In a bid to give both Albanians and Serbs a stake in running Kosovo, the United Nations set up two administrative councils last year. The start-up has been rough. The Serbs walked out of the project in September to protest Albanian violence and only agreed to return in April. Hoping to build on that momentum, U.N. officials have eagerly pressed for local elections to help patch up relations and consolidate their progress so far. In the past month, posters have appeared on walls around the province urging people to register for the vote in elections tentatively set for this fall.
People have to take part.
But a fresh round of violence has again aroused suspicions. Serb leaders, angry over an upsurge in attacks against their communities ahead of the one-year anniversary of the peacekeeping mission, announced on June 5 another boycott of all local administrative organizations and intimated they might stay away from the elections, too. There are those who doubt that elections will do anything even if they are held. Elections will just be window dressing covering the problems. For all the suggestions that Kosovo is returning to some semblance of normalcy, it is the seething indignation of Serbs like Ivanovic and Albanians like Redzepi that are reminders of how quickly NATO's accomplishments of the past year could come unraveled.