Kosovar Serbs Contemplate Life Under Albanian Rule

by admin on Thursday, September 29th, 2011 | No Comments

Although the protests have been peaceful so far, behind the anger a more fundamental issue is smoldering: Serbs here are being forced to finally contemplate a future under the Kosovar government in Pristina, which is dominated by ethnic Albanians.

“It’s the very first time in 12 years that the pressure against the Serbs in the north has been so strong from both Pristina and the international community,” said Tatjana Lazarevic, 41, a native of Mitrovica who is a project manager at a private organization here. “And while at the same time, the support from Belgrade is weakening.”

Indeed, the government in Belgrade is facing new international pressure to finally dismantle the institutions, financed and governed by Serbia since the 1999 war, that have allowed Serbs in northern Kosovo to live separately from the dictates of the government in Pristina.

Serbia must “dismantle the parallel structures” it maintains in north Kosovo if it wants to join the European Union, Angela Merkel, the German chancellor, said in Belgrade last month.

While the European Union does not require Serbia to recognize Kosovar statehood — several current E.U. members do not — it does expect candidates to have normal relations with neighbors. Cutting off Serbian institutions in northern Kosovo is seen as a key to that.

Serbia is hoping to receive an invitation for candidacy to begin negotiations for E.U. membership at the European Council meeting in December. But few expect Serbia to make any dramatic moves on Kosovo before Serbia’s parliamentary and local elections next April.

Still, the carrot of possible membership in the European Union is forcing a thaw in the frozen conflict between ethnic Serbs and Albanians in Kosovo.

“I think Serbian civilians will not integrate because they want to, but because they have no other choice,” said Albin Kurti, leader of the Kosovo opposition movement Vetevendosje — Self-Determination in Albanian. “We have to block Serbia’s intrusion into Kosovo,” Mr. Kurti said in an interview in Pristina. “There is no other way.”

While the Kosovo government and much of the international community view northern Kosovo’s institutions as “parallel,” or as simply illegal, Serbs here see themselves as living normally under the laws of Serbia, which still regards Kosovo as a province, not accepting its unilateral declaration of independence in 2008, which Belgrade and its allies, including Russia, regard as illegal. The Kosovar Serbs flatly refuse to live under any system governed by Pristina.

“The Albanian institutions are parallel, not ours,” said Vladimir Jaksic, 25, reflecting a widely held belief here as he enjoyed a glass of chardonnay and a cigarette in a cafe in the northern center of Mitrovica, a city split by the Ibar River.

Milos Subotic, in charge of international outreach at the University of Pristina, whose Serbian faculty members have decamped to North Mitrovica, said that if Kosovo was permitted to secede from Serbia, so northern Kosovo should be permitted to secede from Kosovo. “If the right of self-determination is given to Kosovo Albanians, I don’t see why I shouldn’t have the same right,” he said.

While ethnic Serbs dominate in the northern Kosovo, some two-thirds of Kosovo’s estimated 110,000 Serb residents live in the south, an area under Pristina’s control. Although Serbs make up only 6 percent of Kosovo’s 1.7 million residents, the Serbian language can be used in all state institutions, and of 16 government ministers in Pristina, three are ethnic Serbs.

Nonetheless tensions in the north remain high, and Serbs there have rejected the Comprehensive Proposal for the Kosovo Status Settlement, proposed in 2007 by Martti Ahtisaari, the Finnish statesman who received the Nobel Peace Prize the next year for his work on the conflicts in Kosovo and elsewhere.