Days after that attack, Kosovo’s opposition froze the Security Fund, choosing courts over readiness, legality over deterrence, and paralysis at the moment of greatest risk.

I remember clearly when Albin Kurti’s government opened Kosovo’s Security Fund on March 1 2022¹. It was not a symbolic gesture. It was a sober response to a deteriorating regional order and to a neighbour that has never accepted Kosovo’s existence as a sovereign state. Serbia still keeps Kosovo inside its constitution. In September 2022 Belgrade formally aligned its foreign policy with Moscow² at the very moment Russia was waging a full scale war in Ukraine. The message was not subtle. Kosovo sits on the frontline of a Kremlin aligned strategy in the Balkans³.

The purpose of the Security Fund was explicit and honest. It allowed citizens at home and in the diaspora to contribute directly to strengthening Kosovo’s defence and security capacities. It was meant to supplement a chronically underfunded security sector and accelerate the transformation of the Kosovo Security Force into a credible deterrent. In plain language it was about arming Kosovo. Not for adventure. Not for provocation. But for survival.

Had this fund been fully accessible and politically protected it would have placed an extraordinary instrument in the hands of Kosovo’s government. It would have meant faster procurement. Better training. Greater resilience. It would have meant that a small state facing an openly hostile neighbour was no longer entirely dependent on slow international processes and donor fatigue. It would have meant a society investing directly in its own protection.

Serbia meanwhile never stopped signalling its intent. It has used parallel structures in northern Kosovo as instruments of pressure and control for more than two decades. Under Kurti these structures were finally dismantled piece by piece. Every step was met with outrage in Belgrade and coordinated political resistance inside Kosovo. The climax came on September 24 2023 in Banjska⁴.

What happened in Banjska was not an incident. It was a paramilitary operation. It was led by Milan Radoicic a senior figure embedded in Serbia’s power networks in the north. Armed men crossed into Kosovo. A Kosovo police officer Afrim Bunjaku was killed in the line of duty. The objective was clear to anyone willing to see it. Seize territory. Destabilise the north. Test how far Serbia could go. It was an attempted annexation by proxy.

Only 82 days later Kosovo’s leading opposition parties the Democratic League of Kosovo and the Democratic Party of Kosovo moved⁵ not to reinforce the state but to freeze it. They sent the Security Fund to the Constitutional Court. They blocked access⁶. They paralysed an instrument designed to protect the country at the precise moment when Serbia had just shown it was willing to kill to reclaim Kosovo by force.

I ask this without masks and without euphemism. What does it mean when parties that claim to represent Kosovo move to freeze a defence fund days after an armed attack? What does it mean when those parties have deep roots in wartime patronage networks and post war state capture? Who benefits when Kosovo is denied the means to arm itself?

The timing was not accidental. Kurti’s administration was dismantling Serbian structures in the north and refusing to trade sovereignty for quiet. Pressure mounted from outside and from within. LDK and PDK did not merely oppose policy. They intervened in the architecture of state security. They chose legal obstruction over national preparedness. They chose to weaken the government while Serbia regrouped.

For three consecutive years now this fund has remained effectively frozen. Three years in which Serbia has continued to militarise⁷. Three years in which Moscow’s influence in Belgrade has only deepened. Three years in which Kosovo has been told to show restraint while its enemy shows teeth.

From a security perspective the consequences are severe. Deterrence is not built on statements. It is built on capability. Every delayed procurement is a vulnerability. Every frozen mechanism is an invitation. Kosovo does not have the luxury of strategic ambiguity. It lives next to a state that denies its right to exist.

I write this as a Kosovan who refuses polite silence. When opposition parties act in ways that objectively serve the interests of an aggressive neighbour it must be said clearly. This was not principled constitutionalism. This was not technical oversight. This was political sabotage dressed in legal language.

If Kosovo is to survive it must confront not only the threats across its border but the paralysis within. A defence fund blocked after an attempted annexation is not neutrality. It is complicity.