Thursday, December 08, 2005


South Mitrovice's new mosque 1.

[Updated on the 25th of November 2005]

According to locals, this mosque was built in 2003. Its construction may be a combination of a desire to provide for the current local community and a resignation to the situation in this divided city, but it may also be more.

Even if it were entirely incidental, which I cannot confirm, this building and others like it in both south Mitrovice and north Mitrovica are produced by and help to reproduce an ethnicisation of the community and the conflict.

As it is, with the levels of uncertainty and insecurity that remain and the depth of division that exists, this could constitute a deliberate Islamification of south Mitrovice, as the new Orthodox church could constitute a Christianisation of north Mitrovica.