Soccer for Peace in Kosovo

In the documentary, “Peace Kicking Mission”, five Austrian journalists attempt to diffuse the remnant antagonisms of the bloody Kosovo conflict on a slightly more civil stage: the soccer field. The film captures this unusual peace mission in the crisis-shaken region through evocative images of Albanians and Serbs playing with and against one another, forming the fledgling foundations of camaraderie.

Priština, May 11, 2008. On a battered soccer field, Manchester United and Chelsea are struggling against one another for victory. Te Fontana is the concrete coliseum where these modern gladiators face off, right in the heart of the Kosovo capitol. Around two hundred eager spectators have come to cheer on their respective teams. This is not the Premier League, but this game has its own set of heavy stakes. The teams are participating in the “Peace Kicking Mission” soccer tournament organized by Austrian journalists hoping to use soccer as a means to overcome the bitter ethnic boundaries that have long divided the Albanians and Serbs. Soccer is, after all, a game that is adored the world over, transcending the limitations of language and culture. Today the players of Manchester United are employees of Hotel Begolli and the Chelsea players, students from the Film Club. Their uniforms set them back five Euros at a nearby clothing market.

The Soccer Field as Battlefield
Peace Kicking Mission documents the journey of these journalists and free-time soccer players through Kosovo. The film culminates in a tournament between players from the nation’s various ethnic groups. Filmmakers, Clemens Foschi, Thomas Haunschmid, Peter Waldenberger, Monika Kalcsics and Peter Lerch, spent two weeks traveling through Kosovo with soccer ball in arm, meeting players from different parts of the country. Accompanied by a camera crew, the players of the Peace Kicking Mission drove in their minibus from village to village, seeking companions for the game, and working towards the tournament in Priština.
“Football is one place where you can get away from rivalries or problems. Out on the pitch, you can get rid of aggression while adhering to the football rules. For there can be conflicts, and the medium of football also serves to work them out. On a sporting level,” explains Clemens Foschi. The film’s apex is the “Turnir Futbolli”, a final tournament, with all of the teams the Peace Kickers encountered participating; Albanian and Serbian players working against and with one another, allowing soccer to become a substitute for the grizzly menace of battle. “We turned up here with a naive idea. Each of us had had the experience, traveling the world, AND HAD RECOGNIZED that people easily get to know each other kicking a ball around. No matter whether it’s in India, Mali or Brazil.”

Soccer as a Means of Understanding
In their cinematic diary, the Peace Kicking Mission allows us to witness the complex emotional duality of the people of Kosovo who are kind and hospitable, yet scarred by the ambivalences that decades of conflict have wrought. These intricate ideas are played out on a vibrant landscape, highlighting the natural beauty of the region, despite the poverty and destruction. “We wanted to show our own view of how we felt ABOUT the conflict. The country SEEMS AS IF IT functions relatively normally, WITH{and there was} hardly any trace of conflict to be felt,” Foschi says.
These soccer missionaries did not stick to any sort of rigid itinerary on their trip. More often, they let themselves be led by local residents from one soccer field to the next. Their only rule: every day a different location, a different game. Foschi describes the ease with which they met up with their fellow players, even when these comrades were armed and in uniform, “Right on the border is where it began, we started to kick it around with a few customs officers. On a pitch about 300 meters away from the customs house.”

“In Brotherhood and Unity”
In the search for useable grounds to serve as a soccer field for the final tournament, the filmmakers lead the audience through Priština. The contemporary governmental buildings from the international organization suggest modernization and economic growth in the capitol, yet for the general population the reality is quite different. Behind the ruins of countless abandoned houses are cafes and shops of back alleyways. Here, among the residences and bazaars, pulses the real life of Priština: a place of drinking, dancing, and black market trade. Of course, this is where soccer is played. The tournaments winners are a group of employees from Café Priština, one such local shop which happens to be staffed by excellent kickers.
Several days before the tournament, on a road in the countryside, the Peace Kicking Mission meets Hamid Kadriu, a former professional player in the Bavarian regional league who received asylum in Germany during the war. He tells of life in post-war times: his brother traumatized and unable to work, his family dispersed to all the corners of the earth, and him being the only one with regular work. A salary of 200 Euros per month, earned on one of the countless construction sites, is how he feeds him and his family. But what happens when all of the buildings are finished? In a cow pasture beside the road, the Peace Kickers have a game with a few boys. One of them, it so happens, had grown up in Germany, where his family found refuge during the war.
Eventually, the soccer missionaries reach the town of Istog, where they speak to the leader of the youth center, Luan Hasanaj. His center is where 300 youths from the region come together, primarily Albanians, but also Serbians, Bosnians and Egyptians. Will the Serbs play as well in the tournament? Hasanaj is skeptical. But he does lead the Peace Kicking Mission to Crkolez, a Serbian-inhabited village. Even the peasants in this remote corner have a passion for the sport. During the match everyone comes together, and between the third and forth quarters all are toasting the newly won friendship with local Rakija. “In brotherhood and unity,” Radenko the Serb and Luan the Albanian joke, in memory of the unified Yugoslavia of Tito’s era, promising to travel together to the tournament. A moment far from self-evident among the Albanians and the Serbs of Kosovo. It was only in February of 2008 that the UNO-governed Republic of Kosovo declared independence, which the Serbian government in Belgrade refused to accept. After years of war, the presence of 16,000 KFOR soldiers in Kosovo also suggests that peace is hardly a universal condition.

A Game with Borders
In the overwhelmingly Serbian-inhabited north, there is always violence erupting. The focal point is the city of Mitrovica, where the river Ibar separates the Serbian North from the Albanian South. It is here that even the soccer peace mission meets a roadblock. The 11th of May 2008 is not only the day of the Peace Kicking Tournament in Priština, but also that of the parliamentary elections in Serbia. Even the Serbian population of Kosovo is summoned to cast its vote; a real provocation for the newly formed republic, which at this point in time has been recognized by 43 states. Neither the UNO nor the EU have done anything to prevent the turnout of Serbs at the ballot boxes in Kosovar territory; they have chosen to merely maintain security. Particularly nervous are not only the KFOR troops, but the Serbian players in an amateur team from northern Mitrovica, who curtly break their original promise to join in the Peace Kicking tournament and cancel all participation. Why? Because of a death, a telephone call states on the day of the event. The organizers of the Peace Kicking Mission are faced with an uncertainty: is participation too dangerous for Serbs on account of the tense political situation on the election day? It seems there are times when a tool as powerful as soccer cannot bring people together because nothing can.
Eight teams, from around the entire country, finally arrive at the tournament, making it a true success for the mission: “Sports are sports and politics are politics”, says Luan, the Albanian social worker, agreeing on further contacts with the Serbian players from Crkolez. Their captain, Radenko, is pleased by the enthusiasm with which the Kosovars of all ethnicities join in the sport: “Football and the like, well I’d like to do it more often with the Albanians”.

KOSOVO - 9 YEARS AFTER THE END OF WAR

Kosovo is a small area of land in the center of the Balkans. Unlike Croatia or Bosnia, it offers nothing for the European holidaymaker, and thus it slips easily out of the public eye. Now, in international news, the region generates most of its headlines from events like the attack on Austrian soldiers in Prizren, The Hague’s charges of war crimes against officiating prime minister, Ramush Haradinaj, and statistics indicating that 80 percent of the heroin shipped to Western Europe makes its way through this region.

UNMIK, KFOR, EULEX
In 1999, after 16 months of war and one thousand deaths, UN Resolution 1244 placed Kosovo under UNO governance. The situation in Kosovo is complicated; two states claim governance to a territory of just under 11,000 km2 with 2.1 million inhabitants. Meanwhile, power is held by the United Nations Mission in Kosovo (UNMIK), with the goal of creating and strengthening sustainable democratic institutions. It is the largest single exercise of power in the entire history of the United Nations: government, police, courts, customs, economy, all under multinational administration.
In June 2008, power was to have been transferred from the UN to the EU, which supplied 2,200 judges, customs officials, state prosecutors and police officers as part of the European Union Rule of Law Mission (EULEX) in Kosovo. Serbia and Russia continue to deny the authority of this mission, which the EU is desperately striving to use in the pursuit of preserving human rights.
In addition, there are the approximately 16,000 KFOR soldiers, from 37 nations, present to guard the implementation of peace and avoid the outbreak of further ethnic conflict. Since Kosovo is no longer in open war, the inhabitants have come to accept the presence of troops on their soil.

Serbs and Albanians
Since the 1980s, the percentage of Serbians has declined, generating sentiments among them that they are being forced out of a land that lies at the heart of their national consciousness. Of the population, 88% of Kosovars are ethnic Albanians, 7% are Serbs and the remaining 5% are divided among Turks, Bosniaks, Roma, Ashkali, and other minorities. It was the Battle on the Field of Blackbirds (the literal translation for the Serbian name of the province, Kosovo Polje) in 1389 that represented the decisive defeat of the Serbian nation by the Ottoman Turks, an event that now forms an almost mythic component of Serbian ethnic identity. The speech delivered on the Field of Blackbirds by Slobodan Milošević to commemorate the 600th anniversary of the battle, on June 28, 1989 in Gazimestan, is now regarded as the first meaningful step towards the Yugoslav civil wars of the following decade.
Just under a decade after the war has ended, the greater part of the Serbian population remains in the northwest of the country, boycotting for independence and undermining the region’s sense of adherence to Kosovo. The Serbs take part in the elections in Serbia, and the officials in the schools and government receive double wages from Belgrade. In the rest of Kosovo, only a very few Serbs remain, though they are relatively well integrated into the lives of their own towns and villages. The UN-dictated constitution prescribes far-reaching minority rights, in order to win acceptance for Kosovan autonomy among the Serbs.

Economic Perspectives
With barely any economic growth and an unemployment rate of over 40%, Kosovo is confronted with an almost unsolvable problem: an ever-growing number of young people live in a land that produces nothing. In the past century, the population has almost tripled, yet with the exception of scrap metal, Kosovo has no significant exports.
Since 1999, the expenditures of the world community on Kosovo has amounted to a gigantic 33 billion euros, meaning around 1750 euros per inhabitant per year. Nonetheless, still nearly half of the population lives on less than 3 euro per day. Most of the households receive financial support from at least one family member working abroad.
Each year sees the labor market flooded with around 30,000 youths: five times more than the economy of the province can actually use. The government in Prishtina is, as a result, looking towards entry into the EU labor market, along the lines of an exchange program in specific branches.

Independence is not the Same as Autonomy
On February 18, 2008, Kosovo declared itself independent and parliamentary elections were held three months later. Three days before the vote, the organization Vetëvendosje (Autonomy) held a demonstration in the capitol of Prishtina against the elections. Protesters brought sacks of rubbish into the city center and threw them over the fence of the UNMIK central office, protesting against the policy of tutelage by international organizations. In the words of Albin Kurti, head of the opposition group, only puppets of the UNMIK-EU-OSZE rule were standing for the vote. Instead of a government directed by the EU, many citizens of Kosovo wish to have an autonomous state of Kosovo as a member of the EU.
Many walls in the region, and especially in Prishtina, bear graffiti with the name of Vetëvendosje and denunciations of UNMIK and EULEX. Experts on the payroll of international organizations drive around in special white Jeeps, receiving salaries many times higher than the actual inhabitants. The general public is well aware of this fact, and would likely not be too disturbed by it if only progress were seen being made in rebuilding the national infrastructure and fighting unemployment and corruption. Yet the ruinous state of the roads and the almost daily power cuts, despite investment of over one billion euros in the renovation of the largest coal-fired power plant, only lower the acceptance of these foreign experts. In addition, the international community and its representatives may also bear, according to a study from the Institution for European Politics in Berlin, the greater share of responsibility for the alarming spread of organized crime structures in Kosovo and, through their open support of political-criminal strongmen, have damaged the trustworthiness of all the international institutions involved.
After years of uncertainty regarding the status of Kosovo, the country is now independent. Yet the initial euphoria has long since dissipated. If there were also support from the international community of nations, since the country is hardly capable of survival on its own, the citizens of Kosovo would certainly wish to rule and govern their land themselves.

01.01.2009