I hope this will shed some light on the region tensions during the centuries for those who don't know nothing about the history:

In the west the popular view of the recent wars in Croatia and bosnia was always that these were 'ethnic conflicts', created by the bubbling up of obscure but virulent ethnic hatreds among the local populations. This whole approach to the subject was essentially false: it ignored the primary role of politicians (above all, the serbian nationalist-communist slobodan milosovic) in creating conflict at the political level, and indeed it ignored the fact that the wars themselves were launched not by ordinary civilians but by armed forces directed from above. As a characterization of the history of those regions, talk about 'ancient ethnic hatreds' was in any case grossly misleading: there had never been ethnic wars in the 'ancient' history of Bosnia or Croatia, and the only conflicts with a partly ethnic character to them were the modern ones, produced under very special geopolitical conditions (above all, the Second World War). Some elements of prejudice, linked in some cases to religious issues and in others to memories of the Second World War, did of course exist. But between low-level prejudices on the one hand and military conflict, concentration camps and mass murder on the other, there lies very long road: it was the political leaders who propelled the people down that road, and not vice-versa.

Does the same apply to the conflict between Serbs and Albanians in Kosovo?
At first sight, this looks much more like a genuine 'ethnic' conflict. The basic division is, in the first place, an ethnic one in the full sense: unlike the different types of Bosnian, who are all Slavs and all speak the same language, the Serbs and the Albanians are linguistically quite separate.
Together with the differentiation in language goes a range of other cultural differences, many of them linked to religion: the division between Serb and Albanian roughly coincides with the divison between Eastern Orthodox and Muslim. (The exceptions are the small minority of Catholic Albanians, and the Bosnian Muslims). With both language and religion setting people apart, all the conditions seem to be present for a primary conflict of peoples.
And yet, once we begin to examine both the present political situation and the nature of Kosovo's past, the idea of ethnic or religious hatred welling up from the depths of popular psychology starts to seem less convincing.
The Albanians of Kosovo today are in many ways a politically mobilized people, but religion has played almost no role at all in that mobilization.
There is no Islamic political movement among the Albanians. Some tensions apparently exist (largely hidden from the public view) between the Albanian Catholic and Albanian Muslims, yet whatever tensions there may be are not strong enough to inhibit either neighbourly good relations or political cooperation. Where religion is a factor in the present political situation is on the Orthodox side, which constantly employs religious rhetoric to justify the defence of 'sacred' Serbian interests; but this is a classic example of religion being mobilized and manipulated for ideological purposes. If we look further back into Kosovo's past, we can find many examples of mixed religious life involving the Orthodox as well the Catholics with the Muslims: the syncretistic practices of folk religion, for example, or the tradition of Muslims Albanians 'guardians' of Orthodox religious sites. There were also, on the hand many cases of oppressions and discrimination against both of the Christian Churches by Muslim Albanians lords and their followers. Religious prejudice was part of the pattern here, but the pattern itself was largely a socio-political one, involving the exercise and abuse of local political power for the sake of financial gain.
As for the supposedly long history of ethnic conflict, this too is a claim that needs to be heavily qualified. There have been many battles and wars in Kosovo over the centuries, but until the last 100 years or so none of them had the character of an 'ethnic' conflict between Albanians and Serbs. Members of those of those two populations fought together as allies at the battle of Kosovo in 1389 - indeed, they probably fought as allies on both sides of the battle, some of them under Prinze Lazar and others under the Ottoman Sultan. Three hundred years later, when an Austrian army invaded Kosovo, both Serbs and Albanians (including even Muslim ones) rose up in sympathy to throw off Ottoman rule: as we know modern historians have had great difficulty trying to distinguish between Serbs and Albanians when analysing the contemporary reports of these events. A later rebellion in support of another Austrian invasion in 1737 also involved a mixed Albanian-Slav group from the mountain areas of nothern Albania and Montenegro: the Slav and Albanian mountain clans there had long traditions of cooperation and intermarriage, and, in some cases, legends of common ancestry. And over many centuries in Kosovo the ethnic divisons between Serbs and Albanians were never entirely clear- cut. There was ethnic-linguistic assimalition in both derictions; and enough of a shared way of live was established for the Serbian colonists who arrived in Kosovo in the 1920s to feel that the long-established local Serbs were almost as foreign to them in some of their practices as the 'alien' Albanians.
None of this is meant to imply that Kosovo was always a wonderland of mutual tolerance. Conditions for much of its history were far from utopian. Much blame must lie with rapacious local Albanian lords of the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, to whom the property of Christian peasants represented particularly easy pickings. But this sort of exploitation, as already suggested, was not driven primarily by motives derived from religion or ethnicity. Muslim Albanian peasants also suffered grievoulsy.

What really turned the division between Orthodox Serbs and Muslim Albanians into a more general and systematic conflict was the politicization of the issue in the nineteenth century, which arose during the growth and expansion of the Slav Christian states in the Balkans. It was 19th century Serbian ideology that created a cult of the medieval battle of Kosovo as some sort of nationally-defining historical and spiritual event. It was the political role played by protector-powers such as Russia, with their consuls in Prishtina and Mitrovica, that helped to create a new atmosphere of suspicion and hostility on the part of the local Albanians. And above all, it was the policies imposed from above by the Serbian and Montenegrin governments from the first moment of their conquest of Kosovo in 1912 that created systematic hostility and hatred on a scale that the region had never seen before.
- From the Albanian point of view, the experience of that imposition of Serbian-Montenegrin rule ( and its reimposition as Yugoslav rule in 1917) was similar to that of many other peoples conquered and colonized by European Christian powers - The Algerians under the French, for example. Many aspects of this period of Kosovo's history match just such a 'colonialist' model. There was even, for example, an explicit programme of introducting Serb 'colonist' to Kosovo throughout the inter-war period.

-From the Serbian point of view, however, what happened in 1912 was to be understood according to a very different pattern of ideas: it was the ultimate example of a war of liberation to release a captive population (the Serbs of Kosovo) from an alien imperial power ( the Turks). And of course there was real difference between the case of Kosovo and the case of a territory such as Algeria: in the latter example, there was no continuous history of a French population in Algeria going all the way back to medieval French kindom there.

The trouble with Kosovo, however, was that both these conceptual models - the colonialist one, which made sense to the Albanians, and the liberationist one, which made sense to the Serbs - were simusltaneously true. The truth as experienced by the Albanians could be described as the more important of the the two thruths, on the simple grounds that Albanians made up the majority of the population of Kosovo at the time of its conquest. But to reduce the Serb version to a secondary status could not be the same as denying it altogether. At the time, the Serbian government made great efforts to bolster its case and turn it into the dominant interpretation. A memorandum sent to the Great Powers by Belgrade in 1913 set out three justifications for Serbian rule in Kosovo:
1- the moral right of more civilized people
2- the historic right to an area wich contained the Patriachate buildings of the Serbian Orthodox Church and had once been part of the medieval Serbian empire.
3-And a kind of ethnographic right based on the fact that at some time in the past Kosovo had had a majority Serb population- a right which, according to the memorandum, was uneffected by the ' recent invasion' of Albanians'.
Of these three lines of argument, the first was rapidly devalued by the actual behaviour of the Serbian (and, subsequently, Yugoslav) régime in Kosovo. The second was in two parts, one relating to the serbian Orthodox Church, the other more generally to the medieval empire.
Claims are still made today that Kosovo is the 'Jerusalem' of the Serbs: but this has always been something of an exaggeration. In no form of Christianity, including Eastern Orthodoxy, does a 'holy place' play any sort of theological role equivalent to the role of Jerusalem in the theology of Judaism.
The seat of the Serbian Orthodox Church was not founded in Kosovo; it merely moved there after its original foundation (in central Serbia) was burnt down. Nor does the Patriarchate have any continuous history as an institution: it was re-created by the modern Yugoslav state in 1920 (having been defunct for 154), and since that date the Patriarch has tended to reside mainly in Belgrade. As for the Serbian empire, this was a medieval state which had its origin not in Kosovo but Rascia, an area beyond Kosovo's north-western border, and most of important early medieval Serbian monasteries and churches were built ouside Kosovo itself. But in any case, the main objection here must be that it makes no sense to base claims of modern political ownership on the geography of long-gone kingdoms or empires. This objection is a simple point, but one which people in the Balkans sometimes find it convienient to ignore. Edith Durham, who knew the region well and witnessed the effects of the Serb-Montenegrin of Kosovo in 1912, later recalled a characteristic exchange: 'I once pointed out to a Serb schoolmaster that we had held Calais at the same time but that did not give us the right to it. He replied: " Why not? You have a fleet."
The last argument about the majority ethnography in Kosovo, being of Serbian, holds no weight. The Albanians have been always (through centuries) the majority in Kosovo, but the Serb nationalistic propaganda that started in 1912 has created a myth that the Albanians just moved to the region in the last 100 years. But when someone studies the history and recalls written historic documents that clearly state the constant mentioning of the albanians in the region.

Nobody is threatening. But once the NATO forces retreat the province, they will live in constant fear of their first neighbour because they know they stole something that doesn't belong to them. But the irony is this: NATO will never retreat. I believe they will even move their HQ to Pristina

Funny.... I never lived in fear and never will live in fear...... I was born in Albania, Tirana..... Yes.... I hate Serbia..... Serbians are rats..... Kosova never had a military, military training, or military hardware..... most of the KLA were untrained and unequipped and they still raped you when they came across your militia...... you only went after civilians that's why you were able kill the way you did.... you didn't show anything again's Croatia (armed and trained)..... Bosnia was the same case as Kosova.... untrained, unequipped, uneducated and the reason was you kept them that way to oppress them harder...... We the Albanians from Albania would have raped you just like the Croats did..... Intervening would have meant that Russia (Serbia got it from her mama..... THE Grand Wh00re) would legally intervene because Kosova was within Serbia's boarders..... You see you Serbs are cowards you beat on unarmed and oppressed people but the minute you bump heads with someone with as much as only half the equipment you had you run......

If they aren't being threatened, what are they living in fear of?

No, that is a threat by definition. But it is an empty threat, because the alternatives were worse for them anyway.


Probably. The US will stay for sure if nothing else. That alone will intimidate the Serbs into compliance. They will not violate Kosovo's borders because they will not risk a military confrontation with us.


For any Kosovoans interested, I made a flag avatar you can use on this forum if you want:

__________________
My Political Blog (Most recent update Oct 3rd) - Which Flame Warrior are you?

No comment!

I guess not. We fought NATO to the very last day. And the ones who ran - were you. There are bunch of war stories on behalf of Albanian cowardness.

Folks, read Codecivil post.

It's very accurate, unbiased.


Look, serbian nationalist of Kostunica likes are the ones who have fomented this kind of turmoil. Kostunica took pride at killing Albanian babies.

In 1974, he resigned from his job because a small Autonomy was given to Kosova.

Today he's serbian pm. Serbs do not recognize Albanians as humans.
Therefore, there is no chance we can co-exist.

Thus, the new country is born. Republic of Kosova.


Enjoy it!

Only a small minority of Serbs really oppose the independence.

No idea what was that in Belgrade, but what i hear, a great deal of them were hooligans, gangs, uneducated, unhappy young people with the economy, crazily obsessed with radicals. Most of them, come from other areas. Disgruntled for being lied by their government. While Belgrade's residents were busy dancing, grooving and smutting one another under the tunes of American Jazz musicians!

There are still a lot of serbs in Kosova. They have a chance to live happily and freely if the recognize the sovereignty of our country, Republic of KOsova. I am serious. Albanians are harmless, and a lot of Kosovar Serbs have already begun to understand and believe it.

__________________
Jesus beat the devil with two sticks. Colossian 2:13,15

Proud American!

Communism/Socialism is similar to legalizing burglary and murder!

Kosova would be more then adequate to deal with the Serbs after they establish a military..... the Kosovars were never allowed to get into the military..... the ones that made it were always hiding that they were Albanians and as soon as they were discovered they were ACCIDENTALY SHOT..... You see Serbs are filthy..... they only compete with a unfair advantage...... That advantage is now dead......

VOCi, you should stop insulting my people in such a manner. If you are not civilized enough - get the hell out of this forum.

I didn't RUN...... I was a Citizen of Albania.... currently a USA citizen...... the ones that ran were oppressed citizens of Serbia from the ex province of Kosova which is now the Republic of Kosova..... you see the ones that ran were unarmed civilians running from the military force that was supposed to look over them..... but that force was made of coward that's why they had to pick on unarmed women, children, and old men.....