American Magazine: Politicians from Pristina take part of smuggling profit in the north

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Kosovo Cold War Act

The Balkans is the central stage for new tensions between Russia and the West, but how true are the actions?

Mitrovica, Kosovo ) It is difficult not to see the town of Mitrovica as the most visible front of what some have called “New Cold War” between Russia and the West. Like this new war, the city's current blockade was created by the fall of communism and its failure to adapt itself to any new political or economic order. Mitrovica was once a war zone, but like the new Cold War, it has now become a filthy theater with election shows, international intervention and media fraud. And like the new Cold War, the city offers a deceptive obstacle in the face of all this one that is so appropriate for its different political actors that if it did not exist, they would be forced to create it.

From Pristina, the capital of Kosovo, in Mitrovica goes through a Romanian road. The black and white graves of those who fought for Kosovo's independence appear on both sides of the road. Tents of the United Nations have turned into greenhouses. You have entered Mitrovica when you pass the area known as Trepca ʹ a large industrial complex of factories and 60 mines, which, in their best time under Tito's power, were Yugoslavia's largest industrial zone, where some 23 thousand Serbs and Albanians were employed. Today, the mines are mostly closed. Unemployment in this region has risen to 40 percent.

Mitrovica is a divided city. On the south bank of the Iber River, Albanians use the euro. American flags are seen in the streets. There is a “restaurant there KFC”, a very large mosque and a whole system of humanitarian organisations. North of the Iber River, where it goes through a bridge blocked at its two ends by Italian Carabinieri's armoured cars, the inscriptions return to the Cyrillic alphabet. Serbs use dinars. The city becomes clearly more polluted. The old streets are full of lucky playgrounds that have black glass. Russian flags can also be seen there. Putin's posters are located in residential buildings. “Krimea for Russia is like Kosovo for Serbia”, it is written in a large inscription of foam. Men in black jackets sit in the bar “Gavrilo Princip”

Early Tuesday morning, in Mitrovica, I woke up from the sound of the sirens of air strikes. “The Serbs have come to get Kosovo back, I thought. However, these sirens indicated that a police operation had been launched in the north of the city, just a few kilometers from the border with Serbia. In fact, these sirens signaled the opposite of a Serbian attack. They signalled that Pristina, which has never controlled Kosovo's north properly, was making a rare display of its authority in its Serb enclave. At least 12 armoured vehicles, along with several U.S. Army and UN vehicles, had entered this area to arrest traffickers in a village of Zubin Potok. Within two hours, 19 police officials were arrested, including the city's police commander and two United Nations workers, including a Russian who was later released.

Kosovo's north is not only border land. It's gangland. It would be hard to overestimate the spread of its black market in everyday life. Trafficking is not just another shameful act to protect against the impression of lack of protection and overcoming power on the part of Albanians. It is supporting the poorest area of Europe's poorest state, keeping all major gas, milk products and meat at free prices. The northern streets of Kosovo are packed with gasoline pumps that sell fuel at twice as cheap as the rest of Kosovo. Tobacco vendors offer some of the cheapest cigarettes in Europe. Last week, while driving near the town of Leposaviqi and the famous Vrachevo monastery, my guide marked the streets through which the 18-rock trucks and the white trucks run through. These are called alternative ways”, he said. At least five of them pass through the hills of Kopolonik, serpentging inside and outside Serbia's territory parallel to the legal system of roads. Almost everything that consumes northern Kosovo, from soap to flour, comes through them, all without taxes. Some policemen appeared on the other road. Others have broken the road.

Pristina loses millions of euros from the black market every year. Why do you tolerate it? It is not simply that Albanian authorities know that trafficking is happening and that they are powerless to do anything about it. It's not a secret that their political elite gets a share of the winning. Northern Kosovo, like the other Transnistria border zone (territorial between Ukraine and Moldova), is a controversial but profitable country, an exchange zone for elites in Pristina and Belgrade, which perform as if they hate each other, but in fact only cross the profits from one side to the other.

Why the operation, and why now? While driving towards the Serbian border, the most obvious thing was that traffickers had been informed earlier about conducting this operation. They had had enough time to rely on the Serbian border and establish barricades on the road leading north. I passed a wall of tires that had been burned to the bottom, leaving an unpleasant smell in the air. A small bus stop had been thrown onto the street. There were also packages of Coca-Cola and Fanta on the street. The cut trees were also scattered on the street. Barricades became more visible as we approached the border with Serbia. The police had forcibly removed an orange truck and had thrown it down the street. About noon, a column of at least 12 armoured cars passed across in front of me while they were going to Mitrovica. Next to them, some bodies in blue uniforms waved automatic weapons and smiled in front of journalists.

Near the gloomy village of Zubin Potok, evidence of the shots left by four injured policemen began to become clearer. The rear windows of both cars were broken. In the sky, a military helicopter approached mountain peaks and sometimes moved towards the border with Serbia, where President Aleksandar Vuciq says he has prepared the army in case of any other provocation. City Serbs stood by using phones and selling video shots. “A knows the story about the Serbian heart in Germany”, answered one when I asked him to describe the clash. Forget the shots. A few years ago, an Albanian terrorist shot a Serb and sold his heart!- on the German black market”, he said. For most villagers, the police operation is little more than the typical intervention of Albanians in their affairs.

But for others in Kosovo, it is clear that this action was just another spectacle that took place for the international community. For a long time, Pristina has done nothing for the apparent phenomenon of trafficking. Last year, when taxes were imposed 100 percent for all products imported from Serbia, trafficking only increased and yet nothing. But here was a small and largely symbolic attempt to show Berlin, Brussels and Washington that Pristina is doing something to fight trafficking. As for Serbs, whether of Belgrade or Mitrovica, they have been given the opportunity to look shocked and terrorise voters with unprecedented intervention on their territory.

On his return in the afternoon from Zubin Potok, the taxi driver strayed off the main road and entered an unauthorized route. My record is “, he said, wrinkled his arms. “But there's no police here to catch me”