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Kosovo Serbs have continued to erect barricades and set up checkpoints in Mitrovica and other northern towns over the past two days, as they have already done by blocking connections to the border in recent weeks. As if to prepare for a new battle, maybe a war. Totally ignoring repeated calls to avoid escalation by KFOR, NATO’s military force, and by Eulex, the EU civilian mission present in Kosovo.
At night they continued to set up heavy trucks and barricades of all kinds to control the roads of the former Serbian province, governed by the Albanian majority, which has declared itself independent but which considers Belgrade part of its territory to be defended.
Closer to confrontation
The tension between Belgrade and Pristina is very high, a spark could ignite new violence. After Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic repeatedly threatened to send the army to protect the Serbian minority in Kosovo, he ordered the armed forces to be on high alert on Monday night and moved troops to the vicinity of the border. “We must protect our people in Kosovo and preserve Serbia,” Vucic said, saying Pristina is preparing to “attack” the Serb minority to force them out of Kosovo.
Unresolved issues following the 1999 war, the last in the Balkans unleashed by Serbian leader Slobodan Milosevic, have fueled an ongoing conflict even after Pristina’s unilaterally declared independence in 2008. A move supported by the United States and the majority of UN members, but not by all EU countries, not by Russia and China. And the clashes have been repeated over the years: in recent months under the pretext of Serbs’ license plates in Kosovo, today with the protests demanding the release of some Serb police officers arrested by the Kosovar authorities.
A conflict that has never been resolved
In the end there is always the ethnic and religious conflict that devastated the Balkans and imploded Yugoslavia: the Serb minority, some 50,000 people, supported by Belgrade, does not accept the presence of the Kosovan police forces and does not recognize the institutions of Pristina; the Kosovar-Albanian government wants to break away from Serbia once and for all.