Colonel, Aferdita Mikullovci, who was born and raised in the northern part of Mitrovica, until after the last war in Kosovo.

She joined the Kosovo Police with the first generation of police officers recruited after the end of the war in 1999.

Today she is the first and only woman in Kosovo to head a regional police directorate.

She took this position in 2018, a full 19 years after wearing the blue uniform, to be at the service of the citizens of Kosovo, and to contribute to their safety.

He first appeared on the ground on November 1, 1999, and since then Colonel Maliqi, who is the director of the Regional Police Directorate in South Mitrovica, has dedicated himself to the profession.

"The moment I came out, on November 1, 1999, I put on my uniform and went out on the field, at no point did it occur to me to surrender or withdraw.

"I felt it a lot, I experienced both the uniform and the reactions of the citizens", says Maliqi.

The 46-year-old colonel has over 580 police officers under her command, most of them men, and some women.

The directorate she leads covers the municipalities: Mitrovica South, Vushtrri and Skenderaj.

I joined the police very spontaneously, I do not belong to those generations, "I have always dreamed of being a police officer".

"It is not that I have been a proponent of uniform in the past", says Mikullovci.

She says she was encouraged to enter the police by a friend of hers and strongly supported by family, especially her father.

Colonel Mikullovci started working at a time when the Kosovo Police did not yet have a database, and later became an instructor of the Management and Leadership Division, and head of the Basic Treatment Division.

"One of the most painful experiences I have had was when my colleague, Enver Zymberi (2011) was killed.

"What happened that day… the next day I started the sightseeing units", she remembers full of emotion.

Although the northern part of Mitrovica is not the responsibility of the Mitrovica Regional Police Directorate, Mikullovci says they can not act freely, as they would if they had the area under control.

"Even though we do not have the burden of the northern part in a way it is a burden more, because you can not act freely, as you would have done if we had the whole situation under control, or the region under control," said the colonel. .

/ REL /