PRISTINA, Serbia — The Kosovo government won’t divulge when it plans to issue its declaration of independence from neighboring Serbia, but the region’s ethnic Albanian majority is acting as though the invitations for the party, widely expected Sunday, have already been sent.
“I can’t describe the feeling; I’m so happy,” said Valon Munolli, 24, an insurance agent who tacked a makeshift banner of white paper with the word “independence” in Albanian on a wall. “We have been waiting for so long for this, for 100 years.”
Twenty young women have labored eight hours a day for five days to bake a 3,000-pound cake in the shape of Kosovo. Pristina, Kosovo’s capital, is awash with red-and-black-eagled flags of neighboring Albania and signs thanking America for its support.
The international community took over the governance of Kosovo in 1999, after a NATO bombing campaign ended the Serb forces’ brutal crackdown on Albanian separatists, which displaced much of Kosovo’s ethnic Albanians. But for almost nine years, Kosovo has been in legal limbo, formally remaining a province of Serbia but under the United Nations’ administration.
Casting a shadow over the country’s birth are the discontent of Serbia, which considers Kosovo to be its cultural and religious heartland, and the region’s Serbian minority, estimated to be about 100,000 strong of the 2 million population. They say they will never accept an independent Kosovo. Most Serbs identify with the Serbian Orthodox Church, while most Albanians are Muslims.
The international community, too, is divided, with the United States and many European countries supporting the province’s bid for independence, but Russia saying that secession will set a dangerous international precedent.
In Kosovo’s north, the Ibar River divides the city of Mitrovica, a symbol of the deep fault lines that remain. Today the city is ethnically divided, with the region south of the river predominantly Albanian and the north almost completely Serbian.
North of the river, the Serbian flag flutters over buildings, and residents buy thick espressos with Serbian dinars from salaries and pensions paid by the government in the Serbian capital of Belgrade. In the south, the official currency is the euro, and residents carry U.N.-issued travel documents and drive cars with plates issued by the Kosovo government.
Kosovans are supposed to be united under a new Kosovo flag, which is expected to be selected from a group of finalists when the state declares independence. But unity may prove elusive.
There are no restrictions on movement in the city. But both Albanians and Serbs say they fear to cross the bridge, which NATO peacekeepers guard.
If there’s trouble in coming days, it’s likely to be in Mitrovica, where tensions are running high. A small explosion Thursday night shattered the windows in a Serbian house on the north side.
Mila Antonovic, a Serb who owns a small clothes shop in a sidewalk kiosk, says no one is buying because buyers are hoarding their money, afraid of what might happen in coming days. Many students at the local university haven’t returned from break.
“We want peace. We just want to keep our country, nothing else,” said Antonovic, who used to live on the south side of the Ibar but hasn’t crossed the bridge since 1999. “Let it be like it was before.”
Many residents of Mitrovica, in both the ethnic Albanian and Serbian communities, now predict that independence will bring the de facto partition of Kosovo along the Ibar, with the northern area continuing to be administered as part of Serbia.
Kosovo Serb leaders warned as much Friday at a meeting attended by thousands in northern Mitrovica. Nebojfa Jovic warned that the international community could “forget about northern Kosovo” if the declaration of independence went ahead. Serb leaders still hope they can halt the recognition of an independent Kosovo.
“Nothing is over,” said Jovic. “It’s just beginning.”
