Unemployment problem
The question now is whether independence, which is still in an embryonic stage and not universally recognized, will result in a change of status for women and eradication of the trafficking networks. Or whether organized criminal gangs, with allies in the new government, will be given an even freer hand.
"The first thing our government must do, and they've promised a lot, is to fight unemployment. The violence is linked directly to economic conditions," said Naime Sherifa, director of the Center for the Protection of Women and Children in Pristina, the first such organization here. "People are very tired of being poor."
Tired, she said, and ready to explode. Roughly half of Kosovo's generally young population is out of work; the World Bank and other experts believe it could take a decade to dramatically reduce unemployment. Poverty strains Kosovo's families, which tend to be large. Add to that the dislocations of war: Thousands of people were killed and entire villages razed, their residents forced to move to urban areas. There, many live in cramped conditions, disoriented, unsettled in an unfamiliar environment.
The breakdown of family structure and the transfer of populations to cities created an anonymity in Kosovo society that did not exist before the war; as one consequence, it left women vulnerable to traffickers and other abuse, said Wanda Troszczynska, a Kosovo specialist with the New York-based Human Rights Watch.
Women used to be relegated to restrictive lives at home, guarded behind the high-walled compounds that traditionally housed extended ethnic Albanian families, or clans. It wasn't freedom, but it was out of the reach of outside exploitation. Traffickers brought women from elsewhere, such as Moldova and Romania, initially to be shuttled to Italy or other parts of Europe and, after the war, to remain in Kosovo to "service" a growing international population.
Eventually, more and more Kosovo women, ripped from their traditional home life, also fell prey to traffickers and found themselves lured by promises of work, marriage or their own cellphone, only to end up in seedy bars, strip joints and brothels.
Need to enforce laws
In their long march to prove themselves ready to run a state, Kosovo Albanians set up a police force under United Nations tutelage that gradually took up the mission of raiding bars and rescuing victims of sexual exploitation. In 2006, the Kosovo police conducted 99 raids, arrested 28 suspected traffickers and "identified" 50 victims, according to statistics provided by the State Department's Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons.
