Serbia's Defense Ministry has proposed reintroducing compulsory military service to shore up its armed forces amid rising tensions in the region.
The General Staff of the Serbian Armed Forces said on January 4 that it was making the proposal of compulsory service for up to four months to President Aleksandar Vucic "after an in-depth analysis of the general security situation and contemporary challenges facing the Republic of Serbia."
The ministry has long eyed bringing back compulsory military service -- abolished on January 1, 2011 -- but previous proposals have been shelved for reasons such as its high cost.
Tensions have been on the rise yet again in the Balkans in recent months, fueled in part by Bosnian Serb separatist leader Milorad Dodik, who has threatened to rip the country apart and wreak new havoc on the Balkans if the international community further strengthens multiethnic institutions.
Since a 1995 peace deal known as the Dayton agreement ended intense ethnically fueled fighting in the former Yugoslavia, Bosnia-Herzegovina has been administered under a Bosniak-Croat federation and a mostly Serb-populated entity known as Republika Srpska.
Dodik has spent the past two years trying to erode central Bosnian authority and establishing parallel institutions to further his longtime threats to divide the country for good.
Many groups cling fiercely to ethnic divisions despite decades of international mediation to settle grievances among Bosnia, Serbia, Kosovo, and other former parts of Yugoslavia. Serbs are the most numerous of the ethno-national groups in the region.
British Foreign Secretary David Cameron emphasized the need for stability in the Balkans and pledged the U.K.'s support for broader recognition of Kosovo "as a full sovereign country" during a visit to Pristina on January 4.
Serbia has not recognized the independence of its former province, and violence has flared between ethnic Serbs and Kosovars several times.
Tens of thousands of ethnic Serbs who live in northern Kosovo do not recognize central Kosovar institutions, and they have often clashed with Kosovar police and international peacekeepers. In May, violence erupted when Kosovar authorities tried to install mayors in some Serb-majority towns.
More recently, four people -- a Kosovar police sergeant and three attackers -- were killed in an attack at a 14th-century Orthodox monastery in northern Kosovo in September when some 30 gunmen led by a Kosovar Serb politician stormed the monastery, sparking a gunbattle with Kosovar police.
Kosovo has accused Serbia of being behind the attack, an accusation that Belgrade has denied, but Belgrade has also ruled out the extradition to Kosovo of Milan Radoicic, the leader of the attack who fled to Serbia.
