This province of the former Yugoslavia holds historical and symbolic value for both Albanian and Serbian nationalists. Throughout the 1970s and 1980s, the Serbs of Kosovo claimed they were being harassed by ethnic Albanians and more than 20,000 of them left Kosovo between 1980 and 1987. The Albanian explanation for this departure was economic hardship in the province. Serbs, along with other minorities (Turks and Roma) were indeed subject to harassment from extremist Albanian nationalists and the ethnic Albanian government remained ineffective to tackle such tension. Kosovo came under further dispute between Serbian authorities and its 90 percent ethnic Albanian majority, especially after Slobodan Milosevic of Serbia pressured the Kosovar parliament to abolish Kosovo’s autonomy in 1989. In 1991, the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia broke up. The Kosovo Liberation Army, funded by Albanian exiles began retaliating against the suppression and violence inflicted by the Serbian government and police in 1996. By 1998, the Serbian army waged outright war against the Kosovo Liberation Army. This resulted in more than 10,000 dead and over 1 million refugees and internally displaced people. In 1999, NATO began bombing Serbian military bases, which eventually pushed Milosevic to surrender and withdraw his forces from Kosovo. Kosovo is now under NATO protection.
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