City Profile: Kosovo Mitrovica/Mitrovica

The municipality lies about thirty miles north of Pristina. Kosovo was the last part of the former Yugoslavia to proclaim independence.

Following the NATO-led campaign, which resulted in the retreat of the Yugoslav Army and Serbian Police Forces from Kosovo, the “Kumanovo Military-technical Agreement” (1999), Amnesty International’s Recommendations to the United Nations Mission in Kosovo (UNMIK) Judicial System and NATO, and UNSC Resolution 1244: established the basis for the UNMIK to become the administrative authority and the NATO-led Kosovo Force (KFOR), the chief security authority.

But the final status of Kosovo remained unclear. Of Kosovo’s 2.1 million people, it is estimated that Albanians comprise at least 88 percent and Serbs at most 7 percent of the population. After years of trying to reach some accommodation between the Belgrade government and Kosovo Albanians, the United Nations appointed mediator Marti Athisaari who put forward a plan calling for supervised Kosovo independence. The United States (US) and the European Union (EU) embraced the plan, but the United Nations did not; Russia, which sided with the Serbs on the issue, withheld its vote in the Security Council. In February 2008, Kosovo made a declaration of independence, again with recognition from the West and the United States, but not the United Nations. The Serbian government has appealed Kosovo’s independence to the International Court of Justice (ICJ), a process that might take years.

The municipality consists of one town and forty-nine villages. Since 1999, the town has been divided along the Ibar River. Mitrovica has a history of communal violence. With the war’s end, a severe outbreak of violence in 2004 and the declaration of independence, the population moved in two directions: Serbs who were living on the southern bank of the river to the northern side and Albanians on the north side to the south. The northern part of the municipality has a Serb majority and the southern part an Albanian majority.

The northern part is administered by its own elected municipality and gives its allegiance to Belgrade, which funds it. The southern part has its own municipal institutions, which regard the northern municipality government as illegal. Kosovar Albanians fear partition and that the Serbian government will attempt to sever the northern tip of the province and have it integrated into Serbia. Kosovo Serbs fear being reintegrated into a Kosovo Albanian controlled town, a small, marginalized group in an independent Kosovo, risking intimidation and the slow emasculation of their culture and language with violent attack always a threat.

Mitrovica itself is less than three square kilometers in size with a population of approximately 85,000. On the northern side of the river, Kosovar Serbs account for an estimated 16,000 people and on the southern side there are an estimated 66,000 Kosovar Albanians. A single bridge across the Ibar is rarely crossed. The river delineates the division. For all practical purposes, the two communities live in different countries, and with the exception of Mitrovica, there are no Serbian urban enclaves in Kosovo. An estimated 18 percent of all Kosovar Serbs live in north Mitrovica. UNMIK, which struggled to exercise authority in Mitrovica for several years, has been replaced by EULEX, an EU operation with a mission primarily to ensure enforcement of the law on both sides of the river. To the chagrin of the Albanian Kosovars, these will be UN laws, not laws that apply to all of Kosovo. With the closure of the one source of industrial activity—Trepca mining complex—the influx of refugees and IDPs and unemployment at 77 percent; the north side is completely dependent on transfers from Belgrade and the south on transfers from Pristina.

Issues of ongoing tension are as follows: restricted freedom of movement, no right to return process, inadequate security structures, the municipality’s deepening economic crisis, and uncertainty about the town’s status. The division of the town has made the provision of services problematic, especially with regard to electricity and water. The nonparticipation of Serbs in the municipal elections led to the creation of separate facilities, north and south. UNMIK established its administrative authority over the northern area in 2002, and the Municipal Assembly does not have any competencies over the administration of north Mitrovica. At present there are fourteen Kosovo Albanian parties and fifteen Serbian political parties in Mitrovica.