So, Kosovo is burning – but only a little. While protestors in Belgrade grab headlines by attacking the U.S. embassy, a rather more subtle game seems to be playing out in Serb-majority north Kosovo itself. There has been violence, with a series of assaults on UN vehicles and border posts, but it seems to be deliberately limited. When NATO forces turn up, the attackers typically pull back. There has been a notable (and welcome) lack of casualties.
Many Kosovo-watchers, myself included, had feared something worse: large-scale violence intended to inflict some high-profile humiliations on NATO, comparable to those achieved by Albanian rioters in March 2004. Then, many NATO troops retreated into their camps – the French general sent to rebuild the force admitted it had faced “defeat”. While UN and NATO officials don’t like to admit it, this shock created much of the momentum towards the province’s independence (you can find Kosovars who believe the whole thing was rigged by the CIA).
When I visited Kosovo last fall for the Annual Review of Global Peace Operations, it wasn’t hard to locate international officials who thought that the Serb minority would attempt to pull off a similar coup. In an unpublished note I wrote at the time, I reflected on the mood of gloom:
Ask international officials in Kosovo if they think the EU could navigate a crisis, and their response is dark: in a deteriorating security situation, it would not be long before European troops, police and civilians found themselves being shot and killed. The Europeans will have no choice but to lock the situation down. That’s the optimistic take. In the pessimistic version, NATO would wade in to evacuate at-risk internationals – but be unable to halt Serb-Albanian violence.
Some had even grimmer visions of how matters might unfold. Here’s one worst-case scenario penned at about the same time (source: anonymous):
First, stories appear of Kosovo Albanian atrocities against a Serbian family . “Look,” say the Serbs, “Kosovars – and NATO – cannot be trusted to protect us.” Then Kosovar Serbs “spontaneously” rise up to defend themselves from ethnic cleansing, catching the sleepy NATO mission off guard. The Serb army moves into Kosovo – occupying the Serb-dominated areas to save their brethren. Russian President Putin calls for a ceasefire. Belgrade then concedes independence for the rest of Kosovo on condition that northern Kosovo is annexed to Serbia.
And it’s possible that the current, low-to-mid-level violence is the prelude to just that sort of escalation. That’s what everyone seems to be telling the New York Times:
“The Serbs appear intent on provoking an Albanian reaction and to make the international community’s mission here impossible, but we will not allow legal partition,” said one senior EU diplomat. But another European diplomat said that if Serbs pursued de facto division, “there is not a lot that could be done.”
But it’s possible that we’ll get to de facto division without really big violence. In the lead-up to Kosovo’s independence declaration, NATO managed to get a lot of troops – including Americans, French and Germans – into the northern part of the province. These probably have the potential to react pretty effectively to any sustained attack by the Kosovo Serbs (and any incursion by the Serb army would be an open invitation to NATO to use air power). After all, the Chadian rebels who thought that they could frighten off the EU this month with a direct show of force were only temporarily successful – and a lot of them are now permanently dead.
But the Kosovo Serbs may be onto a cleverer strategy: a drip-drip of violence that tires out NATO without being sufficient to provoke retribution, and demonstrating that the international community doesn’t really control the north. As long as the protestors avoid inflicting any major casualties, it will be hard to get really tough with them – the headline “NATO forces cut off Serb right to free speech/protest” isn’t exactly an appealing one. Rather than leave the Europeans and U.S. “with no choice but to lock the situation down”, this sort of persistent trouble-making has the potential to corrode NATO’s sense of purpose. The Kosovo Serbs may be being very cunning. Or they may just be hoping for a bigger fight soon.
