Oh Kosovo...

Well Kosovo is an interesting story. There are few decent academics that have written about the history of Kosovo, including Noel Malcolm's Kosovo: A Brief History (not incredibly brief, around 450 pages) and Anna Di Lellio's A Case for Kosovo, which is an compilation of authors' pieces on different aspects of Kosovo's history. Tim Judah also writes well about Kosovo, as he has been a journalist in the Balkans for many years. These are just 3 names that I am more familiar with. There is a blog called "Outside the Walls" about Kosovo penned by Gerard Gallucci, a former foreign service officer for the US, but his reporting isn't always straightforward as I've been told.

I've written a decent briefing on Kosovo and you can find it on zohoviewer.com here. This briefing is by no means exhaustive, but it's a little insight into the world's newest state. I will get some pictures up soon and will write more, but here are some of my observations.

The capital city Prishtina/Pristina is developing. There are no bombed out houses or buildings here, but the infrastructure is a shoddy. The pavements of streets and sidewalks contain potholes and large cracks in most places, but it's not as bad as it sounds. There is no efficient drainage system, and because most businesses use water to wash their sidewalks, there are always puddles. These puddles along with dirt and dust from construction do not allow for clean shoes when walking. Actually the city of Prishtina is trying to catch up to its population of around 500,000-600,000. If I heard correctly, after the war in the early 2000s, the population in the city doubled within 2-4 years, and because it is the capital, Kosovars living outside the city want to move to Prishtina for economic opportunities, although there aren't many available. Unemployment is around 45%, with many young, potential workers having nothing to do. Kosovo in general is a young society, the average age around 27 years old and approximately 75% of the population is under 35 years old.

Traveling outside of Prishtina and one can see ruins and skeletons of houses affected by the war. There are bigger towns but as Kosovo is mountainous terrain, there are many villages, such as you would see in the mountains of other European countries. In these villages, as well as in the towns (including Prishtina), there are many half-constructed houses and buildings. This is interesting to see because some of these houses are quite grand in size, and many buildings look as if they will house businesses. There are a few reasons for this: 1) the funding for the construction dried up (perhaps due to corruption); 2) Families building these houses are waiting on more remittances from abroad to finish the job and this money may not roll in like it used to due to the economic crisis. For more info on Kosovo remittances, look at pages 7-9 in this report and this Reuters article. And #3 is linked to #2 - families and companies pay for construction of houses and buildings like a mortgage: they chip away at the overall sum little by little every year, thus when they have money, they develop the house. I have also seen individuals working on houses themselves, without a professional company, most likely to minimize costs.

Everyone in Kosovo is very friendly and it is true, they do love America (for authorizing NATO bombing of Serbia in 1999 and ending the War). In fact, Kosovo may be the only place where you will find people that love both Bill Clinton and George Bush equally. There is a "road" named after Clinton and his statue has been erected along this road, a picture will come soon.