Well, predictably, things aren't looking great over there.
MITROVICA, Kosovo - A day after Kosovo's ethnic Albanian leadership declared independence from Serbia, 7,000 Serbs took to the streets of this divided city, waving Serbian flags, chanting "Kosovo is Serbia!" and burning an American flag covered with the words "The Fourth Reich."
A small clutch of radicals stood at the bridge leading to the Albanian side of the city shouting, "Kick, shout, kill the Albanians!" Old men and women wept, some expressing disbelief that Kosovo was no longer theirs. A NATO military helicopter hovered overhead. Armed police officers formed a human shield to keep the protesters from trying to cross to the other side of the bridge, where crowds of Albanians looked on defiantly.
Mitrovica is divided between Albanians, who live south of the Ibar River, and Serbs, who live to the north. The city has long been a flashpoint for violence in Kosovo, a territory of two million people, where a Serb minority of 125,000 people ekes out an existence in isolated enclaves surrounded by Albanians, who make up 95 percent of Kosovo's population.
An explosion went off Monday night in the northern part of Mitrovica, near the building where the United Nations police and mediation offices are situated, Agence France-Presse reported. The police said that there were no injuries and that damage was confined to a few shattered car windows.
The Serbian-dominated northern part of Kosovo already has parallel institutional structures and a majority of Serbs there do not recognize the authority of the Kosovo government. The ability of NATO's 16,000 peacekeepers to maintain calm could help determine whether Kosovo will hold together.
As Kosovo's jubilant ethnic Albanians continued to celebrate, concerns were growing that the Serbian-dominated north could boil over into violence, break off and bring about the partition of Kosovo. Conversely, analysts warned of the risks if Kosovo's Albanians, newly emboldened by independence, tried to assert authority over the north, which accounts for 15 percent of Kosovo's territory.
"Mitrovica has for long time been the critical area in the south Balkans where things are going to come to a head," said Misha Glenny, a leading Balkans expert based in London. "Whatever the outcome of Kosovo's independence, everyone knows we are heading for de facto partition, but no one is willing to admit it."
In a sign that Serbia was already asserting its authority in the north of Kosovo, reports emerged Monday that some Serbian policemen had begun to desert the multiethnic Kosovo police force to give their allegiance to Belgrade. The police force in Pristina, the capital of Kosovo, denied that.
Even as Kosovo's ethnic Albanian leaders pledged to protect the rights of the Serbian minority, Serbs in Mitrovica said Monday that they would never join the "false state" and would remain part of Serbia. They said they had put their faith in Moscow, which vehemently rejects Kosovo's independence.
"If the Albanians try to cross the bridge, we demand from the Serbian Army to use all available means to stop them," Marko Jaksic, the Kosovo Serbs' hard-line leader, told the protesters. "America is no longer the single world power. The Russians are coming. As long as there is Russia and Serbia, there will never be an independent Kosovo."
Serbian officials in Mitrovica said they had been encouraged by Belgrade to ignore the independence declaration and remain in Kosovo to keep the northern part of the territory under de facto Serbian control. "They will offer us a lot of money to sell our houses, but we will never leave - never!" Mr. Jaksic said, as the crowd raised three fingers in a sign of Serbian unity.
In the Albanian part of Mitrovica, most residents heeded police warnings to stay inside. Bislim Bislimi, an unemployed 28-year-old ethnic Albanian, said it was unjust that Albanians could not move freely on their own territory. "We live here, and we can't even walk to the other side of the bridge," he said. "It belongs to us."
While the demonstrations in Mitrovica were calm by Balkan standards, violence erupted nearby. An explosion early Monday destroyed a United Nations car in Zubin Potok, a village about six miles northwest of Mitrovica, the local police said. No injuries were reported. Another explosion on Sunday rocked a United Nations building near Mitrovica, causing minor damage but no injuries.
In a move that threatened to heighten tensions, the Serbian Interior Ministry filed criminal charges in a Serbian court on Monday against the three Kosovar leaders who were instrumental in proclaiming independence: President Fatmir Sejdiu, Prime Minister Hashim Thaci and the speaker of Parliament, Jakup Krasniqi. It was symbolic, because Kosovo does not recognize the legal jurisdiction of Serbian courts.
Meanwhile, in Belgrade, 7,000 protesters gathered in Republic Square and chanted anti-Albanian slogans.
The march on Monday followed demonstrations on Sunday in which rioters stoned the American Embassy and attacked the mission of Slovenia, which currently holds the rotating European Union presidency. Both countries backed Kosovo's secession.
Ljubica Gojgic, a leading Serbian commentator, said that if Kosovo's independence declaration was recognized by the West, it would embolden Serbian nationalists while making it difficult for those who advocate closer ties with Europe to have their voices heard.
On Monday, Serbian defiance also spilled over to Bosnia, where the international community maintains a fragile unity between Bosnia's entities, the Serb-run Republika Srpska and the Muslim-Croat Federation.
The main opposition Bosnian Serb party called for the independence of the Serb-run half of Bosnia, citing Kosovo as a precedent. A march by several thousand people in Banja Luka, capital of the Bosnian Serb Republic, turned violent as protesters threw stones at the American, French and German consulates.
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Chanting "Kosovo is Serbia," thousands of Serbs marched Tuesday to a bridge dividing them from ethnic Albanians while others torched U.N. border checkpoints and cars to protest Kosovo's declaration of independence.
Smoke billowed from two checkpoints separating Kosovo from Serbia and flames engulfed several U.N. vehicles set ablaze in protest against Kosovo's weekend proclamation of independence and anger over international recognition of the new nation.
For two days, Kosovo's Serbs have shown their determination to shun the declaration by destroying U.N. and NATO property, setting off small bombs and staging noisy rallies through the Serb stronghold of Kosovska Mitrovica.
The attacks on U.N. border crossings showed the protesters' willingness to use violence to hold onto Kosovo - and could clear the way for Serbian militants to return to fight in Kosovo, a land Serb nationalists consider the cradle of their state and religion.
Kosovo has not been under Belgrade's control since 1999, when NATO launched airstrikes to halt a Serbian crackdown on ethnic Albanian separatists. A U.N. mission since has governed Kosovo, with more than 16,000 NATO troops and a multiethnic police force policing the province.
The divided town of Kosovska Mitrovica in the north has been tense since the ethnic Albanian leadership in Pristina unilaterally declared independence from Serbia on Sunday - widely expected after internationally mediated talks on the province's future fell apart last year.
Overnight, three loud explosions shook the town, with one damaging several cars near a U.N. building. Two hand grenades hit deserted homes that belonged to ethnic Albanians who fled this Serb stronghold after the 1999 war. A U.N. vehicle also was torched overnight in a nearby village.
No injuries were reported, and Kosovo Serb authorities said they were investigating the bombings.
In Jarnije and Banja, some 18 miles north of Kosovska Mitrovica, protesters used plastic explosives and bulldozers to wreck the two border checkpoint posts.
Protesters tipped over metal sheds that housed Kosovo's customs service and sent them sliding down a hill and into a river. They vandalized and set fire to passport control booths.
"It was very dangerous and the police had to withdraw and call for help from NATO peacekeepers," said Veton Elshani, a spokesman for Kosovo's multiethnic police force.
NATO peacekeepers did not intervene but stepped up patrols on the road leading to Serbia. Alliance helicopters buzzed overhead.
Mitrovica's Serb authorities said they intervened at the border because ethnic Albanians were attempting to set up border crossings on the boundary with Serbia. The Serbs called on Belgrade to "urgently take steps" to protect Serbia's territorial integrity and protect its citizens.
About 2,000 young Kosovo Serbs marched to a bridge that spans the Ibar River dividing the town between Serbs and ethnic Albanians, wrecking a NATO car in downtown Mitrovica with sticks and stones along the way.
"We cannot allow the institutions of a nonexistent state to be imposed on us and to pay taxes to some independent Kosovo," said Slavisa Ristic, head of the local Serb municipality. "That is impossible."
International recognition of Kosovo's declaration of independence - led by the U.S., Australia and the European Union's biggest powers - appeared to feed Serbs' anger over a unilateral move the government in Belgrade rejected as illegal.
Russia, China and some EU members also strongly oppose letting Kosovo break away from Serbia over Serbia's objections.
In Vienna, Austria, Serbia's foreign minister urged members of the Organization for Security and Cooperation to condemn Kosovo's "illegal" declaration.
"History will judge those who have chosen to trample the bedrock of the international system and on the principles upon which security and cooperation in Europe have been established," Foreign Minister Vuk Jeremic said.
He said Serbia is ready - "at any time, in any place, in any manner" - to engage in talks with Pristina to agree on a mutually acceptable solution for Kosovo's future status.
"But we cannot give them sovereignty. ... For us, Kosovo is the crucible of our identity, it is the essential link between our past and our future," he said.
Kosovo, where the population of 2 million is more than 90 percent ethnic Albanian, insisted during U.N.-led talks on statehood while Serbia, which has deep religious and historic ties to Kosovo, pushed for wide autonomy.
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Associated Press writer Nebi Qena contributed to this report from Pristina.
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PRISTINA, Feb 19 (Reuters) - Troops of the NATO-led Kosovo peacekeeping force KFOR were being sent to the northern border of the newly independent republic on Tuesday to defend border posts under attack by Serbs who oppose its secession from Serbia.
"KFOR is going to intervene now," spokesman Colonel Betrand Bonneau told Reuters. He declined to say which troops of the 35-nation force were being deployed.
A second KFOR source said troops were already at one border post which had been burnt to the ground. (Reporting by Shaban Buza, writing by Douglas Hamilton)
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Well, I wish I could say this was completely unexpected, but it isn't.
"You've all been selected for this mission because you each have a special skill. Professor Hawking, John Leslie, Phil Neville, the Wu-Tang Clan, Usher, the Sugar Puffs Monster and Daniel Day-Lewis! Welcome to Operation MindFuck!"
The Chinese are probably getting a laugh out of it though.
