Tony Karon reviews the causes of the recent outbreak of violence in northern Kosovo, and considers the official reactions:

The battle for the border posts occurred amid a politically inspired trade dispute between Kosovo and Serbia. Kosovar police tried on Monday to take over the crossings, which have been run since 2008 by an EU mission, in order to enforce a ban on imports from Serbia. That measure had been enacted last week in retaliation for Serbia’s refusal to accept imports from Kosovo on the grounds that it can’t accept customs paperwork from the “Republic of Kosovo”, an entity it doesn’t recognize. While the Kosovar authorities say they’re exercising a sovereign right to control the territory’s border crossings, the local Serb community vows to stop what they see as an effort to cut their links to Serbia. And U.S. and European officials condemned the Kosovar side for a provocative action undertaken without consultation, but called on all sides to restore calm and negotiate a compromise.

While the Serbs and the rest of NATO’s rivals never really accepted the breakaway of Kosovo from Serbia, the Kosovar Albanians chafed at the persistence of a Serb enclave denying Kosovo’s independence within what it claimed as sovereign borders. But NATO’s dominance has enabled it, until now, to enforce its writ on both sides. Serbia’s moderate President Boris Tadic, who knows his goal of joining the EU depends on solving the Kosovo issue, condemned the violence, making clear that Serbia has no appetite for war — but he also warned that any encouragement of Kosovar authorities to take control of the Serb enclave put peace at risk. Kosovo President Hashem Thaci seemed more inclined to talk tough, warning that the Serb enclave would never be allowed to return to Belgrade’s control.

It is more than a little comical that the thuggish government in Pristina insists on their sovereign rights in this part of Kosovo. Their hold on power and the recognition of their state’s independence both depended entirely on disregarding the sovereignty of Serbia and benefiting from an illegal partition. As Belgrade sees it, the Kosovo government does not have sovereign rights there or anywhere else. That said, the Serb minority will gain nothing by acts violence, and more attacks of this kind are simply going to give Thaci the excuse to engage in a brutal crackdown or perhaps even a campaign of expulsion.

P.S. American and French troops are now in the control of the border crossings.