Morton Abramowitz and James Hooper: Balkan War Redux

Morton Abramowitz is a senior fellow at The Century Foundation and James Hooper is a managing director of the Public International Law & Policy Group.

Ethnic violence is back in the Balkans. And once again, it has taken the West by surprise.

This time the focal point is northern Kosovo, the region north of the Ibar River. Formally under Kosovar sovereignty, the area is claimed by Serbia and treated by the West as a de facto part of Serbia, where Serb paramilitaries profit from smuggling to the Albanian mafia while enforcing obedience among the area’s overwhelmingly Serb population.

NATO’s Kosovo Force (KFOR) units—which include some U.S. troops—and the EU’s rule of law mission (EULEX) tread gingerly around this reality. Belgrade exploits the paramilitaries to reinforce Serbia’s territorial claims. Officials from Pristina rarely step into this international shadowland. The United States, European Union and Belgrade all regard Pristina as a distant and inconvenient landlord, a silent partner in their tripartite understandings. Kosovo is expected to abide by the status quo and not fuss over the disjunction between Western professions of Kosovar sovereignty (albeit with close ties to Belgrade) and the reality of dominating Serb paramilitaries on the ground.

These arrangements were upended recently when Kosovo’s prime minister—finally, in the view of his countrymen—sent police units to two northern border posts to enforce a trade-policy decision by the Kosovo government. As Kosovar officials have frequently complained to the EU and the United States (to no avail), Serbia freely exports its goods into Kosovo but blockades Kosovar goods headed north. Kosovo’s deputy prime minister publicly warned Belgrade that unless it lifted the blockade within thirty days, Pristina would block Serbian goods entering through the north. On July 25—after informing EULEX of its intentions, according to the prime minister—he sent Kosovar police units to take charge of two northern crossing points along the Serbian border. The action led to a confrontation with armed Serbs, and one Kosovar police officer was killed in the shooting.

What followed were scenes reminiscent of Croatia and Bosnia in the early 1990s...