When Špetim Gaši left Kosovo to study in America twenty years ago, he had behind him a high school and university experience unlike anyone at his college.
Instead of living in cabinets decorated with globes, math problems and grammar rules, Gashi went to high school and university "in old houses all over Pristina".
"The conditions were very bad... We didn't have most of the classes, there weren't enough teachers, and we didn't learn much," said Gashi in an interview with the BBC in Serbian.
In 1991, the Kosovo Albanians left the institutions of the former Yugoslavia and formed a parallel education and health system.
"When Serbia abolished the autonomy of Kosovo in 1989, virtually all the rights that the Albanians had were also abolished," Azem Vlasi, a long-time official from Kosovo in the SFRY, told the BBC.
"Schooling in Albanian was abolished, Albanians were fired from public services, repression by the police and the judiciary was in full force... That's why it was all done."
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Parallel institutions of Kosovo Albanians lasted until the 1998 and 1999 war between the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) and Serbian security forces.
A quarter of a century later, and 15 years since the declaration of Kosovo's independence, Kosovo Serbs go to school and health centers under a separate, Serbian system, while their political representatives, as well as members of the police, left Kosovo's institutions in November 2022.
"What happened to the Albanians is now happening to us," 53-year-old Nebojša Simić from Gračanica, a town with a majority Serbian population, told the BBC in Serbian.
However, Zoran Anđelković, during the XNUMXs the president of the Provisional Executive Council of Kosovo and Metohija, believes that the current and past situations cannot be compared.
"It was a form of passive resistance of the Albanians, you shouldn't pretend that it wasn't, but it was also possible because of the tax imposed on every Albanian in the world... Everyone singled out, it wasn't a matter of will or not.
"In contrast to that, the Kosovo Serbs today have the official system of the Serbian state, and it finances everything with the legal tax of citizens," Anđelković told the BBC in Serbian.
Although Serbia still refuses to recognize the independence of Kosovo, a diplomatic offensive by the West is underway to resolve the Kosovo issue and simplify the complicated daily life of its inhabitants.
The Brussels agreement of 2013 abolished Serbian judicial bodies and created a single Kosovo police, when it was also agreed to form the Union of Serbian Municipalities (ZSO), conceived as a mechanism for the protection of Kosovo Serbs, but the formation has still not taken place.
Milivoje Mihajlović, a journalist born in Pristina, who reported from Kosovo for numerous media, therefore considers the stories about parallel institutions "a cover for pressure on the Serbs".
"Pristina considers them to be Serbian municipalities that do not function and may exist only on paper - they have no functions and powers," he told the BBC.
Meanwhile, Serbian and Albanian students have been going to separate schools for decades, which Gashi, now a political analyst, believes is "not good for either side".
"They sit in separate classrooms and learn different histories, full of hate... It produces new generations who only know how to hate."
An introduction to the parallel world of Kosovo
At the end of the XNUMXs, the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (SFRJ) brought winds that had little to do with brotherhood and unity of nations and nationalities.
At the moment when the Berlin Wall fell and brought pluralism to Yugoslavia, Slobodan Milošević made his way to the place of one of the central political figures, who would soon become the president of Serbia, the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia and one of the key actors of the war in the territory of the SFRY.
His ascension began precisely with dealing with Kosovo, where there were long tensions due to the aspirations of the Albanians for an independent republic within the SFRY, which meant protests, conflicts and arrests.
In March 1989, Serbia abolished the autonomy that Kosovo had under the Constitution of 1974, took over the competences, institutions, companies and institutions.
"All Albanians who worked in public services were given a half-page paper to sign that they accept the new measures and the authorities of Serbia", says Vlasi, who was soon arrested for "counter-revolutionary activities", for which he was in prison until the spring of 1990.
"If they sign it - they can stay at work, which the Albanians did not want to accept, so they were expelled from the institutional system."
In Kosovo, the Democratic Alliance of Kosovo was previously formed, whose long-time leader Ibrahim Rugova advocated passive resistance to the Serbian authorities, so the Albanians massively boycotted any form of participation in the political and social life of Serbia.
"Parallel elections were organized, a separate Assembly of Kosovo was elected, so that the Republic of Kosovo would also be proclaimed in Kačanik as an equal unit within the Yugoslav federation or confederation, whatever it may be," says Vlasi.
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Yugoslavia fell apart in a bloody war, and the majority of Kosovo Albanians remained outside the official system until the conflict in 1999.
"First, a parallel system of education was organized in private facilities and houses, according to the programs that were valid until the abolition of autonomy," says Vlasi.
"Those conditions were humiliating," he adds briefly.
The Serbian authorities did not pay much attention to it.
"Why should we mistreat 80 percent of the people of Kosovo who arrange for their children to go to a private and not a state school?" Anđelković recalls.
Gashi, who at that time was one of the students in those schools, believes that one of the ideas of the parallel system was "to win the sympathy of the West".
"There was more politics than education... At that time I was studying English language and literature, but there was more politics than Shakespeare in the classes," says Gashi.
"We missed most of the lessons - Serbian was replaced by French, but we never had it because there was no teacher to teach it to us, although we had grades at the end."
That, he says, was "the best that the Kosovo elite could do to avoid war and subjugation, but no one wants their child to actually go to such schools."
All over the world, he adds as a political analyst, education has been used as "a form of resistance to official authorities and the need to preserve narrative, culture and history".
In addition to the educational system, a separate health system was also organized.
"In health centers and the health system, everything was under Serbian rule - some Albanian doctors remained there, but mostly private clinics were built," says Vlasi.
Gaša adds, they went to them if it was about colds, but it was not possible to perform the operations, so "the Kosovo system under the Serbian administration was used more for that".
"They used the state resources that suited them, they didn't," says Anđelković briefly.
Money for the parallel system was raised by parallel tax collection.
Mihajlović and Anđelković say that Albanian businessmen in Kosovo and, above all, the Albanian diaspora were especially targeted.
"I have friends who taught and graduated from those schools in basements... God only knows what and how they did it, but they survived," says Mihajlović, former editor of Radio Priština, and later director of Radio Belgrade.
"It was a national thing for them, a national struggle."
Health and education - again
The war in Kosovo ended on June 9, 1999 with the signing of the Kumanovo Agreement, which ended the NATO bombing of Yugoslavia.
According to that agreement, the Yugoslav Army and the Serbian police left the territory of Kosovo, and the management was taken over by the international community.
"People began to slowly return to work, an official health and education system was established," says Vlasi.
Then came 2008, when Kosovo declared its independence from Serbia.
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However, 15 years later, in Kosovo there are still municipal bodies, public companies, libraries, health facilities, primary and secondary schools, as well as a university - a total of more than 70 educational institutions - that work in the Serbian system, which Kosovo considers illegal.
From the budget for 2022, Serbia allocated around 96 million euros for the functioning of these institutions, writes Radio Free Europe.
The dialogue between Kosovo and Serbia on the normalization of relations began in 2011, and one of the goals was precisely the abolition of parallel structures, that is, their integration into the Kosovo system.
"Some agreements were reached that should not be underestimated - on the integration of the police service, and the court system is also integrated," says Vlasi.
"Everything that the Serbs have in Kosovo today is somehow contracted by the Brussels agreement."
However, Mihajlović believes that separate education and health care in Serbian communities exist only because Kosovo Prime Minister Aljbin Kurti "does not want to finance them".
"Nevertheless, I expect that schools and the university will soon be targeted, especially the one in Pristina, which has been moved to Kosovska Mitrovica - it is one of the most important pillars of Serb survival.
"About 700 professors work there, there are thousands of students, and the north of Kosovo to a good extent, both psychologically and financially, lives from that."
The parallelism of life in Kosovo is especially visible through sports and the story of Trepča, a club named after a Kosovo mine whose miners played an important role in the years of Yugoslavia's disintegration.
Until 1999 and the war, there was FK Trepča in Kosovska Mitrovica - a finalist of the Cup of former Yugoslavia in the 1977/1978 season, when it was defeated by Rijeka - founded back in 1932.
However, after the war, the Serbian and Albanian sides split and founded separate clubs with the same name.
The club from the southern part of the city, where the majority of Albanians live, competes in the Kosovo championship, at the Adem Jašari stadium, named after one of the KLA commanders.
"I believe that one of the main reasons why Serbs want their own education system is the fear that a new curriculum will be imposed on them after integration into the Kosovo system.
"The idea that in the future they could learn that Jashari was a hero is incredible," says Gashi.
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During that time, the other Trepča, based in North Mitrovica, where the majority of Serbs live, competes in the Šumadija-Raška zone, the fourth tier of Serbian football.
They play matches in Zvečan, not in Mitrovica.
"When the Albanians left the institutions, I remember that the players of FC Priština also left the club - that was the directive," says Nebojša Simić, a former soccer player.
In addition to Pristina, he played for Crvena zvezda from Gnjilan, as well as for FK Rudnik Kišnica, which he says "was a giant back then" from the first Kosovo league.
"But they played football back then in the villages, no one defended them, like we played in the villages," adds 53-year-old Simić, who today works at the Cultural Center in Gračanica.
When asked if it is possible to live normally, he answers: "It can't, but it has to."
"We were born here, we do not renounce our country and we work according to the system of the Republic of Serbia," he says.
"It is up to politicians, presidents and prime ministers to agree on our status - ordinary people cannot change anything until the leaders agree and find a common language."
In recent years, the efforts of the West on the issue of Kosovo have been intensified, and an Agreement on the normalization of relations was reached based on the proposal of the European Union.
However, in practice, little has changed for the better, and the provisions of the agreement are still only on paper.
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Future
However, during 2022, there were new tensions that are still ongoing.
The Serbs first left the Kosovo institutions and the police, and then massively boycotted the elections in the four municipalities in the north of Kosovo where they are the majority.
In those elections, the turnout was only a few percent, but despite that, the Kosovo authorities ordered the newly elected mayors - ethnic Albanians - to go to work, which the Serbs opposed and organized protests in front of the municipal buildings.
During the protest, there were riots between Serbs and the Kosovo Police, and a few days later, Serbs with members of KFOR and Kosovo Special Forces, when there were also injuries.
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Life goes on during that time.
"It is difficult, it seems to me that it is getting harder and harder... There is no perspective for the youth," says Simić.
"People enroll their children in schools and colleges in central Serbia, because here, even if they finish something, they have nowhere to get a job, there are no strong companies to say 'here, we will work here.'
"In Gračanica there are a couple of markets, cafes and that's it, there are fewer and fewer Serbs."
During that time, as he says, "pressure and torture from Kosovo Albanians" has been going on for decades.
When asked if he thinks the situation will ever normalize, he answers: "I'm not an optimist".
Seventy-four-year-old Azem Vlasi still believes that the situation in Kosovo is "normal".
"Life is normal, but in Belgrade, first of all, from Vučić, who seems to be taking care of Kosovo, the idea is created that Kosovo Serbs live as if in some kind of hell," he says.
"It's propaganda like 30 years ago, it's not true... Everyone has equal rights in Kosovo."
How long will the parallel world of Kosovo last?
"I have no idea," answers Vlasa shortly.
Gashi believes that for change and any kind of integration, "a little more understanding and respect for others" is needed, a lot of compromise, as well as not being afraid of each other.
"What the Albanians consider the integration of the Serbs, the Serbs see as subordination to the system dominated by the Albanians.
"That's why respect for the past, the views of the other side and understanding for the future are needed."
In both cases, he says, the main responsibility lies with the majority.
"During the nineties, the failure of Serbian society as a majority was that no compromise was made with the Albanians.
"Now I think it is the responsibility of the Albanian community, as the majority, to find a compromise with the Serbs."
Peleven years after the declaration of independence, Kosovo was recognized by about 100 countries. However, the exact number is not known.
Pristina cites a figure of 117 countries, and in Belgrade they say that there are far fewer.
Among the countries of the European Union that have not recognized Kosovo are Spain, Slovakia, Cyprus, Greece and Romania, and when it comes to world powers, they are Russia, China, Brazil and India.
Since 2008, Kosovo has become a member of several international organizations, such as the IMF, the World Bank and FIFA, but not the United Nations.
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