Kosovo fieldwork: status

Kosova/Kosovo fieldwork notes extracts

At 9.05am on the 14th of July 2005, I recorded that:

Some United Nations [UN] and Council of Europe [CoE] staff agree that there are three classes or types of status: 'in towns, in Trepca, they say, "we're Kosovan and we're Serbian"; in settlements, in Mitrovica, they say, "we're Kosovan and we're Yugoslavian"; but in the enclaves they say, "we're not Kosovan, we're not Serbian, we're not Yugoslavian - we're nothing - we're fucked"'.

According to those UN and CoE sources:

'the Serbian government says that "if you're in Mitrovica, Trepca or Bresovica, we'll protect you, if not..."'.

Those sources say that:

'Kosovo doesn't have a status - it's nothing - it's not independent, it's not Serbia"'.

They continued:

'it's like Ireland - it was in the Irish constitution that Northern Ireland was a part of southern Ireland and [as part of the peace process] they said, "well, we'll change the constitution, make an amendment, relinquish our claim over the north", so they say, "okay, we don't own it", but they don't say, "okay, it's independent" - it's nothing'...

Participants have been afforded anonymity. Formatting has been changed to make it easy to read in a blog.

Technorati tags: Council of Europe (CoE); independence; Ireland/Northern Ireland; Kosova/Kosovo; Kosovan; peace; peace process; Serbia; Serbian; status; United Nations (UN); Yugoslav/Yugoslavian.