OhN CAN 29when a Serbian mob attacked NATO troops guarding a town hall in Zvecan, in northern Kosovo, alarms sounded in chancelleries across Europe and in Washington. At least 80 people were injured, including 30 NATO blue helmet. The next day, the crowd had disappeared. But disaster was only narrowly avoided: if NATO If the troops had killed one of the Serbs, the situation would have quickly evolved from a nasty fight in some remote corner of the Balkans to an incident that Russia and its robots allegedly exploited, accusing peacekeepers of killing unarmed civilians. (In fact, the men responsible for the attack were armed and almost certainly belonged to an organized group.) Violence in Kosovo can escalate quickly. Why is the country so turbulent and what caused the latest unrest?
Until the violent breakup of Yugoslavia in the 1990s, Kosovo was part of the country, not as a republic within the federation, but as a province of Serbia. Today, it is for this reason that Serbian leaders argue that Kosovo is not entitled to the independence it declared in 2008. But until then, Serbia could do nothing for it. Stop. Serbian rule over Kosovo was forcibly ended in 1999, when NATO intervened to end fighting between Serbian security forces and Albanian guerrillas. It was then administered by the UN.
The population of Kosovo is predominantly of Albanian origin. Only about 5% of its 1.8 million inhabitants are Serbs; half of them live in the north of the country, where almost no Albanians live. Kosovo Serbs reject the country’s independence. Since 1999, Serbia proper has run a parallel administration in Serb-dominated northern Kosovo, including a mysterious police and security service. This force is involved in criminal networks that thrive on doing business with their Kosovo Albanian counterparts.
In 2013, the governments of Serbia and Kosovo concluded a cooperation agreement. One part included granting some form of autonomy to Kosovo’s Serb-majority municipalities, including the four in the north. But that never happened. In 2015, Kosovo’s Constitutional Court ruled that the plan was “not entirely consistent with the spirit of the constitution.” While in opposition, Albin Kurti, the current Prime Minister of Kosovo, campaigned against the measure.
Since the Russian invasion of Ukraine last February, America and the EU pushed Serbia and Kosovo to conclude a new agreement. But the crises in northern Kosovo continue to intensify. In November, Kosovo Serbs resigned from all official positions, including in northern municipalities; the immediate cause was a dispute over the use of Serbian license plates, but this was only the latest in a series of quarrels.
New elections were held in the north in April this year, but Serbs boycotted them, meaning Albanian mayors were elected by only a few hundred Albanians living in the region. The vote was legal, but mayors have little legitimacy and will not be able to do their job without the cooperation of Serbs who work in town halls and run municipal services. Western diplomats asked Mr. Kurti not to inflame the situation. But he ignored them and sent special police units to take over town halls on May 26, predictably provoking protests.
Mr Kurti’s actions angered Kosovo’s Western supporters. But Aleksandar Vucic, the Serbian leader, is not in a position to take advantage of the situation. Its refusal to join Western sanctions against Russia has he lost his good will, and he faces large anti-government protests in his country. The main Kosovo Serb party is an affiliate of the Serbian Progressive Party, but many Kosovo Serbs have lost confidence in it. Instead, they see themselves as victims of the political games played between the Serbian and Kosovo Albanian leaders. In March, under pressure from the West, Mr. Kurti and Mr. Vucic reached a new agreement that included a new commitment to form an association of Kosovo Serb municipalities. But the two men hate each other and there is no evidence that they have the real political will to enforce the agreement. The period of frequent flare-ups is not yet over. ■