In the densely forested mountains along the contested frontier between Serbia and Kosovo, a patrol of US soldiers under NATO command trudged through snow and mud, keeping an eye out for smugglers or anyone else trying to cross the border. Given the bloody legacy of this area, the situation is quiet now.
It is down below, in Serbia and Kosovo, where old angers are resurfacing as the Balkan region that spawned so much suffering over the past century is again becoming dangerously restive. Once again, Russia is stoking tensions, as it seeks to exploit political fissures in an area that was once viewed as a triumph of muscular US diplomacy — but that now underscores the growing challenges facing NATO and the EU.
“Russia sees the West meddling in its backyard, and [Russian] President Vladimir Putin wants to show he can reciprocate,” said Dimitar Bechev, an expert on Russia and the Balkans and head of the European Policy Institute in Sofia, Bulgaria. “They see the Balkans as the West’s underbelly, and they use it to throw their weight around and project power on the cheap.”
Photo: AFP
Nearly 18 years after a US-led intervention ended Serb domination of Kosovo, the border patrols are part of the longest-running mission in NATO history. Even as the EU has made limited progress in brokering a political settlement between Kosovo and Serbia, the presence of NATO forces has maintained an uneasy peace, with animosity between the minority Serbs and majority Albanian inhabitants of Kosovo still palpable.
Yet NATO is confronting its own challenges, whether it is the seeming ambivalence of US President Donald Trump toward the alliance or an increasingly provocative Russia. The alliance has sent reinforcements to Poland and the Baltic states to counter Russian actions, but Russian involvement in the Balkans has received less attention.
Russia has deep historical ties with Serbia and vehemently opposed NATO’s war over Kosovo in 1999. After a US-led bombing campaign, Serbia lost control over the region, but continues to support Serbs there, vowing never to recognize the sovereignty of Kosovo, which it considers the cradle of the Serbian nation and of its Christian Orthodox faith. Putin has continued to back Serbia, as well as Serbs living in Bosnia and Herzegovina — and continued to dabble in the complex swirl of Balkan politics.
For starters, Moscow supported Bosnian Serbs when they held a controversial referendum in November last year that could lead to more — or even full — independence from Sarajevo. A month later, Russia backed fringe opposition parties in delicate national elections in Macedonia, another former Yugoslav republic. The EU had organized the election to help bring the nation back from the brink of collapse.
In Montenegro, Serbia’s tiny neighbor and a former Russian ally set to join NATO, authorities said they had foiled an October coup attempt that had been orchestrated by the Russians.
Then last month, Moscow moved to help Serbia undermine Kosovo’s independence by supporting a series of provocations that have damaged diplomatic normalization efforts, known as the Brussels dialogue, that are sponsored by the EU. That process had recently produced a small breakthrough, as Kosovo was about to get its own +383 calling code.
However, since Kosovo declared independence in 2008, the ethnic Albanian-dominated government in the capital, Pristina, has failed to bring the predominantly Serb parts of the country north of the Ibar River under its control, including Mitrovica, Kosovo’s second-largest city.
And, as Kosovars were celebrating this breakthrough, the Serbs erected a concrete wall separating the northern, predominantly Serb part of Mitrovica from the ethnic Albanians in the southern part. It was built on the Serbian side of the bridge that crosses the Ibar, a project that the EU funded in hopes of linking the divided communities.
EU officials furiously demanded that the wall come down, but the Serbs remained defiant, forcing the official inauguration of the bridge to be postponed. This month, concrete blocks of the wall were bulldozed, but a metal barrier is still standing, blocking traffic and pedestrians.
Most inflammatory, the Serbian government sent a Russian-made train from Belgrade to Mitrovica, adorning its coaches with signs declaring that “Kosovo is Serbia” in more than 20 languages. Kosovo stopped the train at the border, accusing Serbia of wanting to stage an invasion of northern Kosovo, modeled on Russia’s annexation of Crimea. Serbia, in turn, accused ethnic Albanians of laying mines along the railway tracks and planning a bombing campaign of Serbs and their holy sites.
Serbian President Tomislav Nikolic, who is thought to be backed by Russia as he seeks a second five-year term in the April election, threatened to send his troops back to Kosovo to protect the Serbs, if necessary.
Russian Ambassador to Serbia Aleksandr Chepurin wrote in a recent editorial in Serbia’s daily Politika that Moscow would support “Serbia in preventing attempts to create an artificial pseudo-state of Kosovo.”
NATO’s task in the region is deeply complex. Troop levels have dropped to about 5,000 over the past decade, including 650 US soldiers, and their job includes border patrols as well as navigating the sensitivities of an ethnically divided region.
In the absence of an army of their own, most ethnic Albanians see NATO troops as protectors of their state in Kosovo.
“They are here to defend us from the Serbs when they want to storm back,” said Belkiza Sahatqiu, 46, a mother of three, who works in a shoe store in the Serbian part of Mitrovica.
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