Paul Hosford: Kosovo still has a long way to go

Kosovo’s prime minister Albin Kurti and Taoiseach Leo Varadkar inspect the guard of honour prior to their meeting in Pristina. Picture: Armend Nimani/AFP via Getty Images

It took Ireland just 12 days to recognise Kosovo's 2008 autonomous declaration of independence 16 years ago.

While that act alone may not seem like much, it is worth remembering that nearly half of the UN and five EU members do not, to this day, recognise that Kosovo is a sovereign state, largely due to the fact that independence from Serbia had not been negotiated.

So, while there is a deep history in this mountainous place, there is a sense of newness, too. 

An EU delegation, which includes four Irish staff, works out of a heavily-fortified compound to the west of the city ensuring the rule of law is followed, while perched on a hill above the centre of town sits Film City, a Nato base home to around 800 of the 4,800 peacekeepers still left in Kosovo.

If the city's Mother Teresa Boulevard — named so because the "Nene" had found God in a village in Kosovo — with its high-end shops and restaurants gave off a familiar feeling, the prefabs, the security checkpoints, and the automatic weapons on arrival were a reminder that this is still a very young country, with a long way yet to go.

To assist on its way, Kosovo will look to join the EU though it is not one of nine candidates for EU enlargement and at present is the only one of six western Balkan states not being considered. 

The country applied for membership in late 2022, a purely symbolic act as the EU remains of the opinion that there is a long way to go in implementing a 2013 stabilisation agreement between the two countries.

The EU was spurred into action by a major gun battle last September, when about 30 Serb gunmen crossed into northern Kosovo, killed a police officer, and set up barricades. 

Three gunmen were killed in the shootout with Kosovo police.

Serbian president Aleksandar Vucic.

Serbian president Aleksandar Vucic and Kosovan prime minister Albin Kurti distrust each other — when Kurti was jailed and beaten by Yugoslav forces, Vucic was minister of information in Slobodan Milosevic's government — and what is required is potentially years of dialogue, trust-building and concerted effort, something people on the island of Ireland know a bit about.

In a lunch held for the Irish delegation in a Swiss chalet built on an international base in the middle of a former Yugoslav capital, Taoiseach Leo Varadkar said that Ireland could often think that our problem are ours alone, but that events from the covid pandemic to the Ukrainian war showed that this world we live in is small and getting smaller. 

Some 13 Irish soldiers remain of the 250 or so who were here during the peak of tensions, led by Colonel Tim Daly and Mr Varadkar thanked them for their service to both Ireland and Kosovo, saying that the force's presence here in this bitterly cold, but beautiful place had led to the one thing most aspire to — living a calm and normal life.

After this writer and other journalists returned to Pristina — having briefly been sped toward's the city's airport having been mistaken for part of the Taoiseach's motorcade — it was easy to see as people milled around the city why that is a goal we should all aspire to and why that attempts to protect it must be celebrated and supported.