The Day U.S. Policy Collided With U.S. Practice in Kosovo
Anu Prattipati did not meet “local leaders”. She legitimised Serbian List, a Belgrade-controlled apparatus, while erasing Kosovo’s sovereignty and defying U.S. law enacted by Congress.
What unfolded in northern Kosovo this week was not a routine courtesy call. It was a tableau of calculated ambiguity staged by a foreign mission that knows exactly how symbols work in a country whose sovereignty has been fought for, bled for, and buried for. When Anu Prattipati, serving as Washington’s chargé d’affaires in Prishtina, chose to meet the newly installed mayors of north Mitrovica, Zveçan, Zubin Potok and Leposaviç drawn from Serbian List, she did so beneath a blank wall1. No flag of the Republic of Kosovo. No emblem of the United States. Just power stripped of accountability and dressed as neutrality.
In the Balkans, absence is never neutral. It is a language. And this silence spoke fluently in the dialect of Belgrade’s long project to hollow out Kosovo from within.
Serbian List is not an ordinary minority party. It is an extension cord plugged directly into Belgrade’s power socket. Its leadership has never accepted Kosovo’s independence, never concealed its loyalty to Aleks…
