NORTH AND SOUTH MITROVICA, Kosovo -- Since it opened in 2011, three years after Kosovo declared independence, Ura is beloved locally and ranked high among South Mitrovica's restaurants on sites like Tripadvisor and Restaurant Guru.
It serves up familiar Mediterranean (and Albanian) dishes on archetypal checkered red-and-white tablecloths on a grand, shaded terrace.
It's also perched next to the bridge that spans a powerful symbol of this fledgling Balkan country's greatest challenge: the Ibar River, which separates heavily Albanian South Mitrovica from the smaller and mostly Serb North.
Farther to the north and west lie the three other predominantly Serb municipalities where simmering disputes over Kosovo's independence and local government boiled over at the end of May into violence that injured Serb protesters but also Italian and Hungarian peacekeepers.
These days, between scattered spring showers, Ura is serving a lot of new faces shuttling between north and south. Journalists covering a worrisome flashpoint in a notoriously fractious region. Police officers tasked with enforcing laws on minority Serbs who reject Kosovar statehood and authority. And staff and troops from NATO's Kosovo Force (KFOR) or the EU's Rule of Law Mission in Kosovo (EULEX).
"Everyone's our guest, with no distinctions," says Agron Berisha, a fit, slightly graying waiter who's been serving food and chatting with customers in this neighborhood for 11 years.
But he says the tensions that routinely arise in northern Kosovo ripple through the community and restaurant, nevertheless.
Berisha has learned to pick up on clues from the NATO peacekeeping mission that's been here since 1999 and has gradually devolved duties to the Kosovo Police and other local authorities.
Before the recent outburst of unrest, he recalls, KFOR staff, and particularly its civilian staffers, were more relaxed. "From this situation now that's happened," Berisha tells RFE/RL's Balkan Service, he is seeing KFOR staffers "for the first time with bulletproof vests."
Mitrovica has been a divided city since the height of the former Serbian province's war of independence led by ethnic Albanians in the late 1990s.
North Mitrovica, along with the nearby municipalities of Leposavic, Zubin Potok, and Zvecan, the latter the scene of the most serious clashes between protesters and KFOR troops on May 29, have been governed by a "parallel system" with wide latitude and support from Belgrade.
The recent violence followed Pristina's escalation of a monthslong standoff with Serbs who boycotted by-elections in all four majority-Serb municipalities in April. Those votes were intended to fill mayorships vacated by protesting Serbs with support from neighboring Serbia, which also rejects Kosovo's sovereignty. But the combined voter turnout of under 4 percent discredited the vote in many people's eyes.
Not Kosovar Prime Minister Albin Kurti's, though. His decision to use special forces to secure those town halls to seat the newly inaugurated ethnic Albanian mayors was quickly condemned by U.S. and EU officials, who have swung toward greater criticism of Kurti as they continue to seek a normalization between Belgrade and Pristina.
Such a shift to normalcy has been in the making since the so-called Brussels Agreement in 2013, which enshrined some aspects of self-government and the establishment by Kosovar authorities of an Association of Serb Municipalities to represent Serb interests.
Western pressure has increased on Kurti to follow through on his predecessor's pledge for the association, in particular.
Vladimir Rakic is among the locals seeking relaxation and shelter from occasional rain showers outside a cafe across the Ibar, in mostly Serb North Mitrovica. "Daily life is the same as in the last 20 years," he says, "monotony and tension at every moment. [But] much more tense in the last 10 days."
He and a friend, Llazar Kragovic, are discussing rising prices in the north, where the Serbian dinar is still the currency of choice for most.
Kragovic, like many Serbs in northern Kosovo, has working ties to Serbia. He says cherries right now cost about 120 dinars -- or roughly 1 euro -- across the Serbian border in Raska but around 450 dinars in Mitrovica.
'Everything Is Dead Here In The City'
The Serbian government has long financed and otherwise supported the activities of Serb political parties and even institutions like health care and local administration in northern Kosovo. Pristina calls the "parallel system" illegal.
Travel between Kosovo and Serbia has been complicated by disputes over the recognition of documents like IDs, customs papers, and license plates despite EU efforts to mediate between the two aspiring member states with grievances that predate the brutal wars of the 1990s.
Many Serbs are angry about the closure of schools here and in the other municipalities since tensions intensified on May 26, when most of the new mayors were inaugurated.
"There's wire around schools, wire around municipal facilities; it's hard for these kids," says a North Mitrovica resident who doesn't want to be identified in the media. "Everything is dead here in the city. Everyone is staying home or going somewhere else."
The entire school system of Serb communities in Kosovo teaches the curriculum of Serbia.
Children from Zvecan, about 3 kilometers north of here, joined demonstrations calling for an end to the violence. Protective bars there surround the municipal complex, which also houses a secondary school and residential building. Residents must pass through KFOR peacekeepers to get around.
Back in North Mitrovica, there are also homes and businesses that belong to ethnic Albanians, although they are admittedly few in number.
People working in what's known locally as the "Bosnian Quarter" complain, too.
"I don't know if they're afraid or what the problem is," says Dua Stavileci, who works in a perfume shop. "I don't know, but the work has declined a lot, business has declined."
One second, Stavileci says, the streets are busy and then empty the next.
"Maybe [the street] is full, but the second the alarm goes off, the neighborhood immediately shuts down," she says.
Another retailer says it's not just the civil sirens. Vehicles belonging to the Kosovo Police or EULEX sometimes blare their sirens and scare off potential customers, too.
EULEX is a civilian mission that monitors the implementation of the 2013 Brussels deal on normalization and helps Kosovo's police with crowd and riot control.
KFOR was established pursuant to a UN resolution during fighting between ethnic Albanians and Serb-led Yugoslav forces in 1999. It should gradually hand over its responsibilities to Kosovo Police and security forces until they become self-sufficient.
