Leposavic, KOSOVO -- As Kosovo's central government continues to assert its authority in northern areas long dominated by Serbs, a smattering of new Albanian-run shops there acknowledge tough challenges as they navigate a stubborn intersection of business and ethnically charged politics.
Big national retailers aiming to cater to an unfamiliar client base and local tastes in the Serb-populated region say they have lots of work to do, starting with stocking their shelves with familiar Serbian imports.
"We don't do politics," Nevzad Kadriu, manager of the Pristina-based supermarket chain Interex's newly launched outlet in Leposavic, told RFE/RL's Kosovo Service. "We came for business, to offer customers good, quality service and to adapt to their tastes."
But a total absence of Serbian products on the shelves of Kadriu's supermarket points to a disconnect.
Northern Kosovo is home to tens of thousands of Serbs who make up majorities in four municipalities -- North Mitrovica, Zvecan, Zubin Potok, and Leposavic -- and who in many cases still regard the area as part of Serbia.
'Unilateral' Actions
Kosovo's government has spent much of the past year trying to root out Serbian influence in the daily lives of many of those Serbs, eliciting concerns among Western partners that such "unilateral" actions will stir up unnecessary trouble just a generation removed from bitter ethnic bloodshed. Pristina says it is merely trying to enforce its constitutional order.
The lack of Serbian groceries at Interex in Leposavic follows a yearlong ban on Serbian imports that Kosovo imposed after a deadly incident near the border killed one ethnic Albanian police officer and injured another outside an Orthodox monastery in September 2023.
The commando-style raid by ethnic Serb suspects was the most serious of a number of clashes to have threatened international peacekeeping efforts and risked flare-ups between Serbia and its mostly ethnic Albanian former province in the past three years.
Kosovo's government finally reopened a single border crossing at Merdare to Serbian imports in early October, seemingly satisfied that the threat had ebbed and under intense Western pressure to ease its clampdown on the daily lives of Serbs in the north.
During RFE/RL's visit, Kadriu said the store hadn't had long enough to stock up on the products that appeal more to Serbs than they would to ethnic Albanians in other parts of the country where Interex operates. From what he's seen so far, he says, their absence hasn't been a big obstacle. "But they are something good for this segment of customers and we'll offer them in the future," he added.
One shopper, Mirsad Huskovic, told RFE/RL he'd like to see more of the goods that are popular among Serbs, including dried pork products shunned by many of Kosovo's majority Muslims. "There should be Serbian goods, too, because people are used to them," he said. "They're missing."
Another shopper said it was normal that Albanian-run stores should carry Serbian goods. But the woman, who did not want to be identified, added: "Slowly. I'm satisfied. With my money I can buy wherever I want. I don't care, not at all."
The Leposavic store gets about 500 customers a day, Kadriu says, most of them Serbs. Forty-seven of its 50 or so employees are ethnic Serbs, he adds.
For decades, Serbia has maintained a network of parallel institutions there led by ethnic Serbs who appear to coordinate closely with Belgrade and its governmental Office for Kosovo and Metohija.
But Kosovar Prime Minister Albin Kurti dramatically increased pressure on his country's Serbs with a strict ban on the use of Serbian dinars in cash transactions from February. Kurti has also continued with closures of Serbian banks, post offices, and other facilities.
Until recently, ethnic Albanian businesses -- particularly sizable ones -- were nearly nonexistent in the mostly Serb-populated areas of the north. But as Pristina has sought to expand its authority there, the Kosovo Privatization Agency (AKP) has taken charge of some local offices of Serb-led social enterprises and privatized them or re-leased them to Kosovar-based companies.
'Crazy Times'
The AKP confirmed to RFE/RL that the space used by Interex in Leposavic was sold during the 47th wave of privatization in 2010. The buyer's identity was not disclosed, but they have leased the space to Interex.
It is still just a trickle. Kosovo's Industry, Trade, and Entrepreneurship Ministry said just 19 of the 220 new businesses registered in the four Serb municipalities in the first three-quarters of the year belong to ethnic Albanians.
In North Mitrovica, the mostly Serbian side of a former city now divided by the Ibar River, is a supermarket under ethnic Albanian ownership as part of a chain called Meridian Express that opened at the end of August. There, too, the shelves are barren of Serbian products.
According to the privatization agency, the store currently occupied by Meridian Express in North Mitrovica was offered for sale in April. The agency did not provide details about the buyer who rented it to Meridian.
The store's manager, Jeton Hyseni, told RFE/RL that decisions about inventory are made by the chain's management. But he also said Serb customers are fairly rare. "We hear from some Serb customers who don't dare to enter or hardly enter," he said, because they fear others are photographing the entrance and noting who is shopping there.
Multiple Kosovar Serb residents suggested to RFE/RL that they believe such information is used by Serbian nationalists who want them to boycott Albanian-owned businesses.
"It's not that I don't want to, but, quite simply, no one enters, no one dares," another North Mitrovican Serb said. "I'm with my people, although I'm not a nationalist, but…what can I say? Crazy times.
