A Little Local Difficulty

VISOKI DECANI
6/8/2011

IT IS five in the morning, and in the exquisite 700-year-old Serbian Orthodox monastery of Visoki Decani the soothing sound of chanted prayer wafts heavenwards. A few hours later, fortified by a hearty breakfast and a reading from the lives of the saints, the long-bearded and black-robed monks head off to work, one on a combine harvester.

Deep in Kosovo, surrounded by often-hostile ethnic Albanians, the 24 monks just get on with life. With a new wing under construction, this generation is laying the foundations for the monastery’s next 700 years. But what of the rest of Kosovo’s Serbs? And what of relations between Serbia and Kosovo?

On July 2nd things were looking up. At talks sponsored by the European Union, the countries struck a deal on “technical” issues, such as car-licence plates. Emboldened, the Kosovars expected a further agreement to let them export goods to and through Serbia, which they have been barred from doing since their declaration of independence in 2008. But Serbia postponed the next set of talks.

So the Kosovo government went on the offensive. First it slapped import taxes on Serbian goods. Then, on July 25th, it sent special police units to the lawless, Serb-inhabited north to seize two border points which had been beyond its control since independence. Trouble flared: a Kosovar policeman was killed, a border point was burned down by Serbs and NATO sent in peacekeepers. The popularity of Hashim Thaci, the prime minister, soared.

Some 40,000 of Kosovo’s Serbs, around a third of the total, live in the north, largely surrounded by Serbia proper. Unlike their ethnic brethren elsewhere in the country they do not co-operate with Kosovo’s authorities. Some Serbian officials have begun to discuss partition: they would recognise Kosovo in exchange for annexation of its northern Serb bit. But diplomats hate the idea. Tweaking borders in Kosovo, they fear, could lead to irresistible pressure to do the same in Macedonia and Bosnia.

For the time being the question is whether Kosovo has sunk the talks with Serbia. EU and American diplomats do not dispute the government’s right to control its border, and agree that Serbia has tried everyone’s patience. But they also see Kosovo’s actions as rash.

Kosovo has also shocked Serbian officials, who tend to see it as a supplicant. In fact lots of Serbian jobs depend on the Kosovo export trade. A week after Kosovo’s move on the border, the number of lorries crossing into the country from Macedonia suggested that Kosovars were not having much trouble replacing goods from Serbia.

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