Kosovo

Kosovo refers to the region in the central Balkans situated southwest of Serbia, north of Macedonia, and west of Albania. Kosovo declared independence from Serbia in 2008, where it was previously an autonomous province in the Serbian federation. It has been largely recognized internationally as an independent state, with Serbia and its ally Russia dissenting. Ethnically, Kosovo has traditionally been occupied by Albanians, Serbs, and Roma people, but in the past two centuries it has consisted of an overwhelming majority of Albanians.

The relationship between the Serbs and Albanians has been decidedly contentious over their respective histories. In 1999, Yugoslavian President Slobodan Milošević launched an assault to remove the threat of the Kosovo Liberation Army and to restore the Serbian “heartland” by cleansing the area of its non-Serbian residents. The Serbian police and military forces were resisted by the Kosovo Liberation Army, which equally sought to drive out Serbian citizens from the province's borders (especially the recent Serbian immigrants from the Krajina region of Croatia). Atrocities were extensive, numbering around 11,000 by U.S. State Department estimates (10,000 by Serbs, 1,000 by [Page 676]Albanians), with almost 4,000 persons missing by Red Cross estimates in the year 2000. NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization) sought to end the violence by launching a bombing campaign on Serbian targets from March 24 through June 11, 1999. The bombing, coupled with Milošević's resurrected indictment at The Hague, effectively ended the conflict. The region was subsequently administered by the United Nations and NATO until 2008, when Kosovo declared independence.

In Kosovo, ethnic and religious identities have been forged in the fires of competition for power and legitimacy. Albanians in Kosovo are almost entirely Sunnī Muslim, and Serbs are almost entirely Serbian Orthodox. Serbians revere Kosovo for specifically religious reasons. Kosovo was the area of the founding of the Serbian Orthodox Church; many of the most important monasteries and shrines in the Serbian Orthodoxy are in Kosovo. For Albanians, the significance of Kosovo is strictly as a traditional place of habitation. Albanians are one of the most ancient ethnic groups on the Balkan Peninsula, tracing their heritage to the ancient Illyrians. Serbs revere Kosovo not only for its religious importance but also as the birthplace of the Serbian state. Serbs trace a majority presence in this city from the 9th century until the 14th century. Considerable amounts of money have been spent, and a floodtide of publications issued, in an effort to prove the residential legitimacy of both groups, usually in service to the deep ethnic mythology surrounding Kosovo. There are several things, however, that are generally agreed on by more neutral scholars. First, the basic ethnic makeup of Serbs and Albanians has been in place since the seventh century CE, when the arrival of the Slavs from the north established the structure we see now. Second, after the battle of Kosovo in 1389, many Serbs abandoned the area of Kosovo for refuge beyond the grasp of the encroaching Ottoman power. Third, the Ottomans encouraged immigration to Kosovo by Albanian Muslims to supplant the indigenous population as a reward for adherence to Islam. And finally, the nationalist revival of the 19th century reignited concern over the ethnic makeup of Kosovo, which led in turn to many of the conflicts of the 20th and 21st centuries.

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