The Week, London, 04 August 2022
Tensions between ethnic Serbs and ethnic Albanians in Kosovo are rising once again, 23 years after the end of a civil war in the Balkan nation that claimed the lives of an estimated 13,000 people.
Protesters “blockaded roads and reportedly fired guns” in weekend clashes as anger among ethnic Serbs against planned measures by the Albanian-led government “boiled over into civil disobedience”, said the BBC.
What was the Kosovo War about?
The Kosovo War followed centuries of simmering tensions between the ethnic Serbians, the majority of whom are Orthodox Christian, and their majority-Muslim ethnic Albanian neighbours to the south. These tensions were exacerbated by frequently shifting geographical and political boundaries during the 20th century.
Following the break-up of the former Yugoslavia in the 1990s, the formerly autonomous province of Kosovo proclaimed independence from Serbia, which responded by embarking on a ruthless crackdown on the territory’s Albanian population.
The civil war started 28 February 1998 and lasted until 11 June 1999, following an 11-week-long bombing campaign by Nato against Serbia.
After the war, the province was administered by the UN until February 2008, when Kosovo unilaterally declared independence from Serbia.
According to latest figures from the World Population Review, Kosovo’s 1.7m-strong population comprises:
- 92% Albanian
- 4% Serbs
- 2% Bosniaks and Gorans
- 1% Turks
- 1% Roma
Why is there trouble now?
Kosovo’s government has been planning new rules that would force motorists in majority ethnic Serb areas to swap their Serbian-issued car number plates for Kosovan-issued versions.
The new rules were due to come into force on Monday. But around 50,000 people in these areas “will not use Kosovan number plates because they do not recognise Kosovo’s independence”, the BBC reported. Many have vowed to continue using plates issued by the Serbian government in Belgrade.
Ethnic Serb residents “are also incensed that the Kosovo government now requires – in addition to an ID card – an entry/exit permit for visitors from Serbia”, wrote Stefan Wolff, professor of international security at Birmingham University, on The Conversation,
Following the recent clashes, Nato said in a statement that it was ready to intervene to stabilise the situation. After consulting with the US and EU, the Kosovan authorities delayed the implementation of the number plate rules for a month.
But the tensions are “only on hold”, wrote William Nattrass in The Spectator. The “threats of violence won’t vanish in an instant” and “it will only take one flashpoint to make a full-blown crisis out of long-running resentments”, he warned.
The Telegraph said the dispute was “symptomatic of the uneasy status quo” that has endured in the decades since the civil war.
Can further violence be prevented?
A lot will depend on Russia, which has long been an ally of Serbia. Serbia’s President Aleksandar Vucic has refused to join Western sanctions against Moscow over the Ukraine war, and signed a gas deal with Russia in May.
An MP from Vucic’s party tweeted last week that Serbia might soon be compelled to begin the “denazification of the Balkans” – the same term that Putin used to justify his invasion of Ukraine. The MP later apologised following a public outcry.
The simmering tensions in the Balkans are “clearly welcome to Russia”, which has repeatedly “been accused of fomenting instability and unrest” on the global stage, wrote Wolff on The Conversation.
But on the other hand, he added, China “has made Serbia its regional hub in the western Balkans” and “values stability in the region, which is an important transit hub and entry point to EU markets”.
As the various players consider their next moves, The Spectator’s Nattrass predicted that “the next few months could be dicey”.
With “long-held resentments threatening to break out into the open”, he wrote, the situation in Kosovo “looks less like a question and more like a riddle with no right answer”.
