Tag Archives: Kosovo

Steamrolled:  a special investigation into the diplomacy of doing business abroad

Feb 25th, 2015

Steamrolled: a special investigation into the diplomacy of doing business abroad

One of Europe’s poorest countries wanted a road, so U.S. mega-contractor Bechtel sold it a $1.3 billion highway, with the backing of a powerful American ambassador. Funny thing is, the highway is barely being used—and the ambassador is now working for Bechtel. Story by Matthew Brunwasser Photographs by Matthew Lutton

That Crush at Kosovo’s Business Door? The Return of U.S. Heroes

Jan 5th, 2013

That Crush at Kosovo’s Business Door? The Return of U.S. Heroes

By MATTHEW BRUNWASSER PRISTINA, Kosovo — Prime Minister Hashim Thaci is in a bind. His country’s largest and most lucrative enterprise, the state telecommunications company, is up for sale. The jostling among buyers is intense. Narrowing the bidders has hardly helped. One bid is from a fund founded by former Secretary of State Madeleine K. Albright. Lobbying for another was James W. Pardew, the Clinton-era special envoy to the Balkans. Both former diplomats are among the Americans who hold the status of heroes here for their roles in the 1999 intervention that separated Kosovo from Serbia and created one of the world’s newest states.

Determined to Bring Out the Truth in Kosovo

Nov 29th, 2011

Determined to Bring Out the Truth in Kosovo

By MATTHEW BRUNWASSER PRISTINA, KOSOVO — She cut her journalistic teeth with the BBC as a 22-year-old fixer, helping television crews film in and around Kosovo during the 1999 NATO bombing war against Serbia. Now 33, Jeta Xharra has continued the punchy public interest journalism she says she learned from the likes of Jeremy Paxman, the British broadcaster known as host of the television news program “Newsnight.” In 1999, exposing wrongdoing seemed like an ideal common to most if not all Kosovo Albanians, united as they were by their fight against the authoritarian rule of Slobodan Milosevic of Serbia.

Kosovo’s Serbs Pressed to End Autonomy Push

Sep 26th, 2011

Kosovo’s Serbs Pressed to End Autonomy Push

By MATTHEW BRUNWASSER MITROVICA, Kosovo — After years of impasse between the national government of Kosovo and ethnic Serbs demanding autonomy within their northern enclave in the new country, international pressure has intensified on the Serbs. And while the immediate result has been minor clashes, there is new hope for some movement toward a resolution for the last geopolitically unsettled chunk of the former Yugoslavia.