Balkan Border Wars - Serbia and Kosovo
The Documentary Podcast
BBC
4.3 • 2.7K Ratings
🗓️ 10 January 2019
⏱️ 28 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Old enemies Serbia and Kosovo discuss what for some is unthinkable - an ethnic land swap. This dramatic proposal is one of those being talked about as a means of normalising relations between these former foes. Since the bloody Kosovo war ended with NATO intervention in 1999, civility between Belgrade and Pristina has been in short supply. Redrawing borders along ethnic lines is anathema to many, but politicians in Serbia and Kosovo have their eyes on a bigger prize... For Serbia, that is membership of the European Union. But the EU will not accept Serbia until it makes an accommodation with its neighbour. Kosovo wants to join the EU too, but its immediate priority is recognition at the United Nations, and that is unlikely while Serbia's ally, Russia, continues to thwart Kosovo's ambitions there. Both of these Balkan nations want to exit this impasse. And a land-swap, giving each of them much-coveted territory, might just do it. For Assignment, Linda Pressly and producer, Albana Kasapi, visit the two regions at the heart of the proposal - the ethnically Albanian-majority Presevo Valley in Serbia, and the mostly Serb region north of Mitrovica in Kosovo.
(PHOTO: Hevzi Imeri, an ethnic Albanian and Danilo Dabetic, a Serb, play together at the basketball club Play 017 in Bujanovac – one of very few mixed activities for young people in Serbia’s Presevo Valley. BBC photo.)
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Great, you've chosen to spend the next half hour with us for this edition of assignment. |
| 0:05.0 | Well, no one ever said understanding the Balkans was easy, but on this trip I travel with an old |
| 0:10.4 | hand, BBC producer albana Kasapi and it was absolutely striking wasn't it |
| 0:15.6 | albana how profound the dissonances in Serbia and Kosovo. Yes and what's worse |
| 0:21.4 | those divisions those ethnic, seem to be deepening now, and there is real fear, |
| 0:27.8 | two decades after NATO's last intervention in Kosovo, that the old Balkan demons are awakening, threatening perhaps the very |
| 0:34.9 | fragile peace if borders are withdrawn along ethnic lines. |
| 0:39.7 | So this is Balkan border wars, Serbia and Kosovo. |
| 0:43.0 | It's nearly two decades since Serbia and Kosovo ended a bloody war. |
| 0:57.0 | Still, relations between these former foes remain deeply hostile. |
| 1:02.0 | Now there's talk of a dramatic, some say unthinkable, solution to |
| 1:05.4 | ending the rift, an exchange of territory along ethnic lines. This is |
| 1:11.5 | assignment on the BBC World Service. I'm Linda Presley. |
| 1:15.0 | In the left side of the square are the Serbian bars. |
| 1:19.0 | In the other side are the Albanian boards. |
| 1:32.0 | Southern Serbia butts up against the border with Kosovo where the population is mainly ethnic Albania. And in the press Ovali we get a lesson in the great |
| 1:34.8 | coffee culture divide from Valon Arefe. |
| 1:37.6 | They are separated they don't go in same bars. |
| 1:41.6 | But nobody drinks coffee together here. |
| 1:44.0 | No. |
| 1:45.0 | Only if they have some job or something to do together. |
| 1:48.0 | Think of that, but like drinking together like France, no. |
... |
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