered in Iraq. They fled to save their lives. If, after such tragedy, he and his family genuinely feel that Iraq is safe for them to return then perhaps there is hope for more refugees like them. However, if they have been pushed into returning because they feel unable to continue living in Syria then their story highlights the need to continue to support Iraqi refugees in their exile while the unpredictable future of Iraq unfolds.

Douma, Damascus

For the estimated 1.5 million Iraqi refugees in Syria the road to receiving aid starts in a suburb of Damascus called Douma. It is here that the UNHCR has developed a site to cope with the large number of refugees in Syria, the vast majority from Iraq, registering and receiving aid. We arrived at Douma on a quiet morning. Outside the camp a small group of refugees stood in front of an information board looking for their names and the date of their interview. Once refugees have registered with the UNHCR they are given a date for an interview during which their needs can be assessed. The waiting time for an interview is currently two months, a drastic reduction from the six months refugees used to have to wait, but still a long way off the two week target the UNHCR has set itself.
The main entrance to the site is through a heavy mechanised gate painted in UN colours. The complex is made up of a number of warehouses, some of which have been adapted into large waiting areas and rows of private interview booths. The building in which registration takes place has rows of metal bars to ensure queuing remains orderly. The waiting area has rows of benches, toilets, a small café selling food and drinks and a playroom for young children. When we visited a group of Iraqi clowns, trained by an organisation called ‘Clowns Without Borders’, were putting on a show for the kids. Large TV screens run a programme giving advice to refugees in Syria on a loop.
We visited Douma as part of our project teaching photojournalism to a group of 10 young Iraqi refugees. All of the students live in and around Damascus and all of them have registered with the UNHCR. They may not have visited Douma before, but the registration process is one they have all experienced. We wanted them to document what goes on there so that we could make a sound slide combining their best work. The results were fantastic, especially considering they it was only their second session with their cameras.
The previous day was the introductory session in which we taught them some basic camera skills and got them to take some portraits. We are working in partnership with the UNHCR who have provided the project with outreach workers, translators and a teaching space at their community centre in Saida Zainab, the district in Damascus with the densest population of Iraqi refugees. However, despite all this support our teaching sessions are limited by the strict control the Syrian government enforces on all media organisations. Parts of Saida Zainab are run down. There are dirt roads, large derelict areas of rubble and people begging on the streets. One woman came up to our car window asking for money. These are the things the Syrian government does not want you to see and, without official permission to photograph in such an area, the risk of unwanted police harassment or arrest is likely. Ten students all taking photographs in the same area are not likely to go unnoticed.
Consequently our students are limited to shooting inside the community centre or other UNHCR facilities. Much of our sessions rely on the students taking their own photographs and the community centre offers little more than four rooms and an empty courtyard in which to take photographs. So, with a few anxieties about how exactly the day would turn out, and few options of safe places to photograph, we took our students to Douma.
The site at Douma is the first developed specially for registration of refugees in Syria. The registration and interview process takes time and can be a stressful experience. Many Iraqi refugees are reluctant to register in the first place, seeing it as a failure of their capacity to provide for themselves and their families. Nobody wants to live on handouts. Furthermore, the conclusions drawn from their interview will influence what aid individuals and families are able to receive. Before Douma was set-up registration took place in a residential area in another part of Damascus. People had to wait for long periods of time outside often in the gruellingly hot Middle Eastern sun. Now, in Douma, orderly rows of fans hanging from the warehouse ceiling keep the air cool.
Douma is also the new distribution centre for food aid and other services the UNHCR offers refugees. The aim is for all refugee assistance to be centralised at the site. Although Iraqi refugees reside all over Syria the majority live in and around Damascus. The old food distribution central Damascus forced to close down in April after the government claimed use of the land. Food aid was suspended until Douma was ready in June, something which put severe strain on many of the 128,000 refugees who depend on that aid to feed themselves and their families. Food (provided by the UNHCR, the Syrian Arab Red Cross (SARC) and the World Food Programme) is stored in two large warehouses and two tents which had been erected between the buildings. Large sacks of rice and boxes of other food stuffs are piled high. Forklifts moved pallets of washing detergent around. It is a big operation for a big refugee population.
Despite the organised and hospitable facilities at Douma the desperation which lies so close to the surface of many Iraqi refugees lives was exposed a few weeks ago. As food was being distributed in one of the warehouses, the large and anxious crowd, ended up in a crush. There were 17 casualties, none of them serious. I was shown the area where it happened. A metal fence running from floor to ceiling sectioned off the far end of the warehouse. With a large number of people pushing their way forwards it wasn’t hard to imagine how people could end up trapped against the fence with nowhere to go.
The UNHCR is Syria is facing a funding crisis, only receiving half of the funds it says it needs to run its operation. Out of the estimated 1.5 million Iraqi refugees in Syria, just over 200,000 have registered. Pride is often the main reason for Iraqi’s not registering with the agency. It is deemed by many to be a last resort and many families to choose to live off savings or support from relatives working abroad, rather than register for aid. However, with people’s savings running low, and with little chance of the security situation in Iraq improving enough to encourage widespread returns, it seems likely that the numbers of registered refugees will continue to grow, putting further strain on the UNHCR’s funds and increasing the vulnerability of many Iraqi’s living in Syria.

Last blog of Kosovo

Throughout our or five weeks in Kosovo a lot of people here have asked us what we think of the place. It is a question I still don’t know how to respond to. On one level Kosovo seems like a place which offers a very pleasant life. On the surface the atmosphere is very relaxed. As a British citizen many of the people you meet are very friendly, wanting to talk to you about Premiership football, your favourite music or David Miliband. Its capital, Pristina is developing into fully-fledged European city. In Mitrovica there is a feeling of community that towns of similar size in Britain do not have. Kids play football and basketball on the main streets without the police or angry owners of the coffee bars chasing them away if the ball flies out of control. You can get a good pizza for under £4. A beer costs you less than £1, a decent coffee less than 50p. For a member of the international community, with a wage far higher than the vast majority of local people, there is a nice life to be had in Kosovo.

However, if you say that you like Kosovo, or that life here seems good, to a Kosovan they are likely to look at you as though you are either lying or a little strange in the head. It’s then that you remember the long list of problems the region has.

Most of Kosovo has daily power-cuts. In Mitrovica the water is turned off for 12 hours ever other day to avoid shortages. Generally the roads are in a poor condition. 40% of the population is unemployed. Some estimates are even higher. Social aid is between €30 and €50 a month per person. There is a large underground economy but it does not disguise the fact that money is tight for the vast majority of the population. This is exacerbated by the fact that the banking system is not trusted. Many families get money from relatives who live and work in Europe or the US but, instead of being have a reliable savings account to keep larger sums of money in, it is often spent on building a house, garage, car wash or restaurant in the middle of nowhere and with little identifiable purpose.

The education system is so over-crowded that children have to go to school in shifts. 50% of the population is under 25, 26% is under 18. Teachers get a monthly wage of around €150 a month, earnings which do not represent the amount of work required of them. There is one public university and a number of private ones which offer a variable quality of education. Most degrees obtained are of little worth outside Kosovo. The health service is hugely underfunded. The Ministry of Health has only €56 million to spend on 2 million people. Neighbouring Macedonia has €500 million for a population of a similar size. There is virtually no health insurance. The lack of official employment means there is little money from taxes. Wages for lower-income staff in the health service are low and the government has only €250,000 to spend on continuing the education of Kosovo’s doctors – a sum which the Minister of Health described to me as ‘no more than symbolic’. The result is that the health service remains hugely dependant on foreign donors and will be for some time to come.

This dependence on the international community can be seen at almost every level of the day to day running of Kosovo. Ultimately its government’s authority is still subordinate to UNMIK. Kosovo’s deceleration of independence was based on the condition that it undergoes a period of ‘international supervision’, meaning that the international community still has a lot of influence over the Kosovan government. In June EULEX, a mission of 1800 European diplomats and legal professionals, will descend on Kosovo’s legal system in an attempt to make it stronger and fairer. Even the coffee shops and continental dining largely depend on the disposable incomes of the international community who work here. The Kosovan Police Service is still supplemented by law enforcement from all over the world and essentially relies on the military might of KFOR. The violence in north Mitrovica during March this year, in which KFOR had to take over from the KPS, proves how vital KFOR is to the region’s stability. There are few Kosovans who think that a quick withdrawal of international forces is a good idea.

However, even with strong international support, the government was unable to do anything to stop the Serbian local elections on May 11th proving that even UNMIK and KFOR can still be subject to the region’s volatile politics. Choosing not to exacerbate the already tense post-independence atmosphere between Serbs and Albanians, UNMIK decided to denounce the elections but do nothing to stop them taking place. The Kosovan government, unable to do much else, followed suit, prompting a large protest in Pristina by those Kosovan Albanians who want a government free of what they see as foreign interference. Election day passed by peacefully enough. However, not only did it re-iterate the influence Serbian politics has in Kosovo, it strengthened the structures of a Serbian local government within Kosovo’s borders. It is too early to say exactly how this will progress but a likely outcome is that Serbs will further disassociate themselves with the Kosovan government, choosing instead to identity themselves with the parallel structures the local elections helped to consolidate.

This is in addition to the long standing tactics the Serbian government has used to undermine any kind of autonomous or independent governance in Kosovo. Even before World War I Serbia encouraged its citizens to move to Kosovo by offering them free land and tax exemption in order to strengthen its claim to annexing the region. A similar policy began after the war in 1999. Serbs living in Kosovo can claim up to €110 a month from the Serbian government to remain in Kosovo. Serbia also provides power to the Serb dominated north of Mitrovica, saving it from the regular power-cuts the south of the town suffers. Medical staff at the hospital in north Mitrovica are paid double what they would earn if they worked in Serbia. Many Serbs here say that Kosovo is their home and that is all the reason they need to stay. There is little reason to doubt them. However, the support provided by the Serbian government to Kosovan Serbs undermines the authority and challenges the competency of the new Kosovan government. It wouldn’t be cynical to suggest that the intended message from the Serbian government is that Kosovo cannot govern itself.

The declaration of independence remains controversial. So far only 42 countries have formally recognised it. Whether it is legal not it has served to knock Serbian-Albanian relations backwards. In Mitrovica many people have told us that before independence there was a relatively peaceful atmosphere in the town. Since the declaration all multi-ethnic programmes shut down. Photographers who had worked on both sides of the bridge stopped doing so. Although a recent volunteering programme saw some young people from the north and south get together the fact remains that the deceleration for independence has isolated the vast majority of Serbs and strengthened their affiliation with the Serbian nation.

Besides the mixture of euphoria and outrage the declaration has had few material implications for Kosovo. However, it does seem to have had a huge psychological boost to the Albanian population. Speaking with many people, especially young people, their sense of responsibility for their community and the success of their nation are very strong. Although some of the older people are looking to the government to strengthen the economy and generate more jobs, a lot of the younger people see it the success of Kosovo as an individual responsibility. Of course some of this may be put down to naivety, but it is inspiring none-the-less. The problem is that the pride and duty they feel towards their new nation is equal to the pride and identity young Serbian people feel towards Kosovo as part of Serbia. And memories of the war are still strong, something nationalist Serb politicians will continue to perpetuate and capitalise on in order to grab more votes.

The situation is far too complex to be able to decide whether the future for Kosovo is hopeful or dismal. The level of long term international support, which is likely to extend into the foreseeable future, has done a great deal for the region but it is not a sustainable solution. The vast majority of the people we spoke to, Serb, Albanian and Roma expressed a desire to leave the past behind and work towards a better future. They were all careful to make us understand that when they spoke of their hopes for the future they were hopes for everyone in Kosovo regardless of ethnicity. But the war and its fallout have left raw wounds which lie close to the surface of everyday life. A lot of Kosovan Albanians are big fans of James Blunt, not so much for his music, but because he was in one of the first regiments in the British Army to come to Kosovo in the war. For some of our students, who range from 15 to 19, the war is one of the first collection of memories they have beyond isolated images of walking to school and playing with their friends. Talking about the war still brought tears to one woman’s eyes.

The fact remains that Kosovo is still dominated by the tragic effects of a terrible ethnic conflict. Even nine years after the war many people have not returned to their homes because they would not feel safe there. The hope is that people from Kosovo and the international community are not willing to give up on the region. Serbs, Albanians and Roma feel that it is their home and they do not want to leave. As one of our students said about Mitrovica ‘I don’t have a life without it.’ The hope for the future is that this common desire to live a happy and successful life in Kosovo can result in uniting the people living here rather than continue to force them apart.

New Exposure project

We have been in Mitrovica for over 3 weeks now and our main project is drawing to a close. Our 12 participants are all young people from the town and its surrounding area, five of whom are Kosovan Serbs and seven who are Kosovan Albanians. As well as teaching them the basics of photography we have been introducing them to how photography can be used to tell a story or illuminate a certain issue. As we’re only here for 4 weeks we’ve had to move quickly, beginning with basic camera skills and getting them to think critically about how best to frame a shot in relation to what they are trying to express. Now each of our participants will be working on their own photostory about an issue in Mitrovica that interests or concerns them.
Many of them came up with more than one idea. Unsurprisingly a number of them wanted to do their project on Mitrovica as a divided town but the tension between the two communities has sadly restricted what they can do. Although some of the participants said they go to the other side regularly, the climate here is too tense to let them take photos on both sides of the river. We have spoken to professional photojournalists from the north and south of Mitrovica and each of them said that they have stopped working on the both sides of the river since the declaration of independence. If they feel it is too dangerous for them, then it is certainly too dangerous for our students.
The post-independence climate in Mitrovica has also governed how we have run the programme. Up until autumn of 2007 a local NGO called CBM ran photography classes with Serb and Albanian students. It also published a monthly magazine called M-Magazine which was made up from work by young people and journalists from the north and south of the town. Since the declaration of independence the magazine has stopped and we were told that having an ethnically mixed class would be almost impossible. Consequently we have had to run separate sessions for Serbs in the north of the town and Albanians in the south.
The main obstacle to running a mixed-ethnicity class was has not been from our participants. From our experience, and what we have been told, the problem seems to lie more in their parents and other adults. Most of our participants have expressed how much they dislike the divided nature of the town and would like it to return to the relatively more hopeful relationship between north and south which existed pre-declaration. However, there is still a difference of attitude towards the status of Kosovo between the young Serbs and the young Albanians which seems very difficult to reconcile. Of the young people I have spoken to in the south side many of them speak of the declaration as the point from which they must take pride in their nation and work hard to make it succeed. Their sense of responsibility for the future of their community is rooted in Kosovo as an independent state.


On the northern side, even the most mild mannered of our participants feels that his identity is Serbian before it is Kosovan. During one of our sessions the local college finished classes for the summer. The students celebrated by getting in their cars and driving around the town in a long convey, blaring their horns constantly. A number of them flew the Serbian flag from their windows. The politics which divides Mitrovica are never far away from the surface of people’s lives. Whereas there are man young people who want relationships to continue to improve, the town has been split further apart by the declaration. Independence may be a step forward for the region, but in Mitrovica it has been a definite step backwards for the relationship between the Albanian and Serb communities.

Raza.

Raza is an 83 year old Roma woman who lives in a small village called Plementina. The village is about a 20 minute drive from Pristina and lies next to a huge coal-fired power station which dominates the landscape. The population of the village is a mixture of Kosovan Serbs and Roma people. There is a stark contrast between Serbian homes and the houses the Roma live in. The Serb homes we saw are in good condition. Their well kept lawns and newly painted walls seemed particularly pleasant in the bright May sunshine. The Roma houses, however, are much older, more dilapidated and overcrowded. One family of 16 we visited live in a house which was little bigger than our flat in Mitrovica.

We went to visit Raza with two volunteer workers from Balkan Sunflowers – an NGO which works to increase Roma and other minorities’ participation in the Kosovan education system. The organisation has an education centre in Plementina which is attended by around 50-60 Roma children for a few hours each day. The main school in the village is Serbian and all lessons are taught in Serbian. Roma people have their own language and so children struggle to keep up in classes. In 1989 Slobodan Milosevic banned all Roma children from schools, leaving the current generation of parents largely uneducated. Consequently many Roma parents place little value in education. All this leads to a poor quality of education and low attendance rates among the Roma community. Balkan Sunflowers provide some additional support to these children by helping them with their homework and teaching them Serbian.

Their overall aim is to integrate their learning centres with the Kosovan government’s educational structures, once the government has enough money. The volunteers and coordinators we spoke to seemed reasonably optimistic about their work. According to the coordinator of the Plementina centre attendance of their classes has tripled in the last 2-3 years, but it remains an area with huge room for improvement. An EU progress report estimated that only 10% of Kosovan Roma children attend primary school regularly and we were told that there are only around 30 Roma students in higher education in Kosovo.

After speaking with the people running the centre we went to visit Raza. The conditions of her life are a powerful example of just how neglected members of the Roma community can be in Kosovo. As we walked down a road in a village we approached a cluster of three buildings: two old houses with washing hang up outside and a smaller building which seemed no more than a ruin. We were told that Raza lived here. I assumed that the volunteer meant one of the houses, the volunteers entered the building I had thought a ruin. Inside Raza was crouched down on the floor. She is so small that at first I thought the person huddled up in a thick coat and with a scarf covering her head was a child, not an 83 year old woman.

The building, which is her home, is a single room. A tiny, dirty bed with a thin mattress and a bundle of old sheets stands against one wall. Next to it is an old rusted stove which looks unusable. On top of it lay some bread crusts, old food wrappers and empty plastic bottles. The floor is bare concrete and covered in dirt. In some places the concrete has crumbled away to exposure the soil below. More litter was scattered over the floor. There is no toilet or washing facilities and the room smelt of excrement.

There is one small window letting in a little light, but when the single naked light bulb hanging from the ceiling went out because of a power cut the room was dark. Raza, however, is blind. When we entered the room she was crouched down, feeling along the floor with her hands for some of orange peel. She is probably about 5’4’’ if stood up straight but her spine is so curved that when she gets up to walk outside she stands no higher than four feet. It took her around five minutes to walk eight yards from the middle of her room to just outside the front door and she was assisted by a stick and two people. She complained of being cold despite it being a hot day and said her stomach was causing her pain.

She has two children but neither of them live close enough to take care of her regularly. One of the Sunflowers volunteers tries to see her once a week, but with the commitments of her job she finds it a difficult to keep to this routine. We were told her neighbours do a little to look after her but from the squalid conditions of her home it is clear that what they do for her cannot amount to much. Not that they can be blamed. They are a large family with their own problems to face.

The conditions Raza lives in are by far the worst we have encountered in Kosovo. Life here is far from ideal. The education system here is over-crowded. Children go to school in shifts so that everyone can spend an equal time in classes. The health service is hugely under-funded. Its entire annual budget is €56 million. To put that into context, I was told by the Kosovan government’s Minister for Health that Macedonia, a country with a population of a similar size, has €500 million to spend on its health system. But despite this, the water-shortages, power cuts and high rate of unemployment most people in Kosovo seem to have pleasant lives compared to someone like Raza.

As in most of Europe the Roma community in Kosovo face many difficulties. The people are very poor and have large families to clothe and feed. The work is often unreliable and sporadic. Both Serbs and Albanians discriminate against them. We were told about a bus which takes people from the village to jobs in nearby towns has re-enforced plastic windows which are capable to withstanding stones being thrown at them. There is some political representation for minority communities in the Kosovan government, but in the case of the Roma there is no real unity between the communities scattered across the region. This discrimination, poverty and lack of widespread education has left Roma communities very isolated in Kosovo, and their plight is often overshadowed by the tensions between Serbs and Albanians. Raza's case may be extreme, but she is still an example of just how neglected a person can become in this environment.

Election in Mitrovica

Yesterday around 115,000 Kosovan Serbs voted in the Serbian parliamentary and local elections despite Kosovo declaring its independence from Serbia three months ago. The Kosovan government said that for Serbia to hold elections within its borders is illegal. In reply the Serbian government maintained that it is in fact Kosovo’s deceleration of independence which is illegal and that it remains part of Serbia. UNMIK, the real authority in the region, seemed to come down on the side of Kosovo’s independence. Under UN resolution 1244 Serbian local elections are banned and their spokesman has made it clear that they have ‘no legal validity.’ However, UNMIK also said they will not stop voting taking place in the 295 polling stations all over the region.

Local Serbian elections have not been allowed to take place since the UN took over the security and administration of the region after the war in 1999. Since then the Albanian Kosovan population waited patiently for independence. In February of this year Kosovo declared independence unilaterally and it has given much joy to the Albanian population. However, as unquestionable as their newly acquired statehood is to Kosovan Albanians, Kosovan Serbs still firmly believe that Kosovo is part of Serbia. Just as Albanians think that the Serbia elections have violated their sovereignty, Kosovan Serbs believe they had the right to vote for Serbian candidates in Kosovan municipalities.
The problem seems to stem from the lack of clarity surrounding Kosovo’s independence. The legal argument for independence is tied up in the wording of resolution 1244. This document was agreed upon by the UN Security Council after the war in 1999. The resolution gave UN control over the region and outlined its peace-building role. Under 1244 the United Nations Mission in Kosovo (UNMIK) is an interim administrative structure, aimed at facilitating a sustainable solution which both Kosovo and Serbia are content with. Once this job is done UNMIK leaves. But this has proved impossible. Kosovo (with its 90% Albanian population) wanted independence. Serbia, and Kosovan Serbs did not. Neither side would budge.

Basically, this stalemate is used as legal justification for independence. UNMIK’s mandate is to facilitate progress but because the stalemate blocks any progress, it is argued that a sustainable solution which only one party agrees to is justifiable, as long as that solution is compatible with resolution 1244. An independent Kosovo was considered the most compatible solution.
The argument against Kosovo’s independence, the argument Serbia follows, is that because the UN Security Council has not agreed on a resolution granting Kosovo independence, it is still part of Serbia. Legally, this argument seems much stronger, but that doesn’t appear to concern those who have backed independence. George W Bush, in an out-of-character flagrant disregard for international law, supported the declaration almost immediately. The UK and much of the EU joined in. Generally the nations which have not supported Kosovo’s unilateral declaration, like Russia, China and Spain, have issues with their own separatist regions. Outside Serbia, Russia is the biggest champion of the Serb cause in Kosovo and promises to use its veto in the UN Security Council to block any resolution to grant the region independence. Without such a resolution it seems as though Kosovo’s statehood will continue to be questionable, and Serbia’s claim to the region will be based on more than just its nationalistic pride.

In theory UNMIK had both the legal right and the power to shut-down the polling stations. When we asked their spokesman Russel Geekie about the situation he said that the local elections were illegal under resolution 1244. But UNMIK made it repeatedly clear that it would do nothing to enforce this part of the resolution. Joachim Ruecker, the head of UNMIK, said that the results of the election will not be recognised. But at the same time he warned that the elections could strengthen a Serbian administrative structure which parallels the Kosovan authorities. To have two opposing government structures in the same region, split down ethnic lines, would be dangerous and seriously impede any progress.

On Friday the Kosovan Albanian movement for self-determination, Vetëvendosje, rallied an estimated 1000 people to march in protest against UNMIK’s and the Kosovan government’s weak response to a blatant violation of Kosovo’s sovereignty. One of Vetveendosje’s criticisms of UNMIK is that its policies have deepened the divide between Kosovan Serbs and Kosovan Albanians. By allowing the local elections to take place they are proving these criticisms right. Albin Kurti, the leader of Vetëvendosje, estimated the election will establish 23 Serbian municipal presidents in Kosovo, paralleling the Kosovan government’s local administrative system and giving the Serbs their own governing structures. Furthermore, the most likely winners in these parallel seats are the more radical candidates.

Perhaps there is hope if the region’s economy picks up. Speaking to Albanian’s living in south Mitrovica, they seemed to suggest that work was the way out of the tension which causes the region so many problems. To them independence is won, and it is time to begin improving the economy and infrastructure. The quality of the roads is poor and there are regular power cuts throughout the region. In Mitrovica the water is turned off from 6pm to 6am every other dayas well as the electricity. I spoke to one man from the town who works for the United Nations Development Programme. He said ‘If more people had jobs to go to, and less time to sit and think, then maybe they could move on’. However, this attitude might change if Joachim Ruecker’s warnings prove correct and the Serbian local elections result in parallel governmental structures strong enough to rival the Kosovan government.

Overall there seems to be a lack of clear and consistent action over the status of Kosovo. Its sovereignty is debatable. The structures which are supposed to uphold the integrity of its independence have failed it. If there was no argument over Kosovo’s statehood there would be no argument over Serbia’s local elections. Similarly if UNMIK had been willing to put a halt to the local elections, then the risk of strengthening Belgrade’s influence in the region would diminish. Allowing the elections to take place but pledging that their results will be ignored successfully avoided the possibility of violent disturbances. To deny Kosovan Serbs the vote would have resulted in isolating them further from the Kosovan government. However, by UNMIK’s own admission, the parallel administrative structures the election will consolidate in Kosovo may end up having the same effect.

In Serbia itself the pro-EU coalition headed by Boris Tadic has won the majority of votes in the parliamentary election, but he faces tough negotiations to ensure that his coalition oppose a coalition of nationalist parties which has the potential to claim 51% of the parliamentary seats. In Mitrovica it seems as though the radicals have won the local elections. Only time will tell what kind of impact this will have on the town.

Monitoring My Bordom

Today I joined a routine KFOR patrol around north Mitrovica. At a brief meeting a week ago in the UNMIK head-quarters in Pristina with Major Hervé Cozettie I discussed going up to the Kosovan/Serbian border well north of Mitrovica with a KFOR patrol. Yesterday I received a call from Lieutenant El Ouardi, a KFOR press officer, inviting me to join an afternoon foot patrol in north Kosovo with a unit of French Marines. Sadly we didn’t leave Mitrovica, staying well south of one the most controversial borders in Europe.

I met El Ouardi and our driver at the main bridge over the Ibar. From there we drove up to the hill above north Mitrovica. At the top of the hill, on which sits a huge soviet monument to Mitrovica’s miners, I met a French marine commando unit. They have been here since January and patrol this region of Kosovo in two hour shifts, 24 hours a day. Their purpose is to keep the peace and monitor the situation. When asked exactly what this meant they said that they walk around looking for anything unusual. Anything out of the ordinary they report to KPS. They gave an example from last week when they had seen some Serbians burning pictures of the moderate Serbian president Boris Tadic and had radioed KPS about it. It is hardly the kind of work you associate with marines.

I asked them about March 17th, when a group of Serbs over-took the courthouse in north Mitrovica. In the ensuring violence a Ukrainian UN solider was killed by a grenade. Several others were injured. KFOR were called in and the situation was resolved relatively quickly. The marines said that they are only called in if a situation is too much for the KPS. Effectively they are the third line of security forces. They said that if they had been policing the town on that night the disturbance would never have escalated to the levels of violence that it did, and that a life would not have been lost.

It is unlikely that they would say otherwise, and their opinions are likely to be true. The problem is that KFOR is a military outfit, and to have international soldiers on the streets in the place of local police officers is not sustainable. UNMIK is here to administer the development of Kosovo from a violent and fractured region to a stable and self-sustaining state. A large part of this is developing a police force that can maintain the rule of law without having to rely on the presence of foreign military power. UNMIK has spent the last nine years helping Kosovo to develop an efficient and effective police service. If they still relied on KFOR alone for the rule of law then they wouldn’t have been doing their job.

The result is that KFOR’s day-to-day routine is little more than running the kind of mundane patrols that I went on. Before I met the marines I had expected to be told where we were going and to tag along with them. Instead they asked me what I wanted to see. They obviously felt there was little else for them to do but show me what I wanted to see. Sadly they wouldn’t take me up to Serbian/Kosovan border. Instead we worked our way back down the hill and walked through Mitrovica, monitoring the peace of a fairly relaxed Saturday afternoon. We’ll wait to see if this attitude remains throughout tomorrow when Kosovan Serbs go to vote in the Serbian general elections.

'UNMIK is Rubbish'

I was sat on the bus from Pristina to Mitrovica, drawing a string of disapproving looks from the lady next to me. The bus was packed and she had raced to get the free seat next to me. Unfortunately for her, however, I stunk of sewage. My face and arms were covered in black splatters of liquid waste and I didn’t have enough Albanian at my disposal to explain myself.

On the 9th of May Vetëvendosje scheduled to stage a protest against the fact that voting for the Serbian elections will be allowed to take place inside Kosovo. UNMIK has denounced any voting on Kosovan soil as illegal, but it has also said that it will not stop voting. Nor will the KPS do anything to prevent Kosovan Serbs going to the polling stations. To express their disapproval Vetëvendosje marched through the centre of Pristina with a truck full of rubbish, stopping at the UNMIK head-quarters and other government buildings to pelt them with bags of waste. They brought a water-cannon along too, using it to spray sewage water over the same targets. I got caught in the firing line while taking pictures of the demonstration.

The rubbish is intended to be representative of how Vetëvendosje view the UN’s involvement in the region, in particular the Ahtisaari package, the culmination of negotiations between Serbia, Kosovo and the UN to outline how long term stability in the region might be achieved. Although independence for Kosovo was not mentioned in the text, some of its provisions can be seen as paving the way towards sovereignty for Kosovo. Vetëvendosje (Albanian for ‘self-determination’) are opposed to all aspects of the UNMIK administration, especially the Ahtisaari package, seeing it as undemocratic obstacle to Kosovo’s true sovereignty.

The Serbian general election is another example to supporters of Vetëvendosje of UNMIK’s inability to adhere to the will of the Kosovan people. In allowing the Serbian population of the region to vote in another county’s election, UNMIK is acquiescing in the violation of the sovereignty it is supposed to be protecting. Furthermore, it is perpetuating the ethnic divisions in the region. Although the Kosovan Prime Minister Hassim Thaci has ‘encouraged’ the Serb population not to vote, the fact that most of it will, is a clear sign that their national allegiance remains with Belgrade, not Pristina. Vetëvendosje also fears that UNMIK's policies will end up dividing Serbs and Albanians further. Allowing the election is a case in point.

The declaration of independence can be seen as a similarly divisive move. The Albanian population embraced it. They had been waiting for years. But the Kosovan Serbs were never going to accept it and it has only intensified the tensions between the two groups. The atmosphere in Mitrovica proves this. The UN had a lot of influence on the terms of Kosovo’s independence, especially the condition that its independence is subject to international supervision. Just as they are the ones with the power to oppose voting, that same power protects the independence. Neither action has helped to bridge the divide which dominates Kosovo.

Vetëvendosje are pro-independence, but not the current form of independence. It sees the terms that insist Kosovo’s independence should be subject to a period of international rule as yet another way of denying Kosovo its freedom, and continuing the damaging rule of foreign powers. They can be sympathised with, but only UNMIK really has the kind of military power required to keep the ethnic tensions from exploding into violent conflict. One Serb nationalist politician, Tomislav Nikolic, recently said that if international forces left Kosovo, Serbian troops would have enter the northern part of the region in order to protect the Kosovan Serbs. He hasn’t the authority to do this, but it demonstrates how people don’t think Kosovo is safe place without a military presence. In this respect UNMIK seems the best best for Serbs and Albanians.

Overall UNMIK’s stance on the voting in Kosovo is probably best seen as pragmatic. For them to denounce the elections as illegal, but not to stop them, seems the best way to avoid a period of serious tension erupting into violence. This pragmatism is probably also the reason that the policing of the protest was the most tolerant policing I have seen at a large-scale political protest. Last year two Vetëvendosje protestors were killed by UNMIK rubber bullets. Another 80 were injured. To repeat this so close to election day would generate Albanian animosity towards UNMIK beyond Vetëvendosje members and sympathisers.

Today there were only KPS officers on show. After a short stand-off with some masked Vetëvendosje activists, done more out of formality than anything else, the police stood back and allowed the rubbish slingers and sewage sprayers to do more or less as they pleased. Vetëvendosje is a peaceful organisation. When a few excited members of the crowd started throwing bottles and stones they restrained them before the police were needed.

Still it is difficult to imagine the Met taking the same relaxed attitude if people drove a truck full or rubbish down Westminster and began pelting Parliament with it, and they police one of the most stable democracies in the world. It is a sign of the tension here, and the possibility for serious disturbances, that tolerance of this kind of political protest, which is fundamentally peaceful, is maintained. From the evidence of this event UNMIK is treating everything surrounding the election with caution, trying to remain as distanced from it as possible.