Don’t Trust Serbian or Kosovo ‘Kings’ to Achieve Peace

Everyone, from Brussels to Washington, has enabled these two strongmen to continue holding their citizens in deadlock while simultaneously providing them with a chance to draft agreements in secret, without making much fuss at home, until everything is agreed and their patrons bless their heroic efforts.

The problem is that neither Vucic nor Thaci truly represents the will of their people. This might sound like an easily dismissed argument, since we have got used to the fact that both men have transformed the parliaments in their countries into obsolete, head-nodding institutions.

Serbia's government, with Ana Brnabic in charge, literally repeats everything Vucic says about "the dialogue" with Pristina - while also throwing in some racist remarks about Kosovo's leadership, and showing off her disdain for her Kosovo counterpart, Albin Kurti, at the EBRD Investment Summit in London, where it appears the two did not exchange a word.

But Brnabic has Vucic's strong back to fall on, while Kurti is in, what many in Kosovo call "a political war" with President Thaci - because Kurti rightly wants the government to take control of the dialogue with Serbia, among other things.

Elected as presidents, not as despotic rulers:

Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic in Belgrade, Serbia, 2020. Photo: EPA-EFE/ANDREJ CUKIC

What is the problem with that? While Thaci and Vucic were elected, and their legitimacy as presidents is indisputable, nobody in Kosovo or in Serbia made them kings, making all the political decisions, from the smallest appointments at a local level to the fate of the relations of Kosovo and Serbia.

But life in "young democracies" like Kosovo and Serbia is full of surprises, and it seems a dangerous rule...