During the latest license plates and ID crisis, „Northern Brigade“ graffiti appeared throughout North Mitrovica.
Simultaneously with the multiple pieces of graffiti that have popped up on the streets and buildings in the northern town, the Instagram page “Nema predaje KM ostaje” („No Surrender KM Remains“) has been sharing the same messages: „Don’t worry, we are here – the Northern Brigade“, „We are waiting“, „No surrender, KM remains“, „No surrender, Serbian ID remains“, „NATO GO HOME! This is Serbia“, and „The Northern Brigade is growing day by day“.
Pristina claims that armed uniformed men, alleged members of the Serbian gendarmerie, joined the barricades in the north of Kosovo on July 31st. This claim, however, was soon denied by the Serbian President, Aleksandar Vucic, during a recent joint address with NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg.
At the same conference, however, Vucic also said:
„But when you are cornered and have nowhere else to go, I told Stoltenberg and others, don’t expect the Serbs to enjoy themselves and say they are having a nice time. There is a new generation of kids and young men in the North and Kosovo who will not tolerate that and it has nothing to do with me, Jens or anyone else. They will not suffer terror, they do not perceive Kosovo as an independent state but as the territory of Serbia, and in accordance with Resolution 1244 and international law“.
Humane Center: Pumped up and easy-to-manipulate kids
„As for the word about the appearance of young armed men at the barricades, they are playing dumb, someone is using other people’s children,“ a security expert Veroljub Bata Petronic said at last week’s public debate held in North Mitrovica.
Speaking of what is known about the so-called Northern Brigade, Petronic explained:
„They are pumped up kids, easy to manipulate, hard to control.“
„It is our responsibility to stand up, speak out and call on all those who are doing this to first arm their children, then to push them there, to bring them to the barricades, and only then to arm other people’s children. Instead of shipping off their children to Belgrade, while pretending to be patriots and heroes. That’s not right“.
Simonovic: Arm 10 people, if even three bullets are fired, we’ll have a conflict
His colleague Srdjan Simonovic, a consultant at the Humane Center, presented data from the Kosovo MIA declaring that there are around 260,000 illegal weapons in Kosovo. KFOR, however, has findings that there are actually twice as many, he says.
During the debate, the partition was brought into connection with an armed incident, or „dosed conflict“ – as a dangerous way to manage the Kosovo crisis.
„It’s very easy to manipulate and arm 10 people and we have a conflict. If they fire three bullets, we would have a conflict. Whether that conflict will serve in favor of partition or not, that is the question, but I personally think that if there is already talk of a potential conflict, then conflict is a sure path to the partition of Kosovo,“ Simonovic stressed.
Although the President of Serbia recently corrected an N1 journalist that it is not the Northern Brigade, but the Brigade North, noting that she must have read that term in the „Albanian media“, the new graffiti gracing the town of North Mitrovica nonetheless bears the same name as the well-known group of fans of Red Star club.
The public debate held on Friday was organized by the civic initiative „Srpski Opstanak“. Members of civil society organizations, political activists, and some councilors participated in the debate on the current situation, negotiations, solutions, ASM, Srpska Lista, and President Vucic.
The debate was held only a day before it was announced that Belgrade and Pristina have reached an agreement to solve the issue of IDs – by Serbia ceasing to issue an entry-exit document for citizens with Kosovo IDs, which it has been doing for the past decade based on the agreement on freedom of movement from 2011. On the other hand, Pristina withdrew its decision to issue the same document for citizens with Serbian documents, which it introduced on June 29th as a „reciprocal measure“.
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