An Ahtisaari ‘Plus’ Paradigm for the northern Kosovo: a Unified or a Divisive Approach for Ethnic Communities in Kosovo?

October 12, 2011

The events that followed the Kosovo‟s government- owned police action intended to reassert control over the border crossings in the northern Kosovo dominated by ethnic Serbs generated a complex situation, both domestically and internationally. A very common tendency – as anticipated by several rational observers – was that the reaction of local Serbians living in the northern Kosovo would be adjusted to both the aims of the Serbian Government and Serbian opposition political parties that control some of the local leaders in those areas.A number of multifaceted developments therefore pursued these events. On the one hand, local Serbians living in the northern Kosovo were mobilized to confront any action of the Kosovo Government to put into control both border-crossing posts, and on the other, to avert any action that intends to establish a different  governing logic in the northern part of Kosovo. With a new – both political and non-political – approach to resisting any form of control from the international and Kosovo‟s Government authority, local Serbians in the northern Kosovo started to implicitly articulate the Serbia‟s Government request for a northern autonomous territorial entity, later labelled as an “Ahtisaari Plus” solution. Of note is the fact that this solution was never substantively articulated and/or formulated. There is of course another view which reiterates that the Serbian leaders‟ claim for an autonomous north is an ambiguous claim in itself. It goes without saying that considering Kosovo part of Serbia on the one hand, and claiming an autonomous solution for its northern part, on the other, makes this claim both ambiguous and obscure.

Policy Notes

An Ahtisaari ‘Plus’ Paradigm for the northern Kosovo: a Unified or a Divisive Approach for Ethnic Communities in Kosovo?

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