Eating away at divisions in Kosovo and Northern Ireland
By Nora LUTA and Julia PAUL
Eating a meal is rarely done with an enemy — sharing food is in itself an act of friendship. The phrases “sitting down around the table” and “breaking bread” are often used to describe ways of bringing warring sides together to break down barriers. So, in the conflict zones of Northern Ireland and Kosovo, can food help break down barriers?
“Eating is a very positive experience”, says Yvonne McCullagh, a Catholic/Nationalist from Northern Ireland. While in Kosovo, Serbian Ivana Pavlovic, tells us:
“Sharing a good meal can truly build respect and friendships.”
And yet, in the past conflicts in both places, food has often been a factor.
Famine memorial. Rathlin Island, Northern Ireland. © Allan LEONARD @MrUlster
In Northern Ireland, the concept of “hunger” has been a powerful political tool. In the 19th century, the Irish famine of 1845-49 killed a million people and caused around two million to emigrate. At that time, before the island was divided, most of the country’s land was owned by English Protestant landlords but farmed by impoverished Catholic tenant farmers. They provided crops for Britain but had little left to feed themselves and relied on potatoes as food. When the potato crop failed over successive years, hundreds of thousands of Irish farmers were evicted from their lands, while the British government provided little help other than soup kitchens.
Memorial to those who died by hunger strike, with information poster by Pat SHEEHAN MLA (Sinn Fein). Falls Road, Belfast, Northern Ireland. © Allan LEONARD @MrUlster
Jump forward 140 years and Ireland was in the middle of some of the worst years of the Troubles. Now the island was divided between the independent country the republic of Ireland and the new state of Northern Ireland (as part of the UK). In Northern Ireland hunger was being weaponised. IRA men jailed in the Maze prison had been fighting for five years to be recognised as political prisoners; now they resorted to hunger strikes. Ten men died. Eventually the British government negotiated to allow concessions for those still in prison.
“Traditional Kosovo Food”. Image source: YouTube
In Kosovo, food has also been politicised — both before and after the war. During the socialist republic of Yugoslavia, as University of Pristina anthropologist Arsim Canolli has written, the government was pushing to modernise food production by promoting “Yugoslav cuisine”, which was predominantly Serbian. But in the villages, local people grew produce and cooked as they had always done. Canolli explored how, after the war, cuisine was used in an attempt to help forge a “Kosovar” identity:
“Local chefs, waiters, politicians, and tour guides were quick to respond by describing certain popular local dishes as ‘traditional cooking’, a term they adopted as a label to classify ‘Kosovar cuisine’”.
Likewise, often restaurants claimed Albanian dishes as local and national.
So today, how is food helping to reconcile the divisions in both societies?
Shelves of food. Bangor Foodbank & Community Support Resource Centre. Bangor, Northern Ireland. © Allan LEONARD @MrUlster
In Northern Ireland, hunger is once again a central issue in many people’s lives. Changes to social benefits and the rising cost of living has spawned more and more food banks across the UK. In Northern Ireland, the charity The Trussell Trust runs 23 food banks in all six counties. It’s reported that between April 2023 and March 2024 it distributed 90,375 emergency parcels, including 60,831 for children. This is an 11% increase on 2022 and a 143% increase compared to the same period five years ago.
Freshly cut coriander. Grow community gardens. Westland Gardens, Waterworks, Belfast, Northern Ireland. © Allan LEONARD @MrUlste
While food poverty is affecting both communities, as users of and volunteers at food banks, community gardens are allowing for more positive interactions around food. Grow is a small multi-cultural charity that supports local people to develop and run community gardens. It is helping address food poverty — and particularly lack of access to fresh food — as well as providing new natural habitats in the city of Belfast — bringing people together to improve mental health and welcome immigrant communities. Fifteen different languages are spoken at Grow and the charity has helped develop five gardens across Belfast. At its centre in the Waterworks park in north Belfast, volunteers also cook the food they grow at the charity’s kitchen there and share meals together.
Katie SHUKRI and Yvonne McCULLAGH. Grow community gardens. Westland Gardens, Waterworks, Belfast, Northern Ireland. © Allan LEONARD @MrUlste
Volunteers Yvonne McCullagh and Katie Shukri both live in north Belfast and have become friends thanks to the Grow garden. Yvonne is 69 and comes from a Catholic/Nationalist background, while Katie is 73 and grew up as a Protestant/Unionist. Both readily agree they would not have met if it weren’t for the Grow garden.
Sitting on Yvonne’s sofa in her north Belfast home, Katie said: “We’ve got very friendly, and we have done lots of things, but all prompted by meeting in the garden.”
Yvonne told me: “Even though it’s the same ingredients, you can treat it differently — so I can like the way you do it and think, ‘Oh, I’m going to try that.’
“So, you’re sharing, you’re learning from each other. You’re focusing on positive things. And that’s what I like. What has happened in the Grow garden is that it’s not focusing on differences. It’s focusing on similarities, and it’s all positive.”
Both women have astonishing life stories. Yvonne left Northern Ireland to go to university in Dublin in the 1970s, after losing childhood friends in the fighting and being knocked down by an army vehicle herself. She spent 20 years in America before returning to Northern Ireland:
“The Troubles really were very scary for me, because just when I was starting to understand about the world being bigger, it closed in. I couldn’t wait to get out.
“I was so angry. I was angry at everybody that was fighting, the IRA, the UVF, I didn’t care who it was. I was very distressed about everything about it.”
Katie grew up in Ballymurphy in nationalist west Belfast — despite her Protestant background — but her life was transformed when she met her future husband while working in a nightclub aged 19. He was an Egyptian Muslim ship’s captain, and after just a handful of meetings, she went onto marry him and have three children. She spent the next few years travelling on board with him, staying in places like Egypt and Libya, and at times coming home to Belfast with him. Despite the huge differences between them, they were happy, and she says for the most part, her neighbours accepted him.
Her experience means she feels particularly drawn to the immigrant women at Grow:
“Naturally, because my husband was Egyptian, I just always felt it would be nice to try and help them and hear about all the different things from all the different places. I do speak a wee tiny bit of Arabic, and I loved being able to communicate sometimes with them.”
But Yvonne also feels an affinity with the immigrant women. She has mobility issues and lives in a sheltered housing complex with other people from the Catholic/nationalist community. But she says that when she first moved in, she didn’t always feel at home:
“All the people that live here, they’ve all lived in this area all their life. They haven’t moved from the area at all. And they saw me — not because of America, but because I came from a different part of Belfast — as an outsider.”
Although Yvonne said that she believes many people in Northern Ireland did share friendships across the divided communities, even during the Troubles, she recognises those barriers can still exist:
“It would be nice if it was not just meeting people from different countries but meeting both sides of the community. Because if you’re meeting about food, you’re focusing on something that’s positive in your life, something that feeds you.”
In Kosovo, traditional foods — like stuffed peppers, goulash, and ajvar — are an important part of the cuisine. Albanians and Serbians have lived side by side for centuries, despite the war of the 1990s, so shared food, even though it may be named and made slightly differently, still has the ability to transcend differences and bring people together.
One example is the Albanian flija and Serbian obaruša. Flija is a layered pancake-like dish cooked on an open flame and is celebrated widely in the Albanian community today. But for many Serbians, obaruša, which is made slightly differently, holds a special place in their culinary heritage.
Shenaj Zeneli is from the divided city of Mitrovica, but currently living in Pristina, the capital of Kosovo. She is Albanian. At her table you can find dishes like flija being served. But flija is also a favourite food of Ivana Pavlovic, from Leposavic in the northern Serbian part of Kosovo. She is Serbian.
“My grandmother used to make obaruša, but I see flija celebrated more in the Albanian community today,” Ivana said.
Shenaj ZENELI. Image used with permission
The two women first met at language classes, where Shenaj was teaching Albanian to Ivana, and they’ve been friends now for years. Shenaj explained that in regions where cultural divides run deep, finding common ground can be a challenge. But sometimes, she says, the simplest gestures have the power to build bridges and foster understanding:
“One of those gestures is sharing a meal. Most of the food we have is similar to the Serbian community, because we have lived together and the way of eating has been more or less the same, except for the fact that the Albanian-speaking community has cooked more brumera (dough-based dishes), and among the Serbs, they are a little rarer.
“We have lived together in the same space, we have shared and transmitted to each other our customs and traditions, beliefs, and food recipes.”
Ivana PAVLOVIQI. Image used with permission
While for Ivana, Shenaj’s style of cooking intrigued her:
“My own journey of connecting through food took an interesting turn when I met Shenaj. She has a unique cooking style that emphasizes organic ingredients and low-fat options, aligning with my preference for lighter meals, so I quite enjoyed her cooking.”
Ivana is convinced that food can serve as a good way to connect Albanians and Serbians, and Shenaj agrees:
“Through my passion for cooking, I have known those extraordinary women of the Serbian community who have shown me many recipes and many ‘tricks’ about the preparation of food and sweets, which I practice in my daily life and the way of feeding my family.
“The food that connected us the most, I would say, is what the two communities obviously consume the most: meat and sweets. I see food as the connecting way to cooperate with each other.”
In conflict regions like the Balkans, and Northern Ireland, where political and historical differences often dominate the conversation, food can be a powerful tool for peacebuilding. The act of cooking and sharing traditional dishes allows people from different backgrounds to come together and celebrate similarities.
As Katie Shukri said:
“If somebody invites you to something, as long as there’s food, people will go. That draws people in, you know — really and truly.”
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This article is part of a series co-authored by Kosovo and Northern Ireland participants in a peace journalism project, Reporting on a Troubled Past, initiated and organised by the Association of Journalists of Kosovo in partnership with Shared Future News, with funding from the British Embassy Pristina. The facts presented and views expressed are those of the authors and editorially independent of any funder.