In recent months, Serbia and Kosovo, long pitted as eternal enemies by international and local narratives, signed a broad range of agreements for regional cooperation. As part of the negotiations, Kosovo gains its own telephone country code while its ethnic Serb minority wins greater autonomy via the Association of Serbian Municipalities. Many are hailing these “landmark” decisions on telecom, energy, and infrastructure as the successful progression of the April 2013 Brussels Agreement to normalize relations between Serbia and Kosovo, paving the way for Serbia’s EU bid.
But the most symbolic of these agreements is the decision by both national parties to reestablish freedom of movement across Kosovo’s most contested northern region. Such a mission requires the inevitable demolition of a “Peace Park” in the middle of the Ibar Bridge in the city of Mitrovica. This “park” strategically blocks the passage of people and cars from the ethnic Albanian-dominated side of the northern city to the Serbian side.
The bridge over the Ibar river is a site of carnage and politically-charged hatred, with some violent incidents occurring there less than a few months ago. It stands in the backdrop of still raw campaigns of ethnic cleansing, nationalist propaganda, and international interventions and bombings. Thus, the bridge is both a symbol and a product of the material manifestation of the ethnic divide in Kosovo, the politicization of ethnic differences, and the inability of both ethnic Serbs and Albanians to co-exist under one national border. As long as this structure delineates Serb versus Albanian narratives within Kosovo, it will continue to portray a dangerous, unproductive, and painstakingly constructed dimension of Balkan identity politics.
