In the Serbian capital of Belgrade, life seems to go on as normal. Only when asked do citizens tell about their fear of new wars.
Obviously everyday life prevails in the Serbian capital Belgrade at the beginning of August 2022
The sun is shining, people are shopping and going for walks, trams, buses, taxis and private cars are on the move: there is no apparent sign of the conflict with neighboring Kosovo in Serbia's capital, Belgrade. “Nothing will happen,” explains 30-year-old Svetlana, who has just returned from vacation on the Croatian coast, to DW: “That's what politicians here in the Balkans have been doing for over 20 years: you provoke a bit, but then row back before it gets really hot like back in 1999.”
In the last year of the 20th century, the Serbian ruler at the time, Slobodan Milosevic, escalated the conflict between the Serbian state power and the Albanian majority – around 90 percent of the population – in the province of Kosovo, which at the time belonged to Serbia. Serb security forces carried out massacres and expelled hundreds of thousands of non-Serbs, as they did in Croatia in 1991-95 and in Bosnia and Herzegovina in 1992-95. To prevent worse, the North Atlantic defense alliance NATO intervened and drove Serbia's police and military out of Kosovo.
Many Serbian civilians also fled the region with the security forces. Almost a decade followed in which Kosovo was administered by the United Nations. In addition, there has been a strong NATO protection force in the country since the 1999 war. But it failed to defend the remaining Serb minority when Albanian mobs attacked their residential areas, churches and cultural institutions in 2004. Many more Serbs left Kosovo.
In 2008, the parliament in the capital Pristina declared the former Serbian province independent. But most members of the remaining Serb minority – about 5 percent of the population – boycotted the vote. In the north of Kosovo, where Serbs make up the majority of the population, the Kosovan state has remained de facto powerless to this day. And most of the residents of the Serbian “enclaves” in the south of the country only leave their settlements under NATO protection.
“Kosovo is part of Serbia”
“Kosovo? That's far away,” replies the waiter in the restaurant in the city center when asked by the DW reporter. And no, he does not believe that there will be another escalation between the Serbian state and the ex-province. But you can't really know either: “The Albanians are oppressing our compatriots in Kosovo,” the man continued. “Of course they are fighting back. And of course we have to support them, after all they are Serbs like us. And Kosovo is and will remain a part of Serbia.”
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Aleksandar Vucic, a Serbian ultra-nationalist and minister under Milosevic in the 1990s, a leading member of the national-conservative Serbian Progressive Party (SNS) since 2008 and President of Serbia since 2017, sees it that way too. “The regime in Pristina” – meaning the elected government of the Republic of Kosovo under Prime Minister Albin Kurti – decided to “impose things on the Serbs in Kosovo to which they have no right”.
Like you did me …
In fact, Serbia does not recognize identity documents and license plates from Kosovo. Kosovan travelers must have replacement papers issued when entering Serbia and stick all the national emblems of the Republic of Kosovo on their vehicles. Since 2021, Serbian national emblems must also be made invisible in the same way when entering Kosovo. The Kosovar government calls this “reciprocity”.
Trucks are blocking a road nearby the Kosovar-Serbian border
The current dispute began at the end of June 2022 with the announcement by the Kurti government that it intends to apply the principle of reciprocity to Serbian identity papers and to force car owners in the Serbian-dominated north of Kosovo to exchange the Serbian license plates they have been using for Kosovar ones. According to Serbian sources, car owners who refuse to do so face the risk of having their vehicles confiscated. On July 31, 2022, Kosovo Serbs erected barricades at various border crossings in protest against these measures. According to Albanian statements, shots were also fired.
Ally: Russia
“I'm a bit nervous,” the fruit seller told DW at the Kalenic market in Belgrade. “Things have been peaceful here since 1999 – but war has been raging in Ukraine for months, and who knows whether it might spread to us.” How is this supposed to work? Kosovo and Serbia are far from Ukraine and Russia. In addition, there are around 4,000 NATO soldiers in Kosovo alone, and all of Serbia's neighboring countries, with the exception of Bosnia and Herzegovina, are members of the defense alliance. The woman looks a little puzzled when the DW reporter asks. Then she says: “Russia has always been our ally and would certainly help us this time too.”
Nationalist slogans, tennis star Novak Djokovic, Russia's President Vladimir Putin – motifs on T-shirts at the Kalenic market in Belgrade
Key officials of the Serbian governing party SNS seem to have a similar view. Not only that some of them openly show sympathy for Russia's war of aggression against Ukraine. SNS MP Vladimir Djukanovic also used the term “denazification” in connection with the government of the Republic of Kosovo on July 31, 2022. The “denazification” of Ukraine is one of Russia's declared war aims.
In view of the situation on the border with Kosovo, is the seller at the Kalenic market afraid of a new war in the Balkans? “If there's one thing we've learned here over the past 30 years,” she replies, “then it's that: we always have reason to be afraid”.