Two recent stories give insight into the rotten game Belgrade is playing in Kosovo.

First, members of the Serbian Independent Liberal Party (SSLS) returned to take their seats at the Kosovo parliament yesterday. The SSLS chose not to boycott the November elections in Kosovo and therefore has claimed the several seats reserved for minorities. They hadn’t been participating in the government up until now due to several death threats they had received. The president of SSLS, Slobodan Petrović, gave an interview in January in which he heaped scorn on Belgrade for presuming to know what’s best for Kosovar Serbs, and in which he revealed that neither Prime Minister Koštunica nor Minister for Kosovo Samardžić had deigned to meet with him.

Second, several Serbian NGOs working to foster dialogue between Serbs and Albanians were attacked by a mob in Štrpce, a Serbian enclave in southern Kosovo. Sonja Biserko of the Helsinki Committee for Human Rights claimed that Belgrade was behind the attacks:

Clearly, the security services have been keeping an eye on what we’re doing in Kosovo, and organized a spontaneous gathering of citizens. A group of people came after us, but the international police stopped them.

Kosovo is important to the nationalist factions in Belgrade because it is an emotional issue that can be manipulated for electoral gain. Anyone working to find a peaceful solution in Kosovo is seen as an enemy and is faced with violent reprisals.

As Petrović said in the interview cited above,

Besides the large problems which we have already, Kosovar Serbs resent that their interests and livelihoods are being negotiated by people who aren’t from Kosovo and who have no intentions of ever living there.

A poignant echo of the lament of Croatia’s Serbian minority—roused to revolt by Milošević’s regime only to be sold out when supporting them became a liability—it’s heartening that Serbs in Kosovo are coming to recognize that the cynical rhetoric coming from Belgrade may very well do them great harm.