Abigail Salisbury [University of Pittsburgh 3L, just returned from Kosovo]: "I went to spend my summer working in Prishtina, the capital city of Kosovo, because I thought that there I would gain some valuable experience which would be relevant to my work toward the International and Comparative Law Certificate. While many internationals (the generic term given to the foreigners working in Prishtina) enter that country only to work with other people from their own countries, I wanted to work somewhere where I would be able to experience the actual atmosphere of a working Kosovar Albanian office.

Unfortunately, that atmosphere turned out to be nightmarishly disorganized. In order to organize my internship before my departure from the United States, a faculty member from the University of Pittsburgh School of Law, a translator and a staff member from the Council of Europe met with the staff at the Chamber of Advocates, the Kosovar equivalent of a bar association. It was agreed that I would work on an ethics project which could potentially grow into something I could continue studying in the United States upon my return. When I showed up for work at the Chamber, however, I was left with people who spoke no English at a time when I spoke virtually no Albanian, and was shown into a room and left there for four hours while everyone left the office. The same thing happened the next day, and when the person in charge of my internship–an English speaker–showed up, I asked her if there would ever be anything for me to do. She said I should probably go back to the United States, as there was no project.

Fortunately, with the help of the Council of Europe employees, I was able to secure a replacement position as a "Praktikante" or a sort of summer associate at a law firm of an attorney who deals primarily with war criminals and high-profile defense cases. Although some attorneys speak at least rudimentary English, I had no choice but to intensively study and practice Albanian in order to follow most meetings, as almost none of the clients were remotely fluent in English. People found it shocking and admirable that an American would try to learn Albanian, but at the same time they would laugh at me as if I were on a fool's errand and always say, "Don't waste your time!" Indeed, the question of language is always a touchy one. Almost everyone of a certain age speaks Serbian because they were forced to learn it in school under the old regime. Sometimes businessmen will deal in Serbian, and all court documents must be produced not only in English and Albanian, but also in Serbian. However, a friend of mine who had been born in Belgrade and then emigrated to Canada as a child was working in Prishtina for the summer and she was always wary, because we were occasionally threatened by people who heard her speaking Serbian. Thus, despite the fact that she could freely communicate with most of the local business-owners, we usually used a combination of my Albanian and another friend's German to negotiate, as many people also speak German. Prishtina is unique in the fact that many more people speak English than one would imagine, but most internationals do not meet the "locals", and so they often have an overly-inflated notion of how many people actually do speak English.

As an international, my time in Prishtina ended up naturally splitting up into three parts: first, my time spent with other law students like myself who had come from North America; second, my interactions with the local Kosovar Albanians who became my friends; and third, my workdays and networking evenings with local professionals who were friends with my boss. Each of these divisions was strikingly different, made obvious by the fact that many professionals consider it above them to speak to other locals, for example, and by differing social mores based on interpretation of risks under the traditional Leke Dukagjini, or laws of behavior.

While I spent my time at the law office meeting with clients, going to the courts and jails, and writing persuasive correspondence and appeals, everything came to a halt when the courts began to shut down at the end of July. Heaven help you if you were arrested and put into a detention center in June or July! The courts would not open for another month and a half. Even when they are open, they work so slowly that people often sit in prison for over a year without really being properly charged, while the judge and prosecutor go through what is called the "investigatory phase", as they have roles rather different from their American counterparts. The legal system in Kosovo parallels some European procedures, and the judge is required to look into matters personally and to make his or her own investigation. Thus, they set off for the day to visit the crime scene, accompanied by guards with Kalashnikovs.

Thus, I had time to work on my own research and to travel around Kosovo. It is only by traveling to the other areas of Kosovo and accepting the shocking level of local hospitality offered throughout the region that one can truly see the massive effect the international presence has had on Prishtina. In Pejë or Prizren, horse-drawn carts still roll through the streets, there are no restaurants because there are no "rich" foreigners to dine in them, I did not see anyone who spoke English, and many people still wear the traditional Albanian folk costumes. Coming back into Prishtina and watching the city-dwellers drive through the streets blasting American rap and Western European techno, I could better see why the locals thought that the people from the villages were so different from them. In Prishtina especially, there is a tremendous contempt for the country people, who are called "katunar" after the Albanian word for "villager", resulting in a derogatory slang term akin to "redneck". Thousands of these villagers came into the city because their houses were destroyed in the war. Now there is no work for them in an economy of 70% unemployment and many of the old men roam the streets aimlessly all day while there are miles and miles of fallow fields left behind in the countryside.

UNMIK has seemingly done little to help the economy, but much of the problem is likely due to the fact that Kosovo has yet to attain the "final status" which is seen as the determining factor in showing foreign businesses that Kosovo is ready for development and worth the risk of investment. For the time being, it is trendy to put up the signs encouraging the boycotting of Serbian goods in order to foster the market for Albanian and Kosovar products. However, these local products seem to consist merely of building materials and food, and an economy is not built on selling your own cheap goods to your own poor people.

Overall, I leave Kosovo with hope for but not a lot of confidence in its future: UNMIK has not created a system which will self-sustain after the internationals leave. The economy in Prishtina, for instance, is largely a service industry based on catering to the dining, travel, and entertainment desires of the international community, and will necessarily collapse when there is no more customer base. The international judicial system was put into place as a temporary measure to keep cases from being tainted by prejudiced or otherwise influenced local judges. However, the local judicial system has not been cleansed of these problems in the meantime. Instead, there is little confidence in that system by the average Kosovar, who still believes–often rightly so–that paying the right person will ensure a verdict. The attorney with whom I worked makes his clients write out by hand a statement that they are not buying a decision, but merely legal services, and they often still misunderstand and become irate when things do not go their way. Inadequate continuing legal education means that the majority of judges do not understand which laws to apply, do not think it is their job to interpret the law or to utilize case law, and cannot write an adequately-reasoned opinion in any language. The organizations created to improve these problems are floundering helplessly. The Chamber of Advocates has no control over its members and offers little help to them anyway, much like the similar body for judges. The Kosovo Law Center has lost its OSCE funding, meaning that it has had to move into a tiny facility where it has no access to its own archives and that it can no longer offer productive training in any medium. Without some serious practical changes and step-by-step action plans which I do not see forthcoming from UNMIK, I am not optimistic, and perhaps untold millions will have been spent only to see a return to the same old problems."