Serbs barricade roads in Kosovo as spectre of ethnic feuding looms

Hundreds of Kosovo Serbs erected barricades on a road in the north of the country on Saturday, blocking traffic at two major border crossings with Serbia, police said.

Trucks, ambulances and agricultural machinery were used to cut off traffic, amid rising tensions in recent days marked by explosions, shootings and an attack on a police patrol. 

A Kosovar Albanian policeman was injured in this violent incident, which led to an increased police presence in ethnic Serb-majority areas. 

According to local media, protesters from Kosovo’s Serb minority are outraged by the arrest of a former policeman of Serb ethnicity suspected of involvement in attacks on Kosovo police.

Emergency sirens sounded in several Serb-majority towns in northern Kosovo to kick off the organised movement on Saturday, according to an AFP journalist.

Protesters told reporters they wanted to stop the arrested former policeman from being transferred to Pristina, Kosovo’s capital. 

Kosovar Interior Minister Xhelal Svecla said the arrested ex-policeman was one of two suspects apprehended after the attacks on police patrols over the past two days.

The spike in hostilities erupted after Pristina called for snap elections in four Serb-dominated communes in the north, organised for 18 December. 

The Serbs in the north reject Pristina’s authority and Kosovo’s independence from Belgrade. The main Serbian political parties have announced that they want to boycott voting.

In November, there was a mass walkout of ethnic Serb policemen — involving an estimated 600 officers — amid an ongoing spat over vehicle licence plates. 

Explosions and gunfire were heard on Thursday as election officials visited two municipalities in northern Kosovo to prepare for the polls, but no injuries were reported.

Shortly after the barricades were erected, Kosovo President Vjosa Osmani announced that she had decided to postpone local elections to April 23.

The attack in which the policeman was injured on Thursday took place after the deployment in northern Kosovo of Kosovar Albanian policemen. 

According to the government, this deployment was decided after the collective resignation of Serbs working in public institutions, including the police. 

Serbian members of the security forces and civil servants had resigned in protest against the decision of the Kosovo authorities to replace the license plates issued by Serbia with those issued by Pristina.

Serb demonstrators had blocked traffic at the two main border crossings between Kosovo and Serbia in September, to express their anger over the license plates.

On Friday, Serbia’s Prime Minister Ana Brnabić said the country’s leaders were close to dispatching security troops to Kosovo, claiming the lives of minority Serbs there were being threatened.

The return of Belgrade’s troops to the former Serbian province could dramatically increase tensions in the Balkans.

The Serbian minority in Kosovo has a total of around 120,000 members. 

It refuses to be loyal to authorities in Pristina. With the encouragement of Belgrade, it does not recognise the independence of Kosovo, which was proclaimed in 2008.