Violent clashes between Serbian nationalists and NATO-led peacekeepers in northern Kosovo are the latest spike in tensions between ethnic Serbs and Albanians, who make up the majority of the population. Burning cars, tear gas and shock bombs conjured images of 1990s-era carnage last month, when locals in the Serb-dominated town of Zveҫan protested the installation of a Kosovar Albanian mayor. Kosovo sits between Serbia and Albania and has been the site of horrendous conflicts for decades.
Then came the familiar nationalist outrage from either side. Kosovar Prime Minister Aljbin Kurti claimed to CNN that many of the protesters “are being paid and ordered from Belgrade and admire despotic President Putin”. Serbian President Aleksandar Vučić accused Kurti of manufacturing a “big conflict between Serbs and NATO” and vowed to keep his armed forces at the Kosovo-Serbia border on the highest state of alert. Tennis star and world-class chauvinist Novak Djoković sent a message home from the French Open, writing “Kosovo is the heart of Serbia” on a camera lens.
The denial of Kosovo’s right to self-determination is a key pillar of Serbian nationalist ideology. Even today, Serbia does not recognise Kosovan independence, which was declared in 2008.
Ethnic tensions in Kosovo’s north are a product of the drawing and redrawing of borders in the Balkans for over a century. Many different ethnic groups are spread across the region, but none are neatly clustered on the same patch of land. Ethnic minorities fall within the borders of a different, dominant group, or in some cases—like Serbia/Kosovo—countries have claimed lands populated by an ethnic majority different to their own. The groups that differ from the dominant ethnicity of their state face intense oppression. Upon the break-up of Yugoslavia in the 1990s, areas that were particularly multi-ethnic were hit the hardest by violent nationalist divisions. The goal of nationalist leaders was to make ethnically or religiously based states, so they adopted a strategy of ethnic cleansing in order to achieve this goal.
After the Balkan Wars of 1912 and 1913, then again after World Wars I and II, Kosovo’s status was decided by the leading imperialist powers of the time. From 1945, Kosovo was not an independent state, but an autonomous province within the Yugoslav constituent republic of Serbia. In this arrangement, there was little regard for the wishes of the 90 percent ethnically Albanian population. In 1981, student protests sparked a province-wide demonstration demanding republican status for Kosovo. They were met with intense repression by the Yugoslav army, and a racist anti-Albanian campaign by Serbian nationalist leaders. When economic crisis threatened the collapse of Yugoslavia in 1989, Serbian President Slobodan Milošević saw an opportunity in the chaos and revoked Kosovo’s autonomy altogether.
Albanian workers resisted. In February 1989, workers at the Trepça mines staged an occupation and went on a hunger strike, which was followed by a general strike in 1990. The initial demands were to reinstate the Kosovar Albanian leaders replaced by Milošević, but the conflict quickly turned into a fight for independence.
Milošević’s regime did not hesitate to take forcible control of Kosovo, thousands of Serbian police crushing the strike and enforcing apartheid. Instead of accepting defeat, Kosovar Albanians continued to fight for self-determination in the 1998 war.
The United States, keen to extend its influence in Europe following the collapse of Yugoslavia and the USSR, smelled blood. For the US, a stronger Serbia (which was allied with Russia) was unacceptable. Former President Bill Clinton launched a bombing campaign of Serbia through NATO, and Serbia’s rule over Kosovo was forcibly ended in 1999. But this was no act of humanitarianism to save Kosovar Albanians, as it has so widely been portrayed. In the bombings, about 1,500 people were slaughtered as NATO forces targeted bridges, hospitals and schools in Serbia. Despite using Kosovar refugees as their chief moral argument for intervention, the bombings provoked an intensification of the ethnic cleansing of Albanians: more than 600,000 people were forced to flee Kosovo.
The US deposed Serbian rule, but only to install itself as the new master of Kosovo. Today, not much has changed. Kosovo is heavily dependent on the US and powerful EU states, which in turn shape its institutions. For instance, its standing army, the KFOR, is still NATO-led. Camp Bondsteel in Kosovo is the largest US military base in the Balkans, capable of hosting more than 7,000 troops. A human rights envoy described the camp as a “smaller version of Guantánamo” in the mid-2000s.
Kosovo’s rulers are happy with this arrangement: imperialist dominance over Kosovo in exchange for military protection and hefty economic investment. Time magazine even described it as the “most pro-American country in the world”. One only needs to see the boulevards in Pristina named after Bill Clinton and George W. Bush—or the eleven-foot-tall statue of Clinton—to get a glimpse of how servile Kosovo’s ruling class is to the US.
With notoriously poor infrastructure and a gobsmacking unemployment rate of 45 to 50 percent, Kosovar workers have not reaped the benefits of quasi-statehood protected by NATO. Kosovo is the poorest country in Europe, according to the International Monetary Fund. Though many who supported the Albanians’ fight against Serbian rule in the 1990s welcomed US intervention, it bears an overwhelmingly negative legacy. “Humanitarian” intervention allowed the worst warlords and gangsters to dominate Kosovan politics, a trend that continues today. Ramush Haradinaj had to resign as prime minister in July 2019 to face charges of war crimes at the Hague.
The recent violence on Kosovo’s northern border has been the most intense in years. It’s unfolding in the context of negotiations between Belgrade and Pristina, which are trying to come to an official agreement to ensure stability and a “normalisation” of relations between the two countries.
The EU is the main source of foreign investment in both Kosovo and Serbia. Even Vučić, despite still enjoying Russian political support, goes to great lengths to create an optimal foreign investment climate by imposing austerity measures and offering cheap labour. He and Kurti know not to bite the hand that feeds them. What’s more, the US and EU desperately want to avoid another Russia-Ukraine-style ethnic conflict, considering there is already a war raging in Europe.
By stoking nationalist tensions, Vučić and Kurti are playing the game. Each leader is trying to get as many concessions out of the other as they both fight to get the most out of the EU. So, Vučić’s revival of Serbian nationalist violence, and Kurti’s provocation by having KFOR troops escort the new Kosovo Albanian mayor into his office, all go towards bolstering their bargaining positions. These rulers stand in the long tradition of Balkan leaders deliberately whipping up ethnic hatred to tighten their grip on power.
Ordinary Serbians, like Kosovars, do not benefit from this conflict. The inflation rate in Serbia is 14.8 percent—food, housing and transport have increased in price the most. The average worker earns less than A$790 per month, and pensioners receive less than A$320.
For decades, the Serbian state has encouraged a culture of violence and increasingly militarised its police force. Serbia has one of the highest rates of gun ownership in the world. After two mass shootings in May, tens of thousands of protesters hit the streets of Belgrade to demand funding for schools, not police, along with the sacking of the interior minister, the director of the Security Intelligence Agency, and Vučić himself.
Now Vučić is relying on the old playbook of scapegoating Kosovo Albanians to deflect anger and frustration from his own regime. He has nothing else to offer his citizens except the distraction of a fight for the expansion of Serbia’s regional control.
Contrary to popular assumptions about the region, ethnic violence and grinding poverty are not an inherent characteristic of the Balkans. There is an alternative, and it lies in the power of ordinary people across the Balkans, no matter their ethnicity, to challenge the elites who have devastated their lives for generations.
