When Kfor returns to the north of Kosovo

Za "Time" from Bonn

After the bloody Sunday in Banjska (September 24), everyone returned to their busia. According to the Belgrade authorities and tabloids, Kurti is to blame for everything. According to Pristina, the whole world has seen that Serbia is planning a Crimean scenario for the north of Kosovo.

Representatives of the West reflexively repeated the need to return to dialogue under the baton of Brussels. In the hybrid war - which started before the guns fell silent and where "Western partners" seem to be convinced, not the public - Pristina leads 5:0.

The videos from drones and other evidence that should show that Milan Radoičić is behind Banjska, and behind him the state of Serbia, are contrasted with speeches from Belgrade by President Aleksandar Vučić, full of sighs and accusations that everyone conspired against the Serbs. Admittedly, the Americans as well as the high representative of the EU, Josep Borrell, were careful not to describe the attack as "terrorist", while Berlin used that very word.

According to the information of this weekly, in the western capitals there was confusion over Vučić's decision to declare a Day of Mourning last Wednesday and thus celebrate the attackers from Banjska as heroes. No one believed Vučić's explanation that Serbia regrets in general, because of the "tragic events" in which an Albanian policeman also died. Damage limitation also includes the president's interviews with CNN and the Financial Times, a newspaper in which he has repeatedly tried to play music for Western ears in the past. There, Vučić denied that the army was preparing for Kosovo.

"What would be the idea? To destroy our position that we have been building for a year? Destroy it in one day? Serbia does not want war. Serbia would not benefit from that because it would jeopardize its position in negotiations with Pristina under the auspices of the EU", said Vučić.

OWN GOAL IN BANJSKA

Negotiations? That sounds like a bad joke today. If the "dialogue" was painful and forced until now, if Vučić and Kurti were dragged to Brussels so that the European mediators pretended to go somewhere, now that show could stop, at least for a while. Apparently, behind the scenes, there is lively discussion. Kosovo Prime Minister Albin Kurti has come out of the defensive he has been in for the past few months and is now throwing Banjska as the main trump card. All in style – I told you well why we need special police in the North.

"Banjska brings attention back to Serbia", says Andreas Ernst, an experienced journalist of "Noje zircher Zeitung" who was a correspondent from Belgrade for many years. "Until now, Kurti has been under pressure and received sanctions because he did not want to form the Association of Serbian Municipalities. Now the pressure is on Serbia, but also on the EU and the USA to achieve some success. They invested political capital, and now things seem to be slipping out of their hands. It's a question of prestige and authority."

Ernst is one of those who declared EU enlargement dead a long time ago - neither Serbia nor its neighbors think they need to do what they need to do to join, nor does the European Union want them. But now, says Ernst, Russian aggression against Ukraine reminds Europe that there is a soft underbelly in the Balkans, and a new logic of expansion is being considered. A group of parliamentarians from the region had meetings about this last week in Berlin. Allegedly, the German interlocutors also have sympathy for the idea of ​​a spoonful approach. Let's say, so that Serbia and the neighborhood would first be economically integrated and have representatives in the European Parliament.

"The charm of that model of gradual approach is that something is gained already in the first phase. This could also solve the Kosovo issue. Because now the West only has the threat of sanctions in hand, but there are few carrots," says Ernst. "However, time is running out. In Banjska, we saw how quickly it can explode."

The priority must be to prevent "much worse bloodshed" in the near future, Adi Ćerimagić, senior analyst of the European Stability Initiative (ESI), tells Vreme. "If there is no punishment and consequences, then this moment will be remembered as a return to some version of the terrible events of the nineties, in Kosovo and beyond."

ESI is not just any initiative. This influential Berlin organization, whose work is supported by a number of Western countries and foundations, is headed by Gerald Knaus, the architect of the EU-Turkey refugee agreement. For a long time, ESI has stated in its analyzes that Belgrade could be preparing such a "scenario" in Kosovo. In their opinion, only a credible offer from the European Union - if not for admission to permanent membership, then for admission to the common economic space - can entice Belgrade and Pristina to search for solutions.

TRY TO MAKE KFOR MOVE

Belgrade is also playing the card of "preventing far worse bloodshed" by calling for KFOR to take control of the North. That scenario is recounted in the diplomatic corridors - Banjska was supposed to be a demonstration of instability and rebellion of the local population that would force NATO to take over the North in fear of war.

"In order to prevent this conflict in any way and by any means, which today seems more likely than ever before, KFOR must take control of the north of Kosovo," said Albanian Prime Minister Edi Rama, who is no secret that he is closer to Vučić than to Kurti. . "Any hesitation and delay, including the argument that 'we don't have enough troops', can make KFOR's intervention tomorrow much larger in terms of troops, but also more difficult," said Rama after Banjska.

To that, German journalist Michael Martens cynically noted on Twitter: "Edi Rama is probably the best prime minister that Serbia has had since Nikola Pašić."
For now, it is not clear whether the announced reinforcement for Kfor is a step towards taking control of the North. Another 200 British soldiers should arrive in Kosovo. In Germany, parliamentarians of the ruling coalition are advocating that Berlin send more people - currently there are only 85 Bundeswehr soldiers in Kosovo, out of a possible 400. The KFOR has a total of 4.500 people on the ground. Was that the whole idea of ​​the amateur action in Banjska? Some sources say that Vučić tried to put the United States in front of a fait accompli - chaos in the North would force them to send KFOR. The Serbian army near the administrative line would serve as an additional scarecrow.

A bolder version of the theory - which is not heard from idlers in front of drugstores, but from diplomatic circles - is that the Americans in principle supported the intensification of tensions in the north of Kosovo in order to have more of an argument for KFOR troops to take control.

According to that theory, after this year's agreements in Brussels and Ohrid, Belgrade received a signal from Washington to wait six months. If Kurti is not forced to join the Union of Serbian Municipalities within that period, then the Americans will demand that KFOR take over the duties of the special Kosovo police, known in Serbian circles under the infamous name Rosu. "That would lead to a soft division of Kosovo," a source familiar with the diplomatic situation in Pristina tells us. Because, if KFOR were to "play" the special police, and the Serbs returned to the regular police, there would no longer be "Albanian boots" in the North.

What happened then? According to the same sources, the action was "penetrated" by intelligence, probably with the help of German services. Kosovo police showed up and bloodshed ensued.

THE ARMY IS GOING IN REVERSE

Since then, Belgrade, as well as Washington, have been working on damage control. The silence of the officials about how the armed group left the monastery and walked to the surrounding hills is striking. The sources of "Vremen" say that it was the Americans who mediated this "withdrawal", in order to avoid even more bloodshed in the middle of the monastery.

Whatever the idea was in Banjska, it ended as a fiasco and left Serbia's first man, Aleksandar Vučić, confused. Because he didn't know anything, some say. Because he knew, but he didn't expect it to end like that, say others.

Damage limitation has been in place since then. Warnings from the White House on Friday (September 29) that Serbia is reportedly massing unprecedented troops near the Land Security Zone, were elaborated from Pristina - Serbian artillery, air defense and tanks are reportedly deployed in three directions towards Kosovo.

News about the movement of troops dates back to a few days before Banjska, when Tanjug reported that "columns of military combat vehicles" were filmed in Blac, Beloljin, Kuršumlija and on the way to Raška. After the skirmish in Banjska, those troops were visited by Minister of Defense Miloš Vučević and Chief of the General Staff Milan Mojsilović.

AND RADOJIC IS SO MUCH "DONE" FOR INTEGRATION...

Vučić claimed that the maneuvers are regular, that Serbia had about 8.400 soldiers in the Land Security Zone, which is twice as few as before, but that they will reduce the number to 4.400. Striking images of the "retreat" followed. This is just the beginning of getting Vučić out of the predicament he got Serbia into, and where the fact that the Serbian dedicated industry has been arming the Ukrainian army with various schemes offers him a slightly softer landing. Those familiar with the situation say that this is precisely what brought Belgrade the favor of the Biden administration.

Now it's on the exam. In the same speech in which he warned about the army's movements, the White House spokesman for national security, John Kirby, asked the Serbian authorities to help the investigation into the events in Banjska. "All those involved in these attacks must be brought to justice," said Kirby.

Some observers concluded that it was a request for the extradition of Milan Radoičić - although Kirby did not say so, nor does Serbia have mechanisms to extradite its citizens, especially not to Kosovo.

In Belgrade, Radoičić became a suspect from his "citizen status". On Tuesday, he was arrested on charges of organizing and arming a group responsible for "serious acts against general security". Radoičić denied it, but that's how a process started to unfold that might satisfy the West.

In the meantime, the Pristina authorities intend to seize the villa on Lake Gazivode that belongs to the former vice-president of the Serbian List. The message that many understood - this is how the master of life and death of the North is playing, with the fact that he somehow always survives while others perish.

"This is almost poetic," a source from the North of Kosovo tells us. "Radoičić is the character who did the most for integration and dialogue, and then he wiped everything out in half a day."

It was Radoičić's "skills of persuasion" that benefited Vučić and Priština when the Serbs had to be forced into the Kosovo institutions after the Brussels Agreement in 2013. Radoičić was instrumental in establishing the Serbian List as the only permitted party for Kosovo Serbs, one that would function as an extended arm of Belgrade, but also sit in all Kosovo governments.

"Serbs in Kosovo did not have their voice. They had to choose to be represented by either Vučić or Kurti, and those are bad options," Swiss journalist Ernst continues in an interview with "Vreme". "ZSO could be partially autonomous and give birth to a pluralistic scene of Kosovo Serbs. It is interesting that neither Belgrade nor Pristina want that. It seems to me that this is the only chance for the Serbs to stay there and live somewhat normally."

CAN THE WEST APPLY THE PRESSURE

Ernst believes that there are no chances that a new dialogue format will emerge after Banjska. And the old one has reached a wall - the EU's proposal that Kosovo work on the formation of the ZSO, while Serbia moves towards the de facto recognition of Kosovo, recognizing Kosovo's documents and not opposing membership in international organizations.

"The chance is that Washington and Brussels will get together and come out with incentives and threats so that the two sides will move. So, to follow the same path as before, but with much more energy", says Ernst.

That would be the logic of a stick and a carrot - on the one hand, the threat of sanctions until the visa-free regime for Serbia is abolished, that is, the postponement of that regime for Kosovo. On the other hand, bait in the form of entry into some EU structures, financing of infrastructure projects and donor conferences.

These days there are demands that Serbia be targeted by EU and US sanctions because of Banjska. In Brussels, Borelj's spokesman only said that he does not rule it out - when all the details of Banjska become clear, which could easily be never. Allegedly, eight EU members - Croatia among them - are seeking sanctions against Serbia, but they would require the consensus of all members and are unlikely.

In that situation, a return to talks in Brussels is almost unthinkable. "The current dialogue has failed," says Adi Ćerimagić, an analyst of the Berlin initiative ESI. According to his opinion, the EU and the USA "pretended" that Serbia accepted this year's agreements from Brussels and Ohrid, which entail steps towards the recognition of Kosovo - and at the same time the formation of the Community of Serbian Municipalities.

"But President Vučić and his partners, from the Minister of Foreign Affairs Dacić to the President of the Parliamentary Committee for Kosovo and Metohija Drecun, were very clear and consistent from the beginning that Serbia does not accept the de facto recognition of Kosovo. Also, the USA and the EU should stop pretending that this position of Serbia would change only if the authorities in Pristina started establishing the Union of Serbian Municipalities", adds Ćerimagić for "Vreme".

Ernst believes that Vučić is making it difficult because he does not want to be the one to recognize Kosovo, first factually, then on paper. "It is more difficult to explain why Kurti makes it difficult. Maybe he thinks he will profit because the situation for the Kosovo Serbs will become so unbearable that they will move away, so the problem will be solved demographically, so to speak," adds this journalist.

For now, the Serbian authorities repeat that they will never allow this. Vučić's nominal party chief, Miloš Vučević, says that the army is ready and will move as soon as the "supreme commander" orders. After Banjska, few believe in it.

Vučić stands in front of the fragments of Kosovo politics that date back to the 1990s, through the easy dismantling of Serbian institutions by the Brussels Agreement, the use of the services of guys like Radoičić in disciplining the Serbs, until the hasty abandonment of the police and other institutions last year.

From that failure, Vučić is running away to the elections, which should postpone for several months the pressures surrounding Kosovo, Radoičić, and the withdrawal of the army. There is no doubt that in the campaign he will "defend Kosovo" beyond all measure. The only thing that would be convenient is if the graffiti in Serbia now read "When KFOR returns to the north of Kosovo".