Tensions linger along Kosovo border

[Bernkastel]

From Al Jazeera. It is a bit difficult to get recent articles on this situation, and this is what I could get at the present.

NATO peacekeepers have issued an ultimatum to Serbs to remove roadblocks on the border between Kosovo and Serbia, as a tense standoff threatens to trigger renewed violence in the region.

A trade row spilled over into violence in late July, when Kosovo's government in Pristina ordered its security forces to take over two crossings on the border with Serbia to enforce a newly imposed ban on Serbian goods. Serbs in northern Kosovo reacted angrily and an ethnic Albanian police officer was killed and four injured in ensuing clashes.

Serbs form a majority in the two northern provinces of Kosovo. Albanians form the majority in most other areas. Local Serbs have for weeks been manning 16 barricades blocking the main
access roads to the border gates.

The commander of NATO-led forces in Kosovo (KFOR) said his troops would remove roadblocks near sensitive border crossings on Monday, if local Serbs fail to do so voluntarily. Kosovo unilaterally declared independence in 2008 but Serbia still considers the breakaway territory its southern province.

[K. A. Pital]

Ban on Serb goods? With Serb enclaves still surviving in Kosovo after the postwar cleansing? Doing classy, indeed.

I guess KFOR should have just ran that place until kingdom come (not that it prevented drug and human trafficking, islamist violence and other bullshit, but still...).

[Crateria]

It makes me wonder how Kosovo might be faring today had the ethnic cleansing of Serbs never occurred. We'll never be quite sure about what might have happened, but what are the most likely outcomes? No Muslim Fundie hangout (?) or narcostate?