There is an old proverb that goes “Bad things come in threes”—if an unfortunate event has already occurred twice, a third one is likely to occur. This decade has already seen the start of two wars, so will it see another? Many analysts believe that the third war will begin with China’s invasion of Taiwan. But a more likely place will be the Balkans, centred on the tiny landlocked state of Kosovo bordered on two sides by its enemy Serbia. Winston Churchill once said of the Balkans that the region “makes more history than it can consume, much of it very convoluted and very bloody”. His wise words resonate today. Kosovo is a dangerous powder keg in the midst of a highly volatile region.
The roots of the current dispute between Serbia and Kosovo go back more than a century, with massacres on both sides. Kosovo eventually declared independence unilaterally from Serbia in 2008, becoming Europe’s youngest country. That came nearly nine years after a 78-day NATO bombing campaign in June 1999 ended Serbia’s bloody crackdown on ethnic Albanian separatists in Kosovo. Fighting continued for over a year, with the loss of over 13,000 Kosovar lives and the displacement of over a million people. Muslim Albanians make up 92% of the 1.8 million people who live in Kosovo, alongside some 70,000 Orthodox-Christian ethnic Serbs. Unlike the Christian-minority Armenians in Nagorno-Karabakh, who were ethnically cleansed last month by surrounding Muslim Azerbaijan, the residents of Kosovo are determined to remain in a country separate from neighbouring Serbia.
The United States and most Western powers are among the 117 countries that have recognised Kosovo’s statehood, and some 200 international organisations have accepted Kosovo as a member—although notably not the United Nations. India, Brazil, China, Russia, and Mexico among others have not recognised the territory, maintaining that Kosovo’s declaration of independence contradicts the UN Security Council Resolution 1244, which sought to establish an “interim administration for Kosovo” to solve the political crisis there at the time. Indian Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru and Yugoslavian President Josip Broz Tito had close ties when both countries, along with 118 others, founded the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM). Belgrade, the capital of Serbia, was the host of the First Summit of the NAM in September 1961.
But there’s another reason why India is refusing to recognise Kosovo—Kashmir.
In a seminal piece “Can Kashmir be a Kosovo?”, published in Mint just after Kosovo’s self-declared independence, the distinguished Indian historian, Bharat Karnad, professor at New Delhi-based Centre for Policy, raised the question in many minds. Referring to the complex religious makeup of the Balkans, Karnad wrote: “The trouble is that the Croats and the Slovenes are Catholic, the Serbs and the Montenegrins are Russian Orthodox, and the Bosnian-Herzegovinians, like the Albanian Kosovars, islanded in a Serb sea, Muslim. But who better to appreciate the pull of religion and the murderous friction it creates than us Indians?” He then conjectures: “So why worry?”, before answering his own question: “Because one can never tell when the self-serving American approach against Serbia and support for Kosovo, premised on ‘self-determination’ for the minority Muslim Kosovars will be transferred to Kashmir. Kosovo can easily become the precedent for breaking up other countries that have inherent diversities”. Karnad then concludes that New Delhi should not only decline Washington’s request to recognise the sovereign state of Kosovo but “wage a sustained diplomatic campaign to deny Kosovo international recognition”.
Ever since Kosovo’s independence, which of course Serbia doesn’t recognise, tensions have ebbed and flowed between the two countries. Belgrade has accused Pristina, the capital of Kosovo, of plotting “terrorism against the Serbs”, with Serbian President Alexander Vucic insisting that he will “take all measures to protect our people and preserve Serbia”. In return, Pristina charged Belgrade with being a client regime of the Kremlin, due to its close links with Moscow.
Last month, a Kosovo police officer was killed during a skirmish with 30 or so heavily armed Serbian militants, marking the most significant security incident in more than a decade. Following the attack, the US ambassador to Pristina, Jeffrey Hovenier, said “We know it was coordinated and sophisticated. The quantity of weapons suggests that this was serious, with a plan to destabilise security in the region”. Authorities in Pristina concurred and were even more explicit, blaming President Vucic for the escalation. Few doubt that Serbia played a major role in the killing. The Kosovo police published drone footage of the incident, showing that the vice president of the Serb ethnic party in Kosovo—Srpska Lista—was among the attackers. Lista is widely perceived as a proxy in Kosovo for the Belgrade regime.
Vucic, of course, denied all allegations and accused Kosovo’s Prime Minister, Albin Kurti, and his government of their persecution of Kosovo’s Serbs. The Vucic government promptly declared a day of national mourning, glorifying the dead attackers as martyrs for the Serbian nationalist cause.
Inevitably, Russia is taking the side of Serbia in the dispute. In return, Serbia has refused to impose sanctions on Russia resulting from its invasion of Ukraine. There were even multiple rallies across Serbia in honour of Vladimir Putin and graffiti on walls in Belgrade included the “Z” symbol, showing public support for the invasion. Billboards featuring a picture of Putin read: “Happy birthday to President Putin from his Serb brothers.” These featured a huge letter “Z”, and were posted all over Belgrade to mark the Russian president’s birthday. Recently, Serbia signed an agreement with Russia to “consult” each other on foreign policy issues. President Putin also signed a new gas agreement with President Vucic, and the state-controlled Air Serbia airline has doubled its flights to Moscow. “Serbia is Russia’s Trojan horse in Europe”, claims Arben Hajrullahu, a professor at Kosovo’s University of Pristina.
Numbers would appear to support this claim. According to a recent poll, Vladimir Putin is the world leader that Serbs admire the most and 95% of Serbs see Russia as a true ally, compared to only 11% who see the European Union that way, despite the EU being a major financial supporter. In the same poll, 68% of Serbs said that they believed NATO had started the war in Ukraine, not Russia, with 82% saying they were against sanctions being imposed on Russia. The strong political alliance between Serbia and Russia is founded on a deep sense of resentment towards NATO for its role in the establishment of new republics that were part of the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia, namely Ukraine and Kosovo. Putin and Vucic argue that Russia and Serbia have been wrongly portrayed as aggressors when they are only trying to protect their ethnic brothers.
Russia and its ally Belarus have provided Serbia with advanced equipment, including MIG-29 fighter jets. Serbia has also conducted joint exercises with Russia, while Serbian officials have had regular exchanges with the likes of Nikolai Patrushev, the all-powerful chief of Russia’s Security Council. A further sign of close friendship was when Russia’s ambassador to Serbia recently inspected a Serbian army base in direct proximity to Kosovo’s border.
The United States has already urged Serbia to withdraw its large military presence along its border with Kosovo to de-escalate tensions. Last week, the EU parliament passed a resolution that also condemned the Serbian Army’s build-up, and urged Vucic to avoid any further action.
This weekend, the two leaders, Kurti and Vucic, met for the first time since NATO—which has had a peacekeeping presence in Kosovo since the 1999 war—increased its numbers there to 4,000. More than a decade of European-led mediation efforts have so far failed to normalise relations between their two countries and Brussels hopes that the two leaders will sign a document agreed upon in March, under which both countries would recognise each other’s flags and symbols; Serbia would not object to Kosovo’s membership in any international organisation; and Kosovo would “ensure all appropriate level of self-management for the Serbian community in Kosovo”.
The meeting was of huge importance to reduce tensions between Serbia and Kosovo, but few had held out any hope of success. In the meantime, rumblings of war can still be heard.
John Dobson is a former British diplomat, who also worked in UK Prime Minister John Major’s office between 1995 and 1998. He is currently Visiting Fellow at the University of Plymouth.