Milos Nedic spends his time reading and watching television, day in and day out, in the gymnasium operated by German KFOR troops in Prizren. In March Nedic, who, together with 80 other Kosovo Serbs, was being pursued by a raging mob of Albanian extremists, was taken in and given shelter here. For him and 30 other fellow sufferers, the German barracks, fenced in with barbed wire and protected by massive barriers and heavily armed guards, are a new home, at least until their burned-down houses have been rebuilt.

The refugees leave the barracks once a week, when the German soldiers accompany their charges on shopping trips to a supermarket. And because the troops have been accused of having failed miserably in protecting the Serbian minority half a year ago, they now do their utmost to ensure that none of the people they have been ordered to protect returns to the barracks with so much as a hair out of place.

If the 75-year-old Nedic asks for spiritual support, the KFOR soldiers take him to the destroyed Monastery of the Holy Archangel, whose monks still live in temporary shelters and tents while volunteers help rebuild the church complex. Nedic shows a 90-year-old photo of his father, surrounded by dignitaries from Prizren. It is a photo of Turks, Bosnians and Serbs posing with Albanians. His point? The Albanians' demand for an independent Kosovo has no justification in history. Of all people, the Serbs, who are claiming Kosovo as a core state of their nation, are now demonstrating for ethnic diversity and understanding.

Then Nedic, who is certainly no gentle proponent of compensation and reconciliation, shows pictures of his destroyed house in the center of Prizren. Nedic remained in the house for five years after the NATO bombing in 1999, barricading himself against Albanian neighbors, his survival the result of humanitarian assistance. But on March 17, the mob advanced, using axes to destroy the doors on which Nedic, in testimony to his perseverance, had written: "I will never sell my house." He says that it was only with the help of the police that he was able to flee over the roofs of two neighboring houses.

Since then, Nedic is quite content with the shelter provided by the "internationals," and he is absolutely certain that they will never permit an independent Kosovo. He plans to return to his rebuilt house one day (he is currently arguing with the reconstruction authority about the details of fixtures and fittings), even if his Albanian neighbors remain hostile.

Most of his 30 fellow sufferers in the KFOR barracks do not share his intentions. They want to leave Kosovo as quickly as possible, or at least as soon as they have sold their rebuilt houses. They are convinced that even Saturday's parliamentary election will not transform troubled Kosovo into an oasis of peaceful coexistence.

On Saturday, 32 parties and alliances will compete for 120 seats in parliament. In the last parliamentary election in 2001, the party of Kosovo's president, Ibrahim Rugova, garnered 45.6 percent of the vote and formed a coalition government with the parties of former guerilla fighters Hashim Thaçi and Ramush Haradinaj. This government is now deeply divided, and a number of prominent members of Rugova's party have been assassinated. There is one issue, however, on which everyone agrees, even those members of the administration who managed to transform themselves, by not altogether transparent means, from former revolutionary fighters into well-heeled business magnates: Kosovo must be independent, that is, Albanian. Although the 22 representatives of the ethnic Serbs have provided the parliament with multi-ethnic legitimacy, their influence has been insignificant.

This is unlikely to change. In fact, the Serbs' position is likely to deteriorate, because most politicians in Belgrade have called upon ethnic Serbs to boycott the election, and now they are expected to send even fewer delegates to Kosovo's parliament. Many Serbs have recognized that as long as they continue to be mistreated by Albanians, the international community will hesitate to turn over Kosovo to the Albanians.

The Albanians, for their part, are doing their best to obstruct talks with the Serbs. At campaign events, Prime Minister Bajram Rexhepe and former UÇK gladiators Thaçi and Haradinaj have been intoxicating their supporters with the promise that Kosovo will soon be independent. At a campaign rally in the village of Junik, former bodybuilding trainer, armored vehicle guard, nightclub bouncer and war hero Haradinaj announced that this will occur by the fall of 2005, and that a constitution has already been written. He also announced that Kosovo already has its own army, the 5000-man Kosovo Protection Corps, a force consisting primarily of former UÇK fighters. This army, at least according to UN plans, had been intended as a multiethnic force designed to protect both ethnic Serbs and Albanians.

In response to such campaign slogans, grim-faced young men, their chins jutting forward energetically, wave red flags displaying the Albanian eagle, while local Islamic community leaders are given front row seats. At these events, there is no talk of Serbs returning to their homeland and, of course, no mention of the rumor that speaker Haradinaj could be the "high-ranking Albanian politician" that chief prosecutor Carla Del Ponte plans to bring before a UN court in The Hague this year. Del Ponte complains that she is receiving little support for her efforts to investigate former UÇK fighters, not even from UN administrators.

There are few who express regret about the tragedy of ethnic irreconcilability in Kosovo. Although physician Bujar Bukoshi ("I would arrest the entire current administration") and media entrepreneur and multimillionaire Veton Surroi have entered the race with their own parties, they can only expect support in larger cities, as well as among the international community. However, seventy percent of Kosovo's ethnic Albanians live in rural areas.

For Bukoshi and Surroi, the biggest challenge facing Kosovan politicians is to combat dire economic conditions and a high rate of unemployment. Seven out of ten Kosovans are unemployed today, surviving on money sent from abroad, smuggling and moonlighting. Surroi predicts that within six months, after a hard winter, the country will experience a "social explosion." Then, he believes, even the UN administration's offices could be burning.

Another concern is the rapid increase in crime. Bedri Shabani, the former head of the customs team assigned to combating smuggling operations, is not alone in claiming that Kosovo is now a center for drug smuggling. He believes that at least twice the Kosovan budget is lost each year to the black market trade in cigarettes, coffee, oil and gasoline. New, ultramodern gas stations are popping up all over the country, on some streets at a rate of one every thousand feet.

Shabani claims that for years he unsuccessfully provided UNMIK with specific information on smuggling routes and the people pulling the strings, and even lost his job as a result – wrongfully, according to a recent court decision. Back in his position at customs, he now greets his guests with the bitter words "welcome to Columbia."

Most Albanians hope that during the negotiations to establish the final status of Kosovo, which, under international law, is part of Serbia, the Americans will push for Kosovo's independence. Popular support remains strong for the protective power that led the NATO campaign against Yugoslavia in 1999. The American Stars and Stripes is flown alongside the black-and-red Albanian flag far more often than the flag of the EU, for example. On Bill Clinton Boulevard in the capital, Pristina, a larger-than-life image of the former US president is displayed on the wall of a building. At night, floodlights are aimed at a replica of the Statue of Liberty on the roof of the Victory Hotel.

And even though most Albanians "know full well that the future of Kosovo lies in Europe," as the new UNMIK administrator, Sören Jessen-Petersen, assures, their biggest concern is having their own country. Since the unrest in March, independence seems to have become more likely, even though Kosovans are now faced with charges that they too are persecuting ethnic minorities.

American presidential candidate John Kerry has already promised self-determination to the Kosovo Albanians. Former US special envoy Richard Holbrooke has expressed himself even more clearly, saying that Kosovo will be independent, with or without Serbia's approval. Such views are even popular in Germany. Prior to Defense Minister Struck's most recent trip to Kosovo, diplomats in Berlin were saying that "reintegration into Serbia cannot be a solution." Former KFOR commander Klaus Reinhardt is concerned that this could lead to another war.

The new commander of Germany's KFOR troops in Pristina, Colonel Erhard Bühler, also believes this would be disastrous. Everyone knows, says Bühler, that Kosovo can no longer afford the kind of unrest that occurred in March, when 19 people were killed, more than 900 were wounded, and Serbian churches and monasteries were destroyed.

For this reason, the 3,300 soldiers in the German contingent are now receiving additional training for "deployment against demonstrators." A shipment of pepper spray recently arrived, and curfew procedures have been prepared for ten cities for an "emergency." In the event of such an emergency, 1,200 soldiers could be deployed into Prizren within 15 minutes.

Colonel Bühler has no illusions: "The situation is unpredictable, and because the ethnic conflicts have not been resolved, the potential for unrest has not disappeared. The former UÇK still has enormous supplies of weapons in Kosovo. All of UNMIK's weapons collection programs have been unsuccessful."

Many KFOR soldiers and UN administrators, however, do not attribute the Serbs' lack of freedom of mobility to the Albanian threat. Even Serb nationalists, most of all Orthodox bishop Artemije, are becoming accustomed to playing the role of victim and have begun turning Serb enclaves into strongholds of a militant nationalism. In these miniature states surrounded by NATO barbed wire, where the valid currency is still the Dinar and not the Euro, Serbs persistently celebrate the era of dictator Slobodan Milosevic, as if they were expecting his triumphant return from The Hague any day.