Above: Students Protest

A huge delegate of cars and trucks from Belgrade and central Serbia entered Mitrovica from Serbia on Tuesday. Men were chanting “Kosovo is Serbia” and making the Serb three-finger salute. Kosovo Serb border police who are supposed to man the checkpoints welcome them with sympathy.

The attack on the border posts were just the beginning. Now they can freely enter Kosovo and do as they please – and spit in the face of the Western allies of Albanian Kosovo.

The United States, Germany, Italy, France, and Britain had already recognized Kosovo as an independent state following its declaration on Sunday. Bold Russia has backed the Serbs and denies recognition of the state.

Mitrovica, a city inside Kosovo, is now closed to outsiders. A bridge over the Ibar River that runs through the city is now a symbolic “wall” of divide.

“Unless NATO forces decide to cross the Ibar in force on behalf of the new Kosovo government, a de facto partition will result,” says an expert. This so-called partition has been in effect since the very beginning. Only now do they have an official struggle for the land; after the declaration of Kosovo as an independent state and its claiming ownership of Mitrovica in the process.

Above : a photo of KFOR setting up fences around Kosovo

“We are urging calm and to not overreact,” said a European Union official. “We don’t need to fan the flames. But we are being challenged by the difference between what we hope to see (in the city of Mitrovica) and what we are seeing.”

Now more than ever do the Kosovans need Western support. Mitrovica is a stronghold of Serb paramilitary and patriots; they will not allow the city to exist as a Kosovan territory.

“The reality is that the north is lost to Kosovo, just as Kosovo is lost to Serbia,” says former US diplomat James Hooper, a representative of the International Law and Public Policy Group. “US and European peace facilitators have treated northern Mitrovica and the area north of the Ibar River as a de facto part of Serbia since the NATO war ended in 1999, all the while piously proclaiming the need to maintain Kosovo’s territorial integrity.”

The area around Mitrovica has always been controlled by the Serbs who run their own police and administration. The Albanians of Kosovo wants this territory for its mineral deposits. The Western allies believe taking it back is a lost cause from the beginning.

Reports say Serb groups are planning to elect a parliament to make the takeover official.