In 1999, Božidar Šarković from Klina expected the worst of the NATO soldiers who following the signing of the Kumanovo Agreement marched into Kosovo and Metohija. KFOR soldiers didn’t move a finger when Albanians killed Serbs and burned their houses, he said. Šarković, who returned to Metohija in 2009, still has reservations about the KFOR, but he admits that the military mission is important for the survival of Serbs in Kosovo, because it protects not only houses, but also churches and monasteries.

How did KFOR manage to go from the enemy army to a guarantor of the survival of the remaining Serbs in the province in 17 years?

The president of the Serbian Parliamentary Committee for Kosovo Milovan Drecun agrees with the assessment that after the 1999 conflict, KFOR was complicit in ethnic cleansing. He recalls the words of Bishop Atanasije Jevtic, who spoke about Patriarch Pavle's meeting with KFOR Commander Michael Jackson. When the Patriarch asked “if Milosevic was to blame, and why innocent people were being blamed and holy places and people not being protected", General Jackson openly said "we are not here to protect you, but to enable you to leave safely".

Nowadays however, the image of the mission is not so black and white. Speaking about the importance of KFOR, former mayor of Mitrovica North, now MP in the Serbian Parliament, Krstimir Pantic, even claimed that KFOR is the only institution that Serbs in Kosovo trust, an opinion shared by Rada Trajkovic, President of the “European movement of Serbs.”  Serbian PM Aleksandar Vucic also emphasized the importance of KFOR's role. At the beginning of February, during the meeting with NATO Commander for Europe, Philip Breedlove, Serbian PM said that KFOR has a key role in the protection of Serbian people in Kosovo.

In 17 years, international military forces led by NATO have survived a long journey, from the force that enabled Pristina to build a “state”, to an institution that Serbs see as a protective barrier against another pogrom, like the one in 2004.