Kosovo’s future. Waiting game

The Serbs in the province ponder a gloomy future

THE villagers of Belo Polje have a fine view of the town of Pec, but are too scared to go there. Before the Kosovo war of 1998-99, some 1,800 people, almost all Serbs, lived in Belo Polje. Today 40 men remain, hoping for better times. Pec is an Albanian town and the men of Belo Polje fear a lynching if they visit it.

Despite the efforts of the United Nations, the ultimate authority in Kosovo (though the place is still legally a province of Serbia), most Kosovo Serbs are cooped up in enclaves. The local ethnic-Albanian government says that the Serbs are kept in fear by their own authorities; they insist it is safe for them to travel and mingle in Albanian-majority areas. Yet a report by the UNHCR, the UN's refugee agency, says that, though there has not been an ethnically motivated murder in Kosovo for over a year, Serbs and other minorities (mostly Roma) continue to suffer attacks, harassment and intimidation. Cemeteries are vandalised and hate graffiti appear on municipal buildings.

All this is being noted by Kai Eide, a Norwegian diplomat appointed by Kofi Annan, the UN secretary-general, to report on Kosovo. If Mr Eide's report is positive, Mr Annan will appoint a “status envoy” to begin talks on the future of Kosovo this autumn. Kosovo's Albanians, who make up more than 90% of its 2m people, want independence. Serbia's leaders say they cannot have it. As Mr Eide drives around, tensions mount. Last weekend, bombs went off outside the buildings of the Kosovo government, the UN and the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe; and a grenade was thrown at a building housing a branch of a Serbian political party.

Over the past few weeks, some Kosovo Serbs have been arguing for an end to what they call a self-defeating boycott of Kosovo's institutions, decreed by Serbian authorities. The government in Belgrade says that, by joining in, the Serbs would make it easier for the Albanians to say all is well, and thus that Kosovo deserves independence. There are thought to be more than 100,000 Serbs in Kosovo. The numbers displaced in Serbia range from 60,000 to 230,000, depending on whose figures you believe. According to the UNHCR, only just over 6,000 Serbs have returned home since the end of the war.

Also near Pec is the village of Gorazdevac, with some 1,000 Serb inhabitants. There is hardly any work; to move in and out of the village, people need a twice-weekly escort of NATO-led peacekeepers. A war memorial defiantly commemorates locals killed by “Albanian terrorists” and NATO bombs. But as one local says, “if Kosovo gets its independence what would we wait for? We'd all go. There would be nothing to wait for.”

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