the economist
Jan 11th 2011, 14:30 by T.J.
KOSOVO has been without an effective government since its election on December 12th. On Sunday there were re-runs in areas in which the original vote had been tainted by fraud allegations, but they failed to dispel opposition calls for an entirely new vote.
Meanwhile, the reverberations continue from a report, published just after the election, that accused Hashim Thaci, Kosovo’s outgoing and probably its next prime minister, of involvement in organ trafficking after the war in 1999 and various other dodgy activities. The Council of Europe's parliamentary assembly will debate the report on January 25th.
At various speeds, most of the countries of the western Balkans are making political and economic progress. But Kosovo is lagging badly behind. Following a recent deal between the European Union and Albania and Bosnia, Kosovars are now the only people in the region who still need visas to travel to Europe’s 25-country Schengen zone. They are also the poorest. As always, ordinary people suffer the most.
This fact is starkly represented by this audio-photo slideshow, produced by our Italian colleagues at the Osservatorio Balcani e Caucaso. (Their English language pages are here.) It is a tragically beautiful insight into the industrial wreckage of the Trepca complex of mines, which straddle the divide between the Albanian-controlled southern part of Mitrovica and the Serbian-run north. This is their introduction to the video:
More than a mine, a metaphor: of hope and development during Yugoslavia, of struggles and tensions in the Milošević era, of crisis and divisions today. A descent into the bowels of Kosovo.
In the 1970s the mining-industrial complex of Trepça/Trepča employed 23,000 people. Its structures, present in the whole of Kosovo, but mainly in the town of Mitrovica with the rich mine of Stan Tërg/Stari trg and its numerous processing plants, accounted for 70% of the Yugoslav extraction production. Today, marked by the embitterment of inter-ethnic Serb-Albanian tensions, by the armed conflict of 1999 and the difficult post-war period, the company is like a worn-out giant, on the verge of total collapse.
For Kosovars, both Albanian and Serbian, Trepça/Trepča represents much more than a mine, it is like a metaphor for Kosovo's fate. A source of wealth (and environmental pollution) in Tito's socialist years, the scene of protests and strikes against Milošević's regime, today Trepça/Trepča is one of the best examples of the complexity surrounding the division of Mitrovica. Stan Tërg/Stari trg is on the south side of the town, in the area controlled by Albanians. Today they are the only ones working in the mine, as the processing plants on the Serbian side of Mitrovica are just about totally inactive.
Audio by Francesco Martino, photos by Andrea Pandini.
Meanwhile, the reverberations continue from a report, published just after the election, that accused Hashim Thaci, Kosovo’s outgoing and probably its next prime minister, of involvement in organ trafficking after the war in 1999 and various other dodgy activities. The Council of Europe's parliamentary assembly will debate the report on January 25th.
At various speeds, most of the countries of the western Balkans are making political and economic progress. But Kosovo is lagging badly behind. Following a recent deal between the European Union and Albania and Bosnia, Kosovars are now the only people in the region who still need visas to travel to Europe’s 25-country Schengen zone. They are also the poorest. As always, ordinary people suffer the most.
This fact is starkly represented by this audio-photo slideshow, produced by our Italian colleagues at the Osservatorio Balcani e Caucaso. (Their English language pages are here.) It is a tragically beautiful insight into the industrial wreckage of the Trepca complex of mines, which straddle the divide between the Albanian-controlled southern part of Mitrovica and the Serbian-run north. This is their introduction to the video:
More than a mine, a metaphor: of hope and development during Yugoslavia, of struggles and tensions in the Milošević era, of crisis and divisions today. A descent into the bowels of Kosovo.
In the 1970s the mining-industrial complex of Trepça/Trepča employed 23,000 people. Its structures, present in the whole of Kosovo, but mainly in the town of Mitrovica with the rich mine of Stan Tërg/Stari trg and its numerous processing plants, accounted for 70% of the Yugoslav extraction production. Today, marked by the embitterment of inter-ethnic Serb-Albanian tensions, by the armed conflict of 1999 and the difficult post-war period, the company is like a worn-out giant, on the verge of total collapse.
For Kosovars, both Albanian and Serbian, Trepça/Trepča represents much more than a mine, it is like a metaphor for Kosovo's fate. A source of wealth (and environmental pollution) in Tito's socialist years, the scene of protests and strikes against Milošević's regime, today Trepça/Trepča is one of the best examples of the complexity surrounding the division of Mitrovica. Stan Tërg/Stari trg is on the south side of the town, in the area controlled by Albanians. Today they are the only ones working in the mine, as the processing plants on the Serbian side of Mitrovica are just about totally inactive.
Audio by Francesco Martino, photos by Andrea Pandini.
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