Kosovo Serbs return to uncertainty

To a muddy field lashed by razor-sharp winds, about 50 brave Serbs have come home. Their houses here on the edge of an ethnic Albanian town have been repaired, or new ones built. A few rows of wheat and corn have been planted.

But there are no jobs, no school, and danger lurks. Graffiti from shadowy anti-Serb militias scar the walls of nearby buildings.

The leadership of Kosovo plans to declare independence from Serbia in the coming weeks, and one of the looming unknowns is what will happen to the small enclaves of Serbs who still live in the ethnic Albanian majority province.

The United States and some European states support Kosovo’s move for independence, but they insist that Kosovo officials guarantee the protection of ethnic minorities.

“We feel safe so far,” said Andrei Banic, 47, a Serb who moved back to Berkovo late last year. That safety, he noted, was thanks in large part to frequent patrols by NATO and U.N. forces stationed in Kosovo.

The United Nations has run Kosovo since 1999, when North Atlantic Treaty Organization airstrikes drove out Serbian military forces conducting a harsh crackdown on Kosovar separatists. An estimated 10,000 ethnic Albanians were killed.

As the war ended, many Serbian civilians fled or were expelled by revenge-seeking Albanian mobs, who also destroyed their property.

Zorka Banjac, 36, returned to Berkovo with her husband, Ranko, and 18-year-old son, Petar. Much of the village they fled in June 1999 was a shambles, including the general store she had owned and where she had waited on Serbian and Albanian customers and neighbors.

“We had a beautiful life. We’d say, ‘Good morning, how are you,’ to our neighbors. We were never attacked and we never attacked anyone,” Banjac said.

“We came back and we might as well stay. We are in their hands,” she said, referring to her Albanian neighbors but also eyeing the anti-Serb scrawls on the ruins of what had been a Serb’s home.

Three of Banjac’s children are still in school, so they have remained in other parts of Serbia.

Most of those who have come back, or who never left, are retirees, and it is highly unusual to see young Serbs in Kosovo. Petar Banjac says he has no friends left, nor is there much for him to do.

“I will stay as long as I can, and I’ll look for a job, but where can I work?” he said, pulling the hood of his gray sweat shirt as tightly around his face as possible, almost as if pretending he wasn’t there.

“It is not as it used to be,” he said.

The 19 families that returned to Berkovo are in many ways the exception that proves the rule. Only a tiny number of Serbs who fled or were driven from their homes have come back to Kosovo; Serbian authorities blame the Albanians for failing to make it safe enough, and Albanian authorities accuse the Serbs of overtly discouraging returns for propaganda reasons.

In short, the displaced Serbs have become political pawns. Outside Kosovo, they are often relegated to atrociously dilapidated housing and are treated as pariahs; in Kosovo, the United Nations rebuilds their homes, but they face isolation and unemployment -- and are treated as pariahs.

Of the estimated 200,000 Serbs and other non-Albanians who fled Kosovo, fewer than 20,000 have returned, according to U.N. statistics.

Those who return at this late point are, at least tacitly, accepting that they will live under an ethnic Albanian government.

Berkovo sits on the outskirts of Klina, a town that bore witness to brutal roundups and killings of Albanians by Serbs leading up to the 1998-99 war. It is also home to a large Albanian Catholic community that some Serbs say is especially tolerant.

Frode Mauring, the Kosovo representative of the U.N. development program that oversees resettlements, said he hoped returns to Berkovo could serve as an example.

“In spite of the things it experienced, Klina has embraced the returns,” Mauring said. “But it is not just about this. Success will depend on the ability of the Serbs to stay here.”

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wilkinson@latimes.com