An Unpredictable Path

by Kat Burnside

Petar Prica lives and works on the fault line of ethnic conflict in Kosovo. His hometown of Mitrovica is a city starkly divided among Serb and Albanian communities.

Located in the northern tip of Kosovo and considered by some the gateway to Serbia, Mitrovica was a frequent battleground in the late 1990s between Yugoslav and Serb forces and Albanian separatist rebels.

The Kosovo war ended after the 1999 NATO bombing campaign, but Mitrovica remains a symbol of ongoing conflict between Kosovo's two ethnic communities, Albanian and Serbian.

Petar's job is to make peace.

A Happy Youth

Petar was born in 1967 and grew up in Mitrovica, then part of socialist Yugoslavia. His parents both worked for Trepca, a now-defunct mining complex that for decades was the city's largest employer.

Petar's parents divorced when he was 6 years old, and his father, a mechanical engineer, moved to Bosnia. His father maintained frequent contact, and Petar's mother's income as a cook continued to provide a decent living.

Despite the divorce, Petar recalls a happy childhood with lots of friends, sports, games and travel. Fond of subjects such as mathematics, physics and chemistry, Petar also excelled at basketball and music. For years, he was an active member of his local Scouts organization.

"Although I was young, I had the opportunity to travel around the former Yugoslavia and Europe. Even today, after a number of violent conflicts in former Yugoslavian republics, I still have friends all around, and we're in regular contact."

Starting Out

Economically, times were good back then too. Unlike the rest of the Soviet bloc, Yugoslavia's economy prospered from the growth of worker-managed versus state-owned companies. Open emigration helped keep unemployment low by allowing Yugoslavs to find work in western Europe.

"A lot of Western people think that we lived behind the Iron Curtain, but they're wrong," says Petar. "We lived very well, and many 'behind the Iron Curtain countries' treated Yugoslavia as the West."

In 1986, when he was 20 years old, Petar met his future wife, Jelena. A good friend of his was dating her sister, and Petar and Jelena met by chance at a party.

"The immediate interest was mutual," says Petar. "We started dating and love set ablaze quickly."

Peter continued his studies in Mitrovica and in 1991 earned a master's degree in chemical technology. He then started a recycling business that did well in the industrial city. In 1997, after dating for 11 years, Petar and Jelena were married.

The Kosovo War

Petar's business grew in the 1990s, and so did ethnic tensions, as Serbian (and later Yugoslav) President Slobodan Milosevic reduced Kosovo's provincial autonomy and cracked down on its dominant ethnic Albanian culture.

In 1996, a militant separatist group calling itself the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) started a guerrilla uprising against Serbia and the Yugoslav government. KLA attacks intensified over two years, and, in 1998, the Yugoslav army and Serbian forces launched an offensive to squash the ethnic Albanian insurgency.

International negotiations to end Milosevic's repression failed. In March of 1999, NATO forcibly intervened with an aggressive bombing campaign against Yugoslav and Serbian forces.

The war ended ten weeks later, in June.

A Changed Life

Peter was nearly 32 then, and his life had changed significantly. His recycling business in Mitrovica crashed during the war, along with the local economy. The high school where he also taught relocated outside of the city due to urban ethnic clashes.

He mourned the death of his brother, who was killed by KLA insurgents in 1998, and celebrated the birth of his first child, a girl, in 1999, 17 days before NATO strikes.

Even after the war's end, street violence continued for several more years.

"Almost every day there were violent clashes between two ethnicities and riots in the middle of the city divide, on Mitrovica's main bridge across the Ibar River," recalls Petar.

With his business gone and a family to support, Petar took a job in an industry with plenty of demand in war-torn Mitrovica: humanitarian relief. As an emergency responder for an international aid group, Petar's job involved supporting families displaced by the fighting, distributing food and household items, and assisting with temporary community shelters.

"It was very hard work, very intense work. There was a lot of need."

'Neither Evil nor Good'

A year later, Petar began working for Catholic Relief Services as program officer for the agency's peacebuilding efforts in Mitrovica. Ethnic violence was still a problem between rival Serbian and Albanian youth who would clash on the bridge at the city's center.

Petar, who is of Serbian descent, was charged with developing programs and dialogue to reconcile rival ethnic youth groups and alleviate the causes of conflict.

"The most exciting part is to see when people who have suffered can still come and talk and work together on issues that they share. It's the beginning of the reconciliation process."

His friends, however, questioned Petar's job in the beginning. "Many of them were confused, because they knew about my brother's killing," he explains. "My answer then and my answer now, are the same: evil things happened not because a majority of the population on both sides wanted them to, but because people were misused and mismanaged.

"Frankly, I didn't want the same thing to happen to my family or to anyone else."

Outside of work, Petar also maintained relationships with Albanians whom his family had befriended decades earlier, in better times.

"Even during the worst of war days, we were in touch. Because when my brother was killed, these friends offered us assistance, and we assisted them during the war. People forget neither evil nor good."

In 2003, 60 youth at a CRS retreat in neighboring Montenegro formed Mitrovica's first citywide youth council. It is believed to be the first multiethnic body in not just Mitrovica, but in all of Kosovo, since the early 1980s. Street violence has since subsided.

Family Life

Now at age 40, Petar is Chief of Party in Kosovo and manager of CRS peacebuilding programs throughout the province. His responsibility also increased at home with the birth of a second child. His son, Pavle, is now 5, and his daughter, Milica is 9.

"Regardless of how tough my day is at work, when I get home, when my kids run up to me at the door with laughter, give me hugs and kiss me, I forget all problems."

Weekdays he takes his kids to the playground after work and at night they play music at home. "My daughter practices on the piano, I play guitar, and we try to play and sing together. We're also trying to teach my son to sing, and he's doing well so far."

On the weekends, Petar enjoys playing basketball and tennis with friends, and fishing. Every winter, the entire family spends a week or two skiing in the mountains — thanks to his wife, Jelena, a former professional skier who taught the entire family how to ski.

"The most important thing in life is family," says Petar. "For my children, I'm trying to make them happy and to raise them in a way so when they grow up, they'll be healthy and useful members of society. I hope I'll be successful at this job in my life!"

'Where Your Path Will Take You'

Kosovo remains a province of Serbia, although talks are under way at the United Nations that will decide whether Kosovo should be granted independence. The decision is expected in December, and tensions are high. Serbia, backed by Russia, opposes the move.

"I strongly believe that whatever the decision will be, there is no need for violence, and people can settle things peacefully. That is my greatest hope," says Petar. "And you can imagine the worst nightmare," he adds. "The worst nightmare is violence."

Petar and CRS staff members are working tirelessly to head off any potential conflicts that could erupt after Kosovo's status is announced. Already, political talks are creating a tense atmosphere.

"In either case, whether independent or part of Serbia, people in Kosovo will be in a difficult situation for a long, long time," notes Petar. "The situation is very poor, there are no economic opportunities, and people are literally trying to survive day to day."

As to his own future, Petar is unsure whether he would consider owning his own business again someday.

"I hadn't thought about it, but who knows,"" he replies. "Ten years ago, I could not imagine that I would work on conflict transformation and reconciliation issues. You can never predict where your path will take you."

Kat Burnside is CRS' communications officer for Asia, the Middle East and Europe. She is based in Baltimore.