ABSTRACT
The walls of ethnic separation in Kosovo were torn apart in spring 1998 with bullets and shells. When a Serb and an Albanian looked at each other over the barrel of a gun, they faced an enemy, and theirs was an enmity made more bitter for all the years they had lived together, but divided, in Kosovo. In addition, the separation of two communities further entrenched their respective beliefs in the righteousness of their own claims over Kosovo. For Albanians the only right future has been Kosovo’s independence, and for Serbs the presence of the Serbian state in Kosovo as a guarantee for the survival of the Serbs in the territory. When relative calm was restored to the war-torn region after the end of the NATO intervention in spring 1999, spatial seclusion proved to be the only way to safeguard Kosovo’s multi-ethnicity. The contact across ethnic lines was most likely to take the form of violence now directed against Kosovo’s minority Serbs, enclosed in their mono-national enclaves dotted throughout Kosovo.
