Psychosocial Notebook - IOM Publications - International ...

Psychosocial Notebook, Volume 2, October 2001
The “Serb” appearing in these passages, the Serb who is “hated”, is still
very different from the civilian perceived to support the government, and
does not refer to the limited number of those who were willing to fight in
paramilitary formations. At this point, the “Serb” is a military man with a
uniform; he is identified with the State and not really with the “People”.
The students soon recognized that they were confronted with a State apparatus,
rather than with a vague enemy in partial or complete civilian garb.
This is a theme of absolute importance: in the minds of the rioting students,
the distinction between “people” and the Serbian Government was
always made, and governed their actions of protest.
Throughout the 1990s, schools and universities became breeding grounds
for ideas of independence, but also made up a sort of democratic training
ground, with a rigorous schedule of sit-ins and peaceful protests. If what
was occurring at the school in some ways was a physical manifestation of
a crucial moment in the construction of a national identity, it is perhaps
significant that these school groups came to support the recruitment of
activists, then fighters. As places where identity was being formed, schools
became the ground of disputes but also of self-definition in contrast to an
ever changing “other”. If the Serbs first excluded the Kosovar Albanians,
these then twisted the exclusion they had suffered into a resource, which
finally was turned against young Romany as a wave of accusations and
discriminations.
The institutions of Kosovo have therefore been the scene of a heavy
battle, one that raged for an entire decade preceding the explosion of the
“real” armed conflict. With the creation of structures financially supported
by the contributions of the Kosovar Albanian citizens, the foundations
of self-determination were constructed in Kosovo. The parallel State’s
institutions, though not internationally recognized, took on the function of
providing material support to the lives of some of Kosovo’s citizens (especially
the Albanians but also the Romany), and provided an alternative to
the growth of conflict and conflicting identities in the tug-of-war over
Serbian institutions. Even though these parallel institutions later led, in
their own way, to direct conflict, the identities invested in spaces they had
created, that were all theirs, and that were civilian, not military, matured
differently from those forged in opposition. The civilian attempt of
Kosovo’s younger population and intelligentsia therefore did provide, in
spite of everything, a protective atmosphere and the chance for some to
mature, sheltered from daily discrimination by their own institutions. This
did not, however, work to the favour of all Kosovars, as none was entirely
immune to Serbian repression. Further, the Romany were not able to
enjoy the material and social advantages of participation in these parallel
and alternative institutions. More than from the political or allegiance dif-
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