Introduction
This article is about the post-war international presence in Kosovo and the international community's emphasis on multi-ethnicity as a means of achieving ‘European standards’.1 It argues that whilst the stated aim of the international presence has been to promote ‘European standards’, especially multi-ethnicity, the policies and practices of this administration have been confused and often contradictory, and have ultimately resulted in the greater isolation of Kosovo's different ethnic groups from each other. Post-war Kosovo represents a bold experiment by the international community to transform a war zone into a multi-ethnic society that adheres to ‘European standards’. With this aim in mind, the post-war administration of Kosovo has used multi-ethnicity as the basis for its policies. It should be noted that an explicit definition of multi-ethnicity by the international administration has been conspicuous by its absence, despite the ubiquitous use of the term. Nevertheless, the administration has publicly promoted multi-ethnicity as being the basis for its policies on education, decentralisation and the return of displaced persons. Double standards with respect to the implementation of these policies has meant that not only have they failed to establish genuine multi-ethnicity, which, it is argued here, is political and social inter-ethnic interaction, but they have actually entrenched ethnic division in Kosovo. For the purposes of this research, the author adopts Will Kymlicka's distinctions. Kymlicka differentiates between ‘multinational’ and ‘polyethnic’ states.Reference Kymlicka2 He explains that ‘nation means a historical community … occupying a given territory or homeland, sharing a distinct language and culture’ and that ‘a country which contains more than one nation is, therefore, not a nation-state but a multinational state, and the smaller cultures form “national minorities” ’.Reference Kymlicka2 By contrast, for Kymlicka, a ‘polyethnic’ state is defined as possessing ethnic groups arising from immigration.Reference Kymlicka2 For the purposes of this article, the author sees Kosovo as being a ‘multinational’ rather than ‘polyethnic’ state, where multi-ethnicity can be defined as the cooperation between the different ‘nations’, that is, Kosovo's different ethnic groups.
As the international administration made promoting multi-ethnicity its priority, it focused on ethnicity as the primary identifying factor. This had the effect of accentuating ethnicity, and therefore ethnic division, rather than focusing on factors that could enhance links between different social groups. At the same time, the administration has promoted a new Kosovo identity that transcends ethnicity. National symbols have been developed with significant influence from the international community and have no reference to the ethnic communities of Kosovo's inhabitants. Far from promoting multi-ethnicity, this policy has attempted to erase ethnic identity in public life.
The European Union has been significantly involved in the post-war administration of Kosovo. United Nations Security Council Resolution 1244, which established the UN Mission in Kosovo (UNMIK), created Pillar IV under the control of the European Union. The Pillar's aim was to support ‘economic development in line with its European perspective’.3 In 2003, UNMIK published the ‘Standards for Kosovo’ document, which outlined both multi-ethnicity and the EU as influential factors in the post-war governance of Kosovo. The document stated that:
These standards reinforce Kosovo's parallel progress towards European standards in the framework of the EU's Stabilisation and Association Process, based inter alia on the Copenhagen criteria. The standards describe a multi-ethnic society where there is democracy, tolerance, freedom of movement and equal access to justice for all people in Kosovo, regardless of their ethnic background.4
UN Special Envoy Martti Ahtisaari's proposal, which outlined the settlement of Kosovo's status following the unsuccessful negotiations in 2006–2007, highlighted a strong and ongoing EU presence in Kosovo. Such presence includes the European Union Special Representative, the European Security and Defence Policy Mission, which monitors rule of law, and the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe, which monitors the implementation of the Ahtisaari settlement. Multi-ethnicity is still a salient theme in the policies of the current European presence in Kosovo. The EU rule of law mission EULEX states in its mission statement that:
[This] mission will … further develop and strengthen an independent and multi-ethnic justice system and a multi-ethnic police and customs service, ensuring that these institutions are free from political interference and adhering to internationally recognised standards and European best practices.5
In his address to the UN Security Council in 2008, Kosovo Prime Minister Hashim Thaçi outlined the link between the Ahtisaari proposal and Kosovo's EU accession. He explained that Ahtisaari's ‘plan offers us a way to make Kosovo a more democratic, multi-ethnic society that is fully integrated into European institutions’.Reference Thaçi6
In addition to strong references by the international administration to ‘European standards’ and eventual EU integration in its strategic framework documents, there are public relations projects aimed both within and outside Kosovo, to brand Kosovo as being intrinsically European. For example, in May 2008 the planning team for the EU's mission in Kosovo launched the campaign ‘Come to Europe’, which included a travelling roadshow throughout Kosovo and the broadcasting of three commercials in December 2008, which included the messages ‘we are here’ and ‘with you’.7 In January 2009, the Kosovo Government announced that the advertising agency Saatchi and Saatchi was chosen to develop a nation branding campaign for Kosovo. The resulting slogan was: ‘Kosovo: the Young Europeans’.8
Façade of multi-ethnicity
The post-war international administration of Kosovo has, in its attempts to bring Kosovo in line with ‘European standards’, enacted policies in the name of multi-ethnicity. But these policies have actually resulted in greater inter-ethnic isolation. Three fundamental areas of post-war governance: education, decentralisation and the return of displaced persons, exemplify the shortcomings of the international governance of Kosovo in this respect.
Education
The importance of education in promoting and developing multi-ethnicity in post-war Kosovo cannot be underestimated. Education divided ethnic communities during the 1990s and education has still served to divide those communities in post-war Kosovo. When Milošević's regime excluded Albanian pupils from educational institutions in 1991, the parallel education system was born. Education became the heart of Rugova's non-violent resistance strategy, and, as a result, education for Kosovar Albanians became part of the nationalistic struggle against the Serbian oppressors. Similarly, by excluding pupils on the basis of ethnicity, the Serbian regime too used education as a tool to promote ethnic nationalism. Since that time, education in Kosovo has been divided along ethnic lines, with non-Serb minorities also having to choose the education system in which to integrate.
From its inception, UNMIK has attempted to re-build the education system in Kosovo with its ubiquitous goal of multi-ethnicity. Whilst launching a public awareness campaign on education in August 2001, UNMIK education consultant Michael Daxner illuminated the importance of education in rebuilding post-war Kosovo, when he declared that ‘the real stakeholders in education are the people: only an informed society can become a civil society, and knowledge shall rank equally with economic and society considerations’.9 As with other aspects of its administration, however, UNMIK has reinforced ethnic division by promoting difference rather than similarity. Instead of promoting multi-ethnicity in schools, the international administration attempted to provide every primary school child with the opportunity of learning in their mother tongue. The result has been that only a very small minority of schools are truly multi-ethnic in nature, and none combine Albanian students with students from Kosovo's biggest minority, the Serbs. Moreover, most students have not had the opportunity to learn the language of another community in Kosovo. This focus has aggravated isolation, as minority community members have little chance of a sustainable future in a place where they do not speak the language of more than 90% of the population. Similarly, the Albanian population has had no opportunity to reach out to other communities by learning their language, history or culture. The failures of this policy have been further exacerbated by financial constraints. Such constraints have meant that students from minority communities are largely denied higher and tertiary education in their mother tongue, as, with the exception of the business faculty of the University of Pristina in Peja/Peć, which offers lectures in the Bosnian language, all Kosovo-run tertiary education is taught in the Albanian language. Due to the fact that minority students have not learnt Albanian, they cannot attend higher and tertiary education in this language either. Subsequently, many students, especially Serbs, have been forced to leave Kosovo to receive higher education, thus further weakening the multi-ethnic nature of Kosovo.
UNMIK's policy of focusing on educating in the mother tongue has attracted considerable criticism from proponents of multi-ethnicity. The Director of the Kosova Education Center, Dukagjin Pupovci, admitted that the biggest challenge was to get those students to learn each other's language.10 The issue of language of education has been a concerning issue too among some members of the international community. Johan Axander of the OSCE believed that the international community's security approach to the situation (which kept communities separate for security reasons) undermined integration. He believed that primary education should be in the mother tongue but secondary education should be 60% in the majority (Albanian) language.11 Kim Vetting, Program Manager for Return of Minority Communities at the United Nations Development Program (UNDP), shared Johan Axander's concerns over the potentially negative influence of the international administration's policy on the integration of minorities, particularly with reference to language of education. Vetting was adamant that if future integration and interaction of different ethnic communities was to be assured, the Kosovo Government needed to at least offer Albanian classes to minorities.12 Unlikely support for the concept of offering Albanian language classes for minorities also came from a Serb representative from a Non-Governmental Organisation based in north Mitrovica, who declared that language education should have been imposed by UNMIK.13 Former Kosovo Ombudsperson Marek Nowicki emphasised the importance of Kosovo's institutions offering Albanian courses to minorities, and was adamant that ‘knowing the Albanian language will minimise barriers of different ethnic groups in Kosovo and will avoid isolation of communities who do not [currently] speak Albanian’.14
Decentralisation
Just as the post-war international presence in Kosovo has strengthened the ethnic divide through education, proposals on decentralisation envisage an even deeper divide. The proposal of UN Special Envoy Martti Ahtisaari for the settlement of Kosovo's status provided the template for Kosovo's decentralisation policy. Supporters hailed the Ahtisaari proposal, and particularly the decentralisation element, as the key to promoting multi-ethnicity in Kosovo, with the ultimate goal of EU accession. Well-respected international think-tank the International Crisis Group praised the proposal as being ‘the best recipe for the creation of a multi-ethnic, democratic and decentralised society’.15 The proposal envisaged the creation of five new municipalities and the extension of one existing municipality. All of these new municipalities would have a Serb majority and all would have enhanced competencies so that they would essentially have more rights than any Albanian majority municipality. Ahtisaari emphasised the ethnic component of the proposal:
All municipalities in which the Kosovo Serb Community is in the majority shall have: Authority to exercise responsibility for cultural affairs, including protection and promotion of Serbian and other religious and cultural heritage within the municipal territory, as well as support for local religious communities.16
Links between the new municipalities and Serbia were also proposed, including the possibility of receiving financial assistance.16 The proposal also provided for the possibility of the establishment of further municipalities on the basis of ethnicity:
Kosovo shall engage in consultations with a non-majority Community where that Community makes up at least 75% of the population of a concentrated settlement with a minimum total population of 5000 inhabitants, with a view to establishing other municipalities.16
There was no attempt to even veil this proposal as anything other than the promotion of the establishment of new municipalities strictly on an ethnic basis. Nevertheless, this decentralisation proposal was described by SRSG Jessen-Petersen as being ‘for everybody, for the majority and for the minority’.17
There was no shortage of criticism for Ahtisaari's ethnically-based decentralisation proposal, which even succeeded in uniting some Serbs and Albanians. The dangers of this plan were, for example, not lost on Serbian human rights activist Natasha Kandić, who declared in 2006 that ‘decentralisation is an important issue, but decentralisation along ethnic lines has never contributed to anyone; neither to the society nor to the country’.18 Kim Vetting from the UNDP Returns Program echoed similar sentiments when he contended that the Ahtisaari plan ‘focused on multi-ethnicity but the solution is mono-ethnic municipalities’.12
Ahtisaari's proposal for decentralisation similarly encountered criticism from several sectors of Kosovar Albanian society. The War Veterans’ Association went so far as to declare the decentralisation proposal to be a continuation of Milošević's policy.19 Agron Xhemajli, a senior official of the Lëvizja Kombëtare për Çlirimin e Kosovës (National Movement for the Liberation of Kosovo) warned of the consequences of the proposal: ‘decentralisation will create unfavourable circumstances thus enabling [the] creation of new enclaves and reinforcement of existing ones’.Reference Lani20 Former Kosovo Government Spokesman Daut Dauti, too, illuminated the dangers of ethnic-based decentralisation: ‘multi-ethnicity stands in the very foundations of Kosovo society and we must not and will not allow the creation of mono-ethnic municipalities’.21 Action group Vetëvendosje (Self-Determination) used the village of Stanishor to exemplify the risks posed by the decentralisation proposal for those Kosovar Albanians who would become minorities in proposed Serb-majority municipalities. It explained that the village was in close proximity to the existing municipal capital of Gjilan/Gnjilane but under the Ahtisaari proposal, residents would have to replace the two kilometre journey with a 30 kilometre trip to the proposed municipal capital of Artana. Vetëvendosje was adamant that ‘the municipalities of Artana and Gjilan are a clear example of how the Ahtisaari decentralisation project is entirely contrary to the principles of bringing local government closer to the people and to multi-ethnicity’.22 The village of Sudaholl was cited as another casualty of the proposal. Village resident Selatin Vehapi asked ‘how is it possible that today, in the name of decentralisation, our village will become part of the municipality of Graçanica where we will be a minority? It does not make sense that in the name of bringing government closer to the citizens, we are pushed to join a municipality 30 km away from our village, while the municipality of Lypjan is on our doorstep, just 2 km away. How can we live as part of a municipality that will be controlled directly by Belgrade?’23
Aside from the decentralisation plan as a whole, one of the most obvious examples of the international administration's failure to promote multi-ethnicity within the Ahtisaari document was the proposal to make the formerly multi-ethnic town of Mitrovica into two separate municipalities. According to residents, the move to create two separate municipalities in Mitrovica, regardless of whether the proposal was a temporary measure, would cement ethnic division: ‘when a new Serb municipality is formed everything here becomes Serb … Invoices will be in Serbian, everything in Serbian. We do not accept this and this would force us to sell our houses and to emigrate. If the city is separated once, it will never unify again’ lamented Luan, a shop assistant from ‘Little Bosnia’, an Albanian dominated settlement in the northern part of town.Reference Syla and Miftari24 Mitrovica's position as the geographic symbol of Kosovo's ethnic divide means that the proposal to divide the town has enormous implications for the possibility of a wider partition.
Return of displaced persons
The international administration's policy on returns represents another important area of post-war governance that has failed to promote multi-ethnicity in Kosovo. The goal of facilitating the return of hundreds of thousands of displaced persons, mostly from minority ethnic communities, has been a publicly pronounced priority of this administration in order to establish a multi-ethnic entity. In 2003, returns became one of the eight standards identified by the international administration as being imperative for Kosovo to move towards adhering to ‘European standards’.4 There is no doubt that the return of displaced persons to their homes is a pre-condition for a sustainable multi-ethnic Kosovo. To admit defeat in this respect would amount to condoning and consolidating ethnic cleansing. Statistics indicate that the post-war administration has failed in this goal. There are still significant numbers of refugees who have not returned to their former homes in Kosovo. The United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) estimated that as of October 2007, a total of 17, 585 displaced persons had returned to Kosovo since 2000.25 According to the Ombudsperson Institution in Kosovo, this figure translated to just 6.76% of the 245,353 total number of displaced persons.26 Moreover, the declaration of independence in February 2008 correlated with a dramatic decline in the return of displaced persons, with the UN Security Council reporting that only 582 minority community members returned to Kosovo in 2008, compared with 1816 in 2007.27 Positive stories show that returns projects can be successful if certain conditions, such as extensive consultations with the receiving community, and a ‘bottom-up’ approach where returnees instigate the returns process, are fulfilled.28 It appears, however, that the international administration has not had these conditions as priorities. Instead, it has promoted projects that aim to return groups of minority community members to ethnically-isolated, rural enclaves in order to minimise interaction with the majority Albanian community and therefore to decrease the possibility of inter-ethnic conflict. Moreover, the international administration has focused only on the return of Serb returnees at the expense of non-Serb minorities and Albanians alike. Emphasis on numbers of returnees rather than creating the conditions for sustainable return have fuelled this policy. The result of this administration's returns project in Kosovo has been the development of a more ethnically-homogeneous Kosovo, not the demonstration of dedication to multi-ethnicity.
The emphasis on returns and aid to returning displaced persons or refugees, particularly Kosovo's Serbs, has inadvertently worsened divisions between Serbs and Albanians. Many Kosovar Albanians have expressed resentment because, according to a study conducted by CDA-Collaborative Learning Projects, they perceived that resources and attention had been dedicated to Kosovo's Serbs – their former oppressors – at the expense of the needs of the majority population.29 According to information provided by the UNHCR Field Office for Returns, projects were compromised by the lack of consultation in the surrounding community. Of particular concern was the fact that whilst UNMIK argued that pre-return dialogue did occur in the form of municipality working groups, UNHCR did not consider this measure to be adequate for preparing Albanian villagers for the returns. Residents complained that there was no discussion with the community as a whole before the Serbs returned.28 This situation occurred in Istog/Istok municipality where municipal leaders were not consulted in the planning of a returns project in the village of Lipjan/Lipljan, which fuelled suspicion that the returnees were not all originally residents of the village. A series of protests greeted the returnees.28
Ethnicity/Identity
The post-war administration's policies on education, decentralisation and returns have demonstrated that identity based on ethnicity has been the backbone on which this administration's policy in Kosovo has rested. Its aim to create a multi-ethnic entity has been necessarily based on the concept of distinct and separate ethnic identities. The international mission has been criticised because of its focus on ethnic identity rather than more inclusive factors. For example activist Albin Kurti contended that:
Since the year 1999 onwards, the approach as well as the starting point was ethnic. UNMIK identified, like in a terra nullius: Albanians, Serbs, Romas, Turks, Egyptians, Bosniacs and Ashkalis. Therefore, it started from ethnic belonging, from differences, not from what is in common, what is universal among people – not from their need for freedom, dignity, job, qualitative education, health care, social insurance.Reference Kurti30
Furthermore, the international administration has been criticised repeatedly for its perceived favouritism towards Kosovo's Serbs; for example, in securing assistance to return to former homes, which was the result of political rather than humanitarian motivations. One example of such criticism came from an Ashkali man who struggled to get international assistance to have his destroyed house rebuilt. He lamented that ‘if it had been a Serb family, they would have immediately constructed a house and had media all over it’.31 It became advantageous to be identified as belonging to certain ethnic groups for certain reasons. For example, as the result of the international administration's focus on filling ethnic quotas, there have been reports of Albanians who began identifying themselves as being Bosniaks so that they could fill jobs that were set aside for people from this community. According to a Bosniak from Mitrovica, as of January 2008 ‘approximately 100 Bosniaks are officially employed in the [Kosovo Police Service] but we suspect that 40 of them falsely represent themselves as Bosniak… I would like to emphasise that Albanians come to me and ask me to sign and stamp a certificate stating that they are members of the Bosniak community because it is easier for them to enter European countries as Bosniaks’.18 Conversely, members of the Ashkali community have voiced concern that the international administration has accentuated ethnic difference between Ashkalis and Albanians in order to create the façade of a multi-ethnic state. Before the war there was little differentiation between these two ethnic groups, but since 1999 the Ashkalis have found it difficult to integrate with the majority Albanian population.32 Moreover, it would seem that being identified as a Roma in Kosovo would mean less of a chance of being given assistance for returning to Kosovo and rebuilding homes. For example UNHCR figures indicate that out of 124 Serb families who required reconstruction assistance in Peć/Peja in 2002, 116 benefited from reconstruction projects. In contrast, for Roma, Ashkali and Egyptian community members, a total of 216 families requested assistance but only 22 families received it.28 In the case of those displaced Roma who have been forced to live in the lead-contaminated IDP camps in Obilić and north Mitrovica for more than a decade, such double standards by the international administration have resulted in serious health concerns and even death from lead contamination.33 Thus, the importance of ethnic identification was heightened by the international administration.
The international administration's focus on ethnic identity may have cemented Kosovo's ethnic divisions and pushed the possibility of an integrated multi-ethnic Kosovo further away. But at the same time as defining people by their ethnicity, this administration has simultaneously sought to create a new identity for Kosovo that transcends ethnicity in the hope that Kosovo moves towards ‘European standards’ and away from ethnic nationalism. This contradiction has perhaps predictably resulted in substantial challenges. Its policy of defining people only by ethnicity on the one hand, whilst completely replacing old identities with a new, non-ethnic identity on the other, will not provide the basis for a solid multi-ethnic future for Kosovo. The conflict in the international administration's policy became evident when attention turned to Kosovo's post-status national symbols.
Whilst there was an attempt to portray an element of local input in the development of new symbols in Kosovo (unlike Bosnia, where they were imposed by the international administration), strong international involvement in the final decision over the new flag was reported. The International Crisis Group illuminated the extent to which Kosovo's new symbols were influenced by the international community when it reported that ‘the independence declaration read out by Prime Minister Thaçi was largely written by the US State Department. Although locally designed, the flag was also chosen with strong US involvement behind closed doors’.34 The rules stipulated that symbols could not resemble or include the colours or the symbols from any of Kosovo's ethnic communities. The national flag and anthem that were eventually chosen again emphasise the link between Kosovo and Europe. The flag includes a yellow map of Kosovo on a blue background with six white stars across the top representing the different ethnic communities in Kosovo. The anthem is called ‘Europe’ and has no words. The restrictions to what could be included in national symbols came under ridicule for their lack of meaning to the people of Kosovo. Activist Albin Kurti quipped that ‘some of my friends call the new Kosovar flag “the click flag” because it was made with a few clicks on a keyboard – and those stars, they say, are really Velcro stick-ons, just in case one of the minority communities decides to leave.’Reference Clinton35 Kurti's Vetëvendosje movement similarly questioned the legitimacy of the new symbols, especially the national anthem:
Is there any other state which has as its anthem, a song to a federation of which it is not even a member? Kosova needs and has the right to an anthem which expresses with pride its values, its history and its identity. Denying these elements denies the dignity of its citizens who have struggled precisely to have a state which reflects these elements, not a state which is empty of substance, meaning and identity.36
Whilst attempting to de-emphasise ethnicity in Kosovo's new national identity, the international presence in Kosovo has succeeded both in entrenching ethnic division even further, as well as ensuring that Kosovo's people feel little connection to the new symbols.
Kosovo's commitment to multi-ethnicity and ‘European Standards’
The importance of the international administration's efforts to promote multi-ethnicity in Kosovo has been heightened by the apparent lack of political will from within Kosovo's local institutions to do the same. The public rhetoric of Kosovo's political representatives appears to show commitment to multi-ethnicity and support for eventual EU accession. In August 2006, the Kosovo Government signed the Kosovo Action Plan for the Implementation of European Partnership, which aimed at ‘becoming an overall framework of measures whose implementation will contribute to progress in the European Integration agenda for Kosovo’.37 Similarly, when asked in October 2008 whether Kosovo diplomacy was pro-European or pro-American, Lulzim Mjeku, general director of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, replied that Kosovo's overall strategy was based on EU integration.38 But the failure to fully implement laws protecting minority rights, including minority representation in political institutions, indicates a lack of will to achieve the standards required by the EU. On paper, the laws that have been developed to protect minority rights are equal to those of developed countries. The Constitutional Framework guaranteed that 20 out of the 120 seats in the Kosovo Assembly were reserved for non-Albanian communities.39 Despite such measures, there have been repeatedly-aired concerns that minority representation was still inadequate. For example, in 2004 the UN Security Council lamented that ‘minority employment in the Provisional Institutions [of Self-Government] continued to be low and confined to areas below the decision-making level’.40 Such concerns continued throughout the following years, and in November 2008 the Commission of the European Communities published a progress report on Kosovo that concluded that the government did not meet its targets for minority representation.41 Similar shortcomings could be found in the implementation of the Law on the Use of Languages. This law, passed in July 2006, ensured the equal status of Albanian and Serbian as official languages of Kosovo and the equal right as to their use in all Kosovo institutions.42 In 2007, the Ombudsperson lamented that the ‘translation of laws, regulations and other documents is still not adequate and often of very poor quality’.43 The inadequate translation of official documents was also noted by OSCE representative Johan Axander, who expressed concern over the ‘appalling quality of translations into Serbian’, which in his opinion ‘directly led to a decreased influence of Serbs in the political sphere’.11
Kosovo's Serbs have been even less inclined to promote multi-ethnicity. This community has largely boycotted Kosovo's political institutions and has preferred to be governed by Belgrade over Pristina. Serbs who defied Belgrade's order to boycott elections and instead integrate into Kosovo's institutions have been intimidated and threatened by members of their own community.Reference Isufi44 The situation for ethnic minorities in Serb-majority areas, especially Albanians, indicates additionally that multi-ethnicity has not been a priority for Kosovo's Serbs. For example, the UN Security Council expressed concern in 2008 for Albanian communities living in Serbian-controlled northern Kosovo and reported that there was not an issue with freedom of movement in Kosovo except for these communities, who largely relied on KFOR (NATO) escorts to leave their villages.27 Such a negative situation has only served to exacerbate the importance of the international administration's efforts to promote multi-ethnicity.
Conclusion
The link between multi-ethnicity and the promotion of ‘European standards’ in the post-war governance of Kosovo is clear. The international administration's policies appear to indicate a commitment to multi-ethnicity with the wider aim of achieving ‘European standards’. But the analysis of these policies and their implementation reveals that what the international administration has done, whilst supposedly being in the name of multi-ethnicity, has resulted in the greater isolation of Kosovo's ethnic communities. Despite public statements to the contrary, in several areas of Kosovo's post-war governance, the international administration has consistently prioritised stability and separation over multi-ethnicity, and the results indicate that this has led to entrenched ethnic division. In education, the administration has ensured that new generations of Kosovars cannot interact with people from other ethnic communities. In decentralisation, the institutions have rewarded Serb non-cooperation with greater autonomy and have essentially legitimised Serbian-run enclaves in Kosovo. In returns, the international administration has manipulated the ethnic makeup of Kosovo and further facilitated the enclavisation of Kosovo. Far from creating a shining example of multi-ethnicity in Kosovo that adheres to ‘European standards’, the legacy of the international administration of Kosovo is a legacy of ethnic isolation and segregation. It appears that what has been created in Kosovo is not a multi-ethnic state, but rather a series of ethnically homogeneous enclaves.
The imposition of new non-ethnic national symbols by the international presence indicates the international community's hope for Kosovo, to leave ethnic division behind and embrace a new, civic identity. But fundamental failures throughout the post-war period mean that the goal of multi-ethnicity and the adherence to ‘European standards’ in Kosovo is still far from reality, and there is little significant evidence of a will from Kosovo's people, particularly within governmental institutions, for a commitment to promote multi-ethnicity without international encouragement.
Anita McKinna has been researching issues related to Kosovo and the Balkans since the late 1990s. She recently completed her PhD on the international administration of Kosovo at the University of Melbourne, after having attained an MPhil on the post-war reconstruction of Kosovo from Cambridge University. She has published articles on the interaction of international administrators and local political actors in post-war Kosovo in several international academic journals. Currently she is working as a researcher for the International Crisis Group in Pristina, Kosovo.
