Kosovo is a state in the center of the Balkan Peninsula. It is landlocked, bordered by Macedonia on the southeast, Albania on the southwest, Montenegro on the west and Serbia on the north and northeast. It is home to over 2 million inhabitants, the vast majority of whom are ethnic Albanians. It has for hundreds of years formed a constitutive part of neighboring Serbia, namely in the Yugoslav era, where it was an autonomous province of said republic.The Battle of Kosovo was waged on 15 June 1389 between the Kingdom of Serbia and the Ottoman Empire. The Serbs were completely defeated, and in Serbian culture the defeat they suffered on Kosovo Field has been a defining moment their history and their attitude regarding Kosovo. In the centuries that followed, this once-ethnically Serbian province saw increasing influence from the Islamic world, and Albanians, a predominantly Muslim people, came to be the primary inhabitants of the province. An Albanian culture was fostered, and by the end of WWII ethnic Albanians already comprised nearly 70% of Kosovo's population.
In Yugoslavia, eight primary nationalities (Slovenes, Croats, Bosniaks, Serbs, Montenegrins, Macedonians, Albanians [in Kosovo], and Hungarians [in Vojvodina in Serbia's north]) were held together by the Communist apparatus. This apparatus was heavily dominated by the Serbs, who constituted a plurality of Yugoslavia's population (around 35% in the early 1980's). As a Communist state, it officially declared that all nationalities are equal and subject to equal treatment, placement and rights. Naturally, however, the majority Serbs ended up creating a state where "everyone was equal, yes, but Serbs were a bit more equal." For example, Slovenia and Croatia, who made up only 25% of Yugoslavia's population but generated nearly 60% of its economy, saw their wealth get steered to developing Serbia, which was half as prosperous as Slovenia or Croatia and far below the Yugoslav average. A similar state of affairs was in the Yugoslav National Army (Jugoslavenska Narodna Armija, JNA), where the majority of soldiers and nearly all officers were Serbs. The inequality was brazen and unscrupulous, and as Communism disintegrated across the European continent, Yugoslavia destabilized.
Having been in total domination since the end of WWII, the Serbs were not about to risk losing their authority. With the fall of the Berlin Wall and of the Communist ideology in Europe at the end of the 1980's, ethnic sentiments surged in Yugoslavia. Albanians in Kosovo marched in non-violent protests against the injustices dealt them by the Serb-dominated government. Slobodan Milosevic responded by neutralizing Kosovo's more autonomous status within Serbia, putting it under even more repressive control. When Slovenia and Croatia seceded from the Yugoslav federation in the summer of 1991, followed shortly thereafter by Macedonia and Bosnia-Herzegovina, Yugoslavia as it was once known ceased to exist. The Serbs used their heavily Serbian JNA to attempt to thwart the independence of these nations and their peoples by imposing an outrageously nationalist vision of a "Greater Serbia", ethnically cleansed of non-Serbs, across much of the Western Balkans, at a time when the newly-independent nations' abilities to defend themselves were at an embryonic state. Slovenia and Croatia were invaded in 1991, followed by Bosnia-Herzegovina in 1992. (Macedonia was coincidentally spared due to the deployment of NATO "tripwire" soldiers.) Despite their catastrophic initial advantage in manpower, equipment, and preparedness, the Serbs provoked and fought three wars over the course of four years against unarmed countries and lost them all resoundingly. With the signing of the Dayton Accords in 1995, the messiest conflict, the one in Bosnia-Herzegovina, ended the bloodshed in the Balkans. The mountain of weaponry and nationalism that the Serbs found themselves on ironically caused Serbia to become the smallest it had ever been since the First World War.
Meanwhile, Kosovo had also proclaimed its independence in the early 1990's, but never achieved international recognition. At the same time, a thoroughly battered and humiliated Serbia had awakened to the reality that it is utterly incapable of asserting itself beyond its borders. Milosevic was not about to see a part of Serbia itself also become lost forever. The Serbian government from Belgrade imposed strict, Serb-dominated controls in Kosovo following the abolition of its status as an autonomous province. Kosovo Albanians responded by raising parallel institutions, governed in Kosovo by Kosovars, to ensure some degree of autochthonous rule. Dissatisfied with the Serbian state of affairs in Kosovo, Milosevic once again turned to brutal ethnic cleansing in 1998, displacing hundreds of thousands of ethnic Albanians into neighboring republics and slaughtering thousands of civilians as they once again terrorized an unprepared, army-less state.
The United States and its NATO allies, recalling the recent horrors that took place in the Balkans thanks to destructive Serbian nationalism, gave Milosevic an ultimatum, demanding that Belgrade pull out all its forces from Kosovo or risk getting bombed ruthlessly. Milosevic thought the West was bluffing, even once telling the American ambassador to the UN Richard Holbrooke "Are you suggesting that the US is really crazy enough to bomb Serbia over some little Kosovo?" Holbrooke's responce? "You bet we're crazy enough to do it." And they did; NATO went to war against Serbia, bombing the country incessantly for 78 days. Milosevic and the Serbs surrendered for the 4th time in a decade, and Kosovo became a UN-administered zone soon after.
These are the events that transpired prior to Kosovo's proclamation of independence in Febraury 2008. This backstory may seem lengthy but it is essential in understanding the justification of Kosovo's independence. In the next post I will address precisely the reasons why Kosovo deserves full international recognition.
