PRISTINA: Kosovo on Friday passed laws to build an army, asserting its statehood in a US-backed move that has angered Serbia, which does not recognise the former province’s independence.

Kosovo has been guarded by Nato-led peacekeeping troops since it broke away from Belgrade in a bloody separatist war in 1998-99.

Now, new legislation will transform a small crisis-response outfit, the Kosovo Security Force (KSF), into an defence army with 5,000 troops.

“This vote today begins a new era for our country,” parliamentary speaker Kadri Veseli announced as MPs embraced each other after the session, boycotted by minority Serb politicians.

The vote has delighted many Kosovo Albanians, with several hundred gathering in Pristina’s main street to celebrate the army as a new pillar of their independence, declared in 2008.

“This is an enormous emotion, we are happy that the creation of our country is being completed,” Vlora Rexhepi, a 23-year-old student, said as a group of musicians dressed in traditional costumes played for the crowd.

Kosovo’s President Hashim Thaci hailed it as “the best gift for the end of the year season.

“We are finally closing down the state-building process,” he wrote on Facebook. While it will take years for the troops to be fully trained, Serbia has cast the move as a dire threat to regional stability.

Nato and the European Union have also criticised the move as hasty. But Kosovo felt free to move ahead with strong backing from the US, its most important ally.

Responding in Belgrade, Serbia’s Prime Minister Ana Brnabic said it was “a hard day”, but that her country would “stay on its path of peace and prosperity”.

In particular, Belgrade has been sounding the alarm over the safety of 120,000 Serbs still living in enclaves across Albanian-majority Kosovo, mainly in the north near their contested border.

Those Serb communities are loyal to Belgrade and also broadly against the army plan.

Several hundred students protested on Friday in the Serb-half of the city of Mitrovica, which was decorated with Serbian flags in response to the American stars-and-stripes draped across much of the rest of Kosovo in a sign of gratitude for Washington’s support.

Goran Rakic, a Serb political leader in the flashpoint city, called Pristina’s decision “a gunshot into peace”. But he urged local Serbs to “exercise restraint”.

Nato, who had warned the move was “ill-timed”, said the alliance would now “re-examine” its relationship with the KSF, which it has helped train.

The alliance nevertheless remains committed to securing Kosovo’s safety through KFOR, the peacekeeping force is has led since the war with Serbia, said Nato chief Jens Stoltenberg.

Published in Dawn, December 15th, 2018