Kosovo clashes as Serbs bar Albanian mayors from office
Nato peacekeepers injured in protest over election
Kosovo erupted in the year’s worst clashes between ethnic Serbs and Albanians yesterday as tensions escalated over a disputed election last month, leading to dozens of casualties among mostly Serb protesters and injuries to about 25 Nato peacekeepers.
The violence broke out as Serb demonstrators tried to block newly elected ethnic Albanian mayors from taking office after widely boycotted elections last month in Kosovo’s contested north. The clashes raised fears of a deepening conflict with the potential to spread through the region just as the two sides were close to a co-operation deal.
While Serbs are a small minority in Kosovo as a whole, they populate most of the four northern districts that held elections in April. Serbs boycotted the vote after their demands for establishing an association of Serb-majority municipal governments were not met by the central government in Pristina.
As a result, the vote ended with a turnout of less than 4 per cent. With no participation threshold in Kosovo’s elections, the vote yielded Albanian mayors in all four districts. As the mayors tried to assume office this week, Serbs, who reject the election results as illegitimate, attempted to block them from entering municipalities.
In a live video feed from Zvecan, Hungarian KFOR peacekeepers could be seen pushing back an angry crowd. Tear gas used by both sides billows in the air as the special forces are heard yelling to one another: “The crowd is throwing bottles. They just lit a torch.”
Western powers condemned both the violence of the mostly Serbian crowds and the Albanian central authorities’ push to proceed with enforcing the results of the election. The EU has described the election as legal but far from “business as usual”.
Nato said the attacks on their personnel were unprovoked, adding: “Such attacks are totally unacceptable. Violence must stop immediately.”
The Serb and Albanian sides each blamed the other.
Serbia’s President Aleksandar Vucic has raised the Army’s combat readiness to the highest level, Defence Minister Milos Vucevic said, adding he had included “additional instructions for the deployment of the Army’s units in specific, designated positions”, without elaborating.
Kosovo’s President Vjosa Osmani claimed Serbia was destabilising Kosovo.
“Serb illegal structures turned into criminal gangs have attacked Kosovo police, KFOR (peacekeeping) officers and journalists,” Osmani wrote on Twitter, adding that they “carry out Vucic’s orders”, without substantiating those claims.
Kosovo’s Prime Minister Albin Kurti said the violence was unacceptable, adding that “ultra-nationalistic Serb graffiti on Nato vehicles is a dark reminder in Kosova”, referring to Serbs spray-painting Nato vehicles with the letter Z, a Russian marking used in the war in Ukraine.
Serbs in Kosovo have consistently denied ties to Russia but many harbour sympathies with Moscow, long a Slavic ally of Belgrade.