The West has lost the plot in the Balkans

Footage of pipe-wielding and stone-throwing Serb militant nationalists attacking NATO peacekeepers in the northern Kosovo town of Zvecan in late May brought the Balkan country back into the international spotlight. Violence erupted in the Serbian majority in the north of the country after Kosovo police escorted mayors to work recently elected in local polls boycotted by ethnic Serb residents.

The news that Serbia had simultaneously put its army on high alert left many unfamiliar with Balkan affairs wondering if another armed conflict would break out in Europe.

The answer is no, we are not on the brink of another Balkan war. But that does not mean that the situation in Kosovo is not alarming.

Violence aside, what is of concern in the region is the role that the United States and the European Union have played in inciting a dangerous new phase of Serb nationalist militancy in Kosovo and in the wider Western Balkans.

Kosovo declared independence from Serbia in 2008, backed by the US, UK, Germany, France and Italy, also known as the Quint.

It came after nearly a decade of international supervision under the UN interim administration established at the end of the Kosovo war. During this transitional period, Kosovo nominally remained part of the then Federal Republic of Yugoslavia as an “autonomous province”, but Belgrade exercised no de facto authority over any aspect of the territory’s administration, with the exception of a limited presence in a handful of municipalities with an Serbian majority. in the north.

Kosovo had also enjoyed a significant degree of self-government during the socialist period, although its ethnic Albanian majority was regularly the target of repression. In 1989, when Slobodan Milosevic seized power in Belgrade, he imposed a new constitutional regime on Kosovo and turned the region into a veritable police state with ethnic Albanians deprived of virtually all civil liberties. This draconian regime eventually led to armed resistance from the Albanian community and ultimately to NATO military intervention.

For the past 15 years, the US and the EU have been trying to negotiate a standardization agreement between Pristina and Belgrade. Despite successive rounds of high-level talks, the two sides remain as far apart over a settlement as ever – as the clashes in Zvecan nicely illustrate.

But there is no question of equal guilt here. The problem remains almost entirely on the Serbian side.

The increasingly autocratic regime of Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic is categorical in its refusal to accept Kosovo’s sovereignty. During the latest round of talks in Ohrid, North Macedonia in March, Vucic refused to even sign the alleged deal he “agreed to”. the Republic of Kosovo”.

In Serbia’s regime-aligned media, the ethnic Albanian community, which makes up 92 percent of Kosovo’s population, is routinely branded with ethnic slurs, while the government in Pristina is branded as the ‘temporary’ local authorities. And in the Serbian-majority northern Kosovo, Belgrade maintains a sort of clandestine occupation, run through a network of local ultranationalists and gangsters, as The New York Times recently pointed out.

But Serbia’s reactionary stance is not limited to Kosovo.

The Serbian leadership and large segments of the public, engulfed by more than three decades of state revisionist propaganda, live in a world of their own. Neither Belgrade nor much of the Serbian public accepts that the Milosevic regime – in whose last cabinet Vucic was Information Minister – was the main architect of Yugoslav dissolution or of the ensuing decade of conflict that engulfed the region.

They falsely claim that between 1991 and 1999 Serbia did not wage wars of aggression against Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina and Kosovo. They also falsely claim that Serbia did not conduct a systematic, genocidal campaign of extermination, terror and expulsion against the non-Serb population of Bosnia between 1992 and 1995, which disproportionately affected the Bosnian community.

In fact, genocidal violence against Bosniaks by Milosevic and his Bosnian Serb proxies was so severe that about half of all Yugoslav wars victims and 82 percent of all civilian deaths in the Bosnian war were ethnic Bosniaks.

Post-war Bosnia is still torn by dysfunction and strife because of the US-brokered Dayton Peace Accords and the extreme degree of autonomy given to ethno-chauvinist elements under the country’s new constitution. In the Republika Srpska entity, declared a Serb-majority region by Milosevic’s genocidal purge and loyal to Belgrade, Milorad Dodik’s secessionist regime undermines even the most modest of reforms while explicitly pushing for Bosnia’s breakup , with Russian and Serbian help.

In light of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, one would think there would have been serious political and diplomatic repercussions for Serbia and its proxies due to their close ties to the Kremlin and their own expansionist machinations in the Western Balkans. But the exact opposite has happened.

For example, in the case of the clashes between Serbian nationalists and NATO peacekeepers in Zvecan, de Quint condemned the country’s prime minister, Albin Kurti, for sending the police to escort the newly elected mayors to their offices in the north.

The US has also kicked Kosovo out of NATO-led Defender 23 military exercises and threatened local officials with sanctions. Washington’s ambassador to Pristina, Jeffrey Hovenier, also said his country will no longer assist Kosovo in seeking international recognition. In contrast, Serbia and Vucic were not affected.

Dodik of Republika Srpska has also not suffered repercussions for regularly meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin, whom US and European officials have repeatedly called a “war criminal”. The entity continues to receive funding from the EU for various development projects, and while Dodik is under US and UK sanctions, he continues to openly lobby US officials in Washington.

Nor is the Bosnian Serb leader the only anti-state actor in Bosnia benefiting from a curiously high degree of Western appeasement. Dragan Covic, the leader of the hardline Croatian nationalist HDZ party who also enjoys the protection of the Kremlin, appears to have his interests defended directly by the internationally appointed Office of the High Representative (OHR).

Last October, the OHR used its expanded executive powers to rewrite Bosnia’s electoral laws in its favor, then in April this year amended the federation entity’s constitution to install a HDZ-dominated government.

In Bosnia, as in Kosovo, the US and EU seem uninterested in curbing Russian influence; instead, they have tried to accommodate the Moscow-backed militant nationalists. Why? Because the West has concluded that it is not worth the time or effort to confront the likes of Vucic, Dodik or Covic in a region as peripheral to its interests as the Western Balkans.

The US and EU have instead opted for a sort of Kabuki policy, maintaining a performative stance of opposition to militant nationalists, but spending political and diplomatic capital to help them achieve their goals in the fleeting hope that this will make them will calm down.

The result, of course, is only a more daring form of nationalist extremism in the Balkans, largely sponsored by the West.

Unfortunately, both the US and the EU appear to be fully following this course, as evidenced by their surrealist responses to the violence in Zvecan. It will likely remain so until the domestic public, including the Bosnian and Kosovan diasporas in the West, and their legislative allies, can effectively argue why Western double-trade in the Balkans is dangerous to Europe’s stability and security.

Until then, however, Belgrade will likely continue to wreak havoc, knowing that Washington and Brussels will look the other way.

The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial view of Al Jazeera.