Unrest in Kosovo (IV)

Escalating Tensions

Since about a year, tensions in Kosovo have been successively escalating and approaching a dangerous level. The escalation began in the fall of last year, with the dispute over Serbian automobile tags, still being used by the Serb-speaking minority in the north of Kosovo. The Pristina government’s categorical attempt to ban them, provoked strong resentment within the Serb-speaking minority, especially since Kosovo’s government under Prime Minister Albin Kurty has continuously refused to honor the founding of an association of Serbian communities in Kosovo agreed upon, in principle, back in 2013. Outraged, numerous public officials in Northern Kosovo. including mayors, resigned in protest. Because of the escalating dispute, new elections were boycotted. Protests erupted in late May when the Kosovo government subsequently attempted to bring the new Albanian-speaking mayors – elected by hardly more than 3 percent of the regional population – into their offices under police protection. The situation quickly escalated into violence, with numerous injuries, some serious. Ninety-three soldiers of NATO’s KFOR units were also among the injured. (german-foreign-policy.com reported.[1])

Ambush

In the early morning hours of September 24, a further escalation occurred near the town of Banjska, in Serb-speaking Northern Kosovo. Two cars had blocked the road. As Kosovo police approached, around 30 armed assailants opened fire. One policeman was fatally wounded. Five of the assailants, who had taken refuge in a nearby monastery, were killed in the hefty firefight that ensued. In the meantime, the businessman Milan Radoičić, from the Serb-speaking minority in Kosovo, had given a written confession to having organized the ambush. He had “chosen this action,” because “all previous methods of resistance had led to no improvement of the Serbians conditions of life” in Kosovo, according to the confession read aloud by Radoičić’s lawyer.[2] The ambush was intended to encourage the Serb-speaking inhabitants of Kosovo to “resist the terror,” wrote Radoičić, referring to actions taken by Prime Minister Albin Kurti’s against the Serb-speaking minority. Pristina, under Kurti, is obviously seeking to “ethnically cleanse” Serbs from Kosovo.[3] Yesterday, Tuesday, Radoičić was arrested by police in Belgrade.

Apprehension in the West

The fact that Radoičić is not only active as a businessman but also as a politician, has caused a stir. He is a member of the Srpska Lista (Serbian List) a party of Kosovo’s minority and had been its vice president. He had resigned that post, however, after confessing to the Banjiska ambush. The Srpska Lista has close ties to Belgrade, which is why many in the West find it difficult to believe that Serbia’s President, Aleksandar Vučić or even the Serbian intelligence service had had no knowledge of the preparations for that meticulously planned ambush.[4] Currently, there is, of course, no evidence that they did. Apprehension spiraled higher in the West over the weekend, when it was announced that the Serbian military had increased its troops at the border with Kosovo. According to the Serbian legal opinion, the fact that Kosovo’s secession in 2008 had been in violation of international law – an opinion shared by around half of the other UN member nations – the UN Resolution 1244, from 1999, still remains in force. The resolution stipulates that, in cases of physical attacks on the Serb-speaking minority, Belgrade has the right to send troops into Northern Kosovo for their protection.[5]

Increase Troops

In this situation, NATO has announced an increase of its KFOR troops. Great Britain will deploy around 200 soldiers to join the 400-strong British contingent already in the country as part of an annual exercise.[6] Over the weekend, demands to also increase the troop levels of the Bundeswehr units stationed in Kosovo were also raised in Berlin. Germany should “send more soldiers into Kosovo,” demanded the Chair of the Committee for European Affairs in the German Bundestag, Anton Hofreiter (Greens). Chair of the Bundestag’s Defense Committee, Marie-Agnes Strack-Zimmermann (FDP), announced that “if necessary” Berlin will also “redeploy (...) more” soldiers to Kosovo. Strack-Zimmermann pointed out that the current mandate foresees the deployment of 400 soldiers, while there are currently only 85 stationed there. There is “still a lot of room for improvement.”[7] For his part, the foreign policy parliamentarian, Adis Ahmetović (SPD), pleaded for “more military” to be sent now, given the escalation of tensions.

“Unless Something Happens”

At the beginning of the week, the tensions seemed again to somewhat subside. Serbia’s staff General Milan Mojsilovic announced that Belgrade had cut the troop level of Serbian troops deployed near the border with Kosovo from 8,350 to 4,500, returning its troop numbers back to normal along the five-kilometer-wide border strip.[8] Mojsilovic expressed surprise that in the West there was an atmosphere of alarm and explicitly pointed out that a troop increase during a crisis situation is nothing unusual. For his part, Germany’s Minister of Defense Boris Pistorius, when asked about possible reinforcement of the Bundeswehr’s Kosovo contingent, responded: “definitely not now and today.”[9] However, he qualified his answer saying “unless something happens.” In that case, the Bundeswehr is “very, very quickly ready to act.”

The Assessment of a Quarter Century

The recent developments in Kosovo testify to the fact that the situation in that region is still disastrous, nearly a quarter of a century since NATO’s 1999 war of aggression and the Bundeswehr’s deployment that soon followed. This places Kosovo in line with the German armed forces’ other current and former theatres of operations. Afghanistan, where German units were forced to flee in the summer of 2021, after nearly 20 years of deployment. In Mali, the German units are in the process of packing to leave – after ten years, during which the jihadi insurgency in that country has not diminished but increased.[10] In 2012, the Bundeswehr withdrew from Bosnia-Herzegovina assessing that the situation no longer required their presence, only to resume their deployment in that country last year.[11] Nowhere has a lasting peace been achieved.  

[1] See also Unruhen im Kosovo (III).

[2], [3] Politiker bekennt sich zu Überfall mit Kommandotrupp. zeit.de 29.09.2023.

[4] Isabelle Daniel: Wie gefährlich ist die Lage im Kosovo? zeit.de 02.10.2023.

[5] See also Unrest in Kosovo (II).

[6] Defence Secretary deploys UK forces to Kosovo for NATO peacekeeping mission. gov.uk 01.10.2023.

[7] Nach Spannungen: Deutsche Politiker fordern Aufstockung der Nato-Friedenstruppe im Kosovo. rnd.de 01.10.2023.

[8] Number of troops on Kosovo border ‘back to normal,’ Serbia says. lemonde.fr 03.10.2023.

[9] Pistorius zum Kosovo: Derzeit keine Bundeswehr-Aufstockung geplant. dbwv.de 03.10.2023.

[10] See also The Next Lost War.

[11] See also Back to Square One.