Amidst posters celebrating Donald Trump’s presidential triumph (‘The Serbs stood by him all along!’ one boasted), a two-metre-high concrete wall of innumerable shades of grey was constructed almost overnight. It ran almost the entire width of Kralja Petra (King Peter’s) street—itself pedestrianized, which for some constituted another form of barricade – where students cram into the string of bars and cafés, beneath eight-storey high-rises. Its concave arc resembled an inverted riot shield. Its towering height – apparently unintended, but they had more cement than expected – foreclosed perspectives of either side towards the other. The lie of the land made it even more imposing when viewed from the south. The gauche wall would funnel pedestrians through two narrow openings, subjecting them to scrutiny that would quickly curtail their inevitable curiosity. It was a flagrant violation of the spirit of normalization – that empty signifier, capable of wrapping itself around each and every positive instance of interaction – the Bridge’s revitalisation was intended to promote. Only a lack of Trumpian bravado prevented the Serbs from asking those south of the Ibar to fund its construction.

It was immediately denounced as Mitrovica’s “Berlin Wall”; a supposed anachronism in the post-Cold War age. The Serbs proclaimed that it was not in fact a wall but an “open air amphitheatre”; a new entry in the pantheon of euphemisms for physical barriers between peoples. Whether the wall was required to support the amphitheatre, or vice-versa, we will likely never know. Those who described it as a wall were accused of being obsessed with narratives of division; whilst those who saw it as an amphitheatre were eager to build connections between people –though it wasn’t clear what sort of plays would be performed. According to such logic, division is in the eye of the beholder. In a world of computer-generated and manipulated realities, no visual representations as to how the project would beautify the north were disseminated; no pixelated perfection of an aspirational lifestyle for its residents.

The long-running Bridge tragicomedy entered a new act on a different stage. Veterans from the Kosovo Liberation Army, KLA, stuck their noses through temporary metal fences erected as a preliminary divide. Whilst threatening protests and unilateral demolishment, they brandished selfie sticks to capture their bewilderment and adrenaline, gripping each other around the waist or shoulders and smirking widely. Several may have even looked on with an enviable longing to construct a wall of their own. The Wall had brought more people from south to north than all the other attempts at reconciliation combined, challenging the stereotypes and prejudices which had accumulated like rust on Trepča’s machinery.

Members of the KFOR forces from Austria guard near the bridge dividing the northern and southern parts of the ethnically divided town of Mitrovica in Kosovo, 2018. Photo: EPA-EFE/DJORDJE SAVIC

On the ninth anniversary of Kosovo’s declaration of independence in February 2017, the letters “N” and “W” from the “NEWBORN” monument in Pristina were flattened, and “No Walls” scrawled in-between. Though ostensibly to protest the EU’s persistent refusal to grant visa liberalisation, it also captured hostility towards the wall in the north. Those responsible for its erection, basking in the sorts of adulation and attention usually only reserved for truly courageous peacemakers, ultimately agreed to its demolition and subsequent reconstruction with EU financing. Bulldozers waddled their way down Kralja Petra street, their arms raised in surrender before scything down the concrete slabs. Few stood in opposition, save for an elderly gentleman who cursed the supposed capitulation. A “cascade of flowerbeds” — with steps filled with tulips or daisies —was proposed as an alternative to the wall; softening the image if not the purpose. Discussions then turned to the size and posture of the new construct, and the seemingly metaphysical question of from where eighty centimetres should be measured (it depends, for instance, on how high the tarmac will be laid on either side).

Preparation of the ninth anniversary of Kosovo’s indepenence, 2017. Photo: Atdhe Mulla

The Main Bridge has been something of an obsession for the international community, which has long been enchanted by the idea that its revitalisation will turn the whole of Mitrovica into a multi-ethnic haven. For the south, the bridge continues to be a symbol of a divided city and a betrayal of its unified past. For the north, it is a symbol of the continuity (or “survival”) of their community and a rejection of attempts at assimilation. Neither side will be satisfied by its re-opening, save those whose legacies will be burnished by the supposed breakthrough. Instead, the Bridge will only serve to expose, and indeed magnify, the relative dearth of engagement that is the result of war and subsequent years of separation. No physical or metaphorical building of bridges can substitute for tangible, face-to-face interaction between the respective communities, especially involving their younger generations.

Ivo Andrić, the Nobel Prize-winning Yugoslav author of classics such asThe Bridge on the Drina andBosnian Chronicle, wrote in a short story, entitled “The Bridges”, that they “belong to everybody and they are the same for everybody, always built in the right place in which the major part of human necessity crosses, more durable than all other constructions and they do not serve for anything secret or bad”. A few paragraphs later he muses how, “everywhere there is something to overcome or to bridge: disorder, death, meaninglessness … And all our hope lies on the other side”. What he omits to mention are the fears, apprehensions, and prejudices that prevent communities from bridging the “disorder, death, [and] meaninglessness”.

Ian Bancroft is a writer and diplomat. You can follow and contact the author via Twitter –@bancroftian

‘Dragon’s Teeth: Tales from North Kosovo’ is published by ibidem Press, and can be purchased directly from theirwebsite.