Church and cemetery guards

We flip through the pages of the book of impressions (1924–1945) - on the last one, the general of the elite armed forces of Nazi Germany, August Schmidhuber, commander of the 21st SS division "Skenderbeg" (1st Albanian), thanks the brotherhood of the monastery Visoki Decani on wonderful hospitality, convinced that after him there will be no more records. The date is June 3, 1944. But after it, on the very cover of the book, in April 1945, the chief of the communist secret police in Ozna for the Beran district, Radivoje Boričić, signs his signature.

In 1947, after the war crimes trial, Šmidhuber was found guilty and hanged in Belgrade; Boričić will not be bypassed by the conflict between Josip Broz Tito and Josif Visarionović Stalin and, although he was a prominent member of the Communist Party until then, he will spend almost three years in prison.

"What kind of feeling does reading these entries in the book of impressions evoke in you?" I ask father Petar.

"They remind us that all those masters of life and death in their time - both Schmidhuber and the communists and the Turks - are transitory. So these masters of life and death will also pass, convinced that everything depends on them." I don't ask him who he means. There are those on both sides.

We are sitting on the terrace of a seven-hundred-year-old inn monastery Visoki Dečani, endowments of the Holy King Stefan Dečanski, part of the world cultural heritage in the west of Kosovo. The view falls on a unique church, the temple of the Ascension of Christ, in the Romanesque style with Gothic elements, which has remained untouched for centuries, which, Father Petar adds, is a rarity even in much happier countries. The harmony of two different marble stones, unusual architecture and fairy-tale nature. About twenty monks have clear responsibilities.

On the long tables on the terrace of the inn, there are bowls with painted eggs - the first time I come is the week after Easter 2024 - home-made raspberry juice of a bright pink color in sparkling jugs, glasses of brandy, bowls full of hot pastries... Below, on the lawn, but also on the terrace, people are constantly passing by - in just a few minutes there is a programmer from America who travels the world, tired of the global tendency to bring everything under the logic of "them" or "we", a retired and smiling couple from Prizren, a Polish photojournalist documenting religious life under the shadows of war, a pilgrim group from Montenegro...

In the corner sits a member of Kfor, a tall Italian, with a wide smile, drinking an espresso and politely greeting the visitors. He talks to his father Peter in Italian; Namely, Father Petar learned that language precisely through conversations with KFOR soldiers who protect the monastery. In the background, swallows nesting in the windows of the church from the Middle Ages, an architectural pearl, fly over, from the monastery room there is a view of blossoming trees, the sound of the stream and barking can be heard in the distance.

If a foreigner were to find himself inside the monastery walls, he would immediately have to think - what a perfect place for spiritual renewal and prayer. And you would be right. But if he looked a little more carefully, he would see the wire on the monastery walls and the heavy weapons of the monastery guards; if he tried to go left from the approach to the monastery, he would not be able to after the first checkpoint. Access prohibited: where there used to be a children's resort, now is the Kforom camp "Sparta".

If you were to walk around the village of Visoki Dečani, you would see that - if the tourist offer of the area is advertised anywhere - there is no mention of the two medieval monasteries of the Serbian Orthodox Church in the immediate vicinity, Visoki Dečani and the Patriarchate of Peć, which are on the UNESCO World Heritage List; if he were to flip through the tourist guides, he would find a few lines about the Patriarchate of Pec, but as an "Orthodox church built on the foundations of three small Roman Catholic churches." Nowhere is it mentioned that these are the buildings of the Serbian Orthodox Church (SPC), that is, the Diocese of Raško-Prizren. If he went to the website of the Kosovo Police, he could read: "Since 2008, the Kosovo Police has been securing and protecting 24 objects of the Orthodox cult, mainly churches and monasteries, with physical security 24 hours a day."

Everyday life for the monastery brotherhood of Visoki Dečani is a constant tightrope walk. Caught between the authorities in Pristina - which denies the very identity of the Serbian Orthodox Church - and the authorities of Aleksandar Vučić in Belgrade, which would prefer to use them for their own political interests, usually contrary to the interests of the Serbian community and the Church in Kosovo; between the majority, Albanian community, which largely sees in them the extended hand of Aleksandar Vučić and Serbian nationalism and Serbian right-wingers, who always know better what should be done and how to wage war while sitting in their comfortable armchairs; between the local Serbs - who have great expectations from them and for whom they are the only institution they trust - and the international community, with whom the relationship is good, but very delicate. There are other players there, and if this sounds complicated, it's a little more complicated on the field. In all these nuances and complex relationships, their everyday life unfolds.

HISTORICAL REMINDER

Immediately after the end of the war in Kosovo, on June 10, 1999, which included the NATO bombing of FR Yugoslavia, Serbian institutions withdrew from the south of Kosovo; there were no more political representatives, people were extremely disorganized. And then the Diocese of Raško-Prizren and the then Bishop Artemije enter the scene.

"They took on the role of political leaders. They directly participated in political negotiations with Hashim Thaci and the international community," explains Milica Andrić Rakić, program manager of the NGO Social Initiative. The two of us are in the middle of July 2024, in the northern part of Mitrovica. Before the arranged conversation with Milica, I read the local news: around 3:30 in the morning, a Molotov cocktail was thrown at the pastry shop "Šar", owned by Goranci. A few days earlier, Pristina's Minister of the Interior, Jelal Sveca, was sitting there. We sat down at "Shar", ordered cakes and coffee; the girl sweeps up the broken glass.

"In 1999, there were Serbian institutions left in the north, but not in the south. Representatives of the Diocese then participated in the formation of the first UNMIC institutions, the first post-war media in Serbian areas in the south, Radio KiM, and they had a very prominent political role. The situation was such that there was no one else to do it," Milica recalls.

Even today, certain groups ask the Church to engage in this sense. Of course, they are greeted only by silence. According to the latest survey of the New Social Initiative (2024), when asked by Serbs with whom the Government of Kosovo should discuss the needs of their community, the Serbian Orthodox Church is in the convincing first place: as many as 80 percent of Serbs in the south of Kosovo and 51 percent in the north answered that way. Namely, so many people would feel safe only if they were represented by the Church, which is certainly impossible. For Milica Andrić Rakić, this is proof of the level of political disorganization that the Serbs in Kosovo have reached.

FROM BANJSKA TO ČACILENDO

For the last four years, since Aljbin Kurti came to power, the situation between Pristina and the Serbian community has been constantly worsening. Bases of special units of the Kosovo Police were built in the north of Kosovo, on land expropriated from local Serbs. Crises followed: Serbs left the institutions in the north and boycotted the elections. It will be shown that those moves did not bring them anything good. In addition, Milan Radoičić and his team were the extended arm of Belgrade, involved in many illegal activities.

To this day, few people are clear about what they wanted to achieve on the night of September 24, 2023, when a group of armed Serbs, led by Milan Radoičić, clashed with the Kosovo police in the village of Banjska, during which one policeman and three armed Serbs were killed.

Milan Radoičić appeared in the context of the implementation of the Brussels Agreement, when the north was supposed to be integrated into the Kosovo system. Since the citizens did not want it, Belgrade began to put pressure on them through Radoičić. And then a criminal Eldorado emerged in the north of Kosovo: liquidations in the underground, burning of cars, beatings, smuggling - everything fell into their domain of work, plus absolute domination over the political and social life of the Serbs in the north of Kosovo.

The event in Banjska burnt down all Belgrade's policy towards Pristina, and the Serbs in Kosovo were completely left to their own devices, that is Kurti's policy. Milan Radoičić managed to escape to Serbia, where, untouchable, he continued to deal with his affairs, the value of which some estimate in millions of euros. Also, he was allegedly seen in Kosjerić, where he intimidated critics of the authorities by his very arrival, while several participants in the attack in Banjska were seen in the so-called Ćaciland.

In the last local elections in Kosovo, the Serbian List, with one exception, regained all power in the majority Serb municipalities, but the positions in the municipal administration, judiciary and police are unchanged - they remain mostly in the hands of Albanians.

One more detail is important: on that September night in 2023, a Serbian group, surrounded by Kosovo police, breaks into the courtyard of the medieval Banjska monastery in order to hide there. Although the Diocese immediately issued a statement in which it clearly distanced itself from the armed group, the situation for the Church became even more difficult during those months.

FEAR OF ALBANIANS

The Serbian Orthodox Church has been suspected by the Albanian public in Kosovo of smuggling weapons even earlier; Kfor claimed that there was no evidence of this.

And that accusation is part of a bigger picture. "There is an impression of the Serbian Orthodox Church among the Albanian population that it is the enemy," explains Tatjana Lazarevic, editor of the KoSSeV portal from northern Mitrovica. For her, it is also the result of misunderstanding, the negative image of the Church resulting from the wars of the 1990s, but also Albanian nationalism and the policies of the Kosovo governments, especially the last one, where everything that has the sign of "Serbian" is seen as threatening. Finally, many Albanians believe that the churches belonged to the Catholic Albanians, and that they were "destroyed" later. According to the interlocutors, this historical revisionism became mainstream with Kurti's coming to power.

In addition to all that, Milica Andrić Rakić sees as possible causes the omnipresent fear of the Serbian Service (security), within which the Church then presents itself as the (secret) organizer of the Great Serbian idea.

"The aversion is great," she says. "A lot of Serbs repeat that the Church is thinking about the long term, where it will be in 200, 300 years and, unlike political actors, they have some kind of strategy. Be that as it may or not, people here believe in it, so maybe that kind of belief has spilled over into the Albanian community."

I ONLY FEAR GOD.

When it comes to the role of the Church in the nineties, a lot has already been written about it. In many ways, its representatives put nationality above religion, inflaming the demons of war instead of calming them down. And to this day, many do not think that they were wrong.

However, examples from the Diocese of Raško-Prizrenska were rare lighthouses. One of the most important events of this type took place right at the end of the war in 1999, when the Yugoslav Army, police and paramilitary formations began to retreat. In the village of Visoki Dečani, before they leave, Serbian paramilitaries break into Albanian houses, rob them, attack women and men.

They also came to the house of Šaban Brućaj, where he lived with his wife and young daughters.

"They came in, they beat me up, I was covered in blood. One of them kicked my daughter, she was eight years old," Saban says in Serbian. "They left and Father Sava (Sava Janjić, current abbot of Visoki Dečani) came. He asks: 'Is there anyone alive in this house?' He picked us all up in a van, and then we went from house to house, to get the documents, then to the cadastre. We took them all to the monastery. We slept and ate here for three days."

He shows me where his room was in the monastery. "You see where the store is now, on the second floor." Every now and then he repeats: "If it weren't for Father Sava, I wouldn't be alive, neither I, nor any of us. Father Sava below, God above... I can't forget that for him."

He claims that there were more than 300 Albanians in the monastery at that time. In an interview, Father Sava said that there were slightly less than 200 of them. Very few of them come to the monastery today as freely and openly as Saban, because the Albanian community does not look favorably on it.

"Are you afraid that something could happen to you?", I ask him.

"I only fear God, not people. And what can they do to me? Kill me? Well, but I saved my soul", he replies. "How can I explain to you, I can't suffer injustice. Now, I can't speak against Sava's father when he saved my life. I wasn't afraid of the Serbs then, I won't be afraid of them now, and I know that they can't see me with their eyes." Someone tried to kill Saban six years ago: despite the large number of bullets fired into his car, he miraculously remained unharmed. His two older daughters live in Austria today; they work in a hospital in Vienna. The youngest in Kosovo is finishing medical school.

WE ARE INVISIBLE - THAT'S OUR RECIPE

Ethnic violence marked Kosovo. The scars are still alive today, and the spiral of violence is unbroken. Mosques were destroyed and churches were burned.

Peć was the scene of serious conflicts between members of the Kosovo Liberation Army and Serbian forces in 1998-1999.

Many people were killed. According to the data of the Fund for Humanitarian Law, a total of 563 civilians of Albanian nationality and 82 of Serbian nationality were killed or disappeared in the city itself; in the entire area of ​​Peć, there are a total of 1234 Albanians and 195 Serbs. These data, the Fund emphasizes, are not final, although the deviations are small. Also, it does not necessarily mean that those killed were citizens of that municipality, but that they died in that municipality. According to the 1991 census, about 7800 Serbs lived in the city of Peć.

Photo: Marija Janković

"I am priest Dragan Radovanović, from the parish in Peja near the Church of the Beheading of St. John the Baptist. I come from the north of Kosovo, the village of Banje near Zubina potok. I live here with my wife and two minor children," Father Dragan introduced himself. Today, he and his family are the only Serbs in Pec.

There are several places in the south of Kosovo in which the situation is like that: a young priest, a priest and their children and none more than Serbs. When the children reach school age, the bishop moves them to one of the Serbian enclaves.

I spend a few days in a modest house next to the church, built for guests. Father Dragan and his family live in the other house. That hidden island in the center of the city is almost invisible from the outside, it is protected by a wall, guarded by the Kosovo police - among those guards there are Albanians, Bosniaks and one Serb; everyone is more than cordial. In the spacious yard, a children's swing, toys...

On the other side of the wall is a merry-go-round, twinkling lights, blaring music. I ask Father Dragan if he ever took the children to that carousel or the nearby cars. He shakes his head. They do not associate with anyone in the city; he goes outside, with the bishop's blessing and advice, without a mantle, even though everyone knows he is a priest of the Serbian Orthodox Church. "We are inconspicuous - that is our recipe", he explains.

From 2023, children started kindergarten in Goraždevac, but which works from 8 to 11 in the morning. For working parents, those working hours sound like a joke. I keep asking how children cope with growing up in a city where they don't have friends, nor do they talk to anyone except their parents. "During this period, nothing bothers the children, look at them," says Father Dragan. And indeed, the smiling, curious little girl keeps interjecting herself into the conversation, proudly showing off her dress." But it's the hardest for my wife, we've been here for five years, she's spent five years in this circle, within four walls. She hasn't had coffee with anyone." Since last year, he has been working at the Health Center in Goraždevac.

What keeps and motivates him, why does he stay there? It fits - the restoration of churches and, above all, cemeteries.

"We have many cemeteries in our parish, one big one is in Peja and it was in a very bad condition."

With the help of the displaced people of Peć and the church municipality, it is now maintained, although it has been desecrated several times. Later, we go to the cemetery - still a pile of broken slabs, crosses, some smaller, still a few scattered bones.

"The graves are monuments that we once lived in this city," he explains. He also talks about efforts to restore churches. "In my parish, 90 percent of the churches were burned," adds Father Dragan.

Finally, I ask if he believes that coexistence is possible. He says yes, but he doesn't sound optimistic. And then he says more about himself: people in the Balkans are the same in that one politician can completely mislead too many people, so much so that everything turns around overnight.

NEIGHBORHOOD RELATIONS

In Vitomirica, a village near Peja, I met Momirka Vukmirović, a retired teacher. Originally from that place, she lived in Serbia for years as a refugee. She made the decision to return to her hometown in order to help rebuild the local church, which was damaged in 1999. In the churchyard is the grave of her daughter, who died as a baby.

"I dedicated my whole life to the living," she says, "But now in my old age, my daughter is calling me to repay my debt to the dead."

Hundreds of Serbs used to live in the village. "I get along well with my neighbors", says Vukmirović about the Albanians who today make up almost all the inhabitants of the village. "If I don't go to the store one day, they stop by to see if everything is right." Recently, she adds, two neighbors helped her build a fence around the church.

"They asked if they could come inside," she said. "They had never been to a church before, they just wanted to see what it looked like."

Ethnic Albanians were once in charge of protecting the Visoki Dečani monastery. In a practice that dates back to the 18th century, and perhaps earlier, a local family would be the monastery's guardian. She would receive compensation for this service, as well as the honorary title of monastery duke. In return, they had to be ready to risk their own lives in the event of an armed conflict to protect the monastery, even from members of their own community.

The practice of granting ducal titles was formally abolished in 1918, but the tradition survived - it was preserved in the Demukaj family and passed down from generation to generation. However, in 1991, the duchy was abandoned. Namely, as Yugoslavia was falling apart, the heirs to the title declared that they feared for their safety and that they no longer wanted to be associated with the monastery in that way. In a cafe in Peja, due to circumstances, I started a conversation with a local dentist, an extremely pleasant and warm person. He speaks good Serbian, and the conversation takes a familiar course, guided by a mutual conviction about the human experience of goodness that transcends national and other borders. In the end, he says that there are only two types of people in the world: good and bad. When parting, I mention that I am on my way to the Visoki Dečani monastery.

Visibly moved, she says: "My family was the last ducal family of the monastery. When I was growing up, Dečani was like a second home to me."

The text was written as part of the Scholarship Program for Journalistic Excellence awarded by the Balkan Research Network (BIRN)