Kosovo Diary: whose flag is it anyway?

It’s not often that you get to meet a President and a Prime Minister on the same day - and get to ask them anything you want. 

These are the perks of the job. While President Hashim Thaci has a smooth politician’s charm - not too dissimilar to his great friend Bill Clinton, Prime Minister Ramush Haradinaj had more of a martial disposition. Like a general doing due diligence in talking to the media, polite, with impressive English. But with eyes that told me that he could crush a man’s skull with his bare hands if he wanted to.

That could just have been in my head (or skull). As are most things when you prepare to visit a country that you’ve never been to before. When you are shaped and moulded by what you have read, what you have watched. What you can feel is only ever what you can get when you’re there.

Both are former Kosovo Liberation Army rebel leaders, warriors who fought against Serb domination, who now lead their country in civilian clothes.

Directing the future of this new, ten-year-old country that is joined at the hip to the west but still does not have complete international recognition.

Thaci and Haradinaj’s default position on most things that I challenged them on — corruption, trafficking, alleged war crimes — was that the Russians and Serbs have tried to make it seem as if this western-sponsored country was run by criminals.

I did my reading before leaving. Absorbed the material. Went to Kosovo for the ten year anniversary of independence. I spoke to the still grieving mothers in Gjakova, sampled the anger, resentment and hurt that many Kosovar Albanians still feel so long after the war of the late 90s.

I interviewed the aforementioned big fish, spoke to opposition figures, young people who want to leave, young people who want to stay. I went to North Mitrovica, tense after the killing of a high profile Serb politician just days before (a man I was due to interview). I got a taste of how the Serb majority there lived, with loyalties to Belgrade. Sampled their anger, resentment and hurt.

North Mitrovica taught me much, most notably that the Balkans’ tensions are not over.But I knew I was going to come away with that analysis even before I stepped foot in Kosoo.

But what’s in-between the cracks. The stuff that makes you ask your fixer, what’s that? Who is that guy? The stuff that fills the gaps that hours of reading articles and archives spanning two decades and watching endless hours of documentaries could never give you.

The difference between months of internet dating and now meeting the real person. How they smile. Why they smile. What they’re really like. The thing that untangles the intangibles that just words on electronic devices can’t express.

Three things stood out for me. One was a church. Another, an impressively bearded fellow. The third, a flag. Or two flags to be more precise. 

The Church

Inside the grounds of the University of Pristina stands an Orthodox Church. It looks like a ruin. Beautiful and eerie, standing lonely in the winter snow in the middle of the campus in the city centre.

I live in Istanbul. Despite being an archeological illiterate, I think I know my old buildings when I see one. So I was surprised to hear that this gorgeous gold-cross-topped giant still in decent condition — that I presumed would tell me some super story about Ottomans fighting Serbs fighting Catholics or something — was really just built when I was a teenager.

Slobodan Milosevic ordered its construction just before the war broke out. Ethnic Albanians (who are either Muslim or Catholic) saw it as a stake driven into the heart of their homeland. It was unfinished. Not a ruin.

Nobody uses it. There was a tussle over who owned it, with the Serb Orthodox Church retaining the rights. Those authorities won’t allow it to be transformed into a museum. There aren’t enough Orthodox Serbs in Pristina to use it, and they probably wouldn’t want to use it if there were, given that for the Albanian majority it has an association with the man who is as reviled as Hitler here. 

Some Albanians tried to destroy it, but local police stopped them and protected its sanctity. And if the state did decide to bulldoze it, or turn a blind eye to vigilantes smashing it up, well, think of the Buddhas of Bamiyan and the Taliban - and the probable outrage and conflict that would follow.

Little acts of violence in the Balkans cause no broader trouble. Said nobody ever. At least not since 1914.

This is a gorgeous house of God built in the ungodliest times, with no one to use it, with mystical powers of paralysis over anyone who wants to do something, anything, with it.

Stuck in the past. Unsure of the future. The perfect metaphor for Balkans politics, to some.

Skanderbeg

George Kastrioti was an Albanian noble from the 15th century. They called him Skanderbeg. A grey-bearded warrior leader of old. And mashallah, he had an awesome beard. Everywhere I walked in Pristina, there he was. Astride a horse on a statue in the city centre. On display within the University walls. On tourism cards.

Okay, so he’s the national hero of ethnic Albanians. There’s the Skanderbeg of myth vs the Skanderbeg of reality. He’s like their William Wallace. You can take either the true historical version or the historically unfaithful (but amazingly told) Mel Gibson version - but he’ll still be William Wallace of Scotland who fought against the English. Scotland’s hero good. England bad.

But here’s the thing. And forgive me for slipping into anecdote here, this is a diary entry - the same person in Kosovo who will tell you the Serbs tried to destroy our identity but we are proud Albanian Muslims, will say I love Skanderbeg, he is our national hero, because he fought against the Ottoman Muslims and kept them at bay to defend not only the Albanian identity, but all of western Europe from...Islam.

The flags

The real life date, no longer the internet flirt, shows us contradictions and nuance and all this mesmerizing complexity that just makes you want more.

I was falling for Kosovo.

But Kosovo already has a true love.

Yes, though she may be wedded to the blue and yellow flag of independence, red and black is where her passion lies.

In no other country in the world will you find the flag of another country proudly displayed all over the place. But Kosovo is like no other country. 

The flag of their country is one, the flag of their soul is the Albanian flag. But speak to locals and leaders and they’ll tell you, this doesn’t mean that they see unification with Albania as an inevitability. It doesn’t mean they chose independence as a placeholder period to get away from Belgrade’s domination until they all fold into Albania. They love to be Kosovar Albanians

Does that love over an ethnic identity exclude the ethnic Serbs? For whom the empty, frozen church represents an empty, frozen, hopeless future here? 

Does the love of Skanderbeg and also their Ottoman heritage tell you all you need to know of a people torn between worlds as prisoners of their own geography? They’re at the eastern-most edges of the west and western-most fringes of the east. How can we expect a linear, simple story?

And the flag which is not really really their flag. As they try to convince nearly eighty countries (mostly allies of Russia) to finally recognize them and give them a voice at the UN, is their seemingly divided loyalty an indication that they will never be fully accepted by the world? 

Sure, Kosovo, you can drop by at the dinner party anytime you like, and you might know the host quite well, but we can never give you an official invitation.

I did my homework before I left for Kosovo. But it was not enough. Our research shapes us and colours us before we arrive. We conscious and subconscious expectations. Kosovo added so much more. Left me with so many more questions. I can’t wait to go back.

Watch Kosovo's Warrior Leaders: