BALKAN PEACE PARK PROJECT
Newsletter No.3 March 2004
TREKKING FOR PEACE
Since the promotion of sustainable visitor activities is one of the stated aims of the project it is good to be able to give news of plans for 2004 and last year’s 2003 ‘inaugural trek’. This 11 day trek, in July 2003, took 36 people from 8 different countries, from Peć/Peja in Kosovo/a, through Montenegro, to Vermosh, the valley and village in the north eastern corner of Albania, and then on to the valley of Theth. There was transport for the 65km from Theth to the city of Shkodër, where 80 people attended a full day international conference on the proposed BalkansPeacePark. The purpose of the trek was to engage as many local people as possible in the enterprise, as guides, interpreters, hosts or accompanying general helpers, and to demonstrate what this kind of eco-tourism could bring to the communities en route and what facilities would be needed for such activity in the future. We had to use transport to cross frontiers this time, but in future it should be possible to walk the whole way.
Vermosh and Theth: July 17th – 25th 2004
This trek is being organized from Shkodër by people from IRSH. It will journey to Vermosh by road and spend two days on walks of varying length in the valley and mountains of the area. Then the group will travel by road round to Theth for two more days of exploration in the surrounding mountains. The trek will end with dinner together at a restaurant in Shkodër. The IRSH organizers for this trip are Vildan Plepi and Blendi Dibra. Anyone interested in joining in can contact them best by e-mail: or
This is a terrific initiative and we wish everyone a very enjoyable trip.
Cycle tour: August 14 – 27th
This is being planned from England by Howard Boyd in Birmingham. The general idea is to revisit places seen by last year's cross-border trek but on two wheels this time. The tour will start and finish in Podgorica and visit Murino/Plav and Cakor in Montenegro and the Rugova valley in Kosovo/a before returning to Plav. From there it will head for Theth in Albania, either by pushing bikes from Gusinje over the Qafa e Pejës (hard work!) or pushing over the border to Vermosh and then riding round to Theth. We expect a group of 10 to 20 people to do this tour and if more than that are interested there would be a second group following on. As on the 2003 trek we hope to have maximum involvement by people living in the area. Further information is available from Howard Boyd or Richard Hargreaves on
TALKS. . .
Richard Hargreaves, who did the trek last year, prepared a talk and slide show which he has now given several times to various groups, including the Peace Studies Department at BradfordUniversity and mountaineering clubs. He is very happy to travel anywhere, within reason, to give this talk/slide show to any group, large or small. It shows the mountain landscape and the people of the three countries and is put in the context of the concept of peace parks. He calls the talk “Mountains for Peace in the Balkans”.
. . .AND EXHIBITIONS
Chris Rossi, also on the trek last year, is preparing an exhibition of photographs and information about the PeacePark. Chris lives in the US where she is a museum curator in Hamilton in New YorkState, The exhibition will be shown at ColgateUniversity in May and in Jackson, Mississippi in October. It is hoped that it could be transported to Europe, to England and the Balkans, perhaps.
PEOPLE. . . in the UK
At the Annual General Meeting of the Balkans Peace Park Project Committee in London in September there were some changes made in the membership. So this is what it looks like now:
Chairperson:Antonia Young
Secretary:Howard Boyd
Treasurer:Nick Oliver
Newsletter editor: Richard Hargreaves
Committee members:
Ted Brown Barry O’Connor
Kimete Bytyci Marija Anteric
Nigel YoungAnya Hart-Dyke
The committee meets four times a year or more often if necessary. We alternate our meetings between York, Birmingham and London and visitors are very welcome.
PEOPLE. . .in the Balkans
The committee in London is only a support group. Its enthusiasm is shared with a growing number of active people in the Balkans, on whom will depend the eventual success of the project, the creation of a real cross-border, inter-national, environmentally protected area dedicated to peace and cooperation in Kosovo/a, Montenegro and Albania. Some of the leading people at the moment in the promotion of the PeacePark in the Balkans and with whom we have the most contact are:
Kosovo/a:
Dritan Shala – Aquila NGO
Fatos Lajci – ERA (Environmentally
Responsible Action group)
Montenegro:
Ali Daci – Albanica Environmental Association
Filip Pavlovic – Fractal
Albania:
Gjon Gjecaj – Headman, Theth
Petrit Imeraj – Preservation of Forests and
the Green Environment
Blendi Dibra ) - IRSH organization, “Young
Vildan Plepi ) Intellectuals, Hope”, Shkodër
Alma Shkreli )
Mario Delia - Shkodër
WHY NO PICTURES ?
The editor apologizes for the lack of photographs in this issue of the newsletter. Last time many readers could not receive e-mails with pictures, so he had to send somewith pictures and some without. This time it is to be the same for everybody. Text only!
(Editor: Richard Hargreaves, Strand House, Hawkswick, Skipton BD23 5QA. )
VISIT TO YORKSHIREDALESNATIONAL PARK (YDNP)
In October 2003 a group of 8, mostly from the Albanian area of the Peace Park, enjoyed a 3 day intensive programme in the YDNP as guests of Antonia Young in Hetton. The visitors were:
Gjon Gjeçaj, the elected headman from Theth and Genci, his 15 year old nephew and interpreter, now living in Essex;
Petrit Imeraj, Mario Delia from Shkodër;
Arben Murra, First Secretary at the Albanian Embassy in London;
Annalisa and Alistair Rellie, Nick Berisha and Enid Ossude.
National Park day
The YDNP kindly arranged a whole day’s programme at Malham, perhaps the most popular tourist centre in the Dales. The group visited the information centre, the local primary school, were given lunch in a pub in the village and were shown a ‘bunk house’, very simple accommodation for groups of visitors taking part in outdoor activities. Many such bunk houses in Britain’s national parks are converted barns; the Balkans group was especially interested in this idea.
A day’s walk in the Dales
On the 2nd day the group were taken for a day’s walk from Richard and Jane Hargreaves’ house in Littondale, an example of a very popular walk on public footpaths between different valleys and villages. In the evening the visitors were amongst a full house at Grassington Town Hall who enjoyed Richard’stalk/slide show on the Balkans trek.
Further round the Dales
On the 3rd day they visited Kilnsey Trout Farm, local builder Andy Singleton showed a fine Dales house he had renovated and Alan Iles demonstrated forest stewardship at Scargill, which hosted them for lunch.
Next visit?
Following the success of this visit we hope later in the year to receive a group of people from all three countries for a study visit to National Parks and visitor activities in England.
MALHAM – THETH SCHOOLS LINK
After the group’s visit to his school the headteacher at Malham was keen to form a link with the school in Theth. He arranged for the 60 children to make cards to send to Theth school
and he encouraged the parents to donate money.
THE BALKANS TREK 2003 AND THE FUTURE
At the end of the trek Blendi Dibra and a team from IRSH organized a full day international conference on the Balkans Peace Park proposal. Among the many fine contributions to the conference was this moving and carefully constructed speech by Nick Oliver. It presents a rationale for the cross-border park and spells out what is needed to encourage visitors to go there to help create it.
There’s a tension within the concept of a National park – on the one hand, access to public; on the other hand, preservation of the environment. Goes against logic – preservation suggests keeping people out; access suggests allowing people to come in and possibly disturb the balance of the environment. The concept of an International park contains further tensions – on the one hand, relatively unrestricted access to the public; on the other hand, the demands of national security. It has always been the case that national security at borders depends on restriction of access across border; better still, restriction of access to all areas close to borders. The Albanian border, particularly, was drawn very specifically to use natural features – unscalable peaks and ridges – to separate the different nations and to make it more difficult for them to invade one another. Surely, a public right to wander freely across international borders must endanger national security?
Sketch map of the 2003 trek through the proposed Peace Park area
What I want to do here is to suggest that there is actually nothing paradoxical in the idea of an international wilderness park, to which the public have relatively unrestricted access, including across national borders; which maintains the highest standards of conservation of the natural environment; and which respects the sovereignty and security concerns of all three national entities.
Depopulation
Let’s look first at the environment – the natural environment, and also the social environment. The unique ecosystem in the area has already been recognised by all three sides of the borders – there are national parks in various stages of development in Kosova, in Montenegro, and in Albania. The human population – there are permanent villages, and katuns (summer pasture huts). From the permanent villages there is a drift to the cities, and the herds of cattle at the katuns are every year slightly smaller, and slightly fewer in number than the year before. There will be depopulation, or there will be change. A depopulated land is difficult to tend; it will become an almost impenetrable wilderness. This will preserve the flora and fauna, certainly, but at a cost of making them inaccessible to all but the dedicated professional. It will be difficult to mount a defence then against commercial pressure for the area to be exploited – for wood, probably, in this case. A depopulated land is also good for cross-border criminal activity – there’s less chance of being disturbed.
Bring in people
So there must be a permanent population, in order to stabilise an ecosystem. And that permanent population must have something to do. It’s unlikely that industry is going to want to locate itself in the farthest, most mountainous corner of any country. There are two aspects to the solution – change the status of the area from being three inaccessible corners of states, into an area in its own right – the centre of itself. And don’t bring in industry – bring in people, who will be prepared to pay for all that is best in the area already. There is already magnificent scenery, solitude, paths to walk (or to cycle). There are villages, there is superb hospitality, there are traditions. In this visitation by thirty people over two weeks, something like fifteen thousand dollars has been brought into the local economies, as payment for accommodation, food, guides, local transport. Fifteen thousand dollars is perhaps not a huge amount of money – but, then again, thirty people is not many people. And let me repeat – that money has gone straight to those who live in the area, for doing things which enhance the area.
Collaboration
So what should we see in this international park? First of all, I’d like to see an international accord between the three national entities to bring the park into existence. I’d like to see it there as a clear statement that security, in the middle of the Balkan region, does not consist of closed borders and continual separations of people one from another, but from collaboration on worthwhile projects whose success is in everyone’s best interest.
Maps and guides
More than that – I’d like to see a park that works. Clearly marked and numbered routes – for cyclists and walkers, for walkers only, for experienced mountaineers only. A good walkers’ map, at a scale of 1:50,000, and an accompanying pocket book describing the walks, the villages, the sights. It would also, of course, list the accommodation – which I would imagine as including small campsites, mountain houses (planinskidomovi), dormitories, rooms with families, and maybe katun huts. The places to eat would be listed there, too – the villages that sell milk, cheese, bread, vegetables. The restaurants. They’re not here yet, of course, because there’s no-one to buy anything from them. There would be a section on guides, with contact details, for those that chose to use their services.
All this information could even be available from a website. In fact, it would be possible to use the website to decide upon and print out a route, and to book and pay for accommodation for each night of the journey. It’s actually a comparatively small exercise creating such a website.
Work to do
So there’s a great deal to do. There’s the political accord that creates the parks, and there’s the much more practical work of creating the facts on the ground – the waymarking of paths, the information boards, the mountain houses, the information packs. Nearly all of this work, once again, is work that could be done by people who live in the area, to help to preserve and enhance all that is best in their area.
There’s much more in terms of economic activity that would be generated from this venture – transport to the park from Tirana, Podgorica, Pristina; hire of bicycles (and walking skis in winter); shops selling mountain equipment.
And, of course, once people have got to know your country, they’ll be back again.
There are many other areas I haven’t been into here – I haven’t said anything about preservation of the flora and fauna, and I’ve said very little about the political significance of a venture like this. I’ve stated quite selfishly, really, what it would take to make me come back as a tourist, with my family, to spend my money, and to introduce two other people to one of the great regions of the world.
Nick Oliver, Shkodër, 24/7/2003