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Kosovo Serbs Give Tsar Lazar’s Guard Wide Berth

08 05 2007  Serbs in province give cool reception to group pledging holy war against Kosovo’s independence.

By Igor Milic in Northern Mitrovica

He died at the Battle of Kosovo in 1389, vowing to shield the Christian heartland of Serbia from its Ottoman Muslim invaders. More than six centuries on, his followers seem willing to make the same sacrifice.

With Kosovo now headed - seemingly irreversibly - for independence from Serbia under its Muslim Albanian majority, 200 Serbian stalwarts gathered in the central Serbian town of Krusevac on May 5 to attend the inaugural ceremony of an organisation called the Guard of Tsar Lazar. Their professed aim – to keep Kosovo Serbian, by fighting if necessary.

The initiative is the brainchild of a number of nationalist groups, including The Serbian Veterans Movement and the Serbian United Popular Front.

The Guard has adopted a declaration vowing to go into battle if Kosovo declares – or is given - independence. How many Serbs will answer the call is open to question. Significantly, the Serbian authorities arrested 27 men heading to the rally in Krusevac. Most were wearing T-shirts emblazoned with the insignia of the now banned former special police unit known as the Red Berets.

Most Serbs strongly oppose Kosovo’s separation from Serbia and views the land as their nation’s “cradle”. However, they also feel stirring up fresh tension is counterproductive.

Some Serbian analysts and politicians in Kosovo said the formation of the Guard was no more than an echo to threats made by Kosovo Albanian extremists to launch an armed campaign if independence is delayed.

“The very fact that the initiative has deliberately drawn media attention shows that its masterminds seek nothing more than their own personal benefit,” Oliver Ivanovic, a moderate Kosovo Serb politician, said.

Ivanovic described Tsar Lazar’s Guard as a response to the acts and threats of Kosovo Albanian extremists.

“A number of virtual extremist organisations have definitely provoked these young [Serbian] people to embark on such ideas and take the same course of action,” Ivanovic said.

“Either way, it’s not good,” he added. “The consequences may be fatal for the remaining Serbs in Kosovo because the initiative could be used as an excuse to launch a fresh wave of violence against them.”

Marko Jaksic, a Kosovo Serb leader in the north of the province, and a member of Serbia’s negotiating team on Kosovo, also scoffed at the ceremony in Krusevac as an empty gesture. “Such ideas are of no use to us and boil down to posing for the purpose of self-promotion,” Jaksic said.

Petar Miletic, of the Independent Liberal Party, agreed. “The time for violence has passed,” he said. Kosovo’s Serbs had already paid a heavy price for earlier violence in the province. “The people coming up with such initiatives are the same people who put Serbia and the Serbs into its present position,” Miletic added.

On the other hand, Ljubomir Kragovic, head of the Kosovo branch of the hardline nationalist Serbian Radical Party, said people were entitled to organise such groups if they wanted to.

“Individuals and groups have the right to rally like-minded supporters to protect themselves and their loved ones,” he said, adding, however, that the Radical Party had nothing to do with it.

“If Albanian extremists feel free to threaten violence if Kosovo is denied independence, it’s logical that Serb extremists will follow in their footsteps,” said Branislav Krstic, an analyst from the northern, Serbian, part of the divided town of Mitrovica in northern Kosovo.

“Bearing in mind that the US administration supports Kosovo Albanian extremists, their Serb counterparts have every excuse to say they will respond to violence with violence,” he elaborated.

On the streets of north Mitrovica, few locals seem very interested in the protection apparently being offered to them by Tsar Lazar’s Guard.

“I don’t want another war because I see absolutely no point in further loss of lives,” Zoran Mihajlovic said.

Dragisa Dazbijevic, a Serbian refugee from the town of Klina, now living in Belgrade, said individuals like those behind the initiative to form the Guard “have no right whatsoever” to represent Serbia’s interests.

Dazvijevic said Kosovo should stay a part of Serbia but believed actions like those of the Guard were detrimental to Serbia’s hopes of holding on to its southern province.

“It will serve as a good excuse to keep branding the Serbs as extremists and as reincarnations of Slobodan Milosevic,” he said.

Although the news about Tsar Lazar`s Guard was widely reported in Kosovo the group is not perceived as a threat. “This should not be taken seriously,” Baton Haxhiu, editor of the daily Express, told Balkan Insight.

Igor Milic is a Balkan Insight contributor in Northern Mitrovica. Zana Limani in Pristina also contributed to this article. Balkan Insight is BIRN’s online publication.