July 2002
The war in Kosovo may have ended four years ago but the UN is still struggling to reconcile former enemies and mediate in property disputes.
Hassan is one of the hundreds of thousands of Kosovo Albanians whose houses were damaged during the war. Rather than rebuild his home, he moved his family into the unoccupied flat of a local Serbian woman. Since then, he has refused all requests to move out. "I have to live there because my house burnt during the war," he explains. However, the flat's real owner doesn't see it that way and complains to the UN. But with many land registry records destroyed during the war, even finding out who originally owned each property is difficult. And with the UN busy mediating in property disputes, there is no system in place to deal with the illegal constructions that have gone up since the end of the war. However, there is one area where Serbs and Albanians successfully co-operate. "It's a cruel fact that the area that is most successful for inter-ethnic co-operation between Albanians and Serbs is in organised crime," states UN police officer Derek Chappell. Until they can co-operate similarly successfully in other areas, Kosovo's future will continue to look uncertain.
