The flare-up of violence in Kosovo shows the folly of the west’s appeasement of Serbia
The killing last weekend of a Kosovo police officer by a group of 30 or more heavily armed Serbian nationalist militants marks the most significant security incident in that country, and the western Balkans region, in more than a decade. The US ambassador to Pristina, Jeffrey M Hovenier, described the attack subsequently: “We know it was coordinated and sophisticated … The quantity of weapons suggests this was serious, with a plan to destabilise security in the region.”
Kosovo’s authorities concur and are even more explicit in who they blame. Namely, Serbia’s government, and its strongman president, Aleksandar Vučić.
In the hours after the day-long skirmishes between the militants and police, in which three attackers were reported to have been killed, the office of Kosovo’s prime minister, Albin Kurti, posted photographs of the large cache of seized weapons and munitions. “The perpetrators acted not alone,” he wrote, “but [with] state backing. Serbia must be held fully accountable for sponsoring terrorist violence on [Kosovo’s] territory.”
Serbia, of course, denies these accusations, and responded with allegations directed at Kurti and his government for their purported persecution of Kosovo’s Serbs. Yet the Vučić government also promptly declared a day of national mourning, and regime media have glorified the dead attackers as martyrs for the Serb nationalist cause.
Few analysts, though, have any doubt that Serbia played a significant role in the attack.
It is claimed that the country’s territory was used as a staging area for the militants, whose leadership is known to have close ties to Vučić and his inner circle. Drone footage published by Kosovo police, for instance, appears to show that the vice-president of the primary Serb ethnic party in Kosovo, Srpska Lista, was among the attackers. Srpska Listais widely perceived as a proxy enterprise of the Belgrade regime, while Milan Radoičić has been under US sanctions for his involvement in significant criminal activities since December 2021. He is now believed to be in hiding in Serbia. Another of the attackers was allegedly the former bodyguard of the country’s intelligence chief (who is also under US sanctions).
The bigger question is how this attack could have happened in the first place.
Kosovo still hosts a Nato peacekeeping force of about 4,500 troops who are closely involved in policing and intelligence-gathering in the country. They were violently attacked in May of this year by Serb nationalist crowds, leaving more than two dozen peacekeepers injured. And Kosovo’s government has warned of the growing likelihood of renewed Serb-orchestrated violence since September 2021, when Serbia deployed fighter planes along the border for the first time since the 1999 Kosovo war.
The answer, alas, is not comforting. The attack is the (in)direct product of a radical reorientation of American and European policy on the KosovoSerbia dispute and the broader western Balkans. Since 2020, Washington and Brussels have explicitly centred the interests of Belgrade over all other neighbouring polities, in an improbable scheme to pacify the country’s nationalist leaders and pull them out of Russia’s orbit of influence. This in a country where 70% of the population backs Russia’s aggression against Ukraine. Even after the May attacks on Nato peacekeepers, for instance, the US and EU, incredibly, sanctioned Kosovo.
Kurti has explicitly accused the EU’s chief regional envoy, Miroslav Lajčák, of working in concert with Serbia to pressure Pristina to give in to Belgrade’s demands. And most observers agree with him. Before Lajčák was appointed, seasoned regional experts warned against the move, citing the former Slovakia foreign minister’s historical ties to Russia. Speaking to Voice of Americaaboutthis week’s attack, the former CIA analyst David Kanin likewise blamed western appeasement of Vučić for emboldening extremist elements in Serbia.
A sharp course correction by the US and EU is now needed. It is evident that both the Biden administration’s policies and those of the European Commission have contributed to the most significant security crisis in the region in years. Their appeasement of Belgrade has endangered Kosovo, but also neighbouring states such as Bosnia and Montenegro, where Serb nationalist militancy, also sponsored by Serbia, is likewise the chief domestic security threat.
The US and EU sanctions against Kosovo must be reversed and replaced by restrictions against the Vučić regime. Serbia’s EU accession efforts should also be frozen until Belgrade demonstrates a serious commitment to de-escalation and functional acceptance of the reality of Kosovo’s existence as an independent state. . And the five EU member states who do not yet recognise Kosovo’s sovereignty should be reproached for their role in exacerbating a major European security issue when the continent can least afford it.
Until then, there can be no meaningful return to dialogue, no matter how much western diplomats will it.
Jasmin Mujanović is a political scientist and the author of Hunger & Fury: The Crisis of Democracy in the Balkans and The Bosniaks: Nationhood after Genocide
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voice says, “but it’s Blank BLANK-blank. Like Tim CON-way.”
Later that day, when I’m not trying to think of it, the faint star is suddenly visible. Bob Denver. Bob DEN-ver.
I seek out my wife. “It’s Bob Denver.” “Who is?”
“Maynard G Krebs was played by Bob Denver.”
“Never heard of him.”
Undeterred, I savor my feat for the better part of an afternoon, enjoying it while I can. Because just ahead, there inevitably lies yet another struggle over another lost name. One of these days, it might be Bob Denver all over again.
Oh, well. Back to my dad. A year or so before he died, I took him and my mom for a drive one early evening. There was a thin crescent hanging brightly in the sky. “Look at that moon!” my mom said.
My dad studied it almost in awe. Then he said, “I’ve never seen a moon like that before.”
I said nothing. My old man grew up in the 1920s in a homestead in northern Montana. They had no electricity, and nobody within many miles did. Unhindered by light pollution, the sparkling sky he undoubtedly saw on almost every cold clear night would have been spectacular. I’m certain he saw literally hundreds of appearances of a crescent moon.
But now he was taking it in as if for the very first time. This sturdy scion of the Great Plains, who had trained horses, fought as an army paratrooper in the Pacific, worked as a carpenter, with hands tough as rawhide … was now softly unraveling. And as for me: the future had reached through time and space to scruff me for a sober look at what lay directly in front of me and what might await me further on.
That was some 15 years ago. Time contracts slowly, painfully, surely, like the rusty vise at my workbench. But to nurture fear is mostly pointless, and the human spirit, when functioning properly, seeks the bright. So, I keep in mind the wonderment my old man expressed that one night at the crescent moon. Really, how fine, to feel that you’ve witnessed something new and amazing at age 96!
I know: my irrepressible psyche is in self-defense mode, looking for any glimmer in the darkness ahead. Fine. In the meantime, for now, I’ve concluded that the best course of action (besides exercise, eating right, sleeping right, blah-blah-ing right) is to keep an eye on the moon - and to think, on each sighting: I’ve never seen a moon like that before.
Larry F Slonaker is a former writer and editor at the San Jose Mercury News and the author of the novel Nothing Got Broke
Really, how fine, to feel that you’ve witnessed something new and amazing at age 96!
it very moving,” says Fiona. “Although I was very British about it; I kept apologising! But I felt I should challenge myself, even for a few seconds, because she [Abramović] has challenged herself so much.”
PitCa, an artist in his 20s, is impressed with the bravery and stoicism of the performers. “It is different from paintings, which is what I usually see,” he says, slightly puzzled. But Peter and Janet Gibbons, visiting from Hampshire, are old hands, having participated in Imponderabilia at a previous Abramović show in Copenhagen.
“It’s fine, if a bit intimate,” says Peter. “The funniest thing is watching people pretend to be so nonchalant about it, as though it’s something they do every day.”
Rowena Gander, one of the nude performers in the doorway, is a Liverpool-based performance artist and choreographer. Next year, she will be touring her own show, Barely Visible, but for the next three months, she is performing all three of Abramovic’s live works – Imponderabilia, Luminosity, and Nude with Skeleton – at the Royal Academy. To prepare, Gander and her fellow performers took part in one of the infamous ascetic Abramović Method bootcamps: fasting; no tech, sex or talking; and a lot of endurance exercises. “The hardest was staring at a wall of primary colours for hours,” says Gander.
In a post-#MeToo world of intimacy coordinators, Gander says the staff at the Royal Academy have been steadfast in their safeguarding approach. “We have signals where, if anyone were to touch us inappropriately, they would be frog-marched out of there.”
So far, she says she has learned a lot; about her own limits, about the public. “Some spectators, you can hear their breath because they are nervous; you can see some building up the courage, sometimes they back out at the last minute. There’s always a few people who try to break the gaze, too.”
Gander expected most men to face her, and women to face her partner; but interestingly, it’s been the opposite. One woman dropped something right at the second she was passing through, and had to bend down to retrieve it.
Andreja Kargačin, an “antidisciplinary” artist and member of the Serbian-based Shock Cooperative, performed Imponderabilia in Abramović’s home town of Belgrade in 2019. She tells me she found it more uncomfortable as aviewer. “That puts you in a vulnerable spot, because you feel responsible for the artists: you could hurt them, step on them … when you are performing you are concentrating on the very physical act.”
For some, as well as being intense and moving, it can be a charged, erotic experience. As Gander says: “That might be the first person they’ve touched intimately for a long time.”
Nudity in art is, of course, as old as art itself, from the Venus of Willendorf (circa 35,000 years ago) to Kate Winslet being drawn like a French girl on her sofa. It’s strange then, perhaps, that in 2023, when attitudes towards the body and sex are much more liberal, it still causes such a stir. Then again, Imponderabilia is a piece which throws up many questions, including the issue of consent; and as a society we’ve become much more cognisant of that. One thing is for sure: Abramović has made a career out of examining the human condition and Imponderabilia is surely one of the finest examples.
The best place to start, for inspiration and a great community spirit, is a parkrun. It could not be more inclusive – parkrun celebrates the fact that the average finishing time for its 5km runs (about 32 minutes) gets slower every year, as people of varying fitness levels join in. You can walk, jog or run in nearly 1,200 places around the UK every Saturday morning.
50s: weightlifting
The usual, cautious advice for over-50s is “low- impact” activities such as cycling or swimming. While those have benefits, weight-bearing activities are crucial, because as we age, muscle mass declines and with it goes strength and, eventually, the ability to perform basic tasks. While weightlifting may seem the preserve of the scarily buff, you don’t need to lift big numbers to feel the benefits, and you don’t have to be strong already – that’s the goal, not the starting point.
Nor are you suddenly going to bulk out. Mimi Bines, who coaches at women-only gym Lift Studio LDN, says: “I’ve been training for 10 years and you probably can’t tell! And it’s a fact that older people who lift weights have better bone density than people a lot younger,” she says. “For women in particular, it’s great to learn performance-based skills after years of weight loss being the only goal.”
If classes or gyms aren’t your thing, YouTube has loads of tutorials. Start slowly, and get used to movements such as squats and deadlifts using only your bodyweight until you feel confident, then you can add light weights and progress from there.
Dozens of studies have shown that even light weights sessions – half an hour, a few times a week – can rebuild muscle tissue in people from 50 to 90. And it can even improve your mood.
60s and 70s: walking football/netball
Between the ages of 65 and 74, sedentary time in men and women increases to 10 hours a day or more. Although plenty of active folk will continue to enjoy running and cycling into their 60s, taking up a whole new sport can be daunting for some.
“It’s really important to do something that involves a bit of impact,” says Brewer. “Though too much can cause problems, higher-impact activities can help maintain bone density. I’d suggest brisk walking uphill and downhill.”
But if walking seems boring, why not try walking sports? Walking football was invented by Chesterfield FC in 2011 to help men over 50 combat loneliness. Today, there are more than 1,000 affiliated clubs, with players in their 70s and 80s. Similarly, Walking Netball is accessible, low-impact and fast-growing. Though there is no running in either, they can still be surprisingly fast and skilful And while they are a fantastic way for those who loved the sports in their earlier years to get back into them, they are also beginnerfriendly. Just as team sports bring social benefits, skills and confidence to teens, they can also help later in life.
80s and beyond: balance and core strength
Every July at Bushy Park in southwest London there is a parkrun for walkers and runners in their 80s and 90s. This year, 84 people took part. Age, for some, really is just a number. But if walking or running is too daunting or difficult, focus on the important basics: balance and core strength.
“Group exercise classes are great,” says Brewer, “and good for your mental health.
Exercise is particularly important to retain strength. If you lose strength to get out of a chair or climb stairs, you lose your independence.” You are also more likely to fall. Age UK runs classes around the country, including pilates and yoga, dance and tai chi.
It’s never too late to take it up: a study of people with an average age of 82 found that those in the bottom 10% when it came to daily physical activity were more than twice as likely to develop Alzheimer’s as those in the top 10%.
“Cardiovascular and strength fitness can help you retain independence, potentially live longer, but also, importantly, have a better quality of life,” says Brewer. “What’s more, repetitive learning of a new skill can stimulate brain cells, whatever your age.”
At a time when PE provision varies hugely, what matters most is simply exposure to as many sports as possible