Kosovo's scars live on

Much of Kosovo is still in ruins from the war

By Ian Pannell in Kosovo

"What is the difference between crime and the United Nations in Kosovo?"

"Crime is organised!"

It is an old joke in the Balkans but as refugees stream into the province from Macedonia, the issue of what it is they are escaping to is increasingly relevant.

The fault lines in Kosovo run deep. Poverty and hatred are inescapable

To be sure, much has been achieved in the reconstruction of the area.

Over $1.4bn of EU money has been spent rebuilding peoples homes, factories and schools.

Kosovo now has the makings of its own police force, there is a lively independent media and democratic political institutions are being developed.

However, there are glaring omissions which are feeding a sense of betrayal and isolation.

War devastation

You are just as likely to be passed by old men on horse-drawn carts or tractors as you are cars in Skanderaij.

Ethnic Albanians are angry at being sidelined

This is a poor area, devastated by the war. The Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) resistance began here and when it came retribution was harsh and complete.

Twenty months on, around 90% of the population is unemployed and many families are living in UN tents, their houses still in ruins.

Those who do work, like market trader Hussein Lustaku, only really scrape a living selling black-market cigarettes and sweets.

"I had higher expectations, I think things could have been better," he says.

"At this stage the international community, the European states and Nato have only partly understood the concerns of the Albanian people.

"They still have to do quite a lot more to improve things. "

'Only choice'

The Albanians here feel they have been sidelined in the great reconstruction of Kosovo.

Many receive just a few deutschmarks a month from the Centre for Social Welfare.

When we arrived, the crowd of people standing in line for aid thrust themselves forward, desperate to tell their stories.

One man with 10 family members gets the equivalent of just $56 a month. He also has to buy medicine for a sick child.

"What other choice do we have? Go crazy?" he said.

"We don't get anything else, so, this is the only choice we have."

Failed reconciliation

Two hours drive along pot-holed roads to the east is the Serbian enclave of Gracanica.

Serbs say the international community did not recognise their problems

These people are equally poor. Subsistance farming seems to be the essential tool of survival.

But money is not their consideration. Safety is.

By its own admission, the UN has ditched the idea of creating a multi-ethnic society, reconciliation has failed.

What it wants is peaceful coexistence, but that simply has not happened.

The town is heavily fortified with permanent K-For peacekeeping protection for the 6,000 or so people who have come to live here from across the province.

Serbs ignored

Dr Rada Trajkovic is one of them. She is the only Serbian representative on the fledgling political council for Kosovo.

She is a moderate, which only makes her tale of the past two years all the more disheartening:

"After the bombing, the international community came in and identified the Albanians as the victims.

"They didn't care what was happening with the Serbs. They didn't recognise our problems.

"This has been the hardest period because two-thirds of the Serbian population have been displaced.

"Over 1,000 people have been killed, many are missing, the majority have lost their jobs and more than 100 churches and monasteries have been razed."

How accurate these figures are is impossible to gauge.

What is clearer is that the fault lines in Kosovo run deep. Poverty and hatred are inescapable.

To be fair, the UN has never run a whole province before, but too many people feel it is they who are suffering while it learns on the job.