Montpelier Group Hopes to Bring Peace to Kosovo

MONTPELIER -- Gary Shapiro's office at Conflict Resolution Catalysts is plastered with maps of the Balkans that use demographic symbols and colors to sort out the complex political boundaries of the region. In appearance, the maps are not unlike those used by NATO spokesmen to illustrate the bombing campaign against Yugoslavia.

But any similarities between CRC and NATO ends with the maps.

Crowded into three tiny rooms in an old house on Upper State Street, Shapiro and the two-person staff of CRC plan its peace-making strategy on a shoestring budget, preparing to use words and simple kindness to achieve their aim: helping the Kosovars return to their homes and live in peace with their neighbors.

It is task similar to the Montpelier-based organization's work rebuilding communities and reconciling the various ethnic groups in war-torn Bosnia in the early 1990's.

"We have four main things that we want to provide in Kosovo when the refugees are allowed to return," says Shapiro, a 47-year old Montpelierite who founded CRC in 1987 after completing a mediation program at Woodbury College. "We can provide the Kosovars with psychological support, economic rebuilding skills, community security arrangements, and democracy and civil society training."

In practical terms, CRC would begin its work by creating, in each Kosovo village, a four-person team consisting of one "international" -- a trained volunteer from outside the region -- and three Kosovars who would also receive training.

These community facilitators might stage games to teach non-violence, organize a neighborhood watch program, help start a community newspaper, and teach community leaders how to start citizen-owned organizations like PTAs and housing boards.

"The idea is to help the Kosovars rebuild their communities to a point of having some sense of normalcy," says Shapiro. "We don't pretend that we can magically make the conflict go away, but by teaching conflict resolution techniques and communication and organization skills to community members we think we can start them toward working things out themselves."

If, or when, the Kosovars are allowed to return home is an open question. No matter, says Shapiro, there is work to be done preparing the Kosovars for a possible return to their strife-torn state. And, there is work to be done in helping the Kosovar refugees co-exist with their Albanian hosts. More than a half-million Kosovar refugees are in Albania, the region's poorest country, and although the Kosovars and Albanians ahve strong ethnic ties, the presence of a half-million refugees in a country of 3.5 million is straining Albania's goodwill and resources.

Shapiro and an assistant plant to travel to Albania in mid-May to talk with Kosovar refugees, aid organizations, and NATO officers, making the connections and laying the groundwork for CRC to operate effectively in the region. The 10-day trip will drain CRC resources; it's hoped a CRC fundraising event next week in Montpelier will raise about $5,000 for the trip.

The fundraiser will take place at Bethany Church Wednesday from 7 to 9 pm and will feature music, presentations, and discussion about ways that Vermonters can assist Kosovar citizens. There will also be an update on the plight of Kosovar refugees in Albania. Shapiro will also use the event as an opportunity to recruit volunteers to serve with CRC in Kosovo or to do project support work in Montpelier.

When Shapiro arrives in Albania next month, it will not be the first time he has traveled to the Balkans to carry out the work of CRC. Since 1993 he has traveled to Bosnia 9 times to work on citizen-led community rebuilding programs.

In Bosnia, Shapiro found that even though the country had been racked by ethnic conflict, international security forces kept ethnic violence from recurring when the war-ended.

That left most of the post-war conflict confined to tensions within segments of each ethnic group, but Shapiro says those tensions can be formidable.

"We sniff out those things and people in a community that worked," he says. "Once we find them, we try to rebuild them. In Bosnia, despite masive ethnic cleansing and violence in some areas, we found, for example, Serbs who had risked a lot to help their Muslim neighbors in the community. These kind of bonds can help re-stitch the bonds that hold a community together."

After the Bosnian conflict was halted in 1995 by the Dayton Peace Agreement and policed by NATO, CRC established community centers on both sides of the conflict in Sarejevo, capital of the Muslim-Croat Bosnian Federation, and Banja Luka, capital of the Bosnian Serb Republic.

CRC also helped returning refugees find housing arrangements, and CRC was instrumental in starting both a youth radio station and a community newspaper in Banja Luka so that residents there could have local sources of reliable, non-biased information.

Shapiro stresses that all of CRC's work is non-political.

"We don't take sides and we're not trying to start a revolution anywhere," he says. "It's really more personal. It starts with quiet relationship-building. We are trying to provide the skills for self-reliance that governments can't provide."

Shapiro says CRC has a niche to fill amongst all the activity by huge relief agencies like The International Red Cross and Catholic Relief Services.

"The big relief agencies treat refugees on an assembly line basis," says Shapiro, because the big agencies are specialized to meet one need, and fill that need for a huge number of people in a short time. By contrast, CRC works with just a few pople at a time, trying to help them plan for long-term peace and economic health. Shapiro says it is always a danger that members of a small outfit like CRC can be overwhelmed by the scale of the humanitarian need in a situation like Kosovo. He said he wished that governments like the U.S. would call up not only thousands of military reservists, as it did this wee, but also thousands of peace workers. Until that happens, what CRC can do might seem like a drop in the bucket.

"It may be a drop in the bucket, but that drop can multiply," said Shapiro. "If we don't do anything, the situation will only get worse."