Facing the Past

In 2025, we mark the thirtieth anniversary of the end of the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina. That same year also marks the thirtieth anniversary of the genocide in Srebrenica — the first genocide in Europe to be legally recognized after the Second World War.

More than 25 years after the bombing campaign that ended the war in Kosovo, this conversation between Granit Gashi and Nemanja Georgijević, now colleagues at the Heinrich Böll Foundation in Belgrade, displays their parallel yet contrasting experiences – one as a child refugee forced from his Peja home, the other as a four-year-old in Belgrade learning about the world through state television and family conversations – illuminating how the same historical moment was experienced and processed differently on each side. Interview by Milan Bogdanović. 

Milenko Živanović was acquitted on July 1, 2025, before the Higher Court in Belgrade on all counts of the indictment that charged him with ordering the forcible displacement of civilian population from the zone of responsibility of the Drina Corps, as well as with participating, through his orders and actions, in the forcible displacement of civilians from the protected zone of Srebrenica. The general's defense team included his chosen lawyer, the public prosecutor, and the judicial panel.

In our text on the occasion of the 20th anniversary of the bombing of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia and the Kumanovo Agreement, which brought some kind of peace to Kosovo, we were able to speak about some kind of status quo, a situation in which Kosovo could not round out its statehood, yet  Serbia did not try too hard to bring Kosovo back under its authority, settling for influence in the north of Kosovo. However, it could be said that the events of the next five years — on several occasions almost to the point of war — almost completely reversed any progress made in the previous twenty. 

From socialist monuments to war memorials, Kosovo's memory landscape reveals a complex web of competing narratives. Through Prishtina's city center, history unfolds in statues and squares, where "politics of memory and oblivion" shape identity—but civilian voices remain silent, and some stories are deliberately erased from public spaces.

The resolution on the Srebrenica genocide would have found its way onto the agenda no matter how Serbia behaved. It is also possible that some hypothetical Serbia with more dignity, one that has taken responsibility for victims, the past, and the future, would have agreed with the resolution.  

Ivan Čolović reflects on his contribution to Perspectives SEE from five years ago, with context on additional developments in two footnotes. The myth of the Battle of Kosovo Field on June 28th 1389, in which the armies of the Ottoman Sultan Murat I and Serbian Prince Lazar clashed, has, since the early 19th century to this day, served the purpose of legitimizing various political and military projects: From the breakup of communist Yugoslavia and the policies of Slobodan Milosevic, through the “Kosovo is Serbia” motto, as part of the Serbian “European agenda”, to the dialogue –both internal and with Brussels– led by Aleksandar Vučić. The “Kosovo Covenant” in modern Serbian history is used to accommodate various political ideas and actions.

  The prewar political history of the former Yugoslav autonomous province of Kosovo was shaped by its educational system. Both Albanians and Serbs have omitted the other community’s language and history from their curricula. Today, twenty years after the armed conflict, Albanian and Serbian students are using textbooks with different versions of history. Some of the controversial phrases from Kosovar textbooks describing activities by Serbs include: “violence and chauvinist terror”, “terror and genocide”, and “horrific barbaric scenes of bloody squadrons”. Serbian textbooks use phrases such as “attacks by Albanian gangs” and “Albanian terror over the Serbs”. Such language in school textbooks amplifies prejudice, inter-ethnic intolerance, and nationalist ideas.