The School Wall

When an agreement between Slobodan Milosevic and Ibrahim Rugova on the normalization of education in Kosovo was revealed on September 3, officials on both sides tried to present it as victory for their side and defeat for the other. The Serbian state-controlled media said the return of ethnic Albanian students to schools was tantamount to indirect recognition of Serbian authority in the province of Kosovo, while the ethnic Albanians said the agreement meant that Serbia had finally given up the schools it "occupied" six years ago, after ethnic Albanian teachers were sacked for insubordination. On the other hand, hard-liners on both sides accused Milosevic and Rugova of yielding in, capitulation and betrayal of national interests. Now, a month and a half later, it is quite clear that both the euphoric claims of victory and the accusations were premature because schools in Kosovo have continued to operate as if there had never been an agreement. The Serbs have remained in their classrooms and university halls, while some 300,000 ethnic Albanians are still getting their education in improvised premises, including cellars and private houses.

One of the disputed objects is a primary school in downtown Pristina, the capital of Kosovo. It has two front doors and two names: Dardanija on the ethnic Albanian side and Milos Crnjanski on the Serbian side. Some 500 Serbian pupils and their teachers occupy two-thirds of the building, while the remaining third facilitates 3,000 ethnic Albanian children and staff. The headmaster of the ethnic Albanian part says that classrooms are overcrowded (three children per chair) and that all the inventory has remained in the Serbian part. Albanian children, he says, have to make do with shorter classes in four daily shifts while the Serbs have a normal timetable and a single shift.

There are no halls or doors connecting the two schools in one - they are separated by walls erected by the Serbs, says the headmaster. The wall, although invisible, is present outside the building too. Serbian and ethnic Albanian children don't mix. Each lot has its own side of the backyard for break time activities.

However, the other side is not too happy either. Serbian teachers complain of small wages which are always late and say that the ethnic Albanians are not paying any bills or taxes. "An ethnic Albanian parent came to see us the other day, he wanted to see our bills for rent, water and electricity. When he asked him why, he said that his children wanted ten German marks each on a weekly basis with the excuse they needed the money to pay bills. When we showed him our bills he started cursing Rugova. Multiply ten marks with the number of their pupils and you will come up with a surprising figure", says Slavica, a Serbian teacher.

The ethnic Albanians deny the claims. They say that all the employed ethnic Albanians allocate three percent of their wages for their cause, including the education fund. The situation is even worse in high schools and universities. Not one of the sixty ethnic Albanian high schools is open, so teaching is done in private houses only. The university, on the other hand, is another story: there are many students from Serbia proper, while Greeks have to bribe their way into the university if they want education. It is hard to imagine that the current staff and cadres would, under any circumstances, give up the possibility of making extra cash from charging Greek students for joining the Pristina university and even more from renting university-owned flats to them. It is therefore not surprising that professor Radivoje Papovic, the rector, recently said that "no one is entitled to think in favour of someone else's ideology" and conditioned the admittance of ethnic Albanian students on their acceptance of the Serbian education program, although this is not part of the Milosevic-Rugova agreement.

It seems that both sides have their own interpretations of the agreement. The ethnic Albanians insist that its implementation (giving school buildings to them) must start immediately with international monitoring, while the Serbs want concessions to show that Serbia still has some authority in the province. Veton Suroi, the editor in chief of the ethnic Albanian weekly Koha, is more than skeptical about the possibility to overcome the differences.

"The agreement has no deadline and envisages no penalties should either side choose not to implement it. Even when the joint commission starts working, the whole thing will break down on the constitution issue. The Serbs will ask the ethnic Albanians to submit their education programmes for approval, which they will refuse to do because that would be tantamount to accepting Serbian authority and statehood in Kosovo. Such course of action means that we are back to square one", Suroi said.

The situation only confirms that no issue regarding the normalization of relations between Serbs and ethnic Albanians in Kosovo is small enough to ignore the crux of the conflict - the question of sovereignty.