‘There’s no trust’: Tensions flare up in Kosovo 25 years on from brutal war

It’s a Friday night in Pristina, the capital of Kosovo; some bars are busy as young people enjoy cocktails and beers, while others are practically empty. Outside people are wrapped up well, it’s minus four degrees and there are pockets of snow on the ground and rooftops.

It has been 25 years since the war in Kosovo, which ended after a months-long Nato bombing campaign forced the withdrawal from the region of Slobodan Milosevic’s Serb forces.

Today Serbia still does not recognise Kosovo’s 2008 declaration of independence, with tensions most acute near Kosovo’s northern border with its neighbour. Ethnic Albanians make up most of Kosovo’s roughly two million people, but in the north, a large minority of ethnic Serbs remain aligned to Belgrade.

Last September was one of the worst outbreaks of violence in years, when an armed group of ethnic Serbs clashed with Kosovo police in the north, leaving one police officer and three gunmen dead

Traditionally one of the poorest countries in the region, in recent years some green shoots of economic development in Kosovo have been apparent. There is a scattering of skyscrapers and cranes along the Pristina skyline, with hoarding promising more high-rise development. Many buildings in other corners of the city remain grey and aged relics of the Yugoslav era when Kosovo was administered as an autonomous province within Serbia.

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Last September was one of the worst outbreaks of violence in years, when an armed group of ethnic Serbs clashed with Kosovo police in the north, leaving one police officer and three gunmen dead. Kosovo prime minister Albin Kurti accused Serbia of supporting the armed group, though Serbian president Aleksandar Vucic denied any state involvement in the attack.

Walking across Mother Theresa Square in Pristina, Bini Lojak (36) says he is concerned about Serbian provocation in the north “all the time”. Lojak, who was about 10 years old during the war, says for most people day-to-day life has to go on.

Some locals have no major interest in the recent developments; one Pristina taxi driver’s main gripe being congestion and traffic in the city.

“I don’t watch the news, I’m not interested in what is happening,” says another man working in a tobacco shop.

The mission is the second longest Ireland has been involved in, behind Lebanon, but the number of Defence Forces troops involved has been scaled down significantly from a high point of more than 200 in Kosovo in the early 2000s

A Nato-led peacekeeping force, known as KFOR, has been stationed in the country since the end of the war in 1999. Thirteen Defence Forces personnel serve among the roughly 5,000-strong contingent of peacekeepers. The Irish troops work in support roles in KFOR headquarters, Camp Film City, which sits on a hill overlooking the centre of Pristina.

The mission is the second longest Ireland has been involved in, behind Lebanon, but the number of Defence Forces troops involved has been scaled down significantly from a high point of more than 200 in Kosovo in the early 2000s.

Col Tim Daly, the most senior Defence Forces officer on the ground, is serving his second stint in Kosovo. Tensions in the country “wave and wane”, but the “trajectory is towards a peaceful resolution” overall, he says.

“The Kosovo situation is a political situation that has to be resolved through the political process … And we are here to create the conditions on the ground [to facilitate that], in terms of security,” he says.

The current tensions trace back to a dispute that flared up over car licence plates in late 2022. Ethnic Serbs walked out of positions in local councils, the police and the courts in the north, after the Kosovo government moved to end the practice of allowing the minority to keep Serbian licence plates predating independence.

Local elections were boycotted by the main Serb party last April, over demands for more autonomy for northern councils. This meant a tiny turnout saw ethnic Albanian candidates take control of councils with only a few hundred votes. The installation of the new mayors, despite local opposition, led to violent protests that saw two dozen peacekeepers injured.

Tensions reached a high point with the outbreak of fighting between Kosovar police and heavily armed Serb gunmen last September.

Originally from Belfast, Boyd McKechnie spent much of the last decade working in Kosovo on a UK foreign office secondment, before more recently setting up a cross-community centre in Pristina.

McKechnie previously worked in Rwanda after the 1994 genocide there, as well as in Bosnia, before coming to Kosovo in the months after a 2013 deal brokered in Brussels, which at the time was seen as a step on the path to normalising Kosovo-Serbia relations. “The place is much better than it was when I first arrived but in the last 18 months it has gone backwards,” he says.

Initially he was posted to Leposavic, one of the northern councils, following local elections. At the time “it was very difficult to achieve anything”, he says.

Two government officials from Pristina, sent to formally observe the swearing in of an ethnic Serb elected mayor, would not enter the council building due to the presence of a Serbian flag. McKechnie recalls the parallels with Northern Ireland and how flags and language can quickly become thorny issues.

“I had to negotiate with the two Albanians who couldn’t come into the room, with the mayor, the deputy mayor, a couple of councillors, for them to do something with this flag. In the end, we rolled it up and put it in the corner. It didn’t leave the room but it wasn’t visible, and that was acceptable,” he says.

As a post-conflict society Northern Ireland was “further ahead” than the Balkans in dealing with the trauma people had suffered, as well as being able to “remember people that have been lost”, McKechnie says. “Places like Kosovo and the Balkans, it’s still a bit of a tricky subject to try and traverse because everything is supposed to be contained in the family and so there’s still a bit of a taboo to talk,” he says.

The prospects of an improvement in the atmosphere in the near future are slim, he says: “There’s no trust, zero trust between the main interlocutors … Once you lose trust in any negotiation or any dispute, then it is very difficult to come back.”

There had been an expectation from western leaders that Serbia would see future membership of the European Union as the “holy grail” and be drawn away from the orbit of Russia. “I don’t know whether that has happened,” he says.

General elections in Kosovo, likely to be held towards the end of this year, could mean politicians ‘use the Serbia card’ to drum up nationalism to win votes

—  Donika Emini

Recently McKechnie has worked with two men from both communities to set up the Barabar Centre, an “inter-community hub” in Pristina, to provide a space for events to try to bridge the gap between the two sides.

Donika Emini (35), executive director of CiviKos, a network organisation connecting civil society groups, says the actions of both countries’ leaders in north Kosovo are often as much to do with domestic political concerns as anything else.

“If Kurti wants to set a position in the negotiations he intervenes in the north, if Vucic needs to distract his own electorate or people in Serbia he starts something in Kosovo. So you know, it has turned into this playground,” she says.

While recent “polarisation” has mainly been fuelled by Serbia, Kosovo has decided to “play along”, she says. “You normalise violence and you normalise tension but without thinking that you might reach a point of no return.”

General elections in Kosovo, likely to be held towards the end of this year, could mean politicians “use the Serbia card” to drum up nationalism to win votes, Emini adds.

Emini, who grew up in Gjilan, a city near Kosovo’s eastern border with Serbia, says there is still “hope” the region could move on. Kosovar authorities have “lost the people” in majority Serb areas in the north, Emini says, so new local elections are needed as soon as possible “to make sure that the mayors that are leading the municipalities are accepted by people”.

Even between ethnic Albanian and Serb civil society organisations relations are bitter at present, she says, adding that if progressive organisations on either side opt to “barricade” themselves behind the “narratives” of both governments it will not end well. “We have to start the trust-building process … hoping that the political elite will follow.”

The slow pace of progress is blamed for a growing ambivalence towards joining the EU among Kosovars

Taoiseach Leo Varadkar visited Pristina on a recent two-day trip to the west Balkans, meeting with Kurti to discuss the recent violence and Kosovo’s ambitions to join the EU. Normalising relations between Kosovo and Serbia would be a prerequisite to either country’s hopes of joining the bloc.

“The EU does not have the leverage as it used to in the early 2000s to push processes forward,” Emini says, adding that there is a perception its focus has shifted to the east following the Russian invasion of Ukraine. As a result the Balkans are “not even in the backseat” of the car when it comes to future EU membership, she says.

The slow pace of progress is blamed for a growing ambivalence towards joining the bloc among Kosovars. “Now for us, it’s very difficult to actually push for the integration process and project because you’re just pushing for nothing,” Emini says.

Britain’s exit from the EU was also a blow, as Kosovo viewed the country as an “independent voice” that was interested in the Balkans, Emini says.

The region seems to have lost the “opportunity” it once had, she adds, with Ukraine now likely to dominate the debate around future EU enlargement. The “waiting room” many of the Balkan countries seemed to have been left in has begun, she says, to look more like “an emergency room”.

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