Daily Times

With no police to call or courts to turn to, Serbs in northern Kosovo are stuck in the middle of another bout of unrest after a mass walkout triggered new uncertainty amid the unending tug-of-war with Serbia.

For three months, residents living in Kosovo’s northern Serb enclaves have gone without basic bureaucratic services — including law enforcement, courts, and local government institutions. Those wishing to divorce, buy an apartment, or report an abusive spouse in Serb areas have nowhere to go, officially speaking. “There is no police, nobody I can turn to. We must quietly endure. There is no alternative,” Vasilije Milojevic, an 83-year-old Serb pensioner living in the northern city of Mitrovica told AFP.

Residents in the areas who spoke to AFP say they have increasingly been forced to look out for each other amid the newest crisis, insisting the situation is worrying but under control. “The neighbours are here for each other. We also have dogs in the backyard,” said Dzelal Kazagic, 69. For nearly 25 years, Mitrovica has been the focal point of friction between arch adversaries Kosovo and Serbia, with a river dividing the town separating ethnic Albanians in the south from Serbs in the north. To help keep the peace in the north, Kosovo institutions have largely drawn personnel from their own population allowing Serb areas to fill administrative offices with their ethnic kin.

The Serbs have remained largely loyal to Belgrade and refused to recognise the Kosovo government, with critics accusing them of serving as proxies stirring unrest at Serbia’s behest. “I don’t have the impression that what Belgrade is after is the rights of the Serbs, what they are after is using the presence of the Serbs to undermine our democratic status,” Kosovo’s Prime Minister Albin Kurti told AFP, discussing the situation in a recent interview.In November, civil servants in Serb-majority areas walked off the job en masse, with police, judges and even members of parliament resigning amid a series of disputes between Kosovo and Serbia. The move followed months of escalating tensions as the Kosovo government in Pristina unveiled several measures aimed at solidifying greater control over its territory, including new rules involving ID cards and car plates.

The plans triggered a fierce backlash in the north, with barricades appearing at the borders with Serbia along with scattered shootings targeting Kosovo police and international peacekeeping troops. The renewed tensions come as officials in both Serbia and Kosovo admit they are under increasing pressure from Western governments to hammer out a deal soon to resolve their longstanding differences and reach some sort of compromise. The festering dispute has lingered for more than two decades since ethnic Albanian insurgents and Serbian forces waged an all-out war in the late 1990s — triggering a NATO intervention and the withdrawal of Belgrade’s troops and government personnel from the breakaway province. Kosovo’s unilateral declaration of independence in 2008 was outright rejected by Belgrade, whose powerful allies including Russia and China blocked the would-be state’s accession to international institutions, including the United Nations. The two sides have held on-again-off-again talks for years between bouts of rioting, protests and other violence that has kept Kosovo largely on the back foot. Amid the latest tussle, authorities in Pristina insist the situation up north remains under control.