• EC: Situation in north still very fragile; talks on Association must start (media)
• KFOR: We’re examining Serbia’s request to deploy troops in Kosovo (Express)
• Hungary plays key role in Kosovo peacekeeping (Hungary Today)
• NATO Military Chiefs of Defence Meeting - 18-19 January 2023 (nato.int)
• Will Kosovo’s war ever end? (UnHerd)
• The religious propaganda that threatens Kosovo (Kallxo)
• The Peak of the Balkans Trail: Europe's last true wilderness (BBC)

EC: Situation in north still very fragile; talks on Association must start (media)

A spokeswoman for the European Commission said on Tuesday that they welcome the calming of the situation in the north of Kosovo and the removal of barricades. “We welcome the de-escalation of tensions and the removal of barricades in the north of Kosovo. The EU has played an active role in achieving this result in cooperation with the U.S. and the KFOR mission in Kosovo,” EC spokeswoman Nabila Massrali said.

“The situation in the north is still very fragile. We expect all parties to keep their calm and avoid actions that can escalate the situation or result in violence. EULEX is continuing to monitor the situation. The developments of the last weeks showed how important it is to make irreversible progress toward the normalisation of relations.”

Massrali said that talks must begin on the formation of the Association of Serb-majority municipalities. “This also implies the full implementation of existing agreements without delay, starting with the return of Serbs to the institutions and the start of discussions on the formation of the Association of Serb-majority municipalities,” she said.

Massrali also said “the European Union will continue to work with the parties and that the date for new meetings between Kosovo and Serbia will be announced in due time”.

KFOR: We’re examining Serbia’s request to deploy troops in Kosovo (Express)

Barricades have been removed and there are no more tensions in the north, but Serbia’s request to deploy its army in Kosovo is still being analysed. This is what the NATO peacekeeping force in Kosovo, KFOR, told the news website on Tuesday. “Serbia’s request about the deployment of its troops is still under examination,” KFOR said in a response.

Hungary plays key role in Kosovo peacekeeping (Hungary Today)

Due to the increasingly tense situation in Kosovo, NATO’s KFOR peacekeeping mission is also on alert, including a large number of Hungarian soldiers, the 24.hu portal wrote in an interview with Major General Ferenc Kajári, the commander of the NATO mission, who served until October 2022.

It is a great honor that Hungary has been given the opportunity to command a NATO mission, Major General Ferenc Kajári said, adding that it demonstrates the reliability of the Hungarian Defense Forces to be able to carry out such a task. “On the other hand, it is also a confirmation of Hungarian foreign policy, as the Western Balkans are an important factor in European security policy,” he pointed out.

The Hungarian Defense Forces have been present in KFOR since 1999. After a transitional period, they started to play a role in the KFOR Tactical Reserve Battalion, which at that time was still under Portuguese command with a Portuguese and a Hungarian company.

“In 2017, Lisbon withdrew, and the Hungarian government made a commitment to NATO that we would take over the whole battalion – securing another company. It is still the backbone of the Hungarian contribution, which is a contingent of nearly 400 men. This organization reports directly to the KFOR commander and answers to him. This battalion is part of the kinetic force, i.e. it performs rifle duties,” the Major General explained.

KFOR’s most important task is to maintain security in Kosovo, and if the situation escalates, it must be prepared to intervene.

“This was the case on July 31, when in a matter of minutes, Kosovo Serb protest groups blocked the roads leading to the main border crossing,” Kajári recalled, calling it the most critical moment of last year.

NATO Military Chiefs of Defence Meeting - 18-19 January 2023 (nato.int)

NATO’s highest Military Authority, the Military Committee, will meet in person on 18-19 January 2023, in Brussels, Belgium. Admiral Rob Bauer, Chair of the Military Committee, will preside over the meeting, which will be attended by the Allied Chiefs of Defence and their counterparts from Invitees Finland and Sweden. They will be supported by General Christopher Cavoli, Supreme Allied Commander Europe (SACEUR), and General Philippe Lavigne, Supreme Allied Commander Transformation (SACT), who will each lead a session.

The meeting of the NATO Military Committee in Chiefs of Defence Session (MCCS) will enable the 32 Chiefs of Defence, to meet and discuss issues of strategic importance to the Alliance.

The NATO Secretary General, Mr. Jens Stoltenberg will join the Military Committee for the first session to provide the latest political objectives and to discuss security challenges facing the Alliance.

Supreme Allied Commander Transformation, General Lavigne, will lead the second session of the day. It will focus on early observations from the ongoing war in Ukraine, and the acceleration of the implementation of the NATO Warfighting Capstone Concept and the Warfare Development Agenda. The Chiefs of Defence will discuss NATO’s military capacity and capability to defend the Alliance against all challenges, now and in the future. This will include a discussion on multi-domain operations, digital transformation and interoperability.

General Cavoli, Supreme Allied Commander Europe, will lead the third session of the day. He will provide an update on the Alliance’s implementation of the Concept for the Deterrence and Defence of the Euro-Atlantic Area. This ‘deter and defence strategy’ provides a common framework for military activity in peace, crisis, and conflict. It closely interlinks national plans with NATO military plans and takes into account threats and challenges specific to particular regions, domains, and functional areas.

The fourth session will be on NATO Readiness and Sustainment of military forces, in particular risks and mitigations. This session will centre on capability development, military stockpiles and logistics.

The first session of the second day will see the Chiefs of Defence meet with their Kosovo Force (KFOR) operational partners – Armenia, Austria, Finland, Ireland, Moldova, Sweden, Switzerland, and Ukraine. The discussions will concentrate on the situation on the ground, the security environment, and KFOR’s mission.

Will Kosovo’s war ever end? (UnHerd)

There is a strict timetable to crises in Kosovo. It runs like this. First, after a disagreement between Serbia’s leader and Kosovo’s, a deadline is set by the Kosovo side to do this or that, or barricades are erected in Serbian-inhabited north Kosovo. The diplomats go into hyperdrive, harsh words are spoken, and the Serbian Army deploys to the border, making sure that clips of military convoys circulate on social media. Serbian nationalists fantasise that they are actually going to do something and Serbian tabloids froth that Kosovo-Albanians are about to wage war against their people.

At this point, parts of the Western media wake up and journalists, who never seem to clock that Nato has thousands of troops in Kosovo pledged to protect it from Serbia, think that it might invade. Then, deal done, the barricades come down until the next time.

Today, we are at the fag end of the latest cycle. The barricades which stood for 20 days have come down and everyone has gone home — but this time, it was a pretty close-run thing. The barricades were in fact trucks blocking the roads in some 14 places. Just over a week ago, as I visited one in the village of Rudare, a colleague pointed out a petrol tanker. People were not very happy about it, he said. It was full; if there were a violent incident, it could explode.

Read full piece at: https://bit.ly/3Il0Xje

The religious propaganda that threatens Kosovo (Kallxo)

Dangerous content that promotes political Islam, religious extremism, including ‘the holy war’ (jihad) for creating the Islamic State and disobedience for the Constitution of Kosovo, continues to be present in hundreds of internet pages in Albanian, the news website reports.

During research prepared for the Center against Disinformation in the Western Balkans led by the Metamorphosis Foundation, Kallxo has found that during 2022, hundreds of materials promoting political Islam, that were produced or translated into Albanian, were published on the internet and shared on social media.

Although security institutions in Kosovo say they have closed hundreds of such webpages, many of the posts continue to be accessible to the public. While security institutions continue to deal with these contents, the government has yet to adopt a strategic plan to oppose this narrative with a counter-narrative and a delegitimising approach.

The Peak of the Balkans Trail: Europe's last true wilderness (BBC)

Stretching 192km, the Peak of the Balkans Trail bridges three previously war-torn nations and crosses through some of the continent's least-explored landscapes.

Hiking through the green valleys and wildflower-strewn meadows under blazing sunshine, with the gunmetal-grey Albanian Alps towering overhead, I was struck by the utter remoteness of this landscape. Unlike Europe's more famous alpine resorts, there were no hotels or ski lifts in sight. Instead, the sweeping setting evoked a startling sense of isolation, and I couldn't help but feel I'd entered a back-of-the-wardrobe secret land that had somehow evaded the attention of the outside world.

Stretching from Northern Albania into southern Kosovo and north-eastern Montenegro, the Albanian Alps are better known by their local Albanian (Bjeshkët e Nëmuna) and Serbo-Croatian (Prokletije) names – both of which mean "The Accursed Mountains". Yet, the question of how these serrated limestone slopes got their unusual moniker remains something of a mystery.

According to local legend, the devil escaped from hell and created the jagged glacial karsts in a single day of mischief. Some say the alps' name stems from a woman who cursed the mountains when she was trekking through them with her children on a scorching-hot day and couldn't find any water. Others claim Slavic soldiers gave the mountains their name as they struggled to march through them. In a way, the peaks' puzzling origin story is something of a metaphor for Albania as a whole.

Read more at: https://bbc.in/3Gdfpaf