Divided They Stand

JUDAH PASSOW / GETTY for TIME
SPLIT DECISION: "No negotiations, self-determination!" slogans reject any dealings with the Serbs

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Ivanovic has spent almost his entire life in the town, working as a top karate coach before becoming a manager of Kosovo's lead-smelting plant. His fluency in English made him a natural head of the small Serb delegation in the U.N.-created Kosovo Assembly. The job has become increasingly hazardous, pitting him against Albanian politicians and officials in Belgrade, who have ordered Serbs to boycott a parliament that they believe already gives Kosovo a veneer of statehood. When Ivanovic's car was blown up in February, he immediately suspected local Serbs who consider him a traitor. Now he travels to the Assembly in bulletproof U.N. vehicles guarded by Polish soldiers.

There Ivanovic discreetly meets Albanian politicians to discuss Kosovo's future; he sees dialogue as the way to heal ethnic divisions. "The political tension is killing the Serbs," he says. He remains unyielding on independence, however: he wants Serbia to annex three Serb-populated municipalities in northern Kosovo that comprise 15% of the province. But Western diplomats and Albanians have already rejected that proposal as unworkable, since many Kosovo Serbs do not even live in the north. If the province does gain statehood and Ivanovic is resigned to the fact that it will he says a mass of Serbs will leave, joining 100,000 exiles who fled to Serbia in 1999. "If they don't leave," he says, "there will be more killings."

The possibility of fresh bloodshed has risen since March 2004, when Albanian riots across the province destroyed Serb churches and houses, leaving 19 people dead. Yet the Albanians, though united in desire for their own state, are divided politically. They have not settled on a successor to President Ibrahim Rugova, who is severely weakened by lung cancer. "Each person wants to be the one to lead his country to independence," says Verena Knaus, senior analyst on Kosovo for the European Stability Initiative, a Berlin-based policy group. The main contenders, from strikingly different backgrounds, are Nexhat Daci, a longtime official in Rugova's centrist party; Hashim Thaci, a former guerrilla leader who now runs Kosovo's second largest party; and Haradinaj, another former guerrilla, who hopes to be acquitted at his war-crimes trial and re-enter politics.

One of the fiercest partisans, though, is Albin Kurti, whose protest group, the Self-Determination Movement, flourishes on a strong anti-Serb message. His campaign for a unilateral declaration of independence has attracted a network of 8,000 members in 16 branches around the province. If Serbia attempts to block independence or reclaim Kosovo, "there will be a great willingness and readiness of people to fight again," he says. "People are tired of war, but people are even more tired of fake peace."

One recent afternoon in the western town of Decani, Kurti spoke to a combat-hardened group of 12 veterans from the defunct Kosovo Liberation Army, the guerrilla force that fought Serb soldiers in the nearby villages and forested mountains. Closeted in a small room, men with battle-scarred faces squeezed around a table, hanging on Kurti's words. "There is corruption. The state-run factories are being destroyed," said the tall, lean activist in black-rimmed glasses, his fist punching the air. "It is time to channel dissatisfaction into political action." The group listened to Kurti because his bravery has earned their admiration. In 1997, he organized illegal mass protests in Kosovo's capital, Pristina, under the noses of the Serb security police. As NATO bombs fell in 1999, he was arrested and sentenced to 15 years for political terrorism. He served more than 2 1/2 years in Serb prisons, where he says he endured torture and beatings.