Kosovo. Another eruption

Date: 20/03/04

Tensions boil over again in the troubled Serbian province

“IT'S back to the old days,” lamented Daut Dauti, a Kosovo Albanian analyst. On March 18th, Belgrade's newspapers agreed. “War!” screamed one headline; “Kosovo in Blood” was another. As many as 22 people were reported dead in the Serbian province. Several hundred were injured, including a few troops from KFOR, the NATO-led peacekeeping force. NATO promptly shifted extra troops from Bosnia to Kosovo.

The Kosovo war ended in June 1999 with the withdrawal of Slobodan Milosevic's Serbian forces from this bitterly contested territory, whose population of 1.8m is 90% ethnic Albanian. Large numbers of Serbs fled or were expelled in the months that followed. Yet some 100,000 Serbs and other non-Albanians remain.

The last word on governance in Kosovo rests with the UN administration, although some powers have been devolved to a multi-ethnic government comprising Albanians and a few Serbs. The UN has been resolutely insisting that things are getting better. But progress has been extremely slow, and most remaining Serbs live either in enclaves or in the northern part that abuts Serbia proper.

This week's violence began after a Serbian youth from the village of Caglavica, near Pristina, was allegedly injured in a drive-by shooting. Three Albanian boys then drowned in the River Ibar, which divides the northern town of Mitrovica into an Albanian south and a Serbian north. The Albanians claimed that the children were chased into the river by Serbs. Rioting broke out, Serbs and Albanians began trading gunfire and Serbian enclaves elsewhere were attacked. Houses built for returning Serbian refugees were torched. Groups of angry Serbs then took to the streets in Belgrade, attacking the main mosque and burning down another in Nis.

According to Mr Dauti, the rage that has exploded in Kosovo has been building because, since 1999, “nothing has really happened.” Kosovo has not become independent, which is what the Albanians want. And its economy is dire, with unemployment as high as 70%.

In Belgrade Dusan Janjic, head of a think-tank, the Forum for Ethnic Relations, has been tipped as the new Serbian government's point-man for relations with Kosovo. He says that the renewed violence signals the “final collapse of the ideology of a multicultural society in Kosovo.” Serbia's new conservative-nationalist prime minister, Vojislav Kostunica, recently called for the official “cantonisation” of Kosovo. Albanians, probably rightly, see this as a forerunner to partition.

Both Serbian and Albanian political parties have tried to make political capital out of the week's events. But one big winner could be Tomislav Nikolic, the leader of Serbia's extreme-nationalist Radical Party. Even without the Kosovo unrest, he was set fair to become Serbia's new president in elections due to be held this spring.

The UN and the NATO powers with troops in Kosovo, which include America, had hoped that talks could begin on the final status of the province by the middle of next year. This week's violence threatens to put paid to any remaining little shoots of optimism that, until then, things could only keep getting better.

Tensions boil over again in the troubled Serbian province.

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