Is this year a turning point for the Serbs as a political factor in Kosovo?

Alongside increasing pressures from the authorities in Pristina, to which the Serbian community is exposed, the number of Serbs leaving Kosovo is also rising, primarily due to security reasons. Analysts assess that this year will be crucial for the survival of the Serbian community and challenging for them politically.

In conditions where 13 percent of Serbs leave Kosovo within a year, and with no Community of Serb-majority Municipalities established, the question arises: will the Serbs in Kosovo survive as a political factor, and how much does it depend on Pristina, Belgrade, and international actors?

Dragisa Mijacic, the Coordinator of the Working Group of the National Convention on the European Union for Chapter 35, believes that "everyone is aware that this year is crucial for the survival of the Serbian community."

"This is a crucial year for Kosovo Serbs, and for the relations between Serbia and Kosovo in general. With the pressure that exists, there is a real possibility that Serbs will no longer be a political factor in Kosovo. The Serbs will live in Kosovo; you will always have some retirees, policemen, priests... but Serbs as a community will not be a political factor, and that's the 'game-changer.' The question is how the international community will react to this. They may say, 'now there are new circumstances, Kosovo is a sovereign state, we have already recognized them, and we move on'," Mijacic said at the recent "Towards the Agreement" conference.

In such circumstances, he asked, can someone in Serbia advocate for European integration "when Serbs have disappeared from Kosovo under the watchful eye of Europe and the West"?

"This throws Serbia into severe isolation, creates new circumstances in the Balkans, and poses a security threat that Americans are most aware of, but also the Quint countries. If there is no Serbian community, there are no multi-ethnic institutions, and how the situation will be resolved, at this moment, no one knows. Something must be done this year regarding the survival of the Serbian community, and unfortunately, this year there will be reduced attention from the international community to address these issues, and there will be a vacuum because this is the year of European and US elections," Mijacic said.

Aleksandar Mitic, a research fellow at the Institute for International Politics and Economics, tells Kosovo Online that this year is very dangerous for the Serbs in Kosovo politically because they are viewed as a tool of pressure by Pristina and the Quint on Belgrade, in order to make concessions aimed at accepting the Franco-German proposal for the defense of the basic rights of the Serbs.

"The ultimate goal of Pristina may not be to completely eliminate Serbs from the political scene and significantly reduce their rights, but to compel Belgrade to make political concessions. The ultimate goal of coordination between Albin Kurti and the Quint is primarily political pressure on Belgrade, exerted through jeopardizing the rights of the Serbs in Kosovo and Metohija. Ethnic cleansing is something that suits Kurti, but what is primarily important to him is to have the West obtain political concessions by accepting the implementation of the Franco-German plan and the Ohrid Agreement, especially those points that Belgrade still opposes, and that are related to the United Nations," Mitic says.

He points out that the broader context should be considered as well, including the Brussels Agreement from 2013, which he describes as being poor, and the non-existence of the CSM, alongside additional pressure from the Quint for the implementation of the "shameful Franco-German proposal and the Ohrid Agreement, under which Belgrade should gradually relinquish Kosovo and Metohija."

"This is a process coordinated by Pristina, specifically Kurti and the Quint, primarily Germany, which is the main sponsor of Albin Kurti and is conducting a general hybrid attack on the Serbs from Banja Luka to Kosovska Mitrovica, and this will not stop even this year. It is clear that the Serbs in Kosovo cannot decide on their own how they will appear as a political factor in these circumstances. They depend on Belgrade - how much Belgrade will diplomatically fight for their rights, whether it is a session of the UN Security Council, other UN bodies, the dialogue led by Lajcak, or some bilateral talks with the US and other actors; it remains for Serbian diplomacy to see. On the other hand, we have this crucial Western factor that must determine to what extent it wants to participate in ethnic cleansing and political discrimination against the Serbs," Mitic says.

The political constellation in Pristina, he adds, is a third crucial factor in the sense that this process suits Kurti, where he gains what he wants on the ground, and on the other hand, he receives support from his voters for it.

At the same time, as he emphasizes, the Serbs have been "pushed" for several months to return to participating in elections, a process in which they lose political energy.

"This process is designed to be humiliating by Pristina, and there is so much legal vacuum in it that it raises the question of what is the point of losing political energy in such a process. They will always come up with something new to avoid giving the Serbs basic rights," Mitic says.

According to sociologist Vladimir Vuletic, Kurti, on the one hand, through pressure on the Serbs, achieves their emigration. However, on the other hand, the essence of these pressures, as he believes, is to compel those who remain to accept the Kosovo authorities.

"The essence of these pressures is to put people living there before a choice: 'Is it better for my and my family's existence to accept the Kosovo authorities and have some kind of normal life, whatever that may mean, or to insist on my right to live in the manner and environment I desire?' In the end, he doesn't care whether two or three percent of Serbs who have no political power live in Kosovo. He might even prefer to have more of them but to be among those who accept the independent state of Kosovo. This would even give him some kind of justification in international discussions," Vuletic says for Kosovo Online.

As he notes, there are few Serbs left in enclaves in Kosovo, and only in the north are there a significant number in terms of expecting that their turnout in those municipalities will lead to Serbian local self-government.

"Generally, the number of Serbs in Kosovo has long been declining, especially after the 2004 riots. The number of Serbs is indeed a key factor, but even if there were no Serbs in Kosovo at all, Kurti should not delude himself into thinking that Serbia would then give up the fight for its territory. Also, one issue is the protection of compatriots if they are in danger, and that has nothing to do with whether Kosovo is independent or not, and the other issue is integrity. Kurti is mistaken if he expects that by expelling Serbs from Kosovo, Serbia and those fighting for the principle of sovereignty will recognize Kosovo. Such logic would, of course, complicate and detract from the meaning of that struggle, but it would not call it into question," Vuletic says.

When asked whether a mono-ethnic or multi-ethnic Kosovo is in the interest of the international community, Vuletic says that the international community is not concerned about the issues of either Serbs or Albanians, but rather about the homogeneity of the Western order, which is now facing various challenges.

"One of them is the war against Russia, or how to ensure that homogeneity. Since 1998, the assessment has been that playing the card of Kosovo Albanians is a safer way to secure that global interest, and that is one of the reasons why the political decision was made at the time that it is safer for the West to support Albanians, both for demographic and geostrategic reasons, as well as because of the special ties that have always existed between Orthodox peoples. And that frozen conflict is something that suited certain actors in the West and allowed their presence here in the region. This should be borne in mind. The West sided with the Serbs when they were in demographic ascendancy during World War I, but today that is no longer the situation, or at least not in the past quarter of a century," Vuletic.

As a crucial moment for the Serbian community in Kosovo during this year, the Program Manager of the NGO Advocacy Center of Democratic Culture, Slobodan Stosic, sees the holding of elections for new mayors in the north. He also emphasizes that the survival of the Serbian community will be crucially dependent on how the issue of the use of the dinar will be resolved.

He points out that the policy of Kosovo Prime Minister Albin Kurti has been aimed at reducing Serbian rights or bringing them to a minimum level, leading to a mass exodus of the Serbian community from Kosovo.

"If Kurti's goal is to reduce the Serbian population to a statistical error, then the solutions that are found will not have a meaningful impact on the citizens. If the number of Serbs remains so small, we can expect bilingualism to be abolished, and if the CSM ever comes, it will have no meaning in those circumstances," Stosic says for Kosovo Online.

As for who can prevent Serbs in Kosovo from losing their political significance, our interlocutor says that it is both the international factor and Serbia.

"The international factor is crucial here, I mean European countries and the US as leading countries in the normalization process. But Serbia should also pursue a more proactive policy, not just be a silent observer, but to offer or seek solutions that would be sustainable and beneficial for the citizens," Stosic says.