The special force’s officers who have just ended their shift experienced a calm but cold night in the valley since they took over the night before. But heavy rain made their three-kilometre walk past a series of roadblocks set up by protesting Kosovo Serbs more difficult. As they approached the blockades, the protesters silently made way for them to pass.

The officers spent the night in their armoured vehicles or in an old container installed not more than a kilometre from the crossing point.

“Have a nice day,” one officer tells his colleague as they hand over.

Jarinje and another crossing point between Kosovo and Serbia, Bernjak, have been blocked for ten days now by Kosovo Serbs protesting against new regulations forcing them to change their Serbian vehicle registration plates to temporary Kosovo ones when entering the country, as Kosovo drivers have had to do for years when entering Serbia.

On the day the measure was imposed, September 20, local Serbs obstructed the roads with dozens of trucks. Around 70 trucks have been parked in the middle of the road in six different places near Jarinje, some 90 kilometres north of the capital Pristina.

Most of the trucks belong to publicly-owned enterprises in Kosovo’s Serb-dominated northern municipalities. A few of them have nothing to do with the protest, and were just unlucky to be there and get caught up by it when the roadblocks went up. Now their drivers are desperately waiting for it all to end so they can continue on their way.

The Kosovo authorities argue that the special police units are keeping the crossing point up and running for pedestrians and vehicles whose drivers are willing to use the temporary Kosovo licence plates.

But Serbia’s government sees the armed units as a provocation to ordinary people living in this Serb-dominated area which has often been a flashpoint for incidents over the past two decades.

Only few metres and dozens of trucks separate the armed police from the Serb protesters who are working in shifts too. At around 10 in the morning, people arrive to relieve those who have spent the night in three tents that the protesters have set up across the road. But others also come and go during the day.

The protesters have been supplied with wood for heating and to barbecue food while observing the situation. From a chimney in one of their tents, white smoke rises upwards as those people try to beat the cold.

They conquer the boredom of their routine by chatting to each other but suddenly fall silent when a stranger or a journalist passes by. None of the protesters agreed to talk to BIRN for this article.

The blocking of the crossing point means that bus passengers have to get out at the border and walk for several kilometres until they get to the last barricade.

In the stillness of the day, only the sound of the wheels of the passengers’ suitcases rolling along the asphalt breaks the silence.

Deadlock unbroken