LAKE OF GAZIVODE

This artificial lake (Jezero Gazivode, Liqeni i Ujmanit) is the largest body of water in the country. It extends over 24 km in length between Kosovo and Serbia with a border post at Brnjak/Bërnjak. Located at an altitude of 690 m, at the foot of the Mokra Gora massif, it offers magnificent landscapes and corners of nature all the more preserved as the population density here is very low. Object of permanent tensions between Pristina and Belgrade since 1999, the lake was recently almost renamed in honor of Donald Trump.

A bar on the Ibar. The lake was created between 1973 and 1977 by retaining the river Ibar (272 km long) which flows from Montenegro and Serbia. For this, two dams were built on either side of the Kosovar village of Gazivode/Gazivoda (300 inhabitants, almost all Serbian). Downstream, southeast of Gazivode/Gazivoda, near Zubin Potok, stands a small dam 10 m high. Upstream, northwest of Gazivode/Gazivoda, the other dam is one of the largest in Europe, standing 108 m high and 490 m wide. Its inverted pyramid-shaped terrace structure can be seen from the M2 road. In total, the lake covers 11.9 km2: 2.7 km2 in the municipality of Tutin, Serbia, and 9.2 km2 in the municipality of Zubin Potok. Its width does not exceed 1.1 km but its depth reaches up to 110 m. The reservoir was designed to supply electricity to the industrial and mining facilities in Mitrovica and Trepča and to provide water for cooling the turbines of the Obiliq/Obilić power plants near Pristina. The lake was also intended to be used to irrigate neighboring agricultural areas. However, this part of the project could not be fully completed due to the war in Kosovo.

"Trump Lake". Since the end of the war and Kosovo's declaration of independence (2008), the issue of control of the lake's waters has been a source of tension between Belgrade and Pristina. The Kosovar state does not have authority over the lake, which is under the responsibility of the Serbian enclave of Zubin Potok and Elektroprivreda Srbije, the Serbian electricity company. The problem was thought to be on its way to being resolved when U.S. President Donald Trump announced that he wanted to reconcile Kosovo and Serbia by the end of summer 2020. On September 4, an agreement on economic exchanges was hastily signed by the heads of state of both countries at the White House. In a brief moment of euphoria, an American emissary jokingly proposed renaming the lake after Donald Trump. The proposal was taken seriously and welcomed by the Serbian President and the Kosovar Prime Minister, who were still moved by their visit to the Oval Office. And the following September 24, a huge banner "Trump Lake" appeared on the large dam. The photo made the rounds on social networks. But faced with the opposition of the inhabitants and a part of the deputies of both countries, the project got bogged down. It was finally abandoned a few days later, a new diplomatic crisis had broken out between the United States and Serbia. The lake was then calm again without the question of sharing its resources being resolved.

Bridge, bears and anti-personnel mines. The shores of the lake are occupied by about 15 hamlets and villages, the largest of which is Ribariće, Serbia, at the western end. This has about 1,000 inhabitants, mostly Bosniaks like the majority of the population of the municipality of Tutin. On the Kosovo side, there are less than 500 inhabitants, almost all of them Serbs, distributed among five localities. In addition to Gazivode/Gazivoda, at the eastern end, the southern shore is home to three hamlets: Kovače/Kovaça, then Rezala/Rezalla and Bojnoviće/Bojnoviqi. Away from the lake, still on the south side and at an altitude of 1,200 m, Brnjak/Bërnjak (130 inhabitants) is the "capital" of this isolated region. The village gives its name to the border post and to the 120 m long suspension bridge that spans the lake since 1983. But there are almost no tourist facilities in the Kosovar part, except for hiking and cycling trails and kayaks for rent. The inhabitants of Mitrovica come to enjoy the beautiful surroundings for picnics, sailing and fishing. The abundance of fish attracts other visitors, migratory birds and also brown bears that regularly come down from the Mokra Gora. Therefore, it is important to be careful. Be careful not to go too far off the beaten track, as the area was mined during the last war. The KFOR assures to have cleaned the area, but it is better to make sure that a guide is present if you want to go hiking.

Sunken heritage. When 380 million cubic meters of water flooded the valley in 1977, twelve old Serbian villages were buried and 2,400 inhabitants had to be relocated. This resulted in the loss of a church and a girls' school (one of the oldest in the world) founded in the 13th century by the French queen Helene of Anjou, wife of the Serbian king Stefan Uroš I and mother of the great Milutin. The Yugoslav authorities at the time did nothing to save or document the monuments. But since 2017, a Serbian-Russian team of underwater archaeologists has been conducting research to rediscover this sunken past.