Kurti has Lost the Plot in the North of Kosovo

A reckless PM may have gambled away his country’s remaining cards in the troubled north

The Opinion is originally published on BalkanInsight

Two years ago, in February 2021, Albin Kurti came to power for a second time on promises to roll back previous governments’ “servility” towards Serbia and the Serbian separatists in northern Kosovo and force the latter back into the fold.

Today, that strategy lies in ruins. Kurti’s government now has less control of northern Kosovo than ever, and he has been publicly repudiated in an unprecedented manner by his country’s chief ally, the US, which has embarrassingly barred Kosovo from further participation in the NATO defence exercise “Defender 23”. So much for Kosovo’s integration into Western security structures.

Supportive media and politicians have cried foul, contrasting the violence of the Serbian protesters in the north with the government’s calm determination to enforce sovereignty and the rule of law.

Either way, however, the strategy of integrating the north into the rest of Kosovo is in disarray; the question now is whether Kosovo can hang on to anything more than nominal sovereignty over its rebellious municipalities.

It’s a pity Kurti didn’t read his history books on other intractable conflicts, like the one in Northern Ireland, where an armed revolt by Irish nationalists cost thousands of lives and caused absolute chaos before a UK government finally calmed the stormy waters by offering massive concessions.

The same arguments raged in Northern Ireland as in Kosovo – about rule of law and sovereignty – but the UK government in the end dumped them, wisely it turned out, in the wider interest of peace and a return to normality.

Kurti hasn’t taken that path, and probably cannot, having taken power as an ideologue who had denounced every preceding agreement reached between Serbia and Kosovo. Like many ex-student protesters, he remains obsessed with abstract ideas devoid of context. He seems uninterested in pragmatically facing the facts – one of which is that the northern Serbs are very confident in their determination to have very little to do with Kosovo, and enjoy the unambiguous support of a neighbouring state that is bigger and more powerful than Kosovo.

Kosovo would have been wiser leaving the northern Serb issue on the back burner, however inconvenient this might be in terms of dealing with smuggling and bootlegging. Other countries have done the same. Ireland mourned the loss of Northern Ireland in the 1920s, but gone on very successfully without it, and the loss of Belfast to Ireland was much bigger loss than North Mitrovica is to Kosovo. Losing Nagorny Karabakh didn’t much Azerbaijan’s development either. Its recently taken most of it back but only because it could, not because it had to.

Kosovo’s four northern municipalities make up a small fragment of the national territory and include only one, minor, urban centre, North Mitrovica. Economically and strategically, the “north” – a total misnomer, as it’s not the northern half of the country but a small bit of the north – means little to Kosovo.

People do not need to cross it, or even go near it, to reach three of the country’s four neighbours – Albania, Montenegro and North Macedonia. Nor does it bisect all the routes to Serbia.

The government would have been better off investing its time on better managing the 90 per cent of the country that is not in “the north”. Instead, the economy lies in the doldrums, the recognition campaign has completely stalled and emigration saps the country of life. Meantime, the Kurti government wastes its time obsessing helplessly over some 50,000 people who clearly don’t wish to be part of the national project but who have nevertheless, with Kurti’s help, made themselves the issue. While Albania is repackaging itself as Europe’s undiscovered dream holiday destination, Kosovo is exchanging one label, as Europe’s newest country, for another, as Europe’s most troubled country bar Ukraine.

It’s no surprise that the US is washing its hands of Kurti’s northern muddle. “We strongly condemn the actions by the Government of Kosovo that are escalating tensions in the north,” US Secretary of State Blinken tweeted on May 26 – about as total a rebuke as you could imagine.

Western governments have little instinct for helping each other deal with internal revolts. Europe and the US did not offer Britain much help on Northern Ireland, until the UK offered major concessions – which the US happily then mediated and claimed the credit for. If Kosovo thinks anyone is going to help it subdue the northern Serbs, it’s going to be talking to the wall.

Marcus Tanner is an editor of Balkan Insight and the author of “Albania’s Mountain Queen, Edith Durham and the Balkans” [Tauris].

The opinions expressed are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of BIRN.