“Kosovo is the heart of Serbia”. This is how tennis player Novak Djokovic signed his support for the Kosovo Serbs, who are the architects of serious conflicts in four municipalities, to prevent the newly elected mayors of Albanian origin from being established in the north on a television camera screen. country. The message is “Stop violence!”, which contradicts the athlete’s original intention. ends with . Taking advantage of the Roland Garros stage, where he defeated American Alexander Kovacevic on red soil, the Serbian tennis player expressed his generous support for the Belgrade government’s refusal to recognize Kosovo’s independence. Despite its popularity in the Balkans, with this move, Christmas loses a lot of support.
Mayors threatened
The message came after a renewed outbreak of inter-ethnic violence in the youngest of the Balkan countries on May 26, when representatives of the Serb majority tried to block the appointment of new mayors of Albanian ethnicity ready to settle in the municipalities of Zubin Potok, Zvečan. , Leposavić and Kosovska Mitrovica. The Serbian community had decided not to participate in the elections, only to object to the result. Tensions in the region have never eased since the small Balkan state’s independence, but for the first time in years, the intervention of NATO armed forces determined to disperse the crowd was necessary. According to local sources, around ten citizens were wounded in the clashes and 52 soldiers (45 according to other sources), of whom 14 are Italians and three are in serious condition (but not life-threatening at the time of this writing).
semi-independence
The departure of General Tito from Yugoslavia gave birth to many children. Kosovo is the only country orphaned as it is considered a “limited recognition” state. Despite declaring independence from Serbia in 2008, Belgrade, with its ethnic Albanian majority, continues to want to impose parental authority over the region. From this low-voltage conflict, many states, primarily Russia and China, decide not to define the region as a fully sovereign republic. At the United Nations, only 101 out of 193 countries have recognized their independence, and the European Union itself has several disagreements on the matter. Against: Greece, Cyprus, Romania, Slovakia and Spain. These are countries with unresolved (or recently resolved) territorial issues and/or strong internal independence movements, as in the case of Catalonia. Hence Pristina’s difficulties in obtaining full status as a candidate for European Union membership.
NATO alert
“We call on Belgrade and Pristina to engage in an EU-led dialogue as the only way to de-escalate tensions and achieve peace and normalization,” the international military mission led by Italian general Michele Ristuccia, the Kosovo Force, said in a statement. The Atlantic Pact, which has been in the region since 1999, also said they have increased their presence in the four municipalities of northern Kosovo “following the latest developments in the region”. KFOR accused the demonstrators of “causing the situation” by attacking them. When a vehicle is on fire and also the alarm sirens are at full volume, as the police and military forces themselves have written provocative Serbian and Russian symbols on the vehicles of the existing police forces, damaging tires and vehicles in general. cocktails, explosive devices and gunfire were also fired. Let’s rewind the tape to try to understand more.
“Abandoned” choices
Due to the boycott of the vote by the Serb community in Kosovo, which is the majority in the northern region, turnout in the April elections in the four municipalities where the conflict took place was almost non-existent and equaled only 3.47%. However, the head of the Kosovo government, Albin Kurti, decided to guarantee mayors, including special police forces, access to the municipal buildings. Fierce fighting broke out to prevent elected representatives of the Kosovar-Albanian ethnic group from taking office. The day was just the culmination of an escalation in recent months that included supporters of the Serbian-Kosovo party Lista Srpska, close to Serbian president Aleksandar Vučić.
burning plates
The “plate crisis” rekindled the fuse in the region in 2021: the Kurti-led government had tried to impose a temporary license plate change on Serbian vehicles entering Kosovo. Belgrade in turn registered and re-registered the cars with the names of Kosovo cities. Therefore, there is a long blockade of border crossings in the north of the country: on the one hand, special forces of the Kosovo police, on the other, units of the Serbian army. After a temporary solution through EU mediation, the problem resurfaced in the summer of 2022 when the Kosovo-Serb minority set up barricades and barricades. European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen also took the field during her visit to the Western Balkans last September to prepare for the summit between the countries of the region and the EU. Von der Leyen says “cooperation is the only possible way” and underlines that “diplomacy and dialogue supported by European institutions” is the only platform that can resolve the current conflict.
brokerage firms
Over time, Brussels’ efforts to normalize relations between Pristina and Belgrade gradually intensified. In this process, various summits followed each other under the mediation of Josep Borrell, Head of Foreign Relations of the European Executive Board, and Miroslav Lajcak, the EU’s Special Representative for Belgrade-Pristina Relations. In early November 2022, the struggle for license plates resulted in the mass resignations of Kosovo Serbs from institutions in municipalities in the north of the country, including police officers. At the end of November 2022, a new agreement was reached, again with the help of the EU’s mediation, to reduce tensions. Borrell had gotten Serbia and Kosovo to agree to “immediately fully focus on the proposal to normalize their relations”. First of all, France and Germany were pushing for this solution, as were the USA in the background. Meanwhile, however, the resignations of local officials triggered snap elections in four municipalities in northern Kosovo, originally scheduled for December but later on April 23, with the desertion of both the main Lista Srpska party and the population of Serbian descent. The polls are an opportunity that President Kurti didn’t let go.
perspective change
The memory of the persecution of Kosovar Albanians by Slobodan Milosevic’s troops is still vivid, but Pristina is being called upon to assume greater responsibility 15 years after independence. After the elections and before taking office, the embassies of France, Germany, Italy, the United Kingdom, the United States and the European Union, who were in Kosovo, expressed themselves in a joint note as follows: “We reiterate our statement condemning Kosovo on 26 May. To our repeated calls for restraint. despite Kosovo’s decision to force entry to municipal buildings in northern Kosovo”. The document also asks elected mayors “to exercise restraint and take immediate action to demonstrate their commitment and responsibility to represent and serve all members of their communities.” Then a general “warning of all parties to other threats or actions that could affect a safe and secure environment, including freedom of movement, and that could inflame tensions or incite conflict”. The diplomats avoided mentioning the Lista Srpska supporters directly, focusing more on a direct accusation against the Kurti government for the conduct of the elections, rather than a warning against the author of the conflicts, the Serb minority.
Belgrade’s long shadow
To understand how strong Belgrade’s influence in Kosovo is, it is necessary to look at the internal conflicts of the Serbian minority. In December, Serbian President Vučić threatened to boycott an important summit in Tirana regarding the Pristina government’s appointment of Nenad Rašić as Minister for Communities and Refugees’ Return. Rašić is a Serbian politician who founded the Democratic Progressive Party (Pdp), of which he was the only elected parliamentarian after joining various political formations. In northern Kosovo, the PDP is the only de facto rival (but with a negligible percentage of the vote) of Lista Srpska, whose leader, Goran Rakić, would be considered Vučić’s de facto representative. Rašić, on the other hand, is seen as a “moderate politician” (with several legal issues behind him), hostile to the current government in Belgrade, and has the trust of President Kurti. The problem is not limited to Kosovo, given the pressure exerted on the pro-Serb political parties of Montenegro, another state that decided to secede and declare independence from Belgrade after a referendum in 2006. Albania escalated tensions, though with less certainty, when Albanian prime minister Edi Rama said in 2021 that he would vote in favor of the unification of Albania and Kosovo if a future referendum on the issue were held. In this case, however, Kurti rowed on the boat, explaining that the referendum was part of a long process that was beyond his government’s control.
beyond nationalisms
Therefore, relations between Kosovars should not be read only through the lens of ethnic conflicts. Tatjana Lazarević, editor-in-chief of the Kossev portal in northern Mitrovica, in an interview with the BalcaniCaucaso portal, highlighted the inner power maneuvers underlying the ascent. “It was precisely the representatives of the Serbian List that pushed the Serbs in the north to join the Kosovo system after the 2013 elections, and then forced Serbs to vote for the Serbian List in every election,” he restructured. “In ten years in power, this party, with the support of the Belgrade government, through cooperation with the institutions of Pristina – a cooperation that ended with the coming to power of Albin Kurti – managed to establish a control mechanism based on subordination and blackmail recruitment and civil servants, so that Serbs in the north, but also Ibar It weakens the democratic and civic potential of those living south of . Conflicts will therefore be functional to retain power, with “privileged groups, who see no problem in this collapse of democracy and freedom, continue to enjoy privileges, especially in terms of financial and social benefits”. A mural dedicated to Novak Djokovic was demolished overnight in the city of Orahovac (or Rahovec) in Kosovo’s Prizren Region. The work was part of the “Color in the Air” project, created by the “Amici Di Decani” organization together with the artist Derox, in places where the Serbian population lives. Some residents of the small town have previously told Radio Goraždevac that they consider Novak their hero.
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Source: Today IT
Karen Clayton is a seasoned journalist and author at The Nation Update, with a focus on world news and current events. She has a background in international relations, which gives her a deep understanding of the political, economic and social factors that shape the global landscape. She writes about a wide range of topics, including conflicts, political upheavals, and economic trends, as well as humanitarian crisis and human rights issues.
