• on: 12 Sep 2016

Michael Weichert

FES has been partner of Riinvest since 1997. During the period between 1999 and 2005 I had the pleasure to be responsible on the side of FES for the cooperation between both institutions. My first contact with Prof. Mustafa and his colleagues has been in spring 1999. As an observer from outside, I remember well those days of the war in Kosova, the terrible news coming from there, and the dramatic pictures and the preoccupying news in the media during these days. Coming from Sofia, where we had our regional office, I arrived in Tetovo where many people from Kosova had escaped the war and had found shelter. The small city was full of people and cars, one could hardly find a free seat in one of the many cafes which were at the same time the meeting point for everybody, including the many internationals who were present as part of international aid programs or as correspondents from media outlets all over the world.

Riinvest had established a small office in the center of town. Not knowing when the war would end, we started in those days a program of studies and proposals for the (re-) construction of Kosova after the war. We knew that many experts from Kosova were in Tetovo, waiting for better days to come, in the cafes of the town. While waiting in Tetovo, we wanted to offer them the opportunity to make use of their intellectual and visionary capacities to contribute to “the days after” and the enormous challenges which were to be addressed once war was over and the people of Kosovo would return to their country.

As a result, Riinvest and FES organized the first international conference after the end of the war, in the early days of July 1999 (it would be good, to include, here, the title of the conference). The venue was the sport-palace (??), which had suffered from bombardments during the war. Windows were broken, and during that rainy day the water was coming into the conference room through a variety of wholes and broken windows. It was a challenge to provide technical equipment, but the conference brought together a relieved and enthusiastic community of people who wanted to contribute to the (re-) building of a new country and a new state.

I imagine that some of the papers presented and many of the proposals made found their way into the reconstruction process which has continued since then, up to today. The heart-warming experience of our cooperation and the contact and the communication between our teams and in particular with Prof. Mustafa remain very prominently in my memories.

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