NORTH MITROVICA, Kosovo -- Fears of ethnically charged strife have flared up in the Balkans this week as Kosovo dramatically intensified its pressure on tens of thousands of local Serbs to abandon aspects of daily life tied to Serbia, shutting post offices used by Serbs and preparing a controversial reopening of a bridge separating ethnic Serb and Albanian communities.
Tensions between Kosovo's government and the minority Serbs are a near-constant problem in Kosovo, but the rapid-fire pace of Pristina's current clampdown could threaten to drag it toward confrontation with neighboring Serbia.
Unilateral moves by Kosovar Prime Minister Albin Kurti's government over the past two years has already tested the patience of longtime Western allies responsible for maintaining security in the former Serbian province and sensitive to Russian inroads of influence in a region where critics say Moscow fuels separatism and actively stokes disinformation.
Serbia and Kosovo are both aspiring EU members, but Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic's stubborn insistence on deepening diplomatic and security ties with Moscow and Kurti's increasingly assertive actions affecting Kosovo's Serb minority and failure to lay the groundwork for a long-promised representative body for Kosovo Serb municipalities have complicated their respective relations with the West.
Lulzim Peci, a former ambassador and current director of the Kosovar Institute for Policy Research and Development (KIPRED), told RFE/RL's Kosovo Service that the uncoordinated steps by Pristina suggest "the rift is deepening" between Kosovo and the international community.
He said it was important to understand that Kosovo doesn't necessarily have "full sovereignty" so long as KFOR, NATO's peacekeeping mission in Kosovo, is the de facto guarantor of security in parts of the country where Serbs are the majority.
KFOR is understandably eager to avoid getting "caught up in some interethnic tension...without being notified in advance," Peci said.
"The problem does not lie with the implementation of the law, the problem lies in whether or not we are reliable partners," Peci said. "Herein lies the crux of this problem."
Peci said that "there is no greater sanction" at Washington's disposal than a public withdrawal of support for Pristina's actions. "Kosovo has been left to itself and it is now only being dealt with in the domain of conflict management -- nothing more," Peci said.
He predicted that "Kosovo is heading toward a major clash with the international community," adding, "It can only harm itself."
More than 100 countries, including the United States and all but five EU members, recognize Kosovo's independence.
Serbia, with Russian and Chinese diplomatic support, continues to reject outright independence for its former province, which it officially calls the Autonomous Province of Kosovo and Metohija.
New Protests
On August 7, local Serbs protested near a bridge over the Ibar River in the divided city of Mitrovica after Kurti told Western diplomats last week he would reopen it to vehicle traffic after years of closure despite warnings from the United States and European powers as well as NATO.
"We don't feel safe here," a protester and former judge from North Mitrovica, Nikola Kabasic, said. He said such a move should only happen after agreement within the so-called dialogue, involving EU and U.S. mediators who have spent more than a decade encouraging Kosovo and Serbia to build trust and normalize relations.
The Serbs held banners claiming they were defending themselves against "expulsion" and "extinction." The bridge is a powerful symbol of the ethnic volatility that has seen sporadic clashes since the wars of the 1990s.
KFOR said it would "not hesitate to tackle any development that may affect the security environment and regional stability, in full respect of our UN mandate."
Two watershed events in the last 14 months have crystallized the urgency of diplomacy and a resolution of so-far intractable differences between Pristina and Kosovo's ethnic Serb communities, and by extension Serbia.
In May 2023, dozens of peacekeepers for the KFOR mission in northern Kosovo were injured in clashes with Serbs after Kosovar authorities seated ethnic Albanian mayors after boycotted elections in four communities.
Four months later, in September, dozens of commando-style gunmen killed a Kosovar policeman and injured another in a heavily armed siege of a Serbian Orthodox monastery at Banjska, near the Serbian border in northern Kosovo. Pristina blamed Serbia, and Serbian authorities have declined to hand over a Kosovar Serb politician suspected of involvement in what it has called a "terrorist" plot with Serbian state involvement. Belgrade has denied it played a part in the incident.
Parallel Infrastructure
Tens of thousands of Serbs in Kosovo have resisted Pristina's authority in areas from education to health care and pensions, and on customs and other institutions dealing with everything from license registration to cigarette stamps. Many have clung for decades to banking and daily transactions in Serbian dinars at restaurants, doctor's offices, and taxi fares.
Serbia has perpetuated a massive parallel infrastructure financed openly and behind the scenes by Belgrade to support and encourage them, consuming tens of millions of dollars from the Serbian budget over Pristina's objections.
Serbian President Vucic described the EU's response to the postal closures calling for a solution through mediated dialogue as "shameful."
He accused Kurti of "an attempt to provoke a war conflict." "We don't want war, we want to preserve peace," Vucic said. "Kurti is doing it deliberately and organized and with the support of certain Western powers."
Kurti, a former student organizer who was imprisoned by Yugoslav forces during Kosovar Albanians' push for independence in the 1990s, launched his second stint governing and pressing his doctrine of "reciprocity" with a high-profile standoff in 2022 over Kosovar Serbs' continued refusal to register their vehicles and Belgrade's rejection of Kosovar license plates.
Since then, Pristina has enforced a series of unilateral moves to root out the parallel institutions and influence that remain essential to everyday life for Kosovar Serbs.
The steps to rein in northern Kosovo have come more frequently as talk of possible snap elections increases ahead of the end of Kurti's four-year term in February 2025, with a surprise ban on the use of the Serbian dinar, a shutdown of Serbian banks, and a Serb-boycotted referendum on four controversial mayorships held by ethnic Albanians.
So the announcement last week of the intention to reopen car traffic on a bridge partitioned for decades to separate ethnic Albanians from Serbs in the city of Mitrovica and the post-office closures are regarded by some Kosovar Serbs as the last straw intended to destabilize their communities.
"This doesn't lead anywhere, not at all toward peace," Dragan Ilic, a Serb in North Mitrovica, said after the post-office shutdowns earlier this week. "I fear unrest, God forbid that happens, but it seems like someone is calling for it; it seems like they are calling for major unrest to start here because the Serbian people won't tolerate this."
Stern Signal
In a stern signal to Pristina, EU officials who have mediated the Serbia-Kosovo dialogue for over a decade stressed that both sides had agreed to discuss postal services "at a later stage" of the talks.
The U.S. Embassy in Pristina said the "uncoordinated actions of Kosovo put the citizens of Kosovo and KFOR soldiers at great risk, promote an unnecessary escalation of regional tensions, and undermine Kosovo's reputation as a reliable international partner."
Toby Vogel, a Western Balkans analyst and senior associate of the Democratization Policy Council who has criticized the West's tolerance for antidemocratic trends in Serbia as it tries to further the Serbia-Kosovo dialogue, said that, while he didn't have the full picture of the post-office move, "the closure does seem to follow the logic of the dinar ban."
"In any case, the general dynamic at work is quite clear," Vogel told RFE/RL's Kosovo Service. "Prime Minister Kurti has correctly concluded that the dialogue is dead, that the EU's measures against his government are not going to be lifted, and that no consequences will flow for the Serbian regime from Banjska," a reference to the 14th-century monastery that was the site of the deadly September attack.
Kurti, he said, faces elections sometime in the next six months and perhaps feels like he has "nothing to lose."
"In this wider context, [Kurti] seems to think that catering to his core domestic constituency is more important ahead of the general election than trying to patch up relations with Kosovo's main allies in Berlin, Washington, and Brussels," Vogel said.
He said the Kosovar leader's move "feeds the narrative that Kurti wants to make life insufferable for Serbs in Kosovo," adding, "It is hard to see a way out of this dynamic."
