{"id":1707,"date":"2008-02-19T19:49:09","date_gmt":"2008-02-19T19:49:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.jcm.org.uk\/blog\/?p=1707"},"modified":"2008-02-19T20:19:19","modified_gmt":"2008-02-19T20:19:19","slug":"and-so-it-begins","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jcm.org.uk\/blog\/2008\/02\/and-so-it-begins\/","title":{"rendered":"And so it begins…"},"content":{"rendered":"

After the little-reported grenade attack<\/a> on a UN court on Sunday afternoon, it seems that Kosovo’s Serbs aren’t going to accept independence without a fight.<\/p>\n

Reuters<\/a>: U.N. police pulled out from a Kosovo border post that was destroyed on Tuesday by Serbs who vowed never to submit to the authority of Kosovo’s Albanian government and its Western backers.<\/p>\n

It was one of two border posts, between Kosovo and Serbia, attacked and set on fire by Kosovo Serbs earlier in the day in the Serb-dominated northwest corner of Kosovo.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Sofia Echo<\/a>: Serbs also attacked a check point near Zubin Potok. The police officers hid in a tunnel while about 1000 protesters tried to tear it down…<\/p>\n

hundreds of Serbs set fire to the temporary passport control premises in Banja.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Of course, with any luck this is just a small-scale bit of initial frustration from local ethnic Serbs and it won’t escalate any further. Fingers crossed, eh?<\/p>\n

But considering UN troops so far don’t seem to have clear instructions about what to do (abandoning the border posts of a territory they’re meant to be protecting? What’s all that about?), how long is it going to be before Serbia – or perhaps Russia? – steps in with its own “peacekeeping” troops to “protect” Kosovo’s Serbian minority from the ethnic Albanian majority?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

After the little-reported grenade attack on a UN court on Sunday afternoon, it seems that Kosovo’s Serbs aren’t going to accept independence without a fight. Reuters: U.N. police pulled out from a Kosovo border post that was destroyed on Tuesday … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[70],"tags":[72,38,71,79],"class_list":["post-1707","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-the-balkans","tag-kosovo","tag-russia","tag-serbia","tag-un"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jcm.org.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1707","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jcm.org.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jcm.org.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jcm.org.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jcm.org.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1707"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/jcm.org.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1707\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jcm.org.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1707"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jcm.org.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1707"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jcm.org.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1707"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}