In Kosovo, New School Year Knocks Down Old Barriers

At the Hasan Pristina elementary and junior high school, preparations are furiously underway for reopening Wednesday after what was much more than a summer break.

There has been plenty to do: trash to clear out, smashed doors to repair, books to salvage for the remnants of a school library--and the “Berlin Wall” to rip down.

That crudely constructed floor-to-ceiling red-brick wall was put up by Serbian authorities eight years ago to block off ethnic Albanian classrooms from the dominant Serbian side of this divided Kosovo school. Tearing it down was one of the first things ethnic Albanian educators did when they returned in late June from refugee camps to reclaim both sides of the building as their own.

Hasan Pristina Principal Ali Gashi, sitting in his new office in what had been the Serb-only side, now looks like a happy man, despite facing enormous administrative headaches.

“The ‘Berlin Wall’ is not there anymore,” he said with a satisfied smile, as if that one sentence explained everything.

Such is the mood as ethnic Albanian educators, furthering a regeneration of educational life here, prepare to reopen schools from the elementary through high school levels in Kosovo’s cities and villages.

The self-starting schools reflect the eight-year history of an unofficial “parallel” ethnic Albanian educational system run at considerable personal sacrifice by educators and funded by a quasi-underground ethnic Albanian government set up in the early 1990s.

Some Serb-run schools are also expected to open Wednesday in the scattered enclaves where concentrations of Serbs remain in Kosovo. But the population of the war-torn province--still technically a part of Serbia--is now about 98% ethnic Albanian. Serbs, who last year made up about 10% of Kosovo’s population, have mostly fled since mid-June, when international peacekeeping troops arrived. That exodus was fueled in part by revenge attacks carried out by ethnic Albanians, including some cases of murder and many instances in which Serbs were terrorized into abandoning their houses or apartments.

To make up for lost time, classes resumed this month at Pristina University and in some parts of the countryside worst hit by war, where schooling was disrupted long before NATO began bombing Yugoslav forces on March 24.

Difficulties Abound Despite Assistance

Start-up difficulties are immense, even though the international community is helping in ways ranging from clearing mines and unexploded bombs from school grounds to promising stipends for teachers’ salaries.

At Hasan Pristina, which had 1,570 students last year on the ethnic Albanian side of the building, Principal Gashi’s problems include issues of funding, maintenance and overcrowding far more serious than those normally faced by administrators. Many ethnic Albanian families have fled burned-out villages to move to Pristina, the provincial capital, so the school might have even more students this year.

Gashi, 53, clearly sees his side as victorious in a long and bitter struggle.

“You can imagine how I feel, able to come back, now that we are freed from this fascist occupier,” he said. “They wanted to cleanse from this territory the nation which is entitled to this territory.

“The Serbian police were based here [during NATO’s bombing campaign], and they looted much of the equipment, they smashed doors and windows and burned the documentation,” he said.

Long frozen out of the mainstream educational process, the ethnic Albanians are now firmly in control--including at many educational facilities from which they were banned during most of the 1990s.

Officially, both Serbian and ethnic Albanian children will be welcome at Hasan Pristina and other schools because the United Nations mission here--technically in charge of all administrative matters in postwar Kosovo--is committed to multiethnic and nondiscriminatory policies.

In practice, the lightly staffed U.N. mission is letting educators on both sides of the ethnic divide take the initiative in getting schools up and running. That means that for now, schools are planning to offer instruction only in the language of the group in charge, with a clear division between schools run by ethnic Albanians and those run by Serbs.

In the village of Laplje Selo, a Serbian enclave a few miles outside Pristina, Miladin Mitic elementary and junior high school Principal Eivojin Smiljic said his building will reopen Wednesday not just as a school for the first through eighth grades but also as the temporary home of two high schools for students and teachers who have fled Pristina.

At the elementary and junior high level, about 90% of the students will be the same pupils as last year, but about 10% will be Serbian children “from other parts of Kosovo, who are like refugees here,” he said.

Momcilo Trajkovic, leader of the Serbian Resistance Movement and the most prominent Serb outside the Serbian Orthodox Church who remains in Kosovo, said that “in the Serbian enclaves, the Serbian government is organizing the schools.” Many will open Wednesday, he said.

Smiljic confirmed that his school is getting help from the Serbian government, mainly in the form of funds to pay overdue salaries. He said there has been no contact with his school by the U.N. mission here.

Nikola Kapic, 13, a fifth-grader at Miladin Mitic, said that all his friends from the village have stayed and that many new children have moved in.

“They probably had to leave Pristina, so they came here, probably because they were kicked out of their flats,” he said. “It’s not good.”

Open-Minded Teen Is Exception to the Rule

Nikola didn’t appear to understand what the war had been all about, and he seemed to feel little bitterness or fear. He said that he has never had an ethnic Albanian friend or played with an ethnic Albanian child but that if his school somehow became mixed, he would be perfectly willing to play soccer with ethnic Albanian schoolmates.

“Albanians and Serbs must live together,” he said.

It seems unlikely that any Serbian teachers or children will show up at ethnic Albanian-dominated schools such as Hasan Pristina. If they do, they won’t find a warm welcome. At least on the ethnic Albanian side, there still is little sense of forgiveness in the air in Kosovo.

“Their parents are criminals,” said Kaltriana Ahmeti, 13, a Hasan Pristina seventh-grader who was at the school recently helping reorganize library books that Serbian police had left scattered in the hallways. “They don’t deserve to live with us anymore. When they were here, they did the worst things they could.”

Such views are clearly dominant among ethnic Albanian students--right up to the university level.

“I hate them,” said Arjeta Zeneli, 21, who is finishing her freshman year as an English major at Pristina University. “What they have done to us for 10 years--we cannot forget about it just like that. I think they will never come back because they know what we will do.”

But one sixth-grade girl helping to carry library books at Hasan Pristina defended the idea that Serbian students should come too.

“The ones who are to blame have already left,” said Rudina Hasimja, 11. “They have the right to study too.”

In recent years, it was the ethnic Albanians’ right to study that was in question. From the elementary to the university level, their classes were often held in converted residences or other non-school buildings, in conditions even worse than those at Hasan Pristina. Now those same educators and students are in control of many school buildings--such as the main campus of Pristina University--that after 1991 were Serb-only.

“We came back to where we were eight years ago,” said Vesel Nuhiu, dean of the philology faculty at Pristina University. “In 1991, we were expelled from this building. They gave some explanations, but the fact is, we were Albanians and they wanted to get rid of us. We managed to survive and keep up standards as far as possible.”

Pristina University Vice Rector Ahmet Geca recalled his return to Pristina on June 19 and his visits the same day to many of the university buildings, despite fears of mines and booby traps.

International peacekeeping troops “did not allow us to go into some buildings because it was dangerous,” Geca said. “We went into others knowing the danger involved. It was a time when Serbian police and military were still present [in Pristina]. But the will we had to go back into our buildings was greater than the risk. Fortunately, we have no information of any teacher or student suffering injuries in the buildings.”

From the elementary to the university level, schools are planning to devote the initial weeks after reopening to finishing up last year’s work, with the 1999-2000 academic year to start later this fall.

At least some Serbian schools aim to finish last year’s work by the end of September and start the new year Oct. 1.

Gashi said he expects funding from the United Nations Mission in Kosovo, or UNMIK, to kick in beginning Wednesday. Under a U.N. Security Council resolution, that body, headed by mission chief Bernard Kouchner, has ultimate authority here--at least on paper.

Lines of Authority in Province Still Unclear

Real lines of authority and practical power are not so clear. This is because educators have taken so much initiative and because, on the ethnic Albanian side, they generally look to the self-declared provisional government of Kosovo, which is dominated by the Kosovo Liberation Army but not formally recognized by U.N. authorities.

“UNMIK will only finance us, and not tell us the plans and the curriculum,” Gashi said. “This is their declaration, not ours.”

Hajrullah Koliqi, deputy minister of education in the provisional government, also said that decisions on curriculum, school start dates, use of buildings and similar matters were being made by the ethnic Albanians themselves.

“We at the ministry feel we need help of every kind, but educational policies depend on us,” he said.

Over at the U.N. mission, the view is slightly different.

Asked who will decide educational issues when there is a controversy, spokeswoman Nadia Younes replied: “Ultimately, UNMIK--but in a context of consultation.

“We are the civil administrators of the territory, under mandates given us by the Security Council,” she said. “But of course we’re going to depend on expertise from whatever faction.”

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A previous story by Holley on the divisions between Serbian and ethnic Albanian students at the Hasan Pristina school is available on The Times’ Web site: https://www.latimes.com/hasanpristina.