A senior NATO official warned on Saturday that persistent ethnic tensions in northern Kosovo could lead to a resurgence of violence, similar to last year’s clashes that resulted in the deaths of four people and injuries to NATO peacekeepers.
Kosovo, a former Serbian province that declared independence in 2008 following a guerrilla uprising, is predominantly ethnic Albanian.
However, approximately 50,000 Serbs living in the north refuse to recognize Pristina’s authority and continue to view Belgrade as their capital.
U.S. Navy Admiral Stuart B. Munsch, commander of the Allied Joint Force Command Naples, which oversees NATO’s peacekeeping mission in Kosovo, expressed concern over the potential for renewed violence in the volatile region.
“Heated political rhetoric could inspire some non-government forces to commit violence such as what happened last year,” Munsch told reporters in Pristina.
“I would not say that definitely conflict is coming, I think there is a persistent risk,” he said, referring to a lack of progress in EU-mediated talks between Kosovo’s government and Serbia.
A police officer and three gunmen were killed in September 2023 when a group of heavily armed attackers entered from Serbia and attacked police in the village of Banjska.
Four months earlier, more than 90 soldiers were injured when Serb protesters attacked NATO peacekeepers.
Kosovo has accused Serbia of being behind the Banjska attack but Belgrade has denied the accusations.
The U.S. and the European Union, Kosovo’s leading global allies, have criticised the Pristina government for taking unilateral actions in the north that could spark ethnic violence and risk the lives of some 4,000 NATO troops on duty there.
Kosovo rejects such criticism, and the issue has strained Pristina’s ties with its Western supporters.
As part of the EU-mediated dialogue, Kosovo and Serbia have been holding talks for more than a decade to normalise their relations, but there has been little progress.
Like the Serbs living in north Kosovo, Belgrade also considers Kosovo to be part of Serbia and refuses to recognise it as a state.
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