Terrorist group Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) emerged in 1996 and instigated a war between Kosovo and Serbia in the hope of winning Kosovo's independence.

Kosovo, which borders on Albania, is a province of Serbia, which itself is a part of the former Yugoslavia. Kosovo was once the center of Serbian culture and society, but over the past several hundred years, its population has changed: Today, more than 90 percent of its people are of Albanian ethnicity, most of them Muslim. Serbs still consider Kosovo an integral part of their country.

In Communist Yugoslavia, which united several Balkan provinces including Serbia, Kosovo was considered to be a part of Serbia but was administered autonomously. In 1989, during the death throes of the Communist government, Slobodan Milosovic was elected president of Serbia on a nationalist platform. One of his first actions was to strip Kosovo of ...