The richness of the multilayered historical reality, the authentic multicultural context of everyday life and the specific regional peculiarities of Albanian-Serbian relations in Kosovo have been unjustly simplified for decades by being reduced to episodes of intense interethnic violence. Even a casual conversation with people from both ethnic communities in Kamenica, Gnjilane, Šilovo and Ranilug reveals a more complex picture of mutual relations. From the perspective of ordinary people, the memory of coexistence and a common life together, mutual respect and tolerance in socialist Yugoslavia and in the aftermath of the 1999 war in Kosovo prevails over the notions about ethnic distrust and ethnically motivated violence.

Twenty years on from the Kosovo War, the collective memory of both parties in the conflict remains burdened by myths and incontestable truths about what actually took place. The process of reconciliation and building longstanding peace is being undermined, primarily, by political elites in both countries, whose populist policies amplify the prejudices between Kosovar Albanians and Serbs. In this issue of Perspectives we aim to highlight the fact that Kosovo is not just a toponym, but a country burdened by its recent violent history, where common people are struggling to rebuild the broken societies that the conflict has left behind.

The “Strategy Group for a political, societal and economic European integration of the Western Balkans Six” is a group of legal, historical and political researches from all WB6 countries organized by Heinrich Böll Stiftung’s Belgrade, Sarajevo and Berlin offices. Its aim is to credibly advocate for a more effective European integration of the Balkans in European as well as Balkan capitals.

In the region, patriarchal, homophobic and exclusive tendencies are dominating, shaping a climate of intolerance, of exclusion, of the radical negation of all things humane and rational. The consequences are rigid defence mechanisms against progressive and secular approaches. Instead of modernity, instead of establishing welfare for all, the citizens are kept in a perpetual combat zone, from which hundreds of thousands are fleeing – without war – in order to find their happiness in work and life elsewhere, beyond the continuing radicalisation.