Observations from My Recent Trip to Kosovo

Posted by Andrew Yang, 7/24/07

There are lots of fun, interesting or downright horrifying things I can write about this two week experience in Kosovo (on top of my previous stint working there). But I’m going to stick to the topic of development (it’s long enough as it is!!). Below I've gathered quotes, anecdotes, and observations that made such strong impressions on me, I am still reflecting on them to this moment. They will help explain why my experiences in Kosovo have further increased my doubts about the traditional instruments of development. (primarily projects from actors like the UN, USAID, World Bank, contractors, large development NGOs like CRS, CHF, and others like Red Cross, etc.)

My conversations with people in Kosovo often brought out some intense emotions, and one of the most frustrating things for them could be summed up by the following comment: “millions and millions of dollars have come into Kosovo… we see it on TV all the time. Yet we look around us, and lives in our communities have not gotten that much better. Where have all the money gone? Look at that gap, and tell me there is no manipulation [corruption]!” Another couple living in a slum-like neighborhood said to me: “we expected to live like you do.” “Like Americans?” I asked somewhat incredulously. They answered without hesitation: “why not? We certainly deserve something better than this.” Even where families provided a long list of materials they received, most did not believe their lives had changed in significant ways.

In another village, a Serb father of two leaned towards me and said, “I have a theory: I believe the Americans and Europeans engineered this whole war between Serbia and Kosovar Albanians.” Not wanting to show how ridiculous I thought of his theory, I asked him what made him think that. He responded: “look at this place. Kosovo is suffering 60% unemployment, while the foreigners have all the great jobs and high incomes! I thought they would come here and open factories, not close them.”

At a neighboring community, another man echoed what many others told me: “the international community is trying to fulfill its own political agenda.” A shop keeper in the same region said: “they wanted Kosovars out of Western Europe, so they made me come back from Germany when I wasn’t ready. Things were not good here.” With more visible frustration, local government officials have told me that the international community was obsessed with two particular goals: multiple ethnicities living together, and the return of people who fled the war. This, of course, determined where aid money would go – villages with more than one ethnic group, and those with people who left and haven’t come back. What’s more, someone said frankly to us: “we can’t just have multiple groups; there has to be problems between them for the village to get assistance projects.” Villages with no returnees and only one ethnic group were often out of luck, whatever their levels of poverty are.

These quotes convey two observations I would repeatedly come across in Kosovo:

1. As one of the most ambitious and expensive international development projects ever undertaken, Kosovars had sky-high expectations, rightly or wrongly (whose fault is that?). But for the amount of resources spent, the achievements are confusingly sparse.
2. The priorities of international aid, set in headquarters and capitals, often look random and even silly to local populations, and can completely ignore urgent needs.

The second observation is obvious enough, but the first one was a puzzle that really frustrated everyone: why did all those $billions, manpower and expertise amount to so little change? We have a few likely answers and a few more guesses (although a full picture has to wait for a lot more evidence):

The ridiculous salaries of international organizations: a former contractor implementing projects for USAID revealed: “Lets take a project we were running, say the budget was $15 million. About half of that automatically went to salaries and ‘admin’ costs.” In my own experience, your average local government official or university professor made 200 Euros a month. In 2005, as an intern with a foreign NGO in Prishtina, the capital, I made 750 Euros a month, or a little bit less than the paycheck of the Supreme Court Judge. An experienced consultant with the UN could earn around 9,000 Euros/month, or 45 times the local norm. You may guess that’s because local capacity is poor – except Kosovars are a fairly well-educated population because of the Yugoslav socialist system, and the university students are some of the sharpest I’ve met anywhere. If you are ever in Prishtina, ask your taxi driver what he used to do. There is a good chance he would say he was a doctor or an engineer.

Bloated bureaucracies: this applies to both foreign and Kosovar government set up by the internationals. Donor money usually passes through many hands before reaching the people at the bottom:

- Donor’s own administration (design, management, monitoring, etc.)

- International NGO (similar admin costs)

- National governments (more admin costs shaved off)

- Local governments (sometimes more than one tier)

- Local NGOs (again, admin + training)

- Community leadership (less admin, but some trainings)

They don’t always go through all five or in this order, but you get the picture. Someone compared this system with a General passing out a bowl of food to his soldiers: by the time it moved all the way down the line, there is but a tiny bite left. The local governing structure takes in a huge chunk of aid money as well. Like Bosnia, the size of Kosovo’s government is completely out of whack with its tax base, and is swollen with “multi-ethnic posts” (for every politically significant position, there has to be a Serb AND an Albanian. In Bosnia it’s Bosniack + Serb + Croat).

Concentration on “conflict resolution,” “reconciliation,” and “dialogue”: International organizations absolutely love dialogues. Multiple people commented to the following effect: “every time there is a new idea or project, they talk it to death, spending a lot of money on conferences with their nice rooms, good food and cocktails. And oftentimes, nothing ends up happening anyway!” A few international NGO leaders observed that huge amounts of aid have gone to the national, political level – dialogues, negotiations, institutions, capacity-building. Not to say these are unimportant, but the amount that has gone to the grassroots, say to help people start businesses, seem to pale in comparison.

What is more, the effectiveness of focusing on “reconciliation” and coexistence appears to be questionable. Many communities admitted to treating it like another “rule of the game” not unlike “knowing someone in the system.” When I asked a village councilman why they sent an Albanian delegation to try to convince their former Serbian neighbors to return, he said plainly: “because then we’ll get more money and things.” A Serbian official offered an alternative opinion that others would later affirm: “stop making multi-ethnicity and harmony the center of everything! Get the economy going, lift the living conditions, and better relations will come.” If he is right, this is yet another case of foreign donors and program managers setting agendas that directly contradict trends in the field.

Lack of Monitoring and Follow-up: And neither do organizations consistently come back and check whether things are working. This is a much-publicized point, so I won’t waste your time. I will just put it in the words of one villager, who spoke for hundreds we’ve heard across the world when he said: “they came, they built the houses, then they left and never came back. It’s their money, aren’t they interested in seeing whether the projects actually worked?”

****************************

I’m by no means arguing that the record of outside assistance in Kosovo is nothing but a heap of disaster. Most Kosovars expressed sincere gratitude for the help they did receive, and especially for the military intervention that saved their lives. For them (and many of us observers), the problem is not that the international community did no good. It’s that for all that time, energy, money, and manpower devoted to this tiny place, the visible achievements today simply do not measure up. That so much appreciation was reserved for the military intervention EIGHT YEARS AGO is no praise for what’s been done since then either.

Neither am I questioning the intentions of those who dedicate their careers to this calling. Most of the people I worked with on this effort were aid workers who sincerely want to do good and are intelligent, tough, and hardworking. However, between their noble intentions and the lives of those they are trying to help, something clearly gets lost. Through this already-too-long post, I’ve shared with you some of the insights my short journey through Kosovo revealed: the fat salaries of many internationals; the enormous bureaucracies lots of aid money tend to spawn; and the frequent mismatch between foreign-made priorities and local voices and needs.

There are others I will save for a later post – most notably, what “dependency” exactly means in the context of Kosovo. I will write about it because it resonates so much with the furious debate going on at this moment over whether Western Donors and Bono need to “stop trying to save Africa,” and yield the stage to the energy and ingenuity of Africans themselves. (a whole debate I apparently missed!)

Looking forward to your thoughts and comments!

Comments

[Meir Javedanfar]

Great piece Andrew. I think matters may get worst before they get better, because there is a lot of talk about Kosovo declaring independence unilaterally. That could lead to new tensions, and this would drive away the little investment that is already there.