Using the Web to reconnect and rebuild in Kosovo

By Julian Sher Special to CNN Interactive This news analysis was written for CNN Interactive.

In this story: News from the home front Taking in new views and building bridges RELATED STORIES, SITES

PRISTINA, Kosovo (CNN) -- Just across the street from the shattered glass and concrete rubble of the bombed-out police station, people line up. Nervous, impatient, anxious. Not for food, or shelter, or handouts. They are waiting to get online.

Welcome to the EasyNet Cafe, where the crowds never thin out. Last year, the 20-year-old owner of the cafe says, there was not a single Internet cafe here; now there are at least nine in the city and about 20 in the Kosovo region.

"I have 15 computers now, and if I could buy another 15, they would all be busy," said Luan Oruqi, one of Kosovo's homegrown dot-com adventurers. Like many young ethnic Albanians, Oruqi was forced to spend years abroad; when he and his generation came back, they were infected with the Internet bug.

Oruqi keeps his downtown cafe open 24 hours a day, connected to high-speed servers by satellite. At less than $2 an hour, going online is cheap enough for even hard-pressed Pristina residents to afford a short visit. Oruqi drops his price by half after midnight, when young people flock to the terminals to log on to chat groups so they can speak to relatives in the United States and around the world.

Daily life is still precarious here, more than one year after NATO airstrikes in response to Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic's repression of ethnic Albanians in the southern province of Kosovo. NATO troops still patrol to keep the peace between the Albanian majority and the remaining Serbs.

Pristina is a city with a split personality: Chic teenagers flirt on the sidewalks while younger children rollerblade in the central plaza, but barely a day goes by without news of another shooting, an ethnic flare-up or a political crisis.

In a battle-scarred city where phone service is spotty, national television is on the air only two hours a day and a functioning postal service does not exist, the Internet remains a lifeline to the outside world.

E-mail is not a luxury in addition to the regular mail. For many people in the new Kosovo, it is the only mail.

"Everyone has friends and relatives in Europe and in America. It's the cheapest way to stay in touch," Oruqi said. "It's a way to break the walls between Kosovo and rest of the world."

Journalists in Kosovo are taking bold steps to break down such walls.

Radio21, a popular independent station in Pristina, is poised to broadcast its news 24 hours a day on the Web by this fall. Given the tens of thousands of Albanians around the world, the station thinks a market exists.

"We will be giving Albanians a voice in the decision-making process about our future wherever they live," said station general manager Alfredita Kelmendi, pointing to the satellite dishes that will beam her Web feeds to a server in San Francisco.

By trying to keep those who live abroad more informed of what is happening at home, she hopes to encourage many to return, or at least to invest funds in the new Kosovo.

I came to Pristina this summer as part of a program run by Reseau Liberte (Freedom Network), a media education group, to teach journalists about using the Internet.

More than 30 journalists from seven newspaper and broadcast outlets crowded into a hot room filled with sleek new laptops, provided by European governments that are investing heavily in Kosovo's reconstruction.

Since telephone lines are unreliable, newsrooms are commonly plugged into high-speed LAN servers via satellite. IPKO (Internet Project Kosovo), a nonprofit group originally set up by the International Rescue Committee, provides wireless Internet access here to every U.N. agency, major nongovernmental organizations, diplomatic missions and the media. Many journalists have the latest desktop computers and browsers.

Many of the ethnic Albanian journalists were disturbed during our Web training courses when I showed them critical reports about their own people. Human Rights Watch has criticized Albanian mistreatment of Serbs; we read the organization's full report online and looked at the disturbing pictures.

At a site run by the Institute for War and Peace Reporting, the reporters were conversely surprised to read about Serb journalists imprisoned for exposing atrocities committed by Milosevic's troops.

But some of the younger journalists also had things to teach me.

At 28, Ilire Zajmi has seen more war and destruction than most veteran journalists have. She covers security issues for RTK, the main television network. "Security" in Pristina means everything from bombs and shootings to ethnic riots.

Zajmi often uses the Web to get the news about what is happening right in Pristina, because news about Kosovo often travels faster on the Internet than it does in the jammed, chaotic streets of the city. She gets military briefings, photos and U.N. and NATO press releases online, and checks the wire services for updates on breaking stories to compare different versions of events.

Zajmi also uses the Web in other creative ways.

e.ffect FEEDBACK Email Julian Sher at e.ffect Email e.ffect     MESSAGE BOARD Peace in the Balkans

The nearby town of Mitrovica is often the site of ethnic tensions between Serbs and Albanians that sometimes escalate into violent skirmishes. But Zajmi has a problem: She cannot cross the town bridge that separates the two communities.

"I need to get the Serb point of view, but I can't go to the Serb side of town. As an Albanian, I could likely be attacked," she said. "So I get to the other side on the Web."

Zajmi finds Serb sites with news and details of the fighting, even sound bites. "It's a way to build bridges -- at least in the news business."

And maybe that is a good start.

Julian Sher, an Internet trainer based in Montreal, recently went to Kovoso for Reseau Liberte, a media education group. A journalist for 20 years, Sher created and manages JournalismNet,
an online media resource.

CNN.com World: Europe
CNN.com In-Depth
  • Kosovo: Prospects for Peace
  • NATO at 50

Human Rights Watch
  •  Report: Abuses Against Serbs and Roma in the New Kosovo, August 1999
Institute for War & Peace Reporting
  •  Balkan Media Special
IPKO (Internet Project Kosovo)
JournalismNet
  •  JNet Kosovo
Radio21, Pristina
United Nations
  •  UN Mission in Kosovo

Note: Pages will open in a new browser window

External sites are not endorsed by CNN Interactive.