Week in Review: Brink and Brinkmanship

Dangerous Territory

Kosovo Police Special Operations Unit patrol the area near the border crossing between Kosovo and Serbia in Jarinje, Kosovo, 22 September 2021. Kosovo Serbs in the northern part of the ethnically divided town of Mitrovica set up road barricades with trucks and cars to protest against the Kosovo government?s entry ban on vehicles with Serbian registration plates. Photo: EPA-EFE/VALDRIN XHEMAJ.

Tensions in the Serb-dominated north of Kosovo, as well as between Belgrade and Pristina, can almost be sensed in the air. There is talk of renewed barricades and potentially dangerous stand-offs between local Serbs (backed by Belgrade) and Pristina's special police units.

All of this is a reflection of just what a sorry state the 'dialogue on normalising relations' between Belgrade and Pristina has got into. In his opinion piece for Balkan Insight, Ian Bancroft debunks some myths about the current state of relations between Kosovo and Serbia and offers some signposts for the way forward. All roads, it seems, lead through the setting up of the long-promised Association of Serb municipalities in Kosovo, something that Prime Minister Albin Kurti is bitterly holding out against.

Read more: Kosovo Must Deliver on Municipal Association if it wants Normalisation (August 12, 2022)

Lighting the Fire

A woman crosses the Kosovo-Serbia border in Jarinje while Kosovo Special Police forces patrol the area, September 22, 2021. Photo: EPA-EFE/VALDRIN XHEMAJ

The rise in tensions between Kosovo and Serbia has been fuelled by particularly incendiary rhetoric coming from officials in both Pristina and Belgrade. So much so that the EU recently felt compelled to warn the two sides that they alone will be...