PRISTINA LETTER:A rising tide of foreign aid and influence has made scant difference to a 60 per cen t jobless rate. Has the local corruption found wider world accomplices?
A PEACEFUL procession files quietly along Mother Teresa Boulevard. Many marchers carry black umbrellas yet the sun is out and skies are clear. As is customary in Kosovo, things are not quite what they seem.
The demonstrators number about 1,200, several of them holding American flags aloft. They proceed to the ministry of trade and unfold the umbrellas to reveal red stickers opposing privatisation of their employer PTK, Kosovo’s telecom service.
PTK, like other state assets, may soon be sold off. The irony of appealing to Uncle Sam in a protest against privatisation is lost in translation, but in a place where unemployment is estimated upwards of 60 per cent, these workers have reason to be worried.
After applauding a few angry speeches, the PTK staff fold their flags and umbrellas and return to work against a lunchtime flow. They are swamped by schoolkids who dominate this astonishingly young population.
The government in Pristina has just launched a glitzy marketing campaign identifying Kosovo’s people as “The Young Europeans”. It’s a throwback to the IDA’s campaign of the 1980s but what is less clear is who it is aimed at and what exactly Kosovo has to offer.
Nearby at the national theatre, Pristina's second international film festival is doing its bit to put Kosovo on the world map. Later that afternoon, the festival will screen The War is Over,Mitko Panov's poignant study of a Kosovar Albanian family prised apart by war and emigration. Several of the audience will leave the cinema wiping away tears. It is too close to reality to be bearable.
These are brittle times for the world’s newest and fastest-growing statelet. Since declaring independence 2½ years ago, Kosovo’s day-to-day business is overseen by UNMik (UN Interim Administration Mission), EULex (EU Rule of Law Mission) and a host of international agencies (led by USAid), prompting acronym fever and transatlantic-Euro chatter in cafes around the capital.
Conscious of such heavy dependence on foreign aid, Kosovars are beginning to question its efficacy – if millions of euro and dollars are pouring in here, why doesn’t investment make any impression on the local jobless? Of course the region’s notoriety for graft leads to an easy conclusion that anywhere wedged between Albania, Montenegro, Serbia and Macedonia can make big money disappear.
Not so simple, counters Avni Zogiani, an anti-corruption campaigner with the influential Cohu! (Wake Up!) organisation who sees serious corruption as a tidy reciprocal arrangement between local interests and international donors.
A high-profile EULex raid on the ministry of transport in April encouraged many Kosovars to think this could be the long- awaited fresh start. Fearing prosecution ministry officials admitted to additional crimes, pointing to superiors higher up the food chain. Yet the investigation trail appears to have gone cold and, with each passing day, anticipation has turned to rumbling disenchantment, public confidence draining from a self- important sheriff too busy barking to bother biting.
Coincidentally, one of the contracts awarded by that same ministry last January has turned Pristina into a building site. Budgeted at over €1 billion (and rising), a highly controversial new 120km motorway will clip 40 minutes off the run to Tirana.
Kosovo will somehow fund this gross domestic product-shaking project itself. After public tender, Bechtel Corporation – also prominent in the reconstruction of Iraq – won the contract in a joint venture with Turkish company Enka.
However, not every Kosovar is convinced that building a very expensive new road is money well spent. It is against this backdrop that the Vetevendosje (Self-Determination) movement led by activist Albin Kurti is a voluble presence demanding EU and American interests pack up.
Politically, it’s a tricky call – Kosovars remain hugely grateful to Bill Clinton, commemorating the former US president in bronze on a city centre street named after him.
They know they could not have stood up to Serbia without Nato’s help so, without the Americans, there would be no independence.
Zogiani does not take the Vetevendosje line but identifies a rising tension. “I do say we need the internationals but we have a very schizophrenic relationship with them – they are too influential, too huge, too rich for a poor, small, undereducated society,” he says. “We should be allowed to fail by ourselves. It’s the only way we can learn to walk on our own two feet.”
Without doubt, there is a growing frustration that neither EULex nor UNMik shows any real determination to crack down on corruption. It may ring bells in Ireland that ordinary people want their fledgling country cleaned up, inside and out, but it’s hard to find anyone with faith in the authorities to do it.
July’s arrest of central bank governor Hashim Rexhepi on corruption and money-laundering charges does not enhance Kosovo’s reputation.
Meanwhile, questions remain as to how international donors can award massive contracts to private companies without going to public tender.
Anyone trying to disentangle the process may well conclude that those who pay the piper do indeed call the tune.
Cohu! maintains that, as long as the procedure is plagued by self-interest, local officials and international donors are both part of the same problem.
External support is needed to build this new state but what remains to be seen is whether the international community will ever take its foot off the pedal and trust Kosovo to clean up its own act.