Germany to reinforce KFOR

[Thanas]

Germany will send 500, Austria 100 extra soldiers to Kosovo, thereby increasing the forces already there by 10%.

NATO to send extra troops to Kosovo

PRISTINA/BRUSSELS (Reuters) - NATO will send hundreds more troops to Kosovo after an escalation of violence there between ethnic Albanians and Serbs last week, NATO officials said Tuesday.

A battalion of troops, mainly from Germany and Austria, will join the Kosovo Security Force KFOR in coming days, the officials in Brussels and Pristina said.

"The reason for the deployment is to relieve forces currently engaged in maintaining security," NATO spokeswoman Carmen Romero said.

"It's not that the situation has gotten worse, but that KFOR troops have been very active and the commander considers the troops need to be relieved."

NATO's force in Kosovo currently numbers nearly 6,000.

Diplomats said the reserve battalion that has been kept on standby in Germany consists of 600 German troops and 100 Austrians.

Violence flared last week after Kosovo sent ethnic Albanian special police units to border posts that had been staffed mostly by ethnic Serbs to enforce a ban on imports from Serbia.

NATO sent its peacekeepers to quell a subsequent three days of violence in which one ethnic Albanian policeman was shot dead and hardline Serbian nationalists set fire to one of the northern border crossings.

If push comes to shove, I expect NATO will need to deploy even more troops there.

[Netko]

"It's not that the situation has gotten worse, but that KFOR troops have been very active and the commander considers the troops need to be relieved."

No, no, the situation hasn't gotten worse; those exchanges of fire between KFOR troops and protesters, small arms fire being opened at Croatian helicopters participating in KFOR, the dead policeman, burning and looting of border stations and a new log revolution (Kosovo Serbs, how about a bit of originality?), those are just everyday affairs. Yup, sure are.

On the one hand, the Kosovar government stirred the hornet's nest with their enforcement of their sovereignty on the border posts in the Serb areas, on the other, aside from obviously that the Serb response is insane, there are resolutions to this that can lead to a more stable status quo, rather then the grotesque situations currently in Kosovo and Bosnia.

When a good chunk of your nominal territory goes into armed semi-rebellion when you change customs policy and want to enforce it there is something very very rotten about said status quo.

Anyway, not much more to be said that hasn't already been said in countless Kosovo threads - I just hope this doesn't escalate much; we don't need two more tourist seasons ruined because of a war in the region and foreigners not recognizing the differences in ex-Yu countries.

[K. A. Pital]

The seizure of border control posts by Kosovo Albanians have wrought more troubles than it seemed at first.

[Fingolfin_Noldor]

I have never ever understood why Kosovo wasn't partitioned along racial lines. This is a potential disaster that was just begging to happen.

[K. A. Pital]

I have never ever understood why Kosovo wasn't partitioned along racial lines. This is a potential disaster that was just begging to happen.

The whole Yugoslav war thing happened because Yugoslavia was not partitioned along ethnic lines. Same with post-Soviet wars. Although in my view, all fucktards who took part in forcible partitioning of these nations and thereby caused unmitigated disaster for the economy of Yugoslav nations should be tried in the Hague for gross neglience. What a bunch of pompous nationalist assholes.