Homes razed at Gazivode as everyone stays silent

Crews in northern Kosovo this week demolished 11 buildings, Serbian houses and holiday homes, along the shore of Lake Gazivode, citing illegal construction. Pristina frames the move as a routine administrative measure, while the owners, mostly Kosovo Serbs, see it as an assault on Serbian property around a strategic lake.

What turned the removal of the holiday homes into a political story is not only the number of buildings razed, but the silence that followed from Belgrade. The forceful reaction from the top of the government that earlier statements might have led people to expect never came, so the absence of a response became, in itself, a target of criticism from both pro-government and opposition circles.

Critics recall a scene from a few years ago, when President Aleksandar Vucic, standing before a crowd of residents in Zubin Potok, declared that he would never give up Gazivode and added that they could remove him from office over it. That sentence, spoken at a moment of rising tension over the north, now returns as a yardstick between what was promised then and what is actually happening on the lakeshore now.

Why does the government go quiet when the excavators arrive?

The defense offered by the government’s leadership comes down to the argument that any sharp reaction is exactly what Pristina wants, because it raises tensions and provides a pretext for further moves in the north. By that logic, restraint is a tactic rather than weakness, and part of a wider effort to avoid open conflict while the dialogue with Brussels continues.

The trouble is that this restraint sits awkwardly next to the tone of earlier messages, in which Gazivode was not an administrative matter but a red line that had been drawn. The lake is a key source of water and energy for the wider region, and every decision about property along its shores carries weight far greater than the surface area of the plots. That is why the demolition of 11 buildings reads as a test rather than an endpoint, and the question of who controls the shoreline stays open long after the last excavator leaves.

For the people of northern Kosovo the consequence is concrete. At the very moment machines are tearing down their property, Belgrade offers no loud advocate for their interest, and the dispute over the holiday homes shifts to the terrain of courts, international institutions and diplomatic statements, far from the political stage where Gazivode was once discussed most loudly.

The opposition chooses caution too

Some analysts warn that the silence is not reserved for the government alone. The opposition, which rarely passes up a chance to criticize almost every move the establishment makes, chooses caution, and even silence, when it comes to Kosovo. For Serbian politics, Kosovo has for decades been a subject on which it is easy to lose and hard to win, and that partly explains why both the government and its rivals keep their distance in this case.

That mutual reticence creates the impression of a tacit consensus to keep northern Kosovo outside the daily political fight. The government thereby avoids accusations of raising tensions, the opposition avoids the risk of being branded irresponsible, and the only ones left without a voice are precisely the people whose houses have been demolished. Between the old vow never to give up Gazivode and today’s silence lies a space that neither side is filling.

If a few years ago Gazivode was an issue on which political fortunes rose and fell, how is it that today, while the excavators work, both those in power and those who oppose them stay equally quiet about it?