From: "Dave Coull" <d.y.coull-AT-dundee.ac.uk>
Date: Mon, 5 Apr 1999 16:32:08 GMT
Subject: Kosovo : Historical Background


The London based "Observer" newspaper of Sunday 4th April
had a full page article by the historian Tim Judah, of Yale 
University, on the historical background to the Kosovo events.
Here are excerpts from it.

>Kosovo was the heartland of the Serbian medieval kingdoms
>and for this reason the holiest Serb shrines are there.
>However, over the centuries, Serbs have migrated northwards.
 
There have always remained  _some_  Serbs in Kosovo.
The basic reason for this northwards migration was rule
by the Ottoman Empire, based on Istanbul. The Ottoman
Empire was Islamic and tended to favour its Muslim
subjects over Orthodox Christians like the Serbs.
By the time Serbia regained its independence 
Muslims were in the majority in the province
of Kosovo, but as it was the Serbian heartland,
the Serbs were determined to hang on to it.
Then came the First World War :

>When, in 1915, the Serbian army retreated 
>across Kosovo, chased out by the advancing 
>Austro-Hungarians, Germans, and Bulgarians,
>Albanian guerrillas attacked them, picking
>off weak detachments.

Tim Judah continues

>Just before the Second World War, Rebecca West,
>the English writer, visited the town of Pec  -  from which
>the Serbs last week allegedly drove the bulk of the Albanian
>population. Chatting with an Albanian cab driver and his
>friend, she found that they "would thoroughly enjoy another
>war if only it would give them the chance of shooting
>a lot of Serbs".

The chance came with the Second World war when

>Yugoslavia was occupied by the Axis powers and most
>of Kosovo was incorporated into Greater Albania. 
>Serbian settlers who had been brought in to try 
>to redress the population balance were driven out
>and thousands were killed.

>Carlo Umilta, an Italian civil commissioner, wrote
>of what he saw : "The Albanians are out to exterminate
>the Slavs." In one region he found villages where
>"not a single house has a roof; everything has been
>burned. There were headless bodies of men and women
>strewn on the ground".

In 1944 the Communist partisans under the Croatian
Tito defeated the Nazis and their local allies. But in Kosovo 
so many of the Albanians sympathised with the Nazis
that rule by the Communist Party meant, in effect,
rule by Serbs. 

But Tito, the Croatian communist, didn't like communist
party rule being associated with Serbian supremacy.
So In the 1960s he started a policy of "Albanianisation". 
In 1974 Kosovo was given a measure of "home rule" 
with Albanian communists running the province. But

>Kosovo Serbs complained of discrimination
>and persecution at the hands of the Albanians
>who were now in charge of the province. Many
>left believing that there was no future for them
>in Kosovo

Then in 1988 a relatively obscure politician called
Slobodan Milosevic won popular support in Serbia
by pledging to keep Kosovo part of Serbia at all
costs. He became president, and other parts 
of Yugoslavia, reacting to his Serb nationalism
with nationalism of their own, started seceding.
The rest you probably know.


Dave