The monastery was let down

Albanian police will guard Serbian shrines

By the end of August, one of the largest Orthodox centers in Kosovo and the Balkans in general - the 14th-century Serbian monastery in Gracanica (pictured) near Pristina - will come under the control of the Kosovo police. This was stated by the commander of the international peacekeeping forces KFOR, German General Markus Bentler. In the future, the fate of the monastery will be shared by other medieval Serbian cultural and religious monuments in the Kosovo region, which declared independence from Serbia in 2008: the monastery in Vysoki Decani, the Patriarchate in the city of Pec, the church in Prizren and other objects. Thus, the KFOR command relieves itself of a significant part of the responsibility for the Kosovo Serbs, placing it on the shoulders of the local Albanian authorities. Since 1999, when multinational forces under NATO command were brought into the Serbian region, it has been the peacekeepers who have protected Serbian churches and monasteries from Albanian extremists.

The North Atlantic Alliance decided to abandon the protection of Serbian cultural and religious monuments back in July on the grounds that “the overall security situation in Kosovo has improved significantly over the past few years.” General Bentler said that the Serbian government "was informed long before" of Brussels' intentions. Despite the fact that the authorities of Belgrade and the leadership of the Serbian Orthodox Church spoke out categorically against this step, the transfer of the monastery in Gracanica to the protection of the Kosovo police “will be completed by the end of August,” General Bentler promised. He added that other sites guarded by KFOR forces would be handed over step by step according to a schedule “that has yet to be worked out.”

The Serbian side believes that the Kosovo police are not the best guards for Orthodox monasteries. “It is unacceptable for us that Serbian shrines and priests are protected by the Kosovo police. Our people don’t believe her,” said Goran Bogdanovic, Minister for Kosovo and Metohija in the Serbian government, in an interview with the Belgrade newspaper Vecernje Novosti. According to him, monuments cannot be transferred to the protection of those who “destroyed them or powerlessly watched their desecration and destruction.” The Kosovo police force is overwhelmingly Albanian, many of whom previously served in the Kosovo Liberation Army, which became notorious for terrorizing Serb civilians.

“In today’s Kosovo, Serbs live in enclaves - in small areas fenced with barbed wire under the protection of KFOR soldiers,” Elena Guskova, head of the Center for the Study of the Modern Balkan Crisis at the Institute of Slavic Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences, explained to Vremya Novostei. — In these enclaves, as a rule, there is no functioning church. Therefore, if Serbs need to go to church or a cemetery, they go to other areas under the protection of peacekeepers. Such escort is necessary because the surrounding territory is still under fire from armed Albanians. Under these conditions, removing international protection from Orthodox churches and monasteries means leaving them defenseless against the threat of new anti-Serbian pogroms.”

Kosovo Serb leaders are also worried. One of them, Oliver Ivanovich, in a conversation with VN, noted that the main problems may arise not in Gracanica, but in other Serb-populated areas of Kosovo. According to him, in the area of ​​the Gracanice monastery, “Serbs live compactly, and therefore they constitute the majority in the local police. So Gracanica will be mainly guarded by Serbian police, and they will do it no worse than the KFOR forces.” But where the Serb presence is minimal, in particular in Prizren, “the removal of international protection could leave Serbian monasteries and cemeteries without any protection,” Mr. Ivanovic testifies.

The official representative of the Russian Foreign Ministry, Andrei Nesterenko, recently confirmed that Russia shares “the concerns of the authorities of Serbia and the Serbian Orthodox Church.” According to him, the intentions of the NATO leadership and KFOR forces “are fraught with additional tension in the security sphere in Kosovo and provoke an increase in mistrust of the Serbian population in the readiness of international peacekeeping forces to fulfill their duties.” This decision, “adopted, moreover, without the consent of the Serbian Church, threatens the preservation of Serbian monasteries in Kosovo and Metohija, many of which are on the UNESCO World Heritage List, and complicates the activities of the Serbian Orthodox Church,” they are convinced on Smolensk Square.

“The transfer of powers by the KFOR peacekeeping forces to the Kosovo police does not comply with UN Security Council Resolution 1244 of 1999, which entrusted the international community with the functions of ensuring security and law enforcement in Kosovo,” says Elena Guskova. “It is even more strange that this is being done without the consent of the Serbian government and the Serbian Orthodox Church, which is in charge of the church facilities.”

Petr ISKENDEROV