Kosovo shuts down 5 Serbian governing structures in the north and US reacts with alarm

PRISTINA, Kosovo — Kosovo authorities on Friday closed five parallel institutions working with the ethnic Serb minority, a move that was immediately criticized by the United States and could further raise tensions with neighboring Serbia.

Elbert Krasniqi, Kosovo’s minister of local administration, confirmed the closure of five so-called parallel institutions in the north — where most of the ethnic Serb minority lives — writing in a Facebook message that they “violate the Republic of Kosovo’s constitution and laws.”

The U.S. embassy in Kosovo reiterated Friday in a statement Washington’s “concern and disappointment with continuing uncoordinated actions” taken by Pristina “that continue to have a direct and negative effect on members of the ethnic Serb community and other minority communities in Kosovo.”

Serbia continues to assist its Serb minority after Kosovo proclaimed independence in 2008, which Belgrade doesn’t recognize.

Kosovo was a former Serbian province until a 78-day NATO bombing campaign in 1999 ended a war between Serbian government forces and ethnic Albanian separatists in Kosovo, which left about 13,000 dead, mainly ethnic Albanians, and pushed Serbian forces out.

Kosovo-Serbia relationship remains tense and the 13-year-long normalization talks facilitated by the European Union have failed to make progress, especially following a shootout last September between masked Serb gunmen and Kosovo police that left four people dead.

The EU and the U.S. have pressed both sides to implement agreements that Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic and Kosovar Prime Minister Albin Kurti reached in February and March last year.

Earlier this month Pristina said it would open the bridge on the Ibar River which divides Mitrovica into a Serb-dominated north and ethnic Albanian south. The bridge has been closed to passenger vehicle traffic for more than a decade, with minority ethnic Serbs erecting barricades since 2011 because they say “ethnic cleansing” would be carried out against them if ethnic Albanians could freely travel over the bridge into their part of the city.

Kurti has also been at odds with Western powers over Kosovo’s unilateral closure of six branches of a Serbia-licensed bank in northern Kosovo earlier this year.

Unrest in northern Mitrovica has increased since last year, when the NATO-led international peacekeepers force in Kosovo, known as KFOR, stepped up its numbers and equipment along the Kosovo-Serbia border, including at the bridge in Mitrovica.

The tiny Balkan country will hold parliamentary elections on Feb. 9, a vote that is expected to be a test for Kurti, whose governing party won in a landslide in the 2021.

___

Semini reported from Tirana, Albania. Follow Llazar Semini at https://x.com/lsemini