“Normalcy” in Northern Kosova may mean barely restrained urban violence, but the situation has returned to this level after the events of last week in which Kosovan special police were deployed in response to rioting by ethnic Serbs at the Jarinje border crossing with Serbia.
One Kosovan border guard previously had been killed and several injured, as well as considerable structural damage inflicted following overtures by Prishtina and Belgrade to normalize custom relations. Such open hostility from within the Serb-majority population of Northern Kosova was seen immediately following Prishtina’s declaration of independence from Belgrade in 2008, when Mitrovica courthouse was occupied by Serb Police officers and civilians leading to the death of one UN guard and redeployment on NATO troops.
Since then, Prishtina has complained that exports from their country were blocked at Jarinje and other border crossings despite their accepting imports. The formal reason given by Belgrade was that they would not accept customs paperwork marked by a country she does not yet recognize. This is given lie to by similarly frustrated attempts by Prishtina to relabel exports as being from “Kosova Customs”.
Pieces like this on Harry’s Place tend to attract ardent Serb power fantasists… or more accurately, admirers of a very particular group of Serbs. I imagine this group will be about accuse the Serbian President, Boris Tadic as the Slavic equivalent of a kapo considering his description of the culprits or Jarinje violence as “hooligans”.
