southeastern europe

On Tuesday 17 February 2009 the new Republic of Kosova celebrated its first birthday. The celebrations in the capital, Pristina, were relatively low key. Walking in Rruga Nënë Terezë or throughout the rest of the Qendra, or even in the other, less central districts of the city, one could not but notice the festive mood. A sea of Kosovar and Albanian flags, interspersed with a few American and British ones, hang ing from street poles, or attached on car boots and shop fronts added lively colour to the otherwise grim town. Families strolling in the town’s boulevards, street vendors displaying and noisily promoting their wares around Rruga Ilir Konusheci and beyond recreated a pleasant Sunday, festive yet mundane feel. The busier Bill Clinton Boulevard was sometimes gridlocked as hooting cars with Kosovar flags excitedly moved up and down. But, leaving these manifestations aside, the occasion was a low key affair. The Kosovo assembly met to commemorate and celebrate the d...

As Macedonia is moving towards the March 22 presidential and local elections under the spectre of ethnic violence and amid uncertainty over the country's integration in the Euro-atlantic institutional structures, the VMRO-DPMNE and the Democratic Union for Integration (DUI) coalition government resorted to the past for inspiration in finding ways to compensate for a rapidly disintegrating social contract and worsening interethnic relations. Within a few months of Nikola Gruevski's government renewing its mandate and increasing its share of the popular vote, Macedonians have been witnessing a rapid transformation of the country's public spaces as billboards featuring Alexander the Great addressing bypassers with the message 'you are Macedonia' have been erected in Skopje and other major cities and a host of streets, squares and buildings have been included in an extensive programme of renaming. Skopje's erstwhile Petrovec international airport now features in it...