The Terror That Only Pupin Can See

By Ardit Rada — KFOR has around 4,600 troops in Kosovo, and its commander said on August 25 that it is increasing its presence in North Mitrovica and the north. The OSCE considers Kosovo its largest field operation: 384 staff, teams in all 38 municipalities and a mandate covering community rights, security monitoring and early warning. EULEX monitors alleged cases of police misconduct and says it does so through direct presence on the ground. The United States Embassy has spent a quarter-century building its own contacts in Graçanica and the north. Pupin identifies no warning from any of these structures that Kosovo Serbs are living in anything resembling the state described in its report.

Pupin cannot be dismissed as just another nationalist organization in Belgrade. It is precisely the kind of Serbian organization that Washington is inclined to listen to. Its American arm is a 501(c)(3) organization. Christopher Hill, a five-time U.S. ambassador and most recently ambassador to Serbia, is a senior adviser and needs no introduction to the Kosovo issue. A vice president of the BGR Group advises it. Its other documents argue in favor of the Three Seas Initiative and against Serbia’s membership in WAICO. This report will land on desks that Belgrade’s ordinary lobbying cannot reach.

The report never uses the word terror. It does something more effective: it builds the conditions of a terror. A frightened population. A police force perceived as a threat rather than protection. Collective guilt. Collapsed reporting. Institutions incapable of detecting abuses. Churches that may be at risk. And international missions that misread all of this. Then the report adds one more demand. Before the Specialist Chambers deliver their verdict on September 16, it asks that the already-begun transition on the bridge over the Ibar be frozen for a “high-risk period,” without setting an end date. The immeasurable state of affairs is meant to produce a measurable result.

The facts on which it rests are true. Thirty-seven people were detained in Gazimestan, fined 700 euros and some deported. The Police Inspectorate recommended the suspension of two officials in connection with the case of Nenad Rašković in Dren. The Judicial Council refused on August 27 to allow Serb judges to withdraw their 2022 resignations, which the German Embassy then asked Pristina to correct. None of these is terror. That is why the report places terror where it has not been verified.

Pupin’s argument is that the decline in incident reporting indicates rising fear, because Serbs no longer report to a police they do not trust. The report says this can be tested and even defines how: community surveys, non-reporting rates and case outcomes. But it conducts none of these tests. Its methodology lists three pieces of evidence, one of them anonymous. Pupin publishes the conclusion first. Then it asks the missions that could actually measure this situation to act on it. The Abbot of Dečani supplies the rest: every arrest and every check “can be explained separately,” but their “sum” makes life unpredictable. That sum is never calculated.

Section 9.1 then predicts attacks on Serbs and holy sites around September 16, on three bases: each of the two possible decisions could mobilize people, the bridge regime is changing and the media atmosphere is tense. There is no series of incidents, no threat reports, no comparisons with previous decisions and no warning from any mission on the ground linking these circumstances to violence. On this evidentiary basis, Pupin asks KFOR and diplomatic missions to halt the implementation of a security transition that has already been decided.

The vocabulary is familiar. “Protection from the police.” “Collective guilt attributed to Serbs.” A president speaking of “survival” in connection with a bridge. Vučić spoke of “horrific terror” against Kosovo Serbs in Rmanj on August 2. Here it is presented in the verification English, in a letter with a Washington letterhead.

Pupin says the missions are watching the wrong indicator: Serbs no longer report to the police. But the report itself lists the channels that work. The Ombudsperson opened the Gazimestan case after citizens’ complaints. The Inspectorate opened the Dren case on its own initiative. Five lawyers arrived through Belgrade’s Office for Kosovo. Serbian television broadcast footage of Rašković’s injuries within a day. A community with so many functional channels is simply avoiding one address. The missions have never hung their information on that address to know what is happening in Zubin Potok.

The missions therefore face a double alternative that the report will not state plainly, because they are precisely the people being asked to act. Either Kosovo is experiencing a human-rights crisis and the international presence has failed spectacularly to notice it — I am writing this from Tirana. Pupin operates from Belgrade and Washington. Kosovo is not one of its addresses. The difference is that I do not claim to see what those who are there cannot see — or that an imagined state of affairs is being used to secure a real outcome on the Ibar bridge.

I am writing this from Tirana. Pupin operates from Belgrade and Washington. Kosovo is not one of its addresses. The difference is that I do not claim to see what those who are there cannot see. Pupin does. It has constructed a state of terror that only it claims to be able to perceive and, two days before a court decision, has handed it to KFOR, EULEX, the OSCE and the diplomats who are actually on the ground. For them, this should be the most troubling claim in the entire report.