By Dragutin Nenezić
Trump’s inauguration is scheduled for Sunday, January 19, while the Kosovo parliamentary elections are set for Sunday, February 9. This will mark the end of a period of political uncertainty and calculations on all sides – both Serbian and Albanian – and the beginning of active efforts toward a political resolution of the Kosovo situation. Although it’s too early to say exactly what this resolution will look like, some outlines can already be recognized. I’ll briefly outline them here, as expanding on each would require much more space, starting from their significance for the lives of Serbs in Kosovo, which is the reason for my writing for KoSSev:
– In a potential new world order, it seems that Serbia will end up on the side of the political West, even if the current attempts to sever ties with Russia and China fail. Aligning with this side means continuing the Brussels process, possibly with a more active role from the U.S. At the end of Serbia’s European journey stands the acceptance of Kosovo’s independence, with every stop along the way – each new agreement or deal – strengthening that independence in certain aspects.
– A potential partition of Kosovo cannot be ruled out, but given the current state of military and police forces in Kosovo, it would be impossible without reducing the number of Kosovo forces in the north, or increasing other forces – realistically, only international ones.
– Generally, the world is full of problems that are larger than Kosovo by all significant measures, even though their roots may be the same, so it is expected that the dynamics of resolving the Kosovo issue will align with that.
Thus, Kosovo will be resolved – unless significant changes are observed in the number and identification of forces in northern Kosovo – through peaceful means, along the well-worn Brussels paths, which might be paved with American asphalt to reach the final goal faster and with less jolting. And it will not be resolved too quickly, certainly not before Kosovo’s elections.
In such a framework, Serbs in Kosovo and Metohija have little room for hope of major changes. A return to power in the northern municipalities, the formation of the Association of Serb-Majority Municipalities (ASM), and the formalization of the Serbian Orthodox Church’s status are the ultimate goals, but even these require serious work. The seriousness of this work also requires a serious approach to the key points of this work, which I will briefly outline here, to begin with:
– A return to power in the northern municipalities can only happen after regular local elections, which will take place sometime in the fall of 2025. Given the performance of the current municipal governments in the past two years, the next period can be expected to show the same as before – selective or incorrect application of the law, further dismantling of what remains of Serbian institutions, and economic stagnation for all except municipal officials, Albanian returnees, and local business owners. The biggest question for Serbian political options is how they will respond to all of this when, and if, they return to power, especially in a situation where state mechanisms like courts and police will remain in Albanian hands.
– The ASM cannot be addressed without legitimate authorities in all municipalities, and this will likely be the first diversion from the Kosovo side – both in terms of attempts to deny the need to form the ASM based on ethnic principles (starting with the census results in municipalities where Serbs are no longer the majority), and in terms of forming a community that won’t have a Serbian character. If this is resisted, and if power is taken in the northern municipalities, the ASM will be formed not in line with the Brussels agreements, but with a new European proposal, which will have to undergo constitutional and legal review, likely after the parliamentary elections. Serbs will face a dual challenge here: to actively participate in the constitutional and legal process, and to make full use of the limited maneuvering space left to them by the European draft.
– As for the Serbian Orthodox Church, the biggest challenge in the initial period will be resisting any attempts to formalize its status unilaterally, through a law that would effectively undermine such formalization by failing to address the fundamental issues. This will be a major challenge for Serbian parliamentarians.
As can be seen, in all these points, the focus is not on the Serbs from Kosovo, nor on the Belgrade authorities, which are currently too affected by a political crisis in various forms to even engage with the Kosovo issue beyond inertia. If official Belgrade were to enter this field, issues like resolving problems caused by the dinar ban in a creative way, and fighting against Kosovo’s entry into the Council of Europe, might arise. But I am not optimistic that Kosovo is high on the political agenda right now, so I won’t waste time or space on that.
As for the authorities in Pristina, I would not spend much time on them here, at least not to the extent I have in the past. The last two years have shown the complete ineffectiveness of Kurti’s regime to do anything concrete and constructive – his policy, alongside his persistent push for a Greater Albanian agenda, boils down to – at the very least – problematic rhetoric toward Serbs, accompanied by unarticulated force, while on the legal front, it is marked by ignorance of his own regulations and a constant tendency to take on more than his modest capacities can handle (first the Banjska process, now Gazivode). If nothing else, the past painful period for Serbs in Kosovo can serve as a valuable lesson on where the weak points of Kurti’s regime lie, which should be targeted by all allowed means until it simply implodes under the weight of its own ignorance and bad intentions – which is the fate of any autocracy sooner or later.
Therefore, Serbs in Kosovo and Metohija are the ones carrying the heaviest fight in the upcoming period – the fight to preserve their very existence on Kosovo. Although deprived of influence in the Brussels process, where decisions are being made for them, that does not mean they cannot use the instruments and mechanisms provided by that process, as well as, more broadly, the legal and political framework for multiethnic Kosovo set by the authors of that process, which Kurti persistently seeks to dismantle. However, this requires a significantly more active role than the one held by the delegitimized Serbian List. If all the 10 Serbian MPs are not from the Serbian List, that might be a good thing, but only if these new MPs genuinely focus on their job – which is the protection of Serbian interests.
Similarly, the previous experience of leaving the institutions should serve as a lesson: positions that are regained should not be lost again without any alternative solution, and no action should be considered finished without meeting its demands. Over the past three years, Serbs in Kosovo have shown unparalleled persistence and endurance, but now is the time to transition from a period of passive endurance to a period of active struggle, to ensure that even the bare minimum expected in the most optimistic scenario is not lost.
Preuzimanje i objavljivanje tekstova sa portala KoSSev nije dozvoljeno bez navođenja izvora. Hvala na poštovanju etike novinarske profesije.
