The current situation, in Mitrovica, like in the whole Kosovo, is moving and changing, sometimes better and sometimes worse, time by time. Up to 2011 and 2012, people generally preferred not to go from South to North, the same on the reverse. Later on, in 2014 and 2015, fifteen years after the war, you can go walking, from the South, to the North, and many changes are affecting the Main Bridge (“Austerlitz Bridge”), in Mitrovica, since 2016. Since 2021, periodic escalations of tension and measures by the authorities in Pristina have returned the Main Bridge to a situation of violence and confrontation.

While trying to approach a social problem, especially a controversy issue, you have to identify which are the common things or the common issues that the problem and the people in that context have. You need to start from the things you know, in order to solve the problem or to allow the situation go better and better; and, in the same way, you have to identify the things you don’t know and the topics which are under way. Showing proximity, equiproximity with the culture of the place, respecting the uses and customs, respecting the sensitiveness and religions, is a sign of reciprocity in sociality. If you don’t harm pride and respect local moods, you can establish basic, while important, links.

After the war, 1999, and after the troubles, 2004, the situation became more and more problematic from the point of view of the inter-ethnic relations. The social environment is marked by lack in confidence, segregation and division. Sometimes, you can also see how much cultural boundaries, more than ethnic links, count, both sides. This is a matter for a different conflict perception, even if you’ve also to consider religious affection is really a major problem of nowadays Kosovo, irrespectively of the different ethnicities. You need to face different challenges and efforts, to solve problems in communication, interaction and behaviour among people from different ethnic backgrounds in the entire Kosovo.

As referred by Ida Orzechowska (2014), «Kosovo Albanian Islam is different from… Islam in other Balkan States. It was influenced by the Yugoslav ideas and values, evolved under both socialism and cosmopolitism and is deeply mixed with the Albanian culture, very different from the surrounding Slavic cultures in the region. Until the 1980s, religion in Kosovo was a private thing. Under pressure from the Slobodan Milošević regime, it transformed into a nation-building and freedom-fighting issue.

«Finally, after the 1999 war, and especially after the 2008 independence, Kosovo Albanian Islam once again became private and non-political. The evolution makes the Kosovo Islam very difficult to frame and control, just as – in Jeffrey Goldfarb’s words – the dismantling of the Soviet bloc was run by “the politics of small things” initiated in discussions around kitchen tables». The nation-building process of the “Newborn State” and recent influences from Islamic countries, led to a crescent role of Islam and a thinning of secularism.

First, you have to face the social needs of all the people living in the region and try to find a positive solution for everyone, taking into account all the different instances and points of view, since, when you mix different problems, you can find a constructice, transcending, answer, to satisfy all the sides and solve the problems for everybody. Finally, you have to properly address the real, substantial, people’s needs from each side and any ethnicity, to work for sustainability in life conditions and hope in the future for all the people living the place, combining equity and harmony, freedom and justice, and transforming the conflicts.