Will Kosovo’s war ever end?
The country is doomed to a cycle of crises

BY TIM JUDAH
Tim Judah covers the Balkans for The Economist.

 He is the author of several books on Kosovo and the region.
timjudah1
January 3, 2023
North Mitrovica, Kosovo

There is a strict timetable to crises in Kosovo. It runs like this. First, after a disagreement between Serbia’s leader and Kosovo’s, a deadline is set by the Kosovo side to do this or that, or barricades are erected in Serbian-inhabited north Kosovo. The diplomats go into hyperdrive, harsh words are spoken, and the Serbian Army deploys to the border, making sure that clips of military convoys circulate on social media. Serbian nationalists fantasise that they are actually going to do something and Serbian tabloids froth that Kosovo-Albanians are about to wage war against their people.

At this point, parts of the Western media wake up and journalists, who never seem to clock that Nato has thousands of troops in Kosovo pledged to protect it from Serbia, think that it might invade. Then, deal done, the barricades come down until the next time.

Today, we are at the fag end of the latest cycle. The barricades which stood for 20 days have come down and everyone has gone home — but this time, it was a pretty close-run thing. The barricades were in fact trucks blocking the roads in some 14 places. Just over a week ago, as I visited one in the village of Rudare, a colleague pointed out a petrol tanker. People were not very happy about it, he said. It was full; if there were a violent incident, it could explode.

As we spoke, judges, teachers, doctors — in fact it seemed the entire haute bourgeoisie of Serbian north Kosovo — wandered up and down, chatting to friends and warming their hands on flaming braziers. Some were here because they wanted to be, others because their political appointee bosses had ordered them to be. Leaders of the main Kosovo Serb party were here too. At one point, a car zoomed up and four masked young men jumped out and strode off purposefully. In the nearby divided town of Mitrovica, where Serbs live in the north and Albanians in the south, the north is festooned with Serbian flags and spray-painted with stencilled crests of something called the “Northern Brigade”. They read: “Don’t worry… We are waiting!” But who are they? A Serbian militia in waiting? No one knows for sure.

In hushed tones, residents tell me that, in the last year, 600 men have been sent for military training in Serbia. But there is no way to know, unless you start asking questions of people who would really not appreciate them, what is true and what is a misinformation spread by BIA, Serbia’s intelligence service, which is widely believed to hold the whip hand around here. Meanwhile, locals were queuing at cashpoints. With the barricades having closed the two border posts in the north, they were worried that banks would run out of cash.

A street in North Mitrovic

Ask people in north Mitrovica what they want and, at the end of the day, it is just a normal life — the type that no one here has enjoyed for more than a quarter of a century. But how likely is this? How to cut Kosovo’s Gordian Knot, which has left the fate of Serbs and Kosovo-Albanians (and Kosovo and Serbia) tied to one another? The Kosovo war ended in 1999, but still the diplomats and political leaders have been unable or unwilling to agree on a final framework for peaceful coexistence.

In the wake of Yugoslavia’s disintegration in the Nineties, Kosovo, Serbia’s southern province, remained locked within Serbia — even though its population was overwhelmingly ethnic Albanian, rejected Serbian rule and was repressed by Slobodan Milosevic, Serbia’s then leader who had stripped the province of its autonomy. Following the Kosovo war of 1998-99 between Kosovo-Albanian guerrillas and Serbia, and then Nato’s intervention, Kosovo became a UN protectorate. In 2008, it declared independence. This was recognised by most, but not all, Western countries, and rejected by Serbia, Russia and China among others. Kosovo’s Albanians argued they had the right to self-determination; Serbia argued that its territorial integrity trumped that, even though no one in Serbia actually wanted or wants to reintegrate a region full of hostile Albanians.

Of Kosovo’s population of 1.8 million, some 100,000-120,000 are Serbs. More than half live in central and south Kosovo, while the rest live in the north, a compact area abutting Serbia. Now, say local Serbs in the north, the tables have turned. Marko Jaksic, a lawyer and political activist from north Mitrovica, says that Albin Kurti, Kosovo’s prime minister, “is doing the same things as Milosevic during the Nineties, only we have changed sides.” It is the type of argument that makes Kosovo-Albanians incandescent with rage.

Jaksic and I were talking in the Number One, a hotel café a few hundred metres from the bridge over the Ibar which divides the city in two. He starts the conversation by pointing out that exactly 10 years ago I had asked him what the solution for Kosovo was, and that he had said that the border between Kosovo and Serbia was not “up there”, meaning north of where we were, but “on the bridge”. He believes that Kosovo should be partitioned. It is an idea which comes and goes like the tide. Until he went to The Hague in 2020 to answer charges of war crimes, Hashim Thaci, until then Kosovo’s president, and Serbia’s leader Aleksandar Vucic toyed with the idea, but key Western countries moved to quash it.

Nor was partition popular in Kosovo and Serbia. The problem was not north Kosovo, but rather the precedent. If north Kosovo returned to Serbia, then what about the Albanian-populated Presevo valley in Serbia or the Albanian-inhabited regions of North Macedonia or the Serb and Croat regions of Bosnia and Herzegovina? So, Pandora’s Box remains closed. How, then, can Kosovo-Serbs live normal lives in Kosovo, especially in the north?

The answer to this question is surprisingly simple. With political will there is no issue between Kosovo and Serbia, and between Serbs and Albanians, that cannot be resolved or at least fudged. The two sides have been talking in an EU-sponsored dialogue for more than a decade and plenty of agreements have been struck — even if they have not all been implemented.

The Russian invasion of Ukraine has also injected new vigour into negotiations, which are led by the EU’s Miroslav Lajcak, who is supported by Gabriel Escobar, an American diplomat. However, since June, they have been firefighting, tamping down crises over number plates, identity cards and now barricades. But they have a plan, supported by France and Germany, which could be the basis for a long-term settlement. The diplomats talk of the “two Germanies”, by which they mean that Serbia and Kosovo could live side-by-side (like the two Cold War Germanies did), not recognising one another officially but as independent states.

But this is only half of the equation. In return for de facto recognition, which means being treated like a neighbouring state by Serbia, Kosovo is expected to abide by a commitment it signed in 2013 by which Serbian municipalities in Kosovo could form some type of association, giving them effective autonomy in fields such as health and education. Kosovo’s constitutional court has rejected this and Kurti campaigned vigorously against it in opposition, but now the pressure is on from his Western backers to find a way to deliver it in one form or another.

The current crisis has set back the cause of normalisation badly. Serbs have resigned from parliament, from the judiciary and, in the north, from the Kosovo police force. They also resigned from local assemblies, which triggered elections for new ones which have now been postponed until April after electoral offices in the north were attacked. Tatjana Lazarevic, the editor of the KoSSev news site in the north, says that since the Serbs quit the police, Albanian members of the Kosovo police have been sent north and locals see them “100% as an occupation force”. She adds that Serbs in the north “didn’t want to integrate into Kosovo state… and neither do they want that today”. But if there is a normalisation deal between Kosovo and Serbia, she thinks, people will just live with it.

If that were the case, if there were a deal, what choice would Kosovo Serbs have? Kosovo’s north can be a dangerous place. If it is in Serbia’s interest to make a deal, dissent won’t be tolerated. This is a place where politics and organised crime overlap, even more so than everywhere else in the Balkans.

Despite the high-stakes game played with the barricades these last few weeks, it is not all doom and gloom. Lajcak told me: “Tensions have never been higher in 20 years; mistrust has never been deeper.” But Jeff Hovenier, the American ambassador to Kosovo, struck a more optimistic note. He told me that, while the ultimate goal was mutual recognition of Kosovo and Serbia, “which is unfortunately not possible right now, today’s challenges can still be overcome. If you see this agreement, this work as an interim step towards that… there are real possibilities.”

Ivan Vejvoda, a Serbian analyst and head of the Europe’s Futures programme of the Institute for Human Sciences in Vienna concurs. Despite the current stand-off, “both sides realise they need to do this, but they are still looking for a way in which they turn out to be the winning side, but there is no winner in this. Everyone will lose out on something — or rather, no one will get everything they want. But that’s exactly what compromise is about: to achieve a situation where one goes forward.” He then proceeded to list examples from Northern Ireland to the Faroe Islands to the Basque country to the South Tyrol where all manner of workable solutions for minority rights have been secured.

Beware the Northern Brigade: “We are waiting!”

Kurti himself thinks that Serbia remains uninterested in a compromise and Vucic says Serbia will never recognise Kosovo. Vucic still wants partition, Kurti said to me and talks as if he is “in search of a time machine… sometimes he wants to go back to 1999 and sometimes to 2007 [before Kosovo declared independence], but you know… the train has left the station. We cannot go back there anymore.” Many of the diplomats find Kurti stubborn and that has lost him some Western support, but his policy of playing hardball with Vucic has been delivering results. Vucic is on the backfoot and has had to concede on several issues in the past few months: on 15 December, Kurti applied for EU candidacy and has also finally secured a promise that Kosovo’s citizens will no longer require Schengen visas from 2024.

Yet amid all these technical solutions, a part of the problem — in fact, a very big part of the problem — is personal. A few years ago, I interviewed Hashim Thaci, who had been a leading member of the guerrilla Kosovo Liberation Army when Vucic had been a minister in Milosevic’s government. When the interview ended, he asked me: “Are you seeing Aleksandar?” At first, I drew a complete blank — then I realised he was talking about Vucic. There are no such first name term niceties nowadays. Vucic and Kurti despise one another. When Vucic was a minister, Kurti was a political prisoner in a Serbian jail; on 1 December, Vucic publicly called Kurti “terrorist scum”. The lack of any personal rapport makes finding a deal that much harder.

After leaving the Number One in north Mitrovica, Jaksic and I walked to the bridge over the Ibar as I was returning south to Pristina, Kosovo’s capital. You can walk across the bridge, though it has been barred to traffic since 1999. Jaksic told me that, as a court administrator for the unified court of Mitrovica, he and his Albanian colleagues had parted company with tears in their eyes but as friends when he, like all the Serbs in the court, had resigned when Serbs quit Kosovo’s institutions. There was no going back now, he thought. But then we laughed about whether I would still be asking him the same questions in 10 years’ time. If I were betting, I would say there was a 60-40 chance that I will be.

Arrested development: the unfinished church dividing Kosovo

Kosovars think the unfinished church in Pristina is a reminder of Kosovo's bloody past (AFP/Armend NIMANI)More

Ismet Hajdari and David Stout
Thu, December 2, 2021, 

At first glance, the half-built Orthodox church in the heart of Kosovo's capital seems little more than a napping spot for stray dogs splayed out in a patch of unkempt weeds near the padlocked entrance.

But for nearly three decades the hulking structure has cast a long shadow over Pristina, serving as a potent symbol of the unresolved dispute between Kosovo and Serbia.

"This church must be destroyed," Jahir Islami, a 77-year-old retiree, tells AFP, citing painful memories of Kosovo's bloody past when the land was divided along ethnic lines during years of violent unrest.


Disputes over religious sites remain simmering flashpoints between the bitter rivals since Kosovo declared independence in 2008 -- with Serbia still refusing to acknowledge the breakaway province's sovereignty.

Kosovo is home to some of the Serbian Orthodox Church's most revered monasteries, with many of the centuries-old churches now residing in largely ethnic Albanian towns where Islam predominates.

The fate of those churches and Kosovo's shrinking Serb minority has continued to thwart efforts to reach a deal between the two sides that have achieved little progress in recent years.

Unlike the storied Orthodox monasteries in the countryside, the unfinished church in Pristina belongs to a more recent and brutal history.

Former Serbian strongman Slobodan Milosevic facilitated its construction in the mainly Albanian city during a bloody crackdown on the community in Kosovo, which led to a brief but vicious war in the late 1990s that only ended after NATO intervention.

- Church and state -

"They did not only commit crimes against our bodies but also wanted to erase our history, to attack our identity, to implement their project of ethnic cleansing of Kosovo," Hajrulla Ceku, Kosovo's minister of culture, tells AFP.

Kosovo officials have long accused Belgrade of using the Orthodox Church as a proxy, with the clergy acting as emissaries on the ground carrying out Serbia's will.

Tensions have been steadily rising over the future status of Kosovo's Orthodox churches since the election of Prime Minister Albin Kurti in 2021.

The left-wing leader has since called for four Serbian Orthodox churches to be taken off the UNESCO World Heritage in Danger list.

The churches were listed as endangered following rioting in 2004 that saw mobs target Orthodox sites after unfounded rumours about Serbs murdering Albanian children sparked days of fighting that killed at least 19 people.

For years, NATO troops were positioned outside most of Kosovo's Orthodox establishments to prevent further violence.

But since then, religiously motivated attacks have declined, with NATO troops only guarding the picturesque Visoki Decani Monastery in western Kosovo.

"This is a very important indication that the situation is much better than in the past," said former NATO commander in Kosovo Franco Federici.

Other churches are guarded by special units made up of Kosovo police, but some establishments have no security at all.

- Tensions -

The progress, argues the Kosovo government, also supports their calls to be recognised by the UN as the sovereign party responsible for the four listed churches, instead of Serbia.

Serbian Orthodox officials refused to comment on the matter when contacted by AFP.

But Belgrade has roundly dismissed any such moves to change the status quo.

"They want to present Kosovo as an oasis of peace and Pristina as needing to look after and protect Serbian cultural treasures," said Petar Petkovic, the head of Serbia's office for Kosovo.

"It's a hypocritical act by Pristina and an attempt to deceive the international community," he added, saying more than 135 churches and monasteries have been destroyed since 1999.

Similar claims have been made on the Albanian side, who say more than 200 mosques were damaged or destroyed by Serb forces amid bouts of ethnic cleansing.

But even as Kosovo officials point to a drop in recent violence, hostilities are again rising in Pristina.

In June, members of the Serbian Orthodox Church held a rare liturgy service inside the unfinished church, triggering protests and vandalism including the scrawling of graffiti saying: "Jesus hates Serbs".

The church's future is being hashed out in the courts following years of litigation between Orthodox officials and the University of Pristina, where the structure resides.

Even as tensions flare again, many residents in Pristina say they do not want the church to be demolished but rather to serve as a memorial to help remember Kosovo's troubled past.

"Perhaps this facility can be transformed into a cultural facility and help to build trust between Albanians and Serbs," says Nexhmi Statovci, a 66-year-old retiree.

"Let's not ruin it but use it for positive rather than negative things."

ih-ev-ds/imm/ah

Serbia’s cunning Kosovo deflection

The key to understanding the violent conflicts in northern Kosovo lies not in the capital Pristina, but in Belgrade

DEMOCRACY AND SOCIETY 05.06.2023 | René Schlee

Reuters/ Laura Hasani

NATO Kosovo Force (KFOR) soldiers clash with local Kosovo Serb protesters at the entrance of the municipality office, in the town of Zvecan.

Once again, international attention is focused on violent clashes of the Serbian minority in northern Kosovo. But the key to understanding the current crisis lies not in Kosovo's capital Pristina, but in Belgrade. Faced with domestic political pressure, Serbia’s President Aleksandar Vučić is seeking escalation in the near abroad. This is a recurring pattern that runs counter to Western long-term interests in the region.

Last Monday, at least 30 soldiers were injured, some seriously, in clashes between NATO's KFOR task force and Serbian protesters in Zvecan. In an official press statement, NATO spoke of injuries resulting from homemade explosive devices and firearms. On Tuesday, the alliance then announced that it would send 700 additional soldiers to Kosovo. NATO had to intervene after the mayors of four municipalities in northern Kosovo – where Kosovo Serbs are in the majority – were prevented from accessing the town halls by protesters, and the Kosovo police was forced to use tear gas, among other means, to gain access.

A stricken chord in Serbia’s society

The attack on NATO soldiers is a new low point in the tense relations between Kosovo and Serbia. In Serbia, up to 60,000 people have been protesting repeatedly against President Vučić and his government for about three weeks. These are the largest protests in the country since the fall of former President Slobodan Milosevic. Initially, the protests were triggered by two acts of violence, which resulted in an unusually sudden escalation of the political situation.

In Belgrade, on 3 May, a 13-year-old student at a primary school murdered eight fellow students with a firearm. Several other pupils were injured and two others died from their injuries. The crime was committed with his father's gun. The following night, in the town of Mladenovac, near Belgrade, a 21-year-old man again murdered eight people when he fired from a moving car.

Beyond the parliamentary opposition, the desire for non-violence seems to strike a chord in Serbian society. Not since 2012, when he took office, has Vučić faced as much domestic political pressure as he does now. Since last week, however, the focus has not been on the protests but on what is happening in Kosovo.

Despite minimal voter turnout of less than five per cent, the Kosovar central government clung to the election results and swore in its winners.

The security situation in northern Kosovo has been fragile for months since the Kosovo Serbs – at Belgrade's behest – withdrew from Kosovo's state institutions (including the judiciary, police and government). They had resigned in protest over the dismissal of the Kosovo Serb police commander by the Kosovo central authorities in November 2022. This was preceded by a dispute over reciprocity measures in the recognition of car registration plates last year.

The current protests and riots are a product of the dysfunctional local elections that were supposed to be used to fill those posts. The elections had been boycotted by the Srpska Lista, a Belgrade-controlled party, on the grounds that a Serb municipal association (now a central point of contention in the Kosovo-Serbia dialogue) should be established first. Additionally, massive pressure was put on Kosovo Serbs not to vote in the election.

Despite minimal voter turnout of less than five per cent, the Kosovar central government clung to the election results and swore in its winners. This was followed by the protests and violent riots described above. From this constellation, one can see very clearly how the Serbian regime deliberately generates fragile security situations in nearby foreign countries (in addition to Kosovo, also in Bosnia and Herzegovina) to then – if necessary – activate them.

Barking up the wrong tree

However, if one follows the official statements of the US State Department and German representatives, the Kurti government is to blame for the renewed escalation. But this criticism is disproportionate as it ignores the actual agitator of the renewed crisis. The protests are not the actions of angry citizens gathering in spontaneously erupting, legitimate anger at the central government but a product of the instrumentalisation of the Serb minority by the Vučić regime.

As with the boycott of local elections in April, the full extent of Belgrade's social control in northern Kosovo through the Srpska Lista and other structures is evident. The architect of the fragile security situation in North Kosovo sits in Belgrade, not Pristina. One can certainly criticise the Kurti government for a lack of de-escalation. But to neither clearly name the actor of the escalation nor confront him seems strange.

It is also not entirely clear what Pristina could have done differently. The fact is that the local elections were held – after several postponements in favour of the Kosovo-Serbia dialogue – with the blessing of the international community. However, the boycott in the run-up to the elections, which was ultimately ordered by Belgrade, was not sufficiently criticised by the representatives of the QUINT states. The elections then resulted in the appointment of four mayors of Kosovar Albanian origin, three of whom were going about their official business in their respective town halls under police protection.

If anything, Pristina can be accused of missing an opportunity to let Serbia's provocation go nowhere, thus not giving Vučić an opportunity to set fire to Kosovo for internal political mobilisation.

Certainly, the Kurti government should have coordinated better with KFOR prior to the police operation last Friday. However, pointing out this possibility is all too cheap against the background of the last tensions at the end of last year and the international crisis management. At that time, KFOR – contrary to its mandate – did not intervene and refrained from clearing the roadblocks over a period of several weeks. Failure to intervene again would mean a declaration of bankruptcy on the part of the Kurti government and its own statehood. This is a classic scenario based on the motto: no matter how you do it, you do it wrong.

If anything, Pristina can be accused of missing an opportunity to let Serbia's provocation go nowhere, thus not giving Vučić an opportunity to set fire to Kosovo for internal political mobilisation. A clever sidestep would have helped Pristina to both sharpen the contrast with and keep the focus on the protests in Belgrade.

 
Abandoning naive Western objectives

As frustratingly unconstructive as the Kurti government may appear at times, one must not disregard the source of the conflict and the originator of the current tensions, despite all justified criticism of the crisis management. The timing of the riots, in addition to extensive publicly documented operational links between Belgrade and semi-professional thugs involved in the protests and previous militant actions, should provide sufficient information about the agitator and profiteer of the current situation. The fact that KFOR soldiers have now also been injured in the riots should make people sit up, take notice and call for a change in policy.

The current German and US policy in the Kosovo-Serbia conflict seems to follow the overriding objective of tying Serbia more closely to the Euro-Atlantic camp in view of the conflict with Russia. Given the destabilising role the Vučić regime plays by regularly instrumentalising Serbian minorities throughout the region – against the respective national governments or, in the case of Kosovo, against its statehood – this policy is at the very least short-sighted, if not naïve. The recent increase in the intensity of Belgrade's ’escalate-to-de-escalate’ strategy suggests the need for a change of policy that clearly identifies and more decisively confronts the antagonism in Serbian foreign policy.

The scale of the protests in Serbia shows the extent of the Serbs' dissatisfaction with the government and the de-democratisation of the country. The desire for change and for a re-democratisation of a system that has long since slipped into autocracy is all too clear. The international community should therefore not follow the diversionary tactics in Kosovo but turn its attention to the domestic situation in Serbia. In doing so, it should also seek dialogue with the protesters on their demands.

Kosovo's indicted president withdraws from White House talks

© Provided by The Canadian Press

PRISTINA, Kosovo — Kosovo's president pulled out of a White House meeting with Serbian officials set for Saturday following his indictment on crimes against humanity and war crimes charges.

U.S. presidential envoy Richard Grenell, who invited Kosovar and Serbian officials to meet in Washington to jump start their stalled peace talks, tweeted that Kosovo President Hashim Thaci decided to postpone his trip to Washington.

Grenell wrote: "I respect his decision not to attend the discussions until the legal issues of those allegations are settle.”

The discussions will proceed and be led by Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic and Kosovo Prime Minister Avdullah Hoti, the U.S. envoy said. Grenell said.

Thaci and nine other former separatist fighters were indicted on a range of crimes against humanity and war crimes charges by a court investigating crimes against ethnic Serbs, Albanians and Roma during and after Kosovo’s 1998-99 independence war with Serbia.

The Kosovo Specialist Chambers said the indictment accuses them of being “criminally responsible for nearly 100 murders” of political opponents and Kosovar Albanian, Serb and Roma victims.

THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. AP’s earlier story follows below.

Kosovo’s president and nine other former separatist fighters were indicted on a range of crimes against humanity and war crimes charges, including murder, by a court investigating crimes against ethnic Serbs, Albanians and Roma during and after Kosovo’s 1998-99 independence war with Serbia.

A statement from a prosecutor of the Kosovo Specialist Chambers issued Wednesday said President Hashim Thaci and the others suspects “are criminally responsible for nearly 100 murders” of political opponents and Kosovar Albanian, Serb and Roma victims.

Other charges include enforced disappearance, persecution, and torture. Thaci commanded fighters in the Kosovo Liberation Army, or KLA, during the war.

The president's advisers did not immediately respond to requests for comment from The Associated Press. Before the indictment, Thaci planned to attend a White House meeting with Serbia’s leaders on Saturday aimed at securing a peace agreement between Serbia and Kosovo.

He already has left Kosovo, but it wasn't clear what the charges may mean for his trip to Washington.

Thaci, 52, was elected president in February 2016 and his term ends next year. He previously served as prime minister, deputy prime minister and foreign minister.

The indicted individuals also include Kadri Veseli, former parliament speaker and leader of the opposition Democratic Party of Kosovo. Thaci resigned as the party's leader when he became president, leaving the post to Veseli.

The indictment issued Wednesday was the first by the special tribunal based in The Hague. The court has been operating since 2015 and has questioned hundreds of witnesses. Kosovo’s prime minister resigned last year before he was questioned. Veseli also has been questioned, but not Thaci.

The indictment is being reviewed by a pretrial judge who will decide whether to confirm the charges, according to the statement.

The prosecutor filed the indictment following a lengthy investigation and it reflects his “determination that it can prove all of the charges beyond a reasonable doubt," the statement said.

The prosecutor also accused Thaci and Veseli of repeated efforts “to obstruct and undermine the work" of the tribunal.

“Thaci and Veseli are believed to have carried out a secret campaign to overturn the law creating the Court and otherwise obstruct the work of the Court in an attempt to ensure that they do not face justice,” the statement said.

“By taking these actions, Mr. Thaci and Mr. Veseli have put their personal interests ahead of the victims of their crimes, the rule of law, and all people of Kosovo,” it added.

Kosovo politicians resisted and resented the scrutiny of the war crimes court, repeatedly noting that Serb troops committed massacres and other atrocities during the war that went unpunished.

The 1998-1999 war left more than 10,000 dead and 1,641 are still unaccounted for. It ended after a 78-day NATO air campaign.

Kosovo is a former Serbian province that declared independence in 2008, a move Serbia does not recognize. Tensions between the two countries remain high. European Union-facilitated negotiations to normalize their relations started in March 2011 and has produced some 30 agreements, most of which were not observed.

The White House meeting was set to be the first talks between the two sides in 19 months.

——-
Semini reported from Tirana, Albania. Dusan Stojanovic contributed from Belgrade.
Zenel Zhinipotoku And Llazar Semini, The Associated Press

SEE https://plawiuk.blogspot.com/search?q=KOSOVO

Seeing the Forest for the Trees
Thesis on The Kosovo Crisis and the Crisis of Global Capitalism
(originally written May 1999, Bill Clinton set the stage for George W. to invade Afghanistan and Iraq for humanitarian purposes.)
http://plawiuk.blogspot.com/2005/01/war-whats-it-good-for-profit.html

CLINTON/NATO'HUMANITARIAN'WAR

Joe Biden's letters show new approach in Kosovo, Serbia

President Donald Trump participates in a signing ceremony and meeting with Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic (L) and the Kovovo Prime Minister Avdullah Hoti, in the Oval Office of the White House on September 4. 

Pool Photo by Anna Moneymaker/UPI | License Photo

WASHINGTON, Feb. 19 (UPI) -- With left-wing politician Albin Kurti elected prime minister of Kosovo last weekend, U.S. President Joe Biden has congratulated the heads of state of both Kosovo and Serbia for their independence days in letters revealing how his approach to the region will be different from that of his predecessor.

The letters, sent to honor Serbia's independence from the Ottoman Empire in 1804 and Kosovo's independence from Serbia in 2008, urged the normalization of relations between the two countries, which have struggled to move past animosities from the bloody war in the region in the 1990s. Although most Western countries recognize Kosovo, Serbia and its allies Russia and China have yet to recognize the new country -- a point of contention in the Balkans.

"We remain steadfast in our support for Serbia's goal of European integration and encourage you to continue taking the hard steps forward to reach that aim -- including instituting necessary reforms and reaching a comprehensive normalization agreement with Kosovo centered on mutual recognition," Biden wrote to Serbian President Aleksandar Vučić earlier this month.

Biden also encouraged Kosovo to move toward normalization with Serbia based on mutual recognition -- the crux of the problem between the two countries -- in a letter with a markedly different tone.

RELATED Kosovo, Serbia normalize economic relations

"On a personal note," Biden wrote to acting President Vjosa Osmani this week, "Kosovo continues to hold a special place for the Biden family, in honor of the time our late son Beau Biden spent working to ensure peace, justice and the rule of law for all the people of Kosovo."

The president's son spent time in Kosovo as a legal adviser for the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe after the war ended in 1999, leaving such an impact that the country named a main highway after him following his death in 2015.

Joe Biden also spent time in the Balkans as a senator and vice president. He last visited the region as vice president in 2016 in a final push for normalization between Kosovo and Serbia. During the trip, he attended the naming ceremony of the Joseph R. "Beau" Biden III Highway in Kosovo, where he told the country, "I believe in you" and "we love you."

RELATED Kosovo President Hashim Thaci says he will resign to face war crimes trial

In contrast, Biden's meeting with Serbian leaders in Belgrade the day before the highway ceremony was marred by the presence of hundreds of ultranationalist protesters who marched throughout the city shouting "Donald Trump." Biden's visit came about a month after Trump had been nominated as the Republican presidential candidate, garnering support from pro-Russia populists in the country.

The Trump administration showed more willingness to work with Serbia than most previous administrations, said Engjellushe Morina, a Balkans expert at the European Council on Foreign Relations. Trump officials asked what can the United States get out of the region, rather than the past U.S. position of asking what is it that the United States can do to help the region, she said.

Trump organized a much anticipated peace summit with Vučić and then Kosovo Prime Minister Avdullah Hoti in the White House to move forward peace negotiations in September, overseen by Trump's special presidential envoy for peace negotiations between the countries, Ambassador Richard Grenell.

RELATED COVID-19: Serbia arrests 71 in protest over handling of pandemic

But the meeting resulted in the signing of two documents that included no legally binding agreements, Morina said, largely focusing on economic issues and extraneously normalizing relations with Israel instead of establishing mutual recognition between the two countries.

"That agreement is very dubious in terms of the substance," said Florian Bieber, professor of Southeast European history and politics at the Centre for Southeast European Studies at the University of Graz. "Without really putting details on paper, it's not going to matter much."

Bieber said it seems Trump sent Grenell to the region to score an easy foreign policy win before he was up for re-election.

After the summit, Trump sent letters to Vučić and Hoti urging them to take more concrete steps toward normalization. Trump's letters showed less sympathy than Biden's to the Kosovo cause.

"I appreciate and share your steadfast commitment to ensuring the stability and peace of the Balkans and the world," Trump wrote to Hoti. "I look forward to continuing to strengthen the partnership between our nations and send my best wishes to you and the people of Kosovo."

Trump's note to Vučić read more warmly: "I am heartened by your tremendous courage in beginning to normalize economic relations with Kosovo," Trump wrote, "and look forward to continuing to create a safer, stronger and more prosperous region. Best wishes to you and the great people of Serbia."

Despite Kurti's belief that Grenell played a role in the demise of his first coalition, Kurti has said that he does not hold a grudge against the United States and immediately tweeted congratulations to Biden after his inauguration.

Although Vucic has not made a public statement responding to Biden's most recent letter, Serbia's Minister of Foreign Affairs Nikola Selaković said this week that if the United States and other countries expect Belgrade to recognize Kosovo, they will not find the answer they are hoping for in Serbia.

upi.com/7076788

SEE https://plawiuk.blogspot.com/search?q=KOSOVO

Seeing the Forest for the Trees
Thesis on The Kosovo Crisis and the Crisis of Global Capitalism
(originally written May 1999, Bill Clinton set the stage for George W. to invade Afghanistan and Iraq for humanitarian purposes.)
http://plawiuk.blogspot.com/2005/01/war-whats-it-good-for-profit.html

Kosovo: ‘fascist mobs’ guided by Serbia causing violence, says country’s PM

A soldier from the Nato-led peacekeeping force in Kosovo sets up a razor wire fence in front of a municipal building in Zvecan, Kosovo, on Wednesday. Photograph: Georgi Licovski/EPA

More than 30 Nato peacekeeping soldiers were injured in clashes on Monday after ethnic Albanian mayors took office

Shaun Walker in Bratislava and Lorenzo Tondo

THE GUARDIAN

Tue 30 May 2023 

Kosovo’s prime minister has blamed violence in the north of the country on “fascist mobs” controlled by the government of neighbouring Serbia, and said he had rejected a US request to relocate recently installed mayors out of their official offices.

More than 30 Nato peacekeeping soldiers were injured in clashes on Monday, prompting the alliance to announce it would send another 700 troops to the country. Serbia’s president Aleksandar Vučić put his country’s army on high combat alert.

The Nato peacekeeping mission, Kfor, said Italian and Hungarian peacekeepers were subjected to “unprovoked attacks and sustained trauma wounds with fractures and burns due to the explosion of incendiary devices”.


Kosovo clashes: Nato commander criticises ‘unacceptable’ attacks on troops

“Yesterday was very severe, we were very lucky that no life was lost,” Kosovo prime minister Albin Kurti told the Guardian by telephone from Pristina on Tuesday. He said “several” Nato peacekeepers were still in hospital.

Italy’s prime minister, Giorgia Meloni, called the attacks “unacceptable and irresponsible”.

The violence came after ethnic Albanian mayors took office in Serb-majority areas of northern Kosovo, after elections in April which Serbs boycotted. Kurti blamed Belgrade for orchestrating the boycott, which led to an extremely low turnout.


00:50Kosovo: Serb protesters throw teargas at Nato soldiers as internal frictions escalate – video

The area’s majority Serbs have never accepted Kosovo’s 2008 declaration of independence from Serbia, and consider Belgrade their capital more than two decades after the Kosovo Albanian uprising against repressive Serbian rule.

Ethnic Albanians make up more than 90% of the population in Kosovo, but northern Serbs have long demanded the implementation of an EU-brokered 2013 deal for the creation of an association of autonomous municipalities in their area.

The violence has been widely condemned, but western allies of Kosovo have also sharply criticised the government in Pristina for the decision to install the mayors.

On Friday, the US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, issued an unusually strong rebuke to a US ally, saying the decision to use force to access municipal buildings in the north had been taken “against the advice” of the US and European partners and had “sharply and unnecessarily escalated tensions”.

Kurti expressed his displeasure at the statement, calling it “appeasement” of Vučić.

“I think it’s not just unfair and wrong and hurtful but at the same time very naive,” said Kurti, speaking to the Guardian by telephone from Pristina. “Perhaps secretary Blinken will explain this further one day, but definitely it was not helpful.”


Since then, Kurti said he had spoken to Gabriel Escobar, the US special envoy for the Balkans. He said Escobar had asked the Kosovan authorities to move the mayors to different premises, or to have them work from home, a request he had rejected.

“We cannot have Zoom mayors, we are a democratic republic,” said Kurti. “A democratic republic cannot surrender to fascist militia,” he added.

In a sign of how much the recent events have damaged the relationship between Washington and Pristina, the US ambassador to Kosovo, Jeff Hovenier, told the Financial Times on Tuesday that the US will cancel joint military drills with Kosovo and put diplomatic meetings on hold.

“I would be surprised if, in this situation, Kosovo officials would visit the US,” Hovenier said.

Kurti insisted that the new mayors would continue to work from municipal offices.

“These are administrative, technical mayors who are necessary for smooth functioning of municipalities … I acknowledge that the political legitimacy of these mayors is low, however the legitimacy of others is zero,” he said.

Kosovo has been backed strongly by the west, but non-recognition by Russia, China and even five of the 27 EU nations has meant it has not been able to take up a seat at the UN or most other international organisations.

A deal signed earlier this year, mediated by the EU, foresaw Kosovo granting rights to Serb municipalities in the north and Belgrade agreeing to Kosovo’s accession to international institutions, but the recent violence shows that there is still a long way to go to implement the agreement.

On Tuesday, the Nato secretary general, Jens Stoltenberg, told a press conference in Oslo that the alliance would send additional troops to Kosovo.

“We have decided to deploy 700 more troops from the operational reserve force for western Balkans and to put an additional battalion of reserve forces on high alertness so they can also be deployed if needed,” he said.

Key U.S. Ally Indicted for

Organ Trade Murder Scheme

by NICOLAS J S DAVIES JULY 7,2020

Photograph Source: Andrew Milligan sumo – CC BY 2.0

When President Clinton dropped 23,000 bombs on what was left of Yugoslavia in 1999 and NATO invaded and occupied the Yugoslav province of Kosovo, U.S. officials presented the war to the American public as a “humanitarian intervention” to protect Kosovo’s majority ethnic Albanian population from genocide at the hands of Yugoslav president Slobodan Milosevic. That narrative has been unraveling piece by piece ever since.

In 2008 an international prosecutor, Carla Del Ponte, accused U.S.-backed Prime Minister Hashim Thaci of Kosovo of using the U.S. bombing campaign as cover to murder hundreds of people to sell their internal organs on the international transplant market. Del Ponte’s charges seemed almost too ghoulish to be true. But on June 24th, Thaci, now President of Kosovo, and nine other former leaders of the CIA-backed Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA,) were finally indicted for these 20-year-old crimes by a special war crimes court at The Hague.

From 1996 on, the CIA and other Western intelligence agencies covertly worked with the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) to instigate and fuel violence and chaos in Kosovo. The CIA spurned mainstream Kosovar nationalist leaders in favor of gangsters and heroin smugglers like Thaci and his cronies, recruiting them as terrorists and death squads to assassinate Yugoslav police and anyone who opposed them, ethnic Serbs and Albanians alike.

As it has done in country after country since the 1950s, the CIA unleashed a dirty civil war that Western politicians and media dutifully blamed on Yugoslav authorities. But by early 1998, even U.S. envoy Robert Gelbard called the KLA a “terrorist group” and the UN Security Council condemned “acts of terrorism” by the KLA and “all external support for terrorist activity in Kosovo, including finance, arms and training.” Once the war was over and Kosovo was successfully occupied by U.S. and NATO forces, CIA sources openly touted the agency’s role in manufacturing the civil war to set the stage for NATO intervention.

By September 1998, the UN reported that 230,000 civilians had fled the civil war, mostly across the border to Albania, and the UN Security Council passed resolution 1199, calling for a ceasefire, an international monitoring mission, the return of refugees and a political resolution. A new U.S. envoy, Richard Holbrooke, convinced Yugoslav President Milosevic to agree to a unilateral ceasefire and the introduction of a 2,000 member “verification” mission from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE). But the U.S. and NATO immediately started drawing up plans for a bombing campaign to “enforce” the UN resolution and Yugoslavia’s unilateral ceasefire.

Holbrooke persuaded the chair of the OSCE, Polish foreign minister Bronislaw Geremek, to appoint William Walker, the former U.S. Ambassador to El Salvador during its civil war, to lead the Kosovo Verification Mission (KVM). The U.S. quickly hired 150 Dyncorp mercenaries to form the nucleus of Walker’s team, whose 1,380 members used GPS equipment to map Yugoslav military and civilian infrastructure for the planned NATO bombing campaign. Walker’s deputy, Gabriel Keller, France’s former Ambassador to Yugoslavia, accused Walker of sabotaging the KVM, and CIA sources later admitted that the KVM was a “CIA front” to coordinate with the KLA and spy on Yugoslavia.

The climactic incident of CIA-provoked violence that set the political stage for the NATO bombing and invasion was a firefight at a village called Racak, which the KLA had fortified as a base from which to ambush police patrols and dispatch death squads to kill local “collaborators.” In January 1999, Yugoslav police attacked the KLA base in Racak, leaving 43 men, a woman and a teenage boy dead.

After the firefight, Yugoslav police withdrew from the village, and the KLA reoccupied it and staged the scene to make the firefight look like a massacre of civilians. When William Walker and a KVM team visited Racak the next day, they accepted the KLA’s massacre story and broadcast it to the world, and it became a standard part of the narrative to justify the bombing of Yugoslavia and military occupation of Kosovo.

Autopsies by an international team of medical examiners found traces of gunpowder on the hands of nearly all the bodies, showing that they had fired weapons. They were nearly all killed by multiple gunshots as in a firefight, not by precise shots as in a summary execution, and only one victim was shot at close range. But the full autopsy results were only published much later, and the Finnish chief medical examiner accused Walker of pressuring her to alter them.

Two experienced French journalists and an AP camera crew at the scene challenged the KLA and Walker’s version of what happened in Racak. Christophe Chatelet’s article in Le Monde was headlined, “Were the dead in Racak really massacred in cold blood?” and veteran Yugoslavia correspondent Renaud Girard concluded his story in Le Figaro with another critical question, “Did the KLA seek to transform a military defeat into a political victory?”

NATO immediately threatened to bomb Yugoslavia, and France agreed to host high-level talks. But instead of inviting Kosovo’s mainstream nationalist leaders to the talks in Rambouillet, Secretary Albright flew in a delegation led by KLA commander Hashim Thaci, until then known to Yugoslav authorities only as a gangster and a terrorist.

Albright presented both sides with a draft agreement in two parts, civilian and military. The civilian part granted Kosovo unprecedented autonomy from Yugoslavia, and the Yugoslav delegation accepted that. But the military agreement would have forced Yugoslavia to accept a NATO military occupation, not just of Kosovo but with no geographical limits, in effect placing all of Yugoslavia under NATO occupation.

When Milosevich refused Albright’s terms for unconditional surrender, the U.S. and NATO claimed he had rejected peace, and war was the only answer, the “last resort.” They did not return to the UN Security Council to try to legitimize their plan, knowing full well that Russia, China and other countries would reject it. When UK Foreign Secretary Robin Cook told Albright the British government was “having trouble with our lawyers” over NATO’s plan for an illegal war of aggression against Yugoslavia, she told him to “get new lawyers.”

In March 1999, the KVM teams were withdrawn and the bombing began. Pascal Neuffer, a Swiss KVM observer reported, “The situation on the ground on the eve of the bombing did not justify a military intervention. We could certainly have continued our work. And the explanations given in the press, saying the mission was compromised by Serb threats, did not correspond to what I saw. Let’s say rather that we were evacuated because NATO had decided to bomb.”

NATO killed thousands of civilians in Kosovo and the rest of Yugoslavia, as it bombed 19 hospitals, 20 health centers, 69 schools, 25,000 homes, power stations, a national TV station, the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade and other diplomatic missions. After it invaded Kosovo, the U.S. military set up the 955-acre Camp Bondsteel, one of its largest bases in Europe, on its newest occupied territory. Europe’s Human Rights Commissioner, Alvaro Gil-Robles, visited Camp Bondsteel in 2002 and called it “a smaller version of Guantanamo,” exposing it as a secret CIA black site for illegal, unaccountable detention and torture.

But for the people of Kosovo, the ordeal was not over when the bombing stopped. Far more people had fled the bombing than the so-called “ethnic cleansing” the CIA had provoked to set the stage for it. A reported 900,000 refugees, nearly half the population, returned to a shattered, occupied province, now ruled by gangsters and foreign overlords.

Serbs and other minorities became second-class citizens, clinging precariously to homes and communities where many of their families had lived for centuries. More than 200,000 Serbs, Roma and other minorities fled, as the NATO occupation and KLA rule replaced the CIA’s manufactured illusion of ethnic cleansing with the real thing. Camp Bondsteel was the province’s largest employer, and U.S. military contractors also sent Kosovars to work in occupied Afghanistan and Iraq. In 2019, Kosovo’s per capita GDP was only $4,458, less than any country in Europe except Moldova and war-torn, post-coup Ukraine.

In 2007, a German military intelligence report described Kosovo as a “Mafia society,” based on the “capture of the state” by criminals. The report named Hashim Thaci, then the leader of the Democratic Party, as an example of “the closest ties between leading political decision makers and the dominant criminal class.” In 2000, 80% of the heroin trade in Europe was controlled by Kosovar gangs, and the presence of thousands of U.S. and NATO troops fueled an explosion of prostitution and sex trafficking, also controlled by Kosovo’s new criminal ruling class.

In 2008, Thaci was elected Prime Minister, and Kosovo unilaterally declared independence from Serbia. (The final dissolution of Yugoslavia in 2006 had left Serbia and Montenegro as separate countries.) The U.S. and 14 allies immediately recognized Kosovo’s independence, and ninety-seven countries, about half the countries in the world, have now done so. But neither Serbia nor the UN have recognized it, leaving Kosovo in long-term diplomatic limbo.

When the court in the Hague unveiled the charges against Thaci on June 24th, he was on his way to Washington for a White House meeting with Trump and President Vucic of Serbia to try to resolve Kosovo’s diplomatic impasse. But when the charges were announced, Thaci’s plane made a U-turn over the Atlantic, he returned to Kosovo and the meeting was canceled.

The accusation of murder and organ trafficking against Thaci was first made in 2008 by Carla Del Ponte, the Chief Prosecutor of the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTFY), in a book she wrote after stepping down from that position. Del Ponte later explained that the ICTFY was prevented from charging Thaci and his co-defendants by the non-cooperation of NATO and the UN Mission in Kosovo. In an interview for the 2014 documentary, The Weight of Chains 2, she explained, “NATO and the KLA, as allies in the war, couldn’t act against each other.”

Human Rights Watch and the BBC followed up on Del Ponte’s allegations, and found evidence that Thaci and his cronies murdered up to 400 mostly Sebian prisoners during the NATO bombing in 1999. Survivors described prison camps in Albania where prisoners were tortured and killed, a yellow house where people’s organs were removed and an unmarked mass grave nearby.

Council of Europe investigator Dick Marty interviewed witnesses, gathered evidence and published a report, which the Council of Europe endorsed in January 2011, but the Kosovo parliament did not approve the plan for a special court in the Hague until 2015. The Kosovo Specialist Chambers and independent prosecutor’s office finally began work in 2017. Now the judges have six months to review the prosecutor’s charges and decide whether the trial should proceed.

A central part of the Western narrative on Yugoslavia was the demonization of President Milosevich of Yugoslavia, who resisted his country’s Western-backed dismemberment throughout the 1990s. Western leaders smeared Milosevich as a “New Hitler” and the “Butcher of the Balkans,” but he was still arguing his innocence when he died in a cell at The Hague in 2006.

Ten years later, at the trial of the Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic, the judges accepted the prosecution’s evidence that Milosevich strongly opposed Karadzic’s plan to carve out a Serb Republic in Bosnia. They convicted Karadzic of being fully responsible for the resulting civil war, in effect posthumously exonerating Milosevich of responsibility for the actions of the Bosnian Serbs, the most serious of the charges against him.

But the U.S.’s endless campaign to paint all its enemies as “violent dictators” and “New Hitlers” rolls on like a demonization machine on autopilot, against Putin, Xi, Maduro, Khamenei, the late Fidel Castro and any foreign leader who stands up to the imperial dictates of the U.S. government. These smear campaigns serve as pretexts for brutal sanctions and catastrophic wars against our international neighbors, but also as political weapons to attack and diminish any U.S. politician who stands up for peace, diplomacy and disarmament.

As the web of lies spun by Clinton and Albright has unraveled, and the truth behind their lies has spilled out piece by bloody piece, the war on Yugoslavia has emerged as a case study in how U.S. leaders mislead us into war. In many ways, Kosovo established the template that U.S. leaders have used to plunge our country and the world into endless war ever since. What U.S. leaders took away from their “success” in Kosovo was that legality, humanity and truth are no match for CIA-manufactured chaos and lies, and they doubled down on that strategy to plunge the U.S. and the world into endless war.

As it did in Kosovo, the CIA is still running wild, fabricating pretexts for new wars and unlimited military spending, based on sourceless accusations, covert operations and flawed, politicized intelligence. We have allowed American politicians to pat themselves on the back for being tough on “dictators” and “thugs,” letting them settle for the cheap shot instead of tackling the much harder job of reining in the real instigators of war and chaos: the U.S. military and the CIA.

But if the people of Kosovo can hold the CIA-backed gangsters who murdered their people, sold their body parts and hijacked their country accountable for their crimes, is it too much to hope that Americans can do the same and hold our leaders accountable for their far more widespread and systematic war crimes?

Iran recently indicted Donald Trump for the assassination of General Qassem Soleimani, and asked Interpol to issue an international arrest warrant for him. Trump is probably not losing sleep over that, but the indictment of such a key U.S. ally as Thaci is a sign that the U.S. “accountabilty-free zone” of impunity for war crimes is finally starting to shrink, at least in the protection it provides to U.S. allies. Should Netanyahu, Bin Salman and Tony Blair be starting to look over their shoulders?

More articles by:NICOLAS J S DAVIES

Nicolas J S Davies is the author of Blood On Our Hands: the American Invasion and Destruction of Iraq and of the chapter on “Obama At War” in Grading the 44th President: A Report Card on Barack Obama’s First Term as a Progressive Leader.

The West’s ‘see no evil’ approach to Serbia’s Vucic is destabilizing the Balkans

Analysis by Christian Edwards, CNN
Sun, August 13, 2023 

When Russia invaded Ukraine, the United States and European Union accelerated their pivot towards Serbia. Rather than juggling the contradictory demands of pluralistic and fractious Balkan states, Western capitals focused the bulk of their efforts on a singular target.

Their policies had two aims. First, to bring Serbia into the Western fold, away from Russia. Second, to allow their respective administrations to focus more fully on supporting Ukraine.

Traditionally one of Moscow’s closest allies in Europe, Belgrade has long tried to tread the line between its historical ties to Russia and a potential future of closer European integration. Western diplomats have sought to pull Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic from the orbit of his Russian counterpart, President Vladimir Putin, by pledging a swifter path to EU membership while simultaneously warning of isolation if they break rank.

But, 18 months on, some observers say the current approach has been all carrot and no stick, and as a result is failing to achieve both of its aims.

Serbia has refused to participate in all rounds of EU sanctions against Putin. And Serbia has continued to pursue its own interests in the region with diminishing accountability, stirring conflicts abroad to distract from discontent at home, safe in the knowledge they will not be rebuked in the West.

The effects of this have been felt most keenly in Kosovo, which achieved independence from Serbia in 2008, after the bloody Balkan wars of the 1990s. But Belgrade – and many ethnic Serbs in Kosovo’s north – still refuse to recognize its sovereignty, straining relations between the neighbors.

CNN spoke with several experts, as well as locals in Serbia and the north of Kosovo, who are rankled by US and EU attempts to court Serbia into the Euro-Atlantic community, and contend that their continued pursuit of the policy risks alienating democratic allies and increasing security concerns in the region.

A Kosovar local waves a US flag as thousands celebrated the announcement of the independence of Kosovo, in February 2008. - Daniel Mihailescu/AFP/Getty Images/File
‘A Russian Trojan horse’

Western governments have long treated Serbia as the indispensable Balkan voice, sometimes at the expense of more peripheral players, some observers say.

“Their belief is that Serbia is the Balkan state, as they see it. Serbia is the one that, if you can bring them on side – whatever that might mean – everything will be easier,” Jasmin Mujanovic, a political scientist specializing in the Western Balkans, told CNN.

While consecutive US administrations have tried to bring Vucic and his Serbian Progressive Party (SNS) “in from the cold,” these efforts “have become especially brazen” since the war began in Ukraine, Mujanovic said, and have not achieved the US’ objectives.

“They seem to believe that they are bringing Serbia closer towards the EU and towards NATO and towards Western thinking and away from Russia… But that isn’t something I would say is being reflected on the ground,” Alicia Kearns, a British lawmaker and chair of the parliamentary Foreign Affairs Select Committee, told CNN.

Vucic has long maintained a cozy relationship with his Russian counterpart, Putin. Speaking after a National Security Council meeting in February, Vucic justified his decision not to sanction Russia because it was “the only country not to have imposed sanctions against us in the 1990s.”

“They supported our territorial integrity in the United Nations,” he added, referring to Russia’s refusal to recognize Kosovo’s independence. Serbia lost control of Kosovo after a NATO bombing campaign in 1999, which ended the massacre of ethnic Albanians – who make up more than 90% of Kosovo’s population – by Serb forces.

Serbia's Aleksandar Vucic, left, and Kosovo's Prime Minister Albin Kurti, right, at an EU-facilitated meeting in Brussels, Belgium, on May 2, 2023. - EU Council/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images

Despite EU-supported efforts toward energy transition, Serbia remains heavily dependent on Russia, having sold a majority stake of its oil company to Russia state-owned giant Gazprom.

The result is that, despite Serbia’s professed hopes to join the EU, Vucic has continued to walk a tightrope between Moscow and western powers. Though he has joined UN resolutions condemning Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Serbia’s leader has shown little willingness to join western sanctions.

In April, the Serbian government denied reports that it sold weapons and ammunition to Ukraine, after a leaked Pentagon document emerged claiming otherwise. Serbia said at the time that it maintained its policy of neutrality, though some Western officials took the reports as proof that their policy was working.

Several analysts told CNN that Serbia has had to do very little to win praise from American and European officials, and that in reality Vucic has left a trail of broken promises.

“When we had his [Vucic’s 2020] re-election, we were all told, just wait until after the election, you’ll suddenly see that he becomes very Western- and European- oriented,” said Kearns. “It didn’t happen.”

“We were told he would join sanctions and show that he is genuinely on our side. It didn’t happen. We were told he wouldn’t get closer to Russia. He signed a security agreement with Putin in September. Time after time, he laughs in the face of the West. And when I ask Western officials, ‘why are you so determined to let Vucic play you?’ they say he is the best option,” said Kearns.

Kearns has been one of the few Western figures to criticize Serbia publicly. But it has come at a cost. After she spoke to CNN, Vucic issued an apparent threat to her during an address on state television, claiming that “if the government of Great Britian is not willing to react” to her criticisms of Serbia, “We will be forced to react.”

Given such behavior, some question whether the whole project of Serbian integration is viable, under its current government.

“Assuming we somehow miraculously bring Serbia into the EU, with this sort of regime, you are practically bringing another Russian Trojan horse into the EU, like you have in the shape of [Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor] Orban,” Majda Ruge, a Balkan expert at the European Council on Foreign Relations, told CNN.

“Yes, you may affect enlargement, but you’re certainly not going to neutralize Russian influence in the region – you’re just going to import it into the EU.”
Kosovo and the rule of law

The effects of the West’s forgiving approach to Belgrade are felt most keenly in Kosovo, which has depended on Western support since declaring independence. While more than 100 countries recognize its sovereignty, Serbia does not, viewing it instead as a breakaway state. Attempts to normalize relations between the two countries – overseen by the US and EU – have been fraught and occasionally violent.

The fiercest flashpoint came after mayoral elections Kosovo’s four northern municipalities in May. These elections often pass without fanfare: Around 90% of the population in this region are ethnic Serbs, and so, under ordinary circumstances, they elect ethnic Serbs as their mayors.

But these were not ordinary circumstances. In November, mayors from the Belgrade-backed Serb List party, which dominates the four municipalities, simultaneously resigned. They were followed by ethnic Serb police officers, administrative staff and judges in the region.

Their resignations triggered new elections, due to be held in December. Serb List said it would not participate in the elections, after Serbs in the region boycotted them, with Vucic’s full support. But, given the tensions, Kosovo agreed to postpone the elections until April – a decision that was praised by the Quint, an informal group comprising the US, UK, France, Germany and Italy.

With Kosovo Serbs not participating, ethnic Albanian candidates ran unchallenged. Election officials said only around 1,500 people voted across the four municipalities – a turnout of just 3.5%. Some mayors were elected with scarcely more than 100 votes.

But while the elections were by no means representative, for Kosovo’s Prime Minister Albin Kurti, the issue had come to represent nothing less than the rule of law itself.

“We have four mayors whose legitimacy is low. But, nonetheless, there is no one who is more legitimate than them. We have to have the rule of law. We are a democratic republic,” Kurti told CNN in May.

However, the prime minister’s stance has been criticized as hardline and uncompromising. His allies accused him of forcing entry to the mayor’s offices on May 26, when many were surrounded by protesters, against explicit instructions.

“The US did tell Kurti – and this is where he’s at fault – they told him not to install them in the municipal buildings. And this is where Kurti ignored the specific direction,” said Edward Joseph, a foreign policy lecturer at Johns Hopkins University who served for a dozen years in the Balkans, including with NATO.

A Pristina government official told CNN that they did not want to “surrender” official government buildings to protesters. “The mayors entered their offices… Serbia had urged Serbs to boycott the elections. Now they wanted no one to enter those buildings. But then, the question is: If the mayors should not enter the building, who should?”

But while Kurti may have taken an uncoordinated action, the response to this was not inevitable. The worst of the violence came not on the day the mayors entered their offices, but three days later, in the town of Zvecan – when the mayor was not even in the building.

The violence was extreme. Dozens of NATO peacekeepers were injured after they were attacked by ethnic Serbs. Some injuries were severe: Three Hungarian soldiers were shot; one had his leg amputated.

Kurti told CNN these were not “peaceful protesters,” but a “fascist militia” known to operate in Kosovo’s north, “who are being paid and ordered by Belgrade.”

The Serbian government did not respond to multiple requests for comment.

NATO peacekeepers clash with local Kosovo Serb protesters in Zvecan, May 29, 2023. - Laura Hasani/Reuters

Others agree with Kurti. Kearns told CNN that British troops stationed in Kosovo had found “weapons caches hidden in churches and ambulances by Serb militia in the north of Kosovo. We heard about grenades outside people’s doorsteps if they refuse to support Serb militia.”

Despite this, much of the diplomatic response has focused on Kurti’s actions, for which Kosovo has paid a heavy price. Since the fallout from the elections, Kosovo has been disinvited from joint military exercises with the US, excluded from European infrastructure projects and slapped with sanctions that the Kosovar Business Alliance says could cost its economy €500 million ($550 million) by the end of this year.

Kearns criticized the “unbalanced” response from the West, saying it ignored the true cause of the troubles. “The start of the crisis was the Serbian government committing foreign interference in domestic Kosovar affairs, where they told Kosovar Serbs not to vote in the local elections. That is foreign interference,” she said.

Kurti has tried to proclaim Kosovo’s sovereignty against the twin forces of foreign interference and organized violence, to which, according to Mujanovic, the US and EU have responded: “No. That is not appropriate in these circumstances.”
‘The Zelensky of the Balkans’

Given Kosovo’s reliance on Western backing, some fear Kurti’s intransigence is frustrating his allies and weakening his country. Some are calling for a complete change of tack.

“He’s trying to be the Zelensky of the Balkans,” Shqiprim Arifi, mayor of the southern Serbian region of Presevo, told CNN. “He is using rhetorically, and in a populist way, the argumentation of the rule of law. He wants to be the Zelensky of the Albanians.”

Serbia’s Presevo Valley represents the flipside of the north of Kosovo. Whereas Kosovo’s north is populated mostly by ethnic Serbs in an Albanian-majority country, the Presevo Valley is populated mostly by ethnic Albanians in a Serb-majority country.

The best way to improve the situation, Arifi said, is for Kurti to do as Western allies demand: Work to create as “Association of Serb Municipalities” (ASM) in the north of Kosovo.

Kosovo Prime Minister Albin Kurti during an interview at his office in Pristina, August 24, 2022. - Ben Kilb/Bloomberg/Getty Images/File

Kurti has been accused of preventing the implementation of self-governing municipalities for Serbs, as outlined in the 2013 Brussels Agreement aimed at normalizing relations between the Balkan neighbors. Under the agreement, Serbia could create the ASM in northern Kosovo, which would operate under Kosovo’s legal system, with Kosovar police remaining the only law enforcement authority.

A decade on, these municipalities have not been created, leaving disputes to fester over the degree of autonomy for Kosovo Serbs.

But there are doubts as to whether this solution – now being forcefully pushed by the US and EU – will ease tensions.

“Trust me, it won’t be the best solution,” Dusan, a Serb living in Leposavic municipality, told CNN. “Maybe, in the first couple of months, it will be a relief. Maybe, ‘Oh look, we finally got something.”

But it would be a false dawn. “From an economic aspect, our lives will not be improved, but it will be worse,” he said, since residents would have to start paying for services and taxes currently covered by Kosovo’s government. CNN is withholding Dusan’s real name, since he feared that his comments could affect his livelihood.

There are also concerns that the ASM could beckon more geopolitical tensions.

“We don’t know what these municipalities will be,” said Kearns. “Will it just be that the local municipalities are responsible for their own water and electricity and taxes? Or is it that it is going to be a new Republika Srpska? The reality is, I don’t think anyone wants another Republika Srpska.”

Republika Srpska, one of the two entities comprising Bosnia and Herzegovina, proclaimed independence in 1992 and was formally recognized under the Dayton Agreement of 1995. In recent months, its pro-Russian President Milorad Dodik has tried to pave the way for its secession from Bosnia.

Republika Srpska President Milorad Dodik at his office in Banja Luka, Bosnia and Herzegovina, January 19, 2022. - Oliver Bunic/Bloomberg/Getty Images

In June, Republika Srpska lawmakers voted to suspend rulings by Bosnia’s constitutional court, in a move described by experts as “legal secession” and a grave contravention of the Dayton Agreement. The US condemned the move, saying it threatened Bosnia’s sovereignty.

“The folks in Pristina and Kurti have made it very, very clear that they see in the autonomous municipalities a new Republika Srpska. And they don’t see in that model a solution for Kosovo. They see a new version, a new generation of crisis for Kosovo, and ultimately the region as a whole,” said Mujanovic.
The wrong horse?

Throughout the recent months of tensions, the US and EU have continually reiterated their commitment to the cause of bringing Vucic on side. But Serbia has acted with increasing abandon, representing what Kearns called “a failure of deterrence diplomacy.”

One damaging episode came in Ohrid, North Macedonia, in March when, after months of negotiations brokered by the US and EU, Serbia and Kosovo finally accepted a bilateral agreement aimed at normalizing relations between the two countries. But, while this was heralded as a breakthrough, Vucic left the negotiations without having signed the document, claiming in a TV address that he was unable to do so: “I have excruciating pain in my right hand… that pain is expected to continue for four years.”

Vucic speaking at Ohrid, North Macedonia, March 18, 2023. - Boris Grdanoski/AP

Another came when Serbian authorities detained three Kosovo police officers, which it claimed were “deep inside the territory of central Serbia” and preparing to commit “an act of terrorism.” But Kosovo insisted that the officers had been “kidnapped” within Kosovo’s borders and that Serbia had committed and “act of aggression.”

The US and EU were slow to respond to this incident. KFOR, NATO’s Kosovo Force, issued a statement 48 hours after the officers were reported missing. The US issued a statement three days later, claiming that the arrests were made on “spurious charges.”

Joseph told CNN that the Serbian account of events was hard to believe – and that the wording of the US statement suggested their officials likely weren’t buying it, either. “If the US were genuinely unsure about whether the Kosovo police were in Serbia, then why use such a categorical term [as “spurious”], which pre-empts the purview and judgement of the Serbian court?”

And yet Serbia was not punished for the detentions. The officers’ release was secured two weeks later – not by Western allies, but by Viktor Oban.

After such episodes, Joseph told CNN that the “see no evil” approach to Vucic’s regime may be starting to crack.

“The question here is: Who in the Biden administration still believes that Vucic is this partner?” he said, pointing to the recent sanctioning of Aleksandar Vulin, director of Serbia’s intelligence service, as evidence that the Biden administration “is no longer captive to fear and illusion about Vucic.”

But whether this translates into a change of policy is unclear.

Red Star fans display a tifo with the Serbian flag, a tank T-84 and an inflammatory message, July 26, 2023. - BETAPHOTO/SIPA/Shutterstock

In the meantime, Vucic has raised the stakes. In response to the sanctioning of Vulin, Vucic banned arms exports from Serbia for 30 days, claiming “everything must be prepared in case of aggression against the Republic of Serbia.”

“He’s basically saying ‘we’re going to go into conflict, we have to stop all of the weapon exports right now, because we need it for our national security.’ He’s literally threatening war. I’ve never seen him so explicit before,” said Ruge of the ECFR.

And the president’s message has been taken up by some Serbian citizens. At Red Star Belgrade soccer match last month, nationalist Serb fans held up a banner reading “When the army returns to Kosovo.” Vucic attended the match, according to local media.

“The situation is clear who the bully of the Balkans still is,” Meliza Haradinaj, Kosovo’s former foreign minister, told CNN. “Time will prove that this ‘investment’ of appeasing Serbia will go in vain.”

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