Got notified on Friday that I got placed in the exact ministry that I wanted working on the exact issue that I wanted (Security Ministry working on Countering Violent Extremism because ISIS is getting its tentacles into secular Kosovo)... and I'm freakin' out a little (in good and bad ways).
Couldn't wait for Pubski to update so here I am.
aw! thanks :3 obviously I'll keep hubski up to date and be sure to sticker Kosovo as appropriate
Congratulations! I lived (in Prishtine) and worked in Kosovo (at Film City) for a while when I was a civilian contractor with KFOR. Kosovo was rough then - 12/13 years ago - and really the ass end of the world. Power for a couple of hours a day, every third or fourth day, often no running water, and the Albanian mafia running basically everything. (The whole thing in Kosovo was a proxy war between the Albanian mafia and the EU, and largely unrelated to the problems in the northern parts of the Balkans. The Albanians were trying to annex the land by trafficking shitloads of Albanians in, and claiming they had "always lived there", and the EU/US were just trying to get everyone to stop shooting long enough that they could have a reasonable conversation with Serbia about the region, and wondering what the fuck the Albanians were going on about.) The one power plant was coal-fired, and it made the snow was bright yellow from all the soot and pollution in the air. My friend ran the - what was it called then? International Security Center, or whatever? - where they housed and tried all the criminals. Nice guy from Texas, ex-cop, ex-military, and a grandfather. Talk about a shitty job, man. Working in a craptastic place like Kosovo, doing a thankless job, for an organization that wished he didn't need to exist, a public that was against him, and genuine war criminals were the people he got to hang out with on a daily basis. Man... that was hard work. Good luck with it. The bureaucracy is inconceivably Byzantine (appropriate, considering the history of the region) but I expect the best introduction to the current situation there is understanding how it went from Yugoslavia to the mess it is now, and the best way to do that is to read my friend Adam LeBor's book, "Milosevic" It really will be a good primer to understanding the tribal underpinnings of everything you are getting into there. Good luck. And thank you for doing the good and important work that needs to happen there. I did my part with UXO awareness, but that was all I could manage before I got out.
I definitely appreciate your insights and any resources you recommend. Again I have zero background besides having lived in bumblefuck Jordan (which is also a rough, poor, and tribal region). I have an old Peace Corps manual for Albanian and found a youtube channel with some basic vocab that I'm studying now. I'm pretty sure I'm going to be living in Pristina but really don't have much info at all yet beyond where I'm working.
Oof. Jumping in with both feet, eh? So. From your post history, I think you are female, right? Being a woman in that region is going to be really fucking hard. Really hard. This is some of the most brutally misogynistic society I have ever experienced. Far beyond the sort of "polite" and weirdly formalized misogyny of the Middle East. In this part of the Balkans, women are either your mother or treated as some sort of whore/prostitute who deserves no respect. I have seen very little gray area between those two extremes. (Professional adult men in their 40's still have their mother make meals for them every day, and do their laundry. Seriously.) Everyone also has a hundred hidden triggers simmering just below the surface, waiting to take violent offense to the smallest thing. Example: Spell it "Prishtine" vs "Prishtina", and get hit in the face. (Even the "sh" sound is a polarizer in "Prishtine".) One faction wants it spelled one way and sees the other spelling as a fighting offense, and the other faction believes exactly the opposite. (Put a map on the wall in your office with one spelling of the word, and you will feel the room go cold when certain people walk in to do business with you. Put both spellings on the map and everyone hates you.) This is the kind of stuff that Adam's book can help you wrap your head around. For a long time people lived next door to each other in Yugoslavia in peace and prosperity, and then Milosevic needed to divide the people against each other to create a power base, so suddenly if the "c" at the end of your name was pronounced with a hard "ch" versus a softer "ts" it defined neighbors as "Serb" or "Bosnian Serb", and the AK-74's come out blazing. (The irony that "Milosevic" is exactly one of these names - meh-lo-se-VICH or meh-lo-se-VITS - is not lost on anyone that studies the history of the area. And there are four different variations of the ch/c/s/ts sound that only Serbo-Croat speakers can discern, so you may say it wrong and piss someone off anyway, even if you tried to use the right one!) Learning anything other than the absolute rudimentary Albanian - "please", "thank you" etc - is pointless. Because the Albanians will think you are being patronizing - "What, you think I don't speak English, or something?!?" - and speaking Albanian is basically spitting in the face of everyone else in the region... Serbs, Macedonians, Montenegrins (who are basically the "Texans of Serbia", as described to me), etc. Learning basic Serbian will serve you much better. (Oh. And Serbo-Croat is, scientifically, one language, but due to the regional chaos the people there will tell you vehemently and in great and confusing detail about why they are two distinct languages. So you want to focus on learning Serbian. It will win you points with any Serbs you deal with, and everyone - even Albanians - can get along in Serbian. The Croatians are also MUCH more lenient and understanding than the Serbs you will deal with in Kosovo. If you go up to Zagreb or Hvar or Dubrovnik for a little vacation and use your Serbian, the Croats will be nice to you anyway. Croats like tourists. Serbs cast a wary eye on tourists and wonder why you aren't in Croatia.) And people are definitely "ranked" there, culturally speaking. Serbs are top of the heap (because they forcefully put themselves there in every single conversation), with Europeans (including Greeks) taking a back seat to them. Macedonians are up there, but not as "pure" as the Serbs because they are in bed with the EU and Greece. Croatians are like that weird rich uncle with the nice house you love to go visit once a year, but you are never quite sure if he's a child molester or not. Roma/Gypsies are below dogs. And if you took a Serb/Kosovar/Macedonian aside, pointed at an Albanian, and said, "Is that human?" They would squint... tilt their heads... look over at the Roma, and back at the Albanian... and say, "Yeah? I guess so?" In short, everything there is just fucking hard. And for reasons that seem completely stupid to someone like me who grew up on the west coast of the USA. But I learned my lessons there - some of them the hard way - and figured out how to navigate through the political mess and how to live in a shitty little flat in "downtown" Pristina. (Another alternate spelling.) I guess my suggestion is to go in with big ears, small mouth. Listen more than you speak. Watch everything. Keep constantly vigilant. Dress like the locals. Buy local clothing and wear it ALL the time. I had my "Balkan costume" I wore whenever I spent time there, (black leather jacket, black mock turtleneck, blue jeans of no name brand make or model, black belt, black shoes, no labels or brand names showing, or cut off) and I could blend in a bit. Or at least not stick out. Ok, yeah, I was living there more than 10 years ago but the problems there have been going on for a long time. When I was there wild dogs were a big problem. (Whenever you have a war, dogs run away. And breed. And run in packs. And become a Problem for humans.) I don't expect that is still the case. The powerplant is now running better and providing power most days, all day, but the soot is still on EVERYTHING all the time. The Albanian mafia is largely under control (or underground) and not a daily threat. The international organizations are better established and secured, and aren't being blown up on a bi-monthly basis anymore with RPGs. But the cultural environment there is probably still very much like it was a decade ago. Culture changes slowly. I will be fascinated to hear your experiences when you get there!!! And what it is like working for an international organization like that. I was just a lowly contractor, driving a truck around. So your view from "inside the system" is going to be particularly interesting. (All of my friends have since left there.)
uh I typed a response but idk what happened to it. In summary, I hope you're wrong and that culture has changed more quickly because this is/was one of my biggest hang ups about going. When I went to Jordan, I was told that the worst harassment I'd endure were marriage proposals. Then I was physically and verbally harassed almost constantly and followed more than once, even while covered collarbone to ankles. So I just gave up and stopped going outside. One of my mentors who wrote a rec for me knows how hard Jordan was for me and was quick to reassure me that it was nothing like that when she went as a mid/late 20's woman. We're going to chat soon so I'm going to press her on that though for sure.
In my experience there (as a white man), and my interaction with many women (some of whom were locals that worked for me), I would say that your mentor's experience is highly rose-tinted, or cloistered. In many of these NGO's, etc, it is very possible to live in an "experience bubble." You live in provided housing, in a safe and secure area, with transport to and from the places you need to go, and a small number of "safe" restaurants, bars, etc, where the ex-pat community congregates, and the locals never go. (I had this experience when I worked outside of Cape Town, South Africa.) This is how almost all of the ex-pat community lives in places like this. "Diplomats" in a bubble that rarely engages with, or crosses over, with the local community. I hate that. I strove to always live outside of those boundaries. So yes, your mentor could have had that experience in Kosovo, and maybe it was due to her circumstances and the bubble she lived in. Or, maybe the place has changed. Both things are possible, but if these issues are important to you, I would have a very direct, open, and honest conversation with her about it. In my experience, it was not unusual for men to openly grope women when they approved of their outfits, be openly sexually suggestive with them, and take umbrage at rejection, including raging outbursts. Like frat bros in a strip bar. Seriously.
I don't remember the context under which she was in Kosovo but I'll find out when we do chat sometime this week. But I definitely appreciate the insight.
Holy shit. Countering Violent Extremism. You go. I'm curious, what have been good resources for you in learning about this? Job training? A certain book? Books? Mentor? I'm curious as to how people learn about this sort of thing.
This what? This Kosovo or this CVE? CVE I worked on a little bit at State and in my studies. I think CVE falls under counterinsurgency to some extent. I can look at my past syllabi for books and articles. Kosovo I have no background on whatsoever and I was upfront about that in my application. I had a mentor that recommended that since my background is on the Middle East and problems caused by extremism there, that I make a case for applying that knowledge to Kosovo.
Oh woops, my bad. Yea, I'm curious about CVE and counterinsurgency as an academic and military discipline. I remember reading that Stanley McChrystal "wrote the book on COIN" and had a chance to execute on some of his ideas, but it was cut a little short with the Rolling Stone piece that ran and soured his relationship with the Commander in Chief.
Generally there are 2 schools of COIN which are hearts and minds and the Roman approach (raze and salt the earth). You're either looking to control the population that would support insurgents or make it impossible for insurgents to hold land. Definitely wanna check out David Galula for hearts and minds, who likely influenced McChrystal. He drew from Mao's understanding of guerrilla warfare. More recently is David Kilcullen's 3 pillars . Martin van Creveld is a burn and salt the earth type scholar who advocates for crushing insurgents before they get too strong because no one will miss them when they're gone. Largely a preventive strategy. CVE is more of the hearts and minds school with a focus on institution building. If you address the people's needs through the govt, they won't be tempted by insurgents' promises of political change.
Institution building really captures my imagination as to how to best counter radicalism. And for that matter, all sorts of things, like corruption, crime, sinking standards of living. Where does one learn how to build institutions? I ask as someone who is personally interested in expanding national service opportunities, so as to knit and cross-socially engage a generation of young Americans.
bootz and anyone else who's interested in CVE, Peter Neumann, who teaches at Georgetown and runs the Center for the Study of Radicalization is testifying in Congress tomorrow on CVE online
Will the testimony be televised? That's what CSPAN is for, right? Will you be in attendance?
It should be on CSPAN and probably online. i will not be unfortunately but I will try and watch. no idea whether i can stream while at work.
Yeah it's definitely a super squishy abstract concept. I think a lot of the problem comes from the fact that in order for institutions to work, you have to let them do their thing which can take a long time. Personally, I think one of the biggest issues with democracy building is that we don't let time pass and for institutions to take on a character of their own. I think the US model worked for the US because the world basically left us the fuck alone for a century or two and we figured out how to make democratic institutions work for us. But in somewhere like post-Arab Spring Egypt, people want things to happen immediately and it just doesn't work that way. In high school, I was on a mock congressional hearings team (lmfao i know) which helped give a really in depth look into how you research and prep for a hearing and involved a lot of constitutional study so we weren't just talking out our asses about what the govt can do. This obviously isn't the best form of civic engagement for everyone, but I think national service opportunities is an awesome way of making civic action widely accessible.
I'm reading an introductory book on economics, and I'm on the part about "institutions." Squishy concept indeed. His stab at defining is "the arrangements between people and organizations." Meh. I didn't think about it until you pointed it out, but that is hilarious. "Most likely to be president."In high school, I was on a mock congressional hearings team (lmfao i know)
that's...kind of it. it's more of a feedback loop than that. actions shape institutions which shape actions etc The mock congressional hearings program (called We The People naturally) is divided into 6 units each with a different focus (philosophical/historical foundations of the US, the founders' process/intent, post-civil war adaptations to the constitution, how the constitution shaped american institutions, the role of the bill of rights, and 21st century issues). I was in the last group which is affectionately dubbed the lovey dovey touchy feely group. And here I am lmao
That sounds rad actually. We The People. I wish I had something like that in middle school. I just read a really interesting book by a legal author Akhil Reed Amar that touched on the Reconstruction Congress and it's "intents" with the 13th and 14th amendments. It inspired me to pick up his America's Constitution: A Biography (though it might be some time before I get to it. I'm currently on hour 3 of 67 of The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York). But speaking of building institutions, trying to normalize the South after the Civil War... sheesh. Not jealous of that job.post-civil war adaptations to the constitution
Akhil Reed Amar was the patron saint of unit 3. I haven't heard that name in forever haha. Yeah and it's definitely really easy to look at Reconstruction and where we are today and draw the conclusion that institution building is hard.
I'm interested in this. It is my understanding that much of the Balkan Peninsula is Islamic and has been historically (not quite half and half with Orthodox, but shouting distance). Indeed a quick demographic check shows that Kosovo is almost entirely Muslim, though wikipedia does not give a reason for the weird religious demographic twists (some countries in the Balkans are 90+ Muslim and some aren't even close) -- it is the Balkans, though, so the most complicated explanation is probably the correct one. Anyway, to what extent is Kosovo secular? Is the population merely nominally Muslim? I'm assuming extremism is on the rise there, since it is in many other majority Muslim states, but I'd be interested in hearing exactly how -- is the secular thing not so true after all?because ISIS is getting its tentacles into secular Kosovo
These are questions that I also have and hope to answer in my time there. From what I understand, the population has been nominally Muslim up until recently when the Saudis started investing. That brings in Salafi texts and clerics and they're very good at targeting vulnerable populations. Apparently Kosovars make up a weirdly high per capita number of European foreign fighters in Syria, and people aren't entirely sure why.
Awesome Girl! I know it's probably not #1 on your priority right ow but do take the time to visit neighbouring countries a little bit. Sarajevo and Belgrade are diametrically opposite but I loved my time in both. So much history, culture in that area.
No it's definitely on my list of to do's when I'm there. Meriadoc's boss is Bosnian and has bluntly informed me that there's not much to do in Kosovo. I'd like to get to as many countries as possible while I'm there.
Kosovo is kinda in the middle of the whole peninsula, so getting to the coast is a bit of work, but totally worth it. Thessaloniki in Greece is due south. To the west you can go to nice little unknown beach towns like Budva, or go for the amazing Croatian coast that is Dubrovnik, Split, and Rijeka/Opatia. Sarajevo is one of my most favorite cities ever. I had a flat there for a couple of years, and LOVED every minute I spent in that town. Great people, amazing history... just walking into the Old Town part of Sarajevo on a warm summer night is enchanting. In the Balkans there is the tradition of the "korso". This is when people get dressed up in the evenings, go out to the walking district, and spend the lovely evenings sitting at outdoor cafe's, drinking little espressos, and people watching. Everyone walks up and down - parades, courses, walks, saunters, shows off, etc - and groups of boys and girls watch and flirt with each other.... it is just lovely. And the food is amazing. And the air is just electric with young energy and excitement. And then, look down at the ground below your feet. See the "Sarajevo Roses" under your shoes. Look around at the hillsides where the artillery was mounted for the "longest siege in modern warfare", and then look around you again. See the faces of the beautiful people. Feel the energy of the place. And realize that you will never in your lifetime have to find the internal fortitude to deal with what these people dealt with. Ever. And then be even more amazed at how gorgeous it all is, and realize what amazing and terrible creatures human beings are. (PS - The building in that photo - the Executive Council Building - was across the street from my flat when I lived in Sarajevo. Bombed out. Burned. When storms blew through bits of debris would still fall from the building to the courtyard below.)
When you're in Sarajevo, 3 really cool things to do: 1. Live bosnian music night Mon/Sat at Kino Bosna, an old cinema turned into a bar/galery 2. Bosnian Genocide Museum - heartbreaking :( 3. Abandoned bobsled track up in the mountains. It might not be very abandoned anymore as they were renovating it in 2014 but still a cool hike. It was built for the olympics and then used by snipers during the siege of Sajarevo. When I was there, you could still see the holes for the guns and it had graffiti all over.
I kind of assumed I wasn't going at this point or that they would put me somewhere that didn't fit my interests (education or tourism ministry for example... didn't think they'd let me do security stuff lol) so I had kind of started making alternate plans and put down a deposit on an apartment and started buying furniture. I was really excited to move into my own place with Meriadoc and while the grant is only a 10 month thing, that pushes it off until next summer. So I'm a lil sad about that but obviously this is a huge opportunity
Score: 1, for getting validated the fuck out of. Ahh, that makes sense, moving into the new place escaped my mind when I read this post. I guess I got so excited for you I forgot about that, haha.I kind of assumed I wasn't going at this point or that they would put me somewhere that didn't fit my interests
Yeah take that imposter syndrome! It's only 10 months though and I can subdue any lingering angst with Kosovar dairy products 👌👌👌
Go wreck their shit! 'grats. We're proud of you. :) edit: their = ISIS
:D thanks!! when I start up my trip blog, i'll be sure to crosspost ETA: that's what I figured you meant LOL. I don't think it would be in the spirit of Fulbright to wreck Kosovo's shit
Predeparture orientation for all Fulbright awardees is late August but the school year doesn't start in Kosovo until October so I got some time.