Kosovo: What Happens to Štrpce?

The Kosovo local elections continue echoing, mostly in terms of the fallout for the various competing Albanian parties and their leaders and coalitions. After all the efforts to get southern Serbs to vote, it remains to be seen how much effort will be put into actually helping them deal with the Kosovo reality surrounding them. No where is this more relevant than in the Serb enclave of Štrpce. Nestled in the mountains abutting Macedonia and with a Serb majority of some 70% of the municipality's 12,000 or so inhabitants, Štrpce is remote but pleasant, or at least when the locals get along and when the outside world allows them to enjoy the basics of life, including electricity. Albanians cluster on the lower approaches to the mountain valley - a redoubt really - that is almost exclusively Serbian. In addition to farming, many people also earned their living from the Brezovica ski resort. This was a state enterprise since Yugoslav days and until now awaits privatization. Without new ownership and investment, the resort has fallen into disrepair and generates only the smallest sliver of income and employment that it could. Who owns the resort, whose state property it is, is tied up in the unresolved issue of the status of Kosovo. Belgrade and the local Serbs see it as Serbian property while the Pristina institutions - supported by the EU - claim it as their own.

In the recent local elections, while an increased number of Serbs turned out to vote in Štrpce, it was not enough to win a majority of the municipal assembly that will choose the mayor. The Albanians won that majority. This leaves open the possibility of a Albanian mayor of a majority Serb municipality. Not the end of the world, perhaps, but not the best way to ensure the Serbs a leading role in governing their own community nor to implement the Ahtisaari plan as it was meant to be. It may be that behind the scenes the EU is working to bridge the gap and find a way to recognize the Serbian majority. Hopefully they are putting as much energy into it as they did into bullying the Serbs to vote or else fall subject to the Albanians.

Meanwhile, Pristina intends to use the opportunity to grab Brezovica through unilaterally privatizing it. They reportedly will start in December. The local Serbs have long seen privatization by Pristina as tantamount to Albanization. Without doubt, unilateral actions in this regard run the risk of changing the ethnic demographics in Štrpce, either quickly through encouraging Serb flight or slowly by shifting the benefits of the resort - especially a share in profits and employment - away from the locals and thus reducing the enclave's population to paupers. One can imagine some of those lusting for Brezovica gladly giving the Serbs the mayor's office to provide cover for the "privatization."

The time has really come for EULEX and ICO to put their actions where their mouths have been. (I am being polite here.) They need to do whatever is necessary to help ensure that non-Albanians in Kosovo have the chance to live normal lives in viable local communities that they can govern for themselves. Elections may or not have a central role in this process. Unilateral actions by Pristina and supported by EULEX in the name of law and order are, to paraphrase Proudhon, theft.