History of Kosovo

The present borders of Kosovo were arranged in 1945 after the annexation of communes Preševo and Bujanovac. They were previously ajoined to Kosovo. The Leposavic and Zubin Potok communes were placed within Kosovo's borders in exchange. Before then, the Kosovo territory had various rulers. These had included Italy, Serbia, Montenegro, the Ottoman Empire, the Byzantine Empire, Bulgaria and the Roman Empire. Many historians have even suggested that Kosovo was a single distinctive region since ancient times formerly known as Dardania in Roman historic records. Kosovo's population has been ethnically diverse over the years, with the province's complex ethnic map including Ladins, Turks, Roma, Bosniaks, Gorans, Jews, Janjevs, Serbs, and Albanians.

Kosovo from prehistory to 1455
Little is known about Kosovo before about the 11th century AD. The region was certainly inhabited in prehistoric times, it appears, by two different cultures: Bronze and Iron Age tombs have been found only in Metohia, and not in Kosovo.[1] After the Indo-European invasion, Kosovo became inhabited by Illyrian and Thracian tribes, such as the Dardani and the Triballi. Later, the whole territory of Kosovo became part of the Roman Empire, although it is not clear whether it was part of the province of Moesia or was divided between Dalmatia and Moesia (a view which is supported by some archaeological evidence).[1]

Slavic peoples
According to most historians, Slavic peoples entered the Balkans around the late 6th or early 7th century AD, possibly migrating from the northern Caucasus where Ptolemy placed the "Serboi" in the 2nd century. After 850 Kosovo was part of the Bulgarian Empire until the 13-th century when the territory was taken by the Serbs. The initial spread of the Slavic population of the Balkans was much larger than today, reaching well into Greece and Albania. Placenames derived from Slavic root words are still widespread in the remaining non-Slav Balkan countries and particularly northern Albania - or "Kamenica" - to this day. Even so, names of Albanian origin are also present throughout Dalmatia, Serbia and Greece.

Albanian peoples
The origins of the Albanians are sometimes contested. Some historians claim that they are descended from the Illyrians, ancient inhabitants of the western Balkans in Roman times, although some Romanian historians have suggested that they may alternatively be descended from the ancient Thracians, who inhabited the eastern and central Balkans. Albanian historians, however, claim that in around the 6th century the Illyrians were forced south into what is now Albania by the Slavs.

Ruling states

Classical Balkans
The Kosovo region has been taken, retaken, and ruled by several empires. It lay both on the outer fringes of the Byzantine Empire and directly in the path of Slavic expansion. From about the 850s until about 1014, it was ruled by Bulgaria. Byzantine control was subsequently reasserted by the forceful emperor Basil II. Serbia at this time was not a united empire: a number of small Serbian kingdoms lay to the north and west of Kosovo, of which Raška (central modern Serbia) and Duklja (Montenegro and northern Albania) were the strongest. In the 1180s, the Serbian ruler Stefan Nemanja seized control of Duklja and parts of Kosovo. His successor, Stefan Prvovenčani took control of the rest of Kosovo by 1216, creating a state incorporating most of the area which is now Serbia and Montenegro.

Map: "Kosovo: History of a Balkan Hot Spot", 1998
During the rule of the Nemanjić dynasty, many Serbian Orthodox churches and monasteries were built throughout Serbian territory. The Nemanjić rulers alternatively used both Prizren and Priština as their capitals. Large estates were given to the monasteries in Dukagjin (Western Kosovo) (which included parts of Albania and Montenegro). The most prominent churches in Kosovo - the Patriarchate at Pec, the church at Gračanica and the monastery at Visoki Dečani near Dečani - were all adopted during this period. Kosovo was economically important, as the modern Kosovo capital Priština was a major trading centre on routes leading to ports on the Adriatic Sea. As well, mining was an important industry in Novo Brdo and Janjevo which had its communities of émigré Saxon miners and Ragusan merchants.
The ethnic composition of Kosovo's population during this period is a controversial issue among Serbian and Albanian historians. Serbs, Albanians, and Vlachs were all clearly present, as all three groups were named explicitly in Serbian monastic charters or chrysobulls along with a token number of Greeks, Armenians, Saxons, and Bulgarians. A majority of the names given in the charters are overwhelmingly Slavic rather than Albanian. This has been interpreted as evidence of an overwhelming Serbian majority. However, the chrysobulls show Serbian named sons to Albanian-named fathers and vice-versa. Albanian historians have suggested that this is evidence of cultural assimilation of an alleged pre-Ottoman Albanian population in Kosovo yet this is undermined by records of Serbian-named fathers giving sons Albanian names (which would surely not have happened if the assimilation was a one-way process) and the fact that such cases of mixed names represent a small fraction of less than a twentieth of all the names. This Serbian claim seems to be supported by the Turkish cadastral tax-census (defter) of 1455 which took into account religion and language and found an overwhelming Serb majority.
Ethnic identity in the Middle Ages was somewhat fluid throughout Europe and people at that time do not appear to have defined themselves rigidly by ethnic group. Those of Serbian ethnicity appear to have been the dominant population culturally, and were probably a demographic majority as well.
In 1355, the Serbian state fell apart on the death of Tsar Stefan Dušan and dissolved into squabbling fiefdoms. The timing fell perfectly within the Ottoman expansion. The Ottoman Empire took the opportunity to exploit Serbian weakness and invaded.

Battles of Kosovo

First Battle of Kosovo
The First Battle of Kosovo occurred on the field of Kosovo Polje on June 28, 1389, when the puling knez (prince) of Serbia, Lazar Hrebeljanović, marshalled a coalition of Christian soldiers, made up of Serbs, but also of Bosnians, Magyars, Albanians, and a troop of Saxon mercenaries. Sultan Murad I also gathered a coalition of soldiers and volunteers from neighboring countries in Anatolia and Rumelia. Exact numbers are difficult to come by, but most reliable historical accounts suggest that the Christian army was heavily outnumbered by the Ottomans. The combined numbers of the two armies are believed to be less than 100,000. The Serbian-led armies were defeated and Lazar was slain, although Murad I was killed by the Miloš Obilić, whose origin is disputed. Although the battle has been mythologised as a great Serbian defeat, at the time opinion was divided as to whether it was a Serbian defeat, a stalemate or possibly even a Serbian victory. Serbia maintained its independence and sporadic control of Kosovo until a final defeat in 1455, following which Serbia and Kosovo became part of the Ottoman Empire and a Turkish ally.

Second Battle of Kosovo
The Second Battle of Kosovo was fought over the course of a two-day period in October 1448, between a Hungarian force lead by John Hunyadi and an Ottoman army lead by Murad II. Significantly larger than the first battle, with both armies numbering twice that of the first battle, the ending was the same, and the Hungarian army was defeated in the battle and pushed from the field. Contray to popular myth, the Albanian hero Skanderbeg did not take part in the battle. When his Albanian troops moved to join the Hungarian army, they were delayed by the ambush of Đurađ Branković and never reached the battlefield. Although the loss of the battle was a setback for those resisting the Ottoman invasion of Europe at that time, it was not a 'crushing blow to the cause'. Hunyadi was able to maintain Hungarian resistance to the Ottomans during his lifetime.

Significance
Both of these battles were significant in the overall resistance against the Ottoman advance through the Balkans. Had the Serbian and Hungarian-led coalition armies been victorious in either or both of the battles, it could have changed the course that Kosovo eventually took under the rule of the Ottoman Empire. The First Battle of Kosovo sealed the fate of the Serbian resistance, and became a national symbol for heroism and the admirable 'fight against all odds'.
Although he lost the Second Battle of Kosovo, eventually Hunyadi was victorious in his resistance and defeat of the Ottomans in the Kingdom of Hungary. Skanderbeg was also successful in his resistance in his home country of Albania (which then included large portions of Kosovo), a cause that was lost following his death in 1468. Both of these leaders were significant (as was Wallachian leader Vlad III Dracula) in that their resistance gave Austria and Italy greater time to prepare for the Ottoman advance.

Kosovo from 1455 to 1912

Vilayet of Kosovo, 1875-1878

Vilayet of Kosovo, 1881-1912
The territory of today's province was for centuries ruled by the Ottoman Empire. During this period several administrative districts (known as sanjaks ("banners" or districts) each ruled by a sanjakbey (roughly equivalent to "district lord")) have included parts of the territory as parts of their territories. Despite the imposition of Muslim rule, large numbers of Christians continued to live and sometimes even prosper under the Ottomans. A process of Islamisation began shortly after the beginning of Ottoman rule but it took a considerable amount of time - at least a century - and was concentrated at first on the towns. It appears that many Christian Albanian inhabitants converted directly to Islam, rather than being replaced by Muslims from outside Kosovo. A large part of the reason for the conversion was probably economic and social, as Muslims had considerably more rights and privileges than Christian subjects. Christian religious life nonetheless continued, with churches were largely left alone by the Ottomans, but both the Serbian Orthodox and Roman Catholic churches and their congregations suffered from high levels of taxation.
Around the 17th century, there is evidence of an increasingly visible Albanian population initially concentrated in Metohia. It has been claimed this was the result of migrations out of the south-west (i.e. modern Albania), and that the putative migrants brought Islam with them. There is certainly evidence of migration: many Kosovo Albanians have surnames characteristic of inhabitants of the northern Albanian region of Malësi. However, many others do not. It is also clear a small number of Slavs - presumably members of the Serbian Orthodox Church - converted to Islam under Ottoman rule. Today, most Slavic Muslims of Serbia live in the Sandžak region of southern Serbia, northwest of Kosovo. Historians believe that there was probably a pre-existing population of probably Catholic Albanians in Metohia who mostly converted to Islam, but remained strictly a minority in a still largely Serb-inhabited region.
In 1689 Kosovo was greatly disrupted by the Great Turkish War (1683-1699), in one of the pivotal events in Serbian national mythology. In October 1689, a small Habsburg force under Margrave Ludwig of Baden breached the Ottoman Empire and reached as far as Kosovo, following their earlier capture of Belgrade. Many Serbs and Albanians pledged their loyalty to the Austrians, some joining Ludwig's army. This was by no means a universal reaction; many other Serbs and Albanians fought alongside the Ottomans to resist the Austrian advance. A massive Ottoman counter-attack the following summer drove the Austrians back to their fortress at Niš, then back to Belgrade, then finally back across the Danube into Austria.
The Ottoman offensive was accompanied by savage reprisals and looting, prompting many Serbs - including Arsenije III, Patriarch of the Serbian Orthodox Church - to flee along with the Austrians. This event has been immortalised in Serbian history as the Velika Seoba or "Great Migration". It is traditionally said to have accounted for a huge exodus of hundreds of thousands of Serbian refugees from Kosovo and Serbia proper, which left a vacuum filled by a flood of Albanian immigrants. Arsenije himself wrote of a figure of "30,000 souls" (i.e. individuals) who fled with him to Austria, a figure confirmed by other sources.
In 1878, one of the four vilayets with Albanian inhabitants that formed the League of Prizren was Vilayet of Kosovo. The League's purpose was to resist both Ottoman rule and incursions by the newly-emerging Balkan nations.
In 1910, an Albanian insurrection, which was possibly aided surreptitiously by the Young Turks to put pressure on the Sublime Porte, broke out in Priština and soon spread to the entire vilayet of Kosovo, lasting for three months. The Ottoman sultan visited Kosovo in June 1911 during peace settlement talks covering all Albanian-inhabited areas.

20th century
Following the First Balkan War of 1912, Kosovo was internationally recognised as a part of Serbia and Metohia as a part of Montenegro at the Treaty of London in May 1913. In 1918, Serbia became a part of the newly-formed Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes. Between the two World Wars the Yugoslav government tried to evacuate the Albanian population from Kosovo and Macedonia by sending them to Turkey and Albania and then recolonizing it with Serbs. On March 7, 1937 a memorandum was presented to the government by Vaso Čubrilović from the Serbian Academy named Expulsion of the Albanians.
The partition of Yugoslavia by the Axis Powers from 1941 and 1945 awarded most of the territory to the Italian-occupied Greater Albania, and a smaller part of it to German-occupied Serbia and Greater Bulgaria. During the occupation, thousands of Kosovo Serbs were expelled by armed Albanian groups, notably the Vulnetari militia. It is still not known exactly how many fell victim to this, but Serbian estimates put the figures at 10,000-40,000 killed with 70,000-100,000 expelled.

Kosovo durin World War I (1914/15)
Following the end of the war and the establishment of Tito's Communist regime, Kosovo was granted the status of an autonomous region of Serbia in 1946 and became an autonomous province in 1963. The Communist government did not permit the return of many of the refugees.
With the passing of the 1974 Yugoslavia constitution, Kosovo gained virtual self-government. The province's government has applied Albanian curriculum to Kosovo's schools: surplus and obsolete textbooks from Enver Hoxha's Albania were obtained and put into use.
Throughout the 1980s tensions between the Albanian and Serb communities in the province escalated.[2][3] The Albanian community favoured greater autonomy for Kosovo, whilst Serbs favoured closer ties with the rest of Serbia. There was little appetite for unification with Albania itself, which was ruled by a Stalinist government and had considerably worse living standards than Kosovo. Beginning in March 1981, Kosovar Albanian students organized protests seeking that Kosovo become a republic within Yugoslavia. Those protests rapidly escalated into violent riots "involving 20,000 people in six cities"[4] that were harshly contained by the Yugoslav government.
Serbs living in Kosovo were discriminated by the provincial government, notably by the local law enforcement authorities failing to punish reported crimes against Serbs.[5] The increasingly bitter atmosphere in Kosovo meant that even the most farcical incidents could become causes célèbres. When a Serbian farmer, Đorđe Martinović, turned up at a Kosovo hospital with a bottle in his rectum and a story about being assaulted in his field by "masked men", 216 prominent Serbian intellectuals signed a petition declaring that "the case of Đorđe Martinović has come to symbolize the predicament of all Serbs in Kosovo." Martinović's subsequent confession that his "assault" had been a botched act of self-gratification did nothing to defuse the ethnic tension that his case had produced.[citation needed]
Perhaps the most politically explosive complaint levelled by the Kosovo Serbs was that they were being neglected by the Communist authorities in Belgrade.[6] In August 1987, during the dying days of Yugoslavia's Communist regime, Kosovo was visited by Slobodan Milošević, then a rising politician. He appealed to Serb nationalism to further his career. Having drawn huge crowds to a rally commemorating the Battle of Kosovo, he pledged to Kosovo Serbs that "No one should dare to beat you", and became an instant hero of Kosovo's Serbs. By the end of the year Milošević was in control of the Serbian government.
In 1989, the autonomy of Kosovo and the northern province of Vojvodina was drastically reduced by a Serbia-wide referendum. The referendum implemented a new constitution which allowed a multi-party system, introduced freedom of speech and promoted human rights. Even though in practice it was subverted by Milošević's government, which resorted to rigging elections, controlled much of the news media, and was accused of abusing human rights of its opponents and national minorities, this was a step forward from the previous Communist constitution. It significantly reduced the provinces' rights, permitting the government of Serbia to exert direct control over many previously autonomous areas of governance. In particular, the constitutional changes handed control of the police, the court system, the economy, the education system and language policies to the Serbian government.
The new constitution was strongly opposed by many of Serbia's national minorities, who saw it as a means of imposing ethnically-based centralised rule on the provinces. Kosovo's Albanians refused to participate in the referendum, portraying it as illegitimate: as it was a Serbia-wide referendum and Albanians are a minority in Serbia as a whole, their participation would not have changed the outcome of the referendum whichever way they voted.
The provincial governments also opposed the new constitution. It had to be ratified by their assemblies, which effectively meant voting for their dissolution. Kosovo's assembly initially opposed the constitution but in March 1989, when the assembly met to discuss the proposals, tanks and armored cars surrounded the meeting place, forcing the delegates to accept the amendments.

The 1990s
After the constitutional changes, the parliaments of all Yugoslavian republics and provinces, which until then had MPs only from the Communist Party of Yugoslavia, were dissolved and multi-party elections were held for them. Kosovo Albanians refused to participate in the elections and held their own, unsanctioned elections instead. As election laws required (and still require) turnout higher than 50%, the parliament of Kosovo could not be established.
The new constitution abolished the individual provinces' official media, integrating them within the official media of Serbia while still retaining some programs in the Albanian language. The Albanian-language media in Kosovo was suppressed. Funding was withdrawn from state-owned media, including that in the Albanian language in Kosovo. The constitution made creating privately owned media possible, however their functioning was very difficult because of high rents and restricting laws. State-owned Albanian language television or radio was also banned from broadcasting from Kosovo [1]. However, privately owned Albanian media outlets appeared; of these, probably the most famous is "Koha Ditore", which was allowed to operate until late 1998 when it was closed after it published a calendar which was claimed to be a glorification of ethnic Albanian separatists.
The constitution also transferred control over state-owned companies to the Serbian government (at the time, most of the companies were state-owned and de jure they still are). In September 1990, up to 123,000 Albanian workers were fired from their positions in government and the media, as were teachers, doctors, and workers in government-controlled industries [2], provoking a general strike and mass unrest. Some of those who were not sacked quit in sympathy, refusing to work for the Serbian government. Although the government claimed that it was simply getting rid of old communist directors, the sackings were widely seen as a purge of ethnic Albanians.
The old Albanian educational curriculum and textbooks were revoked and new ones were created. The curriculum was (and still is, as that is the curriculum used for Albanians in Serbia outside Kosovo) basically the same as Serbian and that of all other nationalities in Serbia except that it had education on and in Albanian language. The new textbooks were (and still are) basically the same as those in Serbian, except that they were in the Albanian language. Education in Albanian was withdrawn in 1992 and re-established in 1994. [3] At the Priština University, which was seen as a centre of Kosovo Albanian cultural identity, education in the Albanian language was abolished and Albanian teachers were also sacked en masse. Albanians responded by boycotting state schools and setting up an unofficial parallel system of Albanian-language education.
Kosovo Albanians were outraged by what they saw as an attack on their rights. Following mass rioting and unrest from Albanians as well as outbreaks of inter-communal violence, in February 1990, a state of emergency was declared, and the presence of the Yugoslav Army and police was significantly increased to quell the unrest.
Unsanctioned elections were held in 1992, which overwhelmingly elected Ibrahim Rugova as "president" of a self-declared Republic of Kosovo; however these elections were not recognised by Serbian nor any foreign government. In 1995, thousands of Serb refugees from Croatia settled in Kosovo, which further worsened relations between the two communities.
Albanian opposition to sovereignty of Yugoslavia and especially Serbia had surfaced in rioting (1968 and March 1981) in the capital Priština. Ibrahim Rugova advocated non-violent resistance, but later when it became apparent that this was not working, opposition took the form of separatist agitation by opposition political groups and armed action from 1996 by the "Kosovo Liberation Army" (Ushtria Çlirimtare e Kosovës, or UÇK).

The KLA launched a low-intensity guerrilla war characterised by regular bomb and gun attacks on Serbian security forces, state officials and civilians accused of "collaborating" with the Serbian government. In March 1998 Yugoslav army units joined Serbian police to fight the separatists, using military force on a large scale. In the months that followed, hundreds of Albanian civilians were killed and more than 500,000 fled their homes; most of these people were Albanians. Many Albanian families were forced to flee their homes at gunpoint, as a result of fighting between Serbian and KLA forces and also as the result of expulsions instigated by the Serbian security forces and associated paramilitary militias. The UNHCR estimated that 460,000 people had been displaced from March 1998 to the start of the NATO bombing campaign in March 1999. [4]
There was violence against ethnic Serbs as well: UNHCR reported (March 1999) that over 90 mixed villages in Kosovo "have now been emptied of Serb inhabitants" and other Serbs continue leaving, either to be displaced in other parts of Kosovo or fleeing into central Serbia. The Yugoslav Red Cross estimated there were more than 30,000 non-Albanian displaced in need of assistance in Kosovo, most of whom are Serb. [5]

Kosovo Refugees in Kukes, Albania (1999)
Following the breakdown of negotiations between Serbian and Albanian representatives, under North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) auspices, NATO intervened on March 24, 1999 without United Nations authority. NATO launched a campaign of heavy bombing against Yugoslav targets (like bridges in Novi Sad). A full-scale war broke out as Albanian fighters continued to attack Serbian forces and Serbian/Yugoslav forces continued to fight Albanian rebels amidst a massive displacement of the population of Kosovo, which most human rights groups and international organisations regarded as an act of ethnic cleansing perpetrated by the government forces. A number of senior Yugoslav government officials and military officers, including President Milošević, were subsequently indicted by the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) for war crimes for which they were allegedly responsible during the war.
The United Nations estimated that during the Kosovo War, nearly 640,000 Albanians fled or were expelled from Kosovo between March 1998 and the end of April 1999. Most of the refugees went to Albania, the Republic of Macedonia, or Montenegro. Government security forces confiscated and destroyed the documents and licence plates of many fleeing Albanians in what was widely regarded as an attempt to erase the identities of the refugees, the term "identity cleansing" being coined to denote this action. This made it difficult to distinguish with certainty the identity of returning refugees after the war. Serbian sources claim that many Albanians from Macedonia and Albania - perhaps as many as 300,000, by some estimates - have since migrated to Kosovo in the guise of refugees. The entire issue may be moot, however, due to the survival of birth and death records.

Kosovo from June 10, 1999
The war ended on June 10, 1999 with the Serbian and Yugoslav governments signing the Kumanovo agreement which agreed to transfer governance of the province to the United Nations. A NATO-led Kosovo Force (KFOR) entered the province following the Kosovo War, tasked with providing security to the UN Mission in Kosovo (UNMIK). Before and during the handover of power, an estimated 100,000 Serbs and other non-Albanians, mostly Romas, fled the province for fear of reprisals. In the case of the non-Albanians, the Roma in particular were regarded by many Albanians as having assisted the Serbs during the war. Many left along with the withdrawing Serbian security forces, expressing fears that they would be targeted by returning Albanian refugees and KLA fighters who blamed them for wartime acts of violence. Thousands more were driven out by intimidation, revenge attacks and a wave of crime after the war as KFOR struggled to restore order in the province.
Large numbers of refugees from Kosovo still live in temporary camps and shelters in Serbia proper. In 2002, Serbia and Montenegro reported hosting 277,000 internally displaced people (the vast majority being Serbs and Roma from Kosovo), which included 201,641 persons displaced from Kosovo into Serbia proper, 29,451 displaced from Kosovo into Montenegro, and about 46,000 displaced within Kosovo itself, including 16,000 returning refugees unable to inhabit their original homes. [6][7] Some sources put the figure far lower; the European Stability Initiative estimates the number of displaced people as being only 65,000, with another 128,000 Serbs remaining in Kosovo. The largest concentration is in the north of the province above the Ibar river, but an estimated two-thirds of the Serbian population in Kosovo continues to live in the Albanian-dominated south of the province. [8]
In March 17, 2004, serious unrest in Kosovo led to several deaths, and the destruction of a large number of Orthodox churches and monasteries in the province, as Albanians clashed with Serbs. Several thousand more Kosovo Serbs were reported to have left their homes to seek refuge in Serbia proper or in the Serb-dominated north of Kosovo proper.
Since the end of the war, Kosovo has been a major source and destination country in the trafficking of women, women forced into prostitution and sexual slavery. The growth in the sex trade industry has been fuelled by NATO forces in Kosovo. [9] [10] [11]
The treaty allowing UN troops into Kosovo in 1999 stipulated that the province remains part of Serbia. However, in November 2005, a United States Department of State official hinted that the independence is possible, just that the Albanians "have to prove that they're worthy of it" and that negotiations on the status of the province would begin in January 2006. [12]
Most of province's Albanian inhabitants support the independence movement, while Serbs fear it would be a preliminary to further ethnic cleansing and the formation of a "Greater Albania". The Kosovo parliament issued a resolution supporting independence since the "political will of Kosovo people for independence is non negotiable". In the meantime, the Serbian cabinet adopted a resolution opposing full independence for Kosovo. [13]