As I posted earlier this week, I am in Kosovo for a few weeks at the invitation of the American Bar Association to do an assessment of legal education in the country.  As part of that process I had meetings outside of Pristina so we set out for a full day road trip.  It is impossible to drive for any amount of time in Kosovo and not confront the scars of war such as the burned remains of houses and other obvious signs of the violence that erupted here not too long ago.  There is also an endless assortment of foreign troops and police officers patrolling the streets with their national flags displayed.  Depending on your viewpoint, this multinational parade of uniformed officers either makes you feel safer or acts as a reminder of the potential for violence.  

One of the towns on our itinerary was Peja—a town in Western Kosovo.  This town had a large ethnic Serb population before the war, many of whom have remained or have returned.  My little assessment team includes two law students:  one is from Kosovo and one from the USA. The American law student has a friend who is Serbian whose father died and was buried in Peja in the 1980s.  This Serbian friend lives in Belgrade and has not visited her father’s grave since before the war (when she was a child).  Since we were in the area we made a detour to pay our respects.  It is no easy thing to find a specific grave with only a name and general instructions of where to look.  We found ourselves in a Serbian graveyard, walking through the uncut grass and weeds trying to find the right Cyrillic name on one of the headstones.  One challenge was the fact that vandals damaged so many graves during the war—many headstones were smashed or completely destroyed. 

Our presence quickly attracted attention—and before long we had several older ethnic Serbian residents helping with our search and directing us to the right graveyard which was a short drive away.  One of our helpers worked in the other graveyard and found what we think is the right gravestone.  It was pushed down, but the writing was still visible and it was not smashed into pieces.  Just outside the graveyard walls were the burned shells of Albanian houses.  Neither the living nor the dead remained untouched in this conflict. 

The family has not visited their father’s grave due to fear that “it isn’t safe” for ethnic Serbians to travel in Kosovo.  As always, this conflict is perceived differently depending on who you are talking to.  The ethnic Albanians that I have spoken to are adamant that “of course” Serbian citizens would be safe visiting Kosovo now.  And, some of the foreigners I have spoken to here agree and attribute it to Kosovo’s declaration of independence in 2008.  The idea is that becoming an independent state (even without universal recognition and UN membership) has made the majority ethnic Albanian population more secure and less fearful that Serbia will regain control of the country.  This feeling of security is leading to less violence and tension.  At least that is the theory.

While the international community focuses its attention at the political level, this conflict, like every conflict, plays itself out daily in small and very personal ways.  And, the different perspectives that people who live in this region have about the current state of the conflict continue to determine very personal decisions such as whether to visit a parent’s grave.