Word: dani
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These days, rather than be a politician himself, Dani wants to be a political watchdog. He founded an NGO two years ago called INPO, initiative for progress, which has a dozen young staff members who report to him. The organization, which takes pains to stay independent from any political party or business interest, aims to hold politicians' feet to the fire and convince citizens to do the same: protesting against missing traffic lights at a busy intersection, investigating candidates for conflicts of interest, running a get-out-the-vote drive. "It's not only about the idea of democracy...
What he is eager to speak out about is politics. Like most Albanians, Dani still loves the U.S., but "sometimes more the idea than the reality." He's noticed that some U.S. troops in Kosovo come after tours of duty in Iraq or Afghanistan and bring with them prejudices against Muslims. But his main focus is Kosovo, where he says the "status" question - of when and how to extend independence to the Albanian-majority nation - has become a way for political leaders to distract citizens from more concrete problems. Basic infrastructure is decrepit (electric power is cut twice...
...four days together, Dani took me to a nearby village named Talinovic, which historically was split between Serbs and Albanians. Here, on July 2, 1999, after Belgrade's capitulation, Greek peacekeeping troops told some 300 Serb villagers that they could no longer guarantee their safety. They fled en masse, and every home was subsequently burned to the ground by Albanians from out of town. Last year, the first 40 brick houses were rebuilt on the land, and a few of the mostly older Serb residents began to trickle back from their exile in Serbia...
...best place to live is where you were born and grew up," says Radomir Stojanovic, 67, whose children and grandchildren are still in Serbia proper. "So far, we are free and safe to be back here. But we are still worried." With Dani translating from Serbo-Croatian, Stojanovic tells me the question of Kosovo's independence is by now a chess match between Russia and the U.S., while Serbs and Albanians want the same things: peace and work. He tells how he used to work in a state-owned corner store, and knew all the Albanian residents. "I've known...
Heading to the car, I thought back to the tents we were invited into by Albanian refugees in Macedonia when Dani was still a fresh-faced boy of 14. The ethnicity of the sufferers has changed, but not the nature of their suffering - nor the simple hope that it may end. These are truths I might never have seen without Dani...