72 hours of radicalization

After the decision of Pristina not to give up the policy of changing license plates in the north of Kosovo and the dismissal of Nenad Đurić, the police chief in the northern sector of the Kosovo Police Service (KPS), the Serbs from the north decided to leave all the institutions of the "temporary authorities in Pristina" and thus expressed their protest over the "terror of Aljbin Kurti" - as the Belgrade press called the decisions of the Government in Pristina.

Thus ended three days of "great uncertainty and tension". They started with reports on incidents on the administrative line between Serbia and Kosovo and the "Drone" affair, which made Miloš Vučević a person known throughout Serbia.

The army, drones, MiGs, combat readiness... This is what the citizens heard during the entire week in which the Kosovo government wanted to start implementing the decision to warn those citizens who have car plates that Pristina no longer recognizes. A seemingly small issue has become crucial for maintaining peace in the region and the possible continuation of the dialogue between Pristina and Belgrade.

The stubbornness of the Prime Minister of Kosovo, Aljbin Kurti, and the readiness of the Serbian List in the north of Kosovo to follow Belgrade's instructions created a serious crisis. Now it will take time to solve it, which can be considered as a small victory for Serbia. Namely, the question arises as to why Pristina is not cooperative, and not why Belgrade is not moving towards a "final agreement".

So, Aleksandar Vučić succeeded in his plan: he moved the political crisis to Kosovo, introduced uncertainty into the political life there, shook the institutions and the way they function. With a strong campaign, he tried to "revenge" Kurti for the previous meeting in Brussels, when the latter managed to force Vučić with the help of foreign mediators to withdraw and to agree to some sort of agreement on the use of license plates in Kosovo and Serbia.

Serbia has now changed its approach and radicalized relations. But it remains to be seen who will have to give in first and what price will be paid for it. Unlike some previous situations, no one in Serbia is declaring "victory" because it is clear that the game is "on a knife's edge". Quite simply, the Serbian representatives left the institutions of Kosovo and it will take time for them to return - if they return at all. And it will take even more time to restore some kind of trust among those who are supposed to work together.

As Marko Jakšić, who was recently employed at the court in Mitrovica, said in an appearance on TV Nova S: "Now we have returned to the period before the signing of the Brussels Agreement in April 2013."

That agreement basically means the integration of Serbs into Kosovo's institutions - no matter what Belgrade calls them temporary, they are now contested. Also, the dialogue is stuck again and instead of moving forward towards a new normalization agreement, it may have to start from the beginning. And all this under the condition that no incident happens in the north of Kosovo that could completely cancel the whole process.

BEANS AND BERLIN

The whole week was dedicated to the events in the north of Kosovo. Even before November 1, when the decision on vehicles with license plates that Pristina does not recognize came into force, a mini-incident occurred when Besnik Bisljimi, the head of the Kosovo negotiation team, was sent back from the road to Belgrade. At the same time, news came from the north of Kosovo that the vehicles of those few vehicle owners who had changed their license plates were set on fire, as a kind of warning not to engage in such ventures.

Belgrade has always insisted that the Serbs from the north of Kosovo will not accept the decision to change the license plates - they can at most agree to neutral so-called. KS plates. So it had to be shown that almost no one heeded the Kurti government's call to re-register cars.

On the day when the implementation of that decision began, information appeared that drones were being introduced from the territory of Kosovo into central Serbia with the aim of monitoring what the Serbian security forces were doing. The new Minister Vučević got his follow-up appearance in the morning and all other programs on controlled TV stations, where he explained the seriousness of the situation and spoke about the fact that Serbia "will not allow another Storm to happen again". It was also learned that "Commander-in-Chief" Vučić ordered the raising of combat readiness in the garrisons of the Serbian Army, which in those days was a participant in the large-scale military exercise Maneuver 2022.

Because of that exercise and because of the "seriousness of the situation", Vučić avoided traveling to Berlin, where a meeting was held under the auspices of German Chancellor Olaf Scholz as part of the "Berlin Process" initiative. Started back in 2014 under then Chancellor Angela Merkel, in recent years it has been on the back burner compared to the "Open Balkans", an initiative strongly supported by the US Government.

Basically, Vučić went to the Pasuljanske meadows for maneuvers, and Ana Brnabić went to Berlin and signed new agreements together with Kurti and other presidents of the governments of the Western Balkans. Certainly, the most important is the one that allows Albanians from Kosovo to travel everywhere in the region with identity cards.

photo: Tanjug

But the "situation in the north of Kosovo" completely overshadowed the meeting in Berlin. The public also learned that it was also mentioned that the so-called German-French proposal for resolving the dispute in Kosovo is a possible basis for future agreements. The agreement that was leaked to the public in a strange way at the beginning of September, when the representatives of the German chancellor and the French president were on a regional visit, and which Vučić claimed to have seen but not taken in hand, will turn out to be a platform on which to build final agreement between Belgrade and Pristina. This also means that the time is shortened and that a quick decision is required.

While Vučić said that he most likes to spend time with soldiers on maneuvers, Brnabić said quite angrily that she does not see the point of new agreements when Pristina does not respect the old one, the Brussels one. When Kurti's statement from Berlin arrived, in which he repeated that there would be no Union of Serbian Municipalities because there are no municipalities according to the national key and that Serbia cannot claim what it does not have on its own territory, the trigger was pressed to take action "on the ground." ".

Squeezed between the pressure to move on, negotiate a new "paper" and the fact that Pristina refuses to form the ZSO according to the Brussels agreement of 2013, Vučić played harder and pulled the strongest civilian card: the withdrawal of Serbs from the institutions, which fundamentally shakes the entire legal the system of Kosovo as a state, since it cannot function without Serbs in the institutions.

PRIME MINISTER PUNK

The crisis situation is nothing new for Kurti. The history of his political activity is an insistence on a kind of institutional and non-institutional radicalism. While he was an activist and in the opposition, overturning a truck with goods from Serbia and throwing tear gas in the Kosovo Assembly may have seemed punk to some. However, the position of Prime Minister does not allow such performances, especially if your position and mandate depend more on "Western partners" than on voters on the ground.

Although he did not carry a rifle and cannot in any way be linked to war crimes during the conflict in Kosovo in 1998/99. , Kurti maintained a radical attitude in politics and stubbornly insisted on principles for which it is increasingly difficult to find support even where he was loved.

He missed several opportunities to establish communication with the Serbian community in Kosovo. His justification would probably be that the Serbs do not want to do anything without Belgrade's permission, which is not incorrect, but there was probably a way to somehow talk to them both in the north and in the south.

He spoke in Serbian through the screen and persistently repeated that Serbia should recognize Kosovo, pay war reparations and put all Serbian criminals on trial. Even if he is completely right, he came to power in the years when he was negotiating with Belgrade and failed to impose his principle - recognize us, so that we can see what we can do as independent states. While he was trying to change the concept of dialogue, he was actually working for Belgrade, whose strategy - and Vučić specifically spoke about it in his weekly "address" - has always been to buy time. So the meetings where nothing happened - Kurti wanted to have "political and not technical talks" - were in favor of Vučić's tactics: fine, he said, we are always in favor of dialogue, but there is no readiness of the other side.

Prishtina believed that everything was going well for her because Serbia did not impose sanctions on Russia and because it received almost everything contained in the Brussels agreements: the Serbs were integrated, an area code was obtained, the energy sector was incorporated into the Kosovo system... But now it can be seen that it was a tactical illusion because with one move all that was more or less erased.

UNDER THE CONTROL OF VESELINOVIĆ AND RADOIČIĆ

photo: tara radovanović / tanjug

"Now we just have to wait," Milovan Drecun, Vučić's favorite security expert for Kosovo and Metohija, said on Tuesday, appearing on TV stations all day long. He also explains that with this move, Belgrade canceled the idea of ​​discussing the German-French plan - that now the Association of Serbian Municipalities must first, then the negotiations on the return of the Serbs, and then we will see what happens next.

Meanwhile, Vučić spoke more openly about the ZSO, equating it with Republika Srpska. "Who cares about Republika Srpska, let's say?", he asked an imaginary interlocutor in "Hit-Twit" on Sunday, November 6, at the end of the episode "72 the hardest hours in history". Vučić "asks" the Western world how it is that Republika Srpska bothers them when they themselves created it with the Dayton Agreement.

That question is rhetorical, but it was followed by an explanation: ZSO should be a kind of Republika Srpska, not "some over there" non-governmental organization, as Pristina sees it and as it is more or less described in the Brussels Agreement. It does not say that ZSO has any management functions except that it can make decisions in the sphere of education and health, as well as in connection with local development programs. There is no indication anywhere that it is a territorial-autonomous-political community - but, who cares. The idea is to buy time as much as possible anyway, and this move helped Vučić get space to plan new moves.

He has now shown in one move why he introduced a single-mindedness in the Serbian community: that when he says "everyone leave", that is what happens and that Pristina does not have the possibility to elect some "other Serbs" to replace those who left the institutions. He turned the Serbian community into an instrument, into a claymole with which he works and acts as he believes is best for his plans. Everything that he could not do in Montenegro, BiH and Croatia is now succeeding in Kosovo and he is asking for support and applause for such a policy.

Here he is supported by his own and his coalition, and indirectly by part of the opposition. Everyone gathered around the story of the need to protect the Serbian people ("if there is no our people, there is no Kosovo"), and no one is saying what kind of deal is being offered to the Albanians (except for the older proposal of the SAA).

Kurti is now at a turning point: to go for new elections in the whole of Kosovo, to try to organize elections in the north of Kosovo or to bring in some people who will take over the institutions that the Serbs abandoned. What he can't do is install 500 Albanian policemen because they wouldn't be able to do anything realistically, and that's why Serbia is asking KFOR and NATO to take control of security in the north while the vacuum lasts. The country that Kurti believes he is leading is now legally crippled, and he needs to show what he is made of - whether he will remain a political radical or whether he too will sit down at the table in a more thoughtful chess-political party.

Vučić demonstrated force. How long can this slap in the face of the European Union with the adulation of America all while waiting for changes in the political sky of the USA last? This is news, but the question is the reaction of the other side: Vučić tried to divide Kosovo with the help of the Soros Fund a few years ago, but the Europeans stopped it. Now everything looks like a similar initiative with the belief that he proved to the Americans that he has nothing against Albanians (he supports "Open Balkans"), but that in Kosovo those communities should be separated.

It seems that Vučić gained time and that his tactics worked. Now he will wait, as Drecun says. And maybe he listens to another expert, Nebojša Čović: he also publicly advises him to immediately start forming parallel Serbian institutions. Slowly, there is time, he will wait for everyone to line up with "ideas" with the faith that Zvonko Veselinović and Milan Radoičić will keep things under control. Well, whatever it costs.