A Bittersweet Anniversary
It was on February 17, 2008 that the Republic of Kosovo declared its independence. However, as its inhabitants celebrate the seventeenth anniversary of statehood, the situation on the ground remains complicated because of recurring tensions in the northern part of the country, which borders Serbia and is mostly populated by members of the Serbian minority. This group’s historically problematic relationship with the ethnic Albanian majority continues to this day, despite 25 years of NATO-led presence and 13 years of EU-facilitated dialogue between Belgrade and Pristina. The possible consequences of this situation are worrying and fraught with danger.
The most recent escalation in tensions took place on November 30, 2024, when an explosion damaged a critical canal in the north of Kosovo. The Ibar-Lepenac waterway’s importance stems from the fact that it not only provides drinking water to half of Kosovo’s population but is also the key source of cooling liquid for the two coal-fired power plants that generate nearly all of the country's electricity. Ominously, the explosion was preceded just a couple of days earlier by grenade attacks at a police station and a municipal building, with Kosovo Prime Minister Albin Kurti accusing Serbia of a "terrorist attack" and Serbian President Aleksandar Vučić rejecting the claim as "irresponsible".
While such exchanges may seem only relevant to the Balkans, the continued involvement of world powers suggests otherwise. For instance, NATO and Russia had a stand-off in Kosovo in 1999, which is reason enough to continue following the situation there closely. Since 2011, the European Union—with the support of the United States—has been trying to prove its collective diplomatic mettle on the ground as well, with the aim of fully normalizing relations between Serbia and Kosovo. As the new EU Commission starts its work in Brussels and the new US administration takes over the reins in Washington, questions about a possible future approach to the region abound. Any viable solution will have to consider Kosovo's history, both before and after Yugoslavia's breakup, as this story is crucial for understanding the current situation and its possible implications for regional and global stability.
The Cause of it All
The origins of the Kosovo question are complex. The very evolution of its current demographic composition, which is overwhelmingly ethnic Albanian, is a contested topic, and the associated narratives remain a delicate issue, as both Serbian and Albanian histories claim deep historical and cultural ties to the region. What is undisputed, however, is that Kosovo’s position within the former Yugoslavia experienced great changes through the three-quarters of a century of its existence, both in its royalist and socialist variants.
The “Land of the South Slavs” first came into existence at the end of 1918, when Serbia and Montenegro united within the newly founded Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes, which was renamed the Kingdom of Yugoslavia in 1929. The entirety of Kosovo, controlled previously by the defeated Ottoman Empire, came under the rule of Belgrade. Kosovo Albanians then demanded to join the neighboring Principality of Albania and started armed resistance, the so-called Kachak Movement, but were outmatched by a better-armed Yugoslav army. The border issue with Albania was eventually settled in 1926, while Kosovo was split in 1929 among three administrative units or "banovinas", with its biggest chunk going to today’s Montenegro.
Unlike its royalist predecessor, the socialist Yugoslavia, which came into being in 1945, was more focused on the rights of national minorities. Its first post-World War II constitution, adopted in 1946, thus consolidated Kosovo territorially as one of two provinces within Serbia, which was left to determine the scope of its autonomy. The constitution of 1974, however, gave Kosovo in the south and Vojvodina in the north de facto veto power, both within Serbian and Yugoslav frameworks. No changes to their status could be made without the consent of the two provincial assemblies. This constitution, which was the brainchild of the influential Slovene politician and Yugoslav ideologue Edvard Kardelj, also granted official status to the Albanian language and raised the stature of Kosovo to that of a federal republic in all but name. The rotating president of the collective Presidency of Yugoslavia in the period 1986-1987 was thus Sinan Hasani, a Kosovar Albanian.
Serbia Strikes Back
In the end, this arrangement satisfied neither the Albanians nor the Serbs. After the death of Kardelj in 1979 and the long-time Yugoslav leader Tito in 1980, the federal state began to crumble. And the very first chips fell off Yugoslavia’s edifice in Kosovo. In 1981, Albanian-speaking students staged demonstrations demanding the full status of a republic for the province, on par with Serbia. In response, Serbian leadership not only crushed the protests but also started lobbying for constitutional reforms to reduce provincial autonomy. In fact, it was the issue of Kosovo that enabled the rise to power of the infamous Serbian strongman Slobodan Milošević, first as the Head of the League of Communists of Serbia and then as the President of Serbia.
In 1989, Milošević delivered a well-known speech at Gazimestan, near Pristina, taking advantage of the 600th anniversary of the Battle of Kosovo of 1389. The timing and location of his public appearance were significant because of the symbolism surrounding the event, which has become the Serbian founding myth. The defeat is remembered as the beginning of both a national calamity, in the form of centuries-long Ottoman oppression, and of national rebirth, because of the enduring Serbian resistance. In this way, Kosovo represents the cradle of modern Serb identity, and Milošević’s decision to take an active part in the special celebration propelled him to the forefront of the revived Serbian nationalist movement.
An integral part of Milošević’s efforts was amending the Serbian constitution. He abolished Pristina's self-rule and reintroduced direct control from Belgrade, including over the local police and judiciary. In addition, the official name of Kosovo was altered to the Autonomous Province of Kosovo and Metohija, harking back to the presence of medieval Serbian monasteries in the region. The very proposal of these changes incited protests on the ground, including the Kosovo miners' strike. To Milošević's surprise, this resistance was publicly supported by both the authorities and the civil society in Slovenia, the powerhouse of former Yugoslavia, accounting for a fifth of its GDP. While imposing ironclad control over its two provinces, Serbia kept their seats and votes in the Yugoslav presidency, stoking fears in Slovenia of a creeping takeover of federal structures. In response, Belgrade introduced an economic boycott against Slovenian goods, while Ljubljana revised its republican constitution to reconfirm its unalienable right to self-determination. The stage was thus set for the final showdown and the start of the dissolution of Yugoslavia.
Fight for Independence
Following the successful Slovenian Ten-Day War of June and July 1991, Kosovars held their own independence referendum in September 1991, with 87 percent voting in favor of a sovereign Kosovo. The next year, they elected Ibrahim Rugova as their president, who set out to create a parallel government. The Serbian authorities reacted by firing thousands of Kosovo Albanians, changing the local curriculum to that of the Serb education system, and increasing police presence. To preserve their culture, identity, and autonomy, Kosovars created underground institutions, including schools and a parliament. They also established the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA), which started the armed resistance.
In 1998, the fighting between KLA and police escalated into a full-blown war, with the Serbian side deploying not only army units but also paramilitary detachments. The consequent indiscriminate killings of civilians, including a widely reported massacre in the village of Racak, led to the involvement of the international community. After unsuccessful efforts in early 1999 to solve the conflict through diplomatic means, NATO decided to intervene on March 24. The Serbian side responded with even greater repression, leading to a mass exodus, with more than 863,000 ethnic Albanians, almost half of the population, forced to flee Kosovo, while some 590,000 others were internally displaced. By June 10, however, the relentless military pressure from NATO forced Belgrade to withdraw its troops. That same day, the United Nations passed Resolution 1244, establishing a UN-led interim administration and a NATO-led international security force in Kosovo.
Despite the international presence on the ground, it took a full eight years before a Comprehensive Proposal for the Kosovo Status Settlement was presented for consideration to the UN Security Council in 2007. The document, drafted by UN Special Envoy Martti Ahtisaari, recommended independence for Kosovo, which would be supervised at first by the international community. Serbia rejected the proposal outright. Kosovo later declared its independence in 2008. Belgrade immediately decried the move as illegal, but the International Court of Justice ruled in 2010 that the act was in accordance with international law. The resulting conundrum led to the adoption of a UN General Assembly resolution, which welcomed the "readiness of the European Union to facilitate a process of dialogue between the parties." It was thus that the EU-sponsored Belgrade-Pristina Dialogue came into being in 2011.
Winter is Coming
At first, the engagement by the European Union led to a big step forward, when the two sides assented to the so-called Brussels Agreement in 2013. The document, consisting of 15 clauses, allowed for only one police force in Kosovo, while envisioning as well the merger of the four Serb municipalities in the north, with a Serb as the regional police commander. Both sides also consented not to obstruct the other's path to EU membership. In succeeding years, however, progress became more difficult. This is mainly due to the fact that the dialogue process did not resolve the question of mutual recognition, with Belgrade remaining adamant on the issue. Pristina has therefore avoided establishing the Association of Serb Majority Municipalities in the north of Kosovo, for fear of creating a “Trojan horse,” similar to the autonomous Republika Srpska (Serb Republic) in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Instead, Kosovo has been placing ever greater importance on seemingly technical matters that carry status implications. One of these has been the question of car license plates. In 2021, Pristina refused to extend the validity of Serbia-issued temporary plates and announced that all residents would need to switch to Kosovo-issued ones.
The decision first resulted in a week of Serbian barricades at border crossings. The temporary solution was to cover state symbols on Kosovar and Serb license plates with stickers when entering either country. When Pristina returned to the issue the next year, the Serbian police commander for the north of Kosovo refused to carry out its instructions, leading to his dismissal. As a result, Kosovo Serbs—including mayors, members of municipal assemblies, and police officers—resigned en masse from their positions in protest, creating an institutional vacuum in the north of Kosovo. They also decided to boycott the local elections in four Serb-majority municipalities in April 2023, even if that meant that Kosovo Albanians ended up being elected to mayoral positions. However, when in May 2023 one of them tried to take up his post in Zvecan, the Serbian side organized protests, which culminated in a violent attack on NATO Kosovo Force (KFOR) soldiers protecting the municipal building that injured over 90 NATO troops.
The situation escalated further in September 2023, when 45 Serb militants ambushed and killed a Kosovar police officer in the village of Banjska. The attackers then fled to the nearby Orthodox monastery, where a gun battle left three Serb fighters dead. In the aftermath, Pristina accused Serbia of having sponsored the group, while Belgrade claimed that the incident was the result of months of Albanian provocations. It has also refused to hand over to Pristina the militants' leader, Milan Radoičić, a member of the Serb List, the Belgrade-sponsored political party in the north of Kosovo. These incidents have all harmed the dialogue process, with Pristina coming to the conclusion that it must strengthen its presence in the north. It has thus replaced Serbia-run postal offices with Kosovar ones and outlawed all transactions in Serbian dinars in favor of the euro, which is now the sole legal tender in Kosovo. For its part, Belgrade has called for a return to the "status quo ante" and international pressure on the Pristina "regime" for any meaningful dialogue to continue.
Big Player Reshuffle
The current situation can therefore be described as a dangerous combination of a political impasse and a fragile security environment. To make things even more challenging, the international community, in particular the collective West, is undergoing an extensive leadership change, adding additional variables to the already complicated Balkan equation. What does it mean, for example, that the new NATO Secretary General is Mark Rutte? NATO played an important role in securing the Brussels Agreement, which has as its final goal EU paths for both Belgrade and Pristina and continues to safeguard stability in the region. And yet, as the Prime Minister of the Netherlands, Rutte was known as a vocal opponent of any additional Balkan states joining the European Union. Has he had a change of heart since?
The new EU leadership, meanwhile, seems to view the Balkans as more of a priority. The new European Commissioner for Enlargement is Marta Kos, a Slovene. Unlike her Hungarian predecessor—who was perceived as being overly friendly towards Belgrade, playing down concerns about the rule of law and human rights in Serbia—she brings a more balanced approach to the table. After all, it was Slovenia that not only helped elevate the status of Kosovo within former Yugoslavia but also stood up against Serbian repression in the province, in the end being one of the first countries to recognize it as an independent state. Similarly, the European Union's new High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy is Kaja Kallas, an Estonian. As such, she succeeds a Spaniard, who has faced repeated criticism of bias, since his country does not recognize Kosovo. Kallas will probably be less tolerant of Serbia's continued flirting with Russia and refusal to impose sanctions on Moscow.
All of which leaves open the question of the new US leadership. Although an independent Kosovo probably would not exist without the American reaction against the attempted ethnic cleansing by Serbia, the first Trump administration seemed more interested in fostering economic interests than principles and accountability in the Balkans, even if that meant glossing over some of the more contentious aspects of the recent past in the region. Controversial ideas about a possible land swap involving the north of Kosovo started floating around as a potential quick-fix solution for a seemingly intractable problem. US President Donald Trump's special envoy, Richard Grenell, was even publicly accused by Kosovar Prime Minister Kurti of trying to pressure him on the issue. In that sense, the recent attack against the critical Ibar-Lepenac water canal is not only highly symbolic but also deeply instructional: it has shown in practice why effective control over the north of Kosovo is actually an existential issue for Pristina. The table is therefore set for yet another game of foreign policy poker in the Balkans, with peace and security in the region at stake.
