A Bitter Struggle in a Land of Strife
By JANE PERLEZ
WASHINGTON — A decade ago, Slobodan Milosevic first fired Serbian nationalism with a speech in Kosovo, the place that Serbs consider the heartland of their orthodox religion and their very identity. Few imagined that the speech by Serbia’s President, which stressed the superiority of Serbian history and tradition, would be the rationale for fighting that destroyed Yugoslavia and has now come to Kosovo.
The first battle of Kosovo occurred in 1389 when Turkish invaders defeated King Lazar, swept through the Balkans and Hungary, and threatened the gates of Vienna. Kosovo remained under Turkish control until Serbia won it back after the first Balkan War of 1912. After World War I, Serbia became a part of Yugoslavia, a federation of southern Slav republics. When Marshal Josip Tito won control of Yugoslavia and turned it into a Communist state, he made Kosovo an autonomous region.
By the time Tito died in 1980, Albanians were the dominant ethnic group in Kosovo, far outnumbering Serbs, with whom they had had hostile relations. During two world wars, they fought each other with Serbs on the Allied side and most Albanians on the German side.
The concessions that Tito had granted giving Kosovo almost equal standing as other republics in the Yugoslav republic emboldened Albanians to demand greater autonomy. In 1981, Albanian students rioted in Pristina, the capital of Kosovo, demanding independence.
Losing Kosovo was anathema to Mr. Milosevic, who in 1989 revoked the autonomy that Tito had granted. He then imposed a police state that kept Serbs in control of all institutions and stripped Albanians of all power. Albanians, who made up 90 percent of Kosovo’s population of two million, were expelled from universities, medical institutions and schools.
The Albanian political leader, Ibrahim Rugova, decided to take a path of peaceful resistance. Mr. Rugova set up a parallel system for Albanians in Kosovo, providing clinics, schools and even a university in the capital, Pristina, all paid for by Albanians living abroad.
But as Serbian repression increased, with beatings of Albanians and prison sentences without trial, Mr. Rugova’s insistence on nonviolence seemed less and less appealing.
As Mr. Rugova was implementing his ideas of nonviolence, the rest of Yugoslavia was racked by wars in Croatia and Bosina.
The Bosnian war ended in 1995 after NATO airstrikes drove the Bosnian Serbs to the bargaining table. An uneasy peace settled over much of the former Yugoslavia. But in Kosovo, a guerrilla movement, called the Kosovo Liberation Army, emerged.
The guerrillas wanted independence, a goal that the United States and its European allies have refused to back. For the West, supporting Kosovo independence would break the rule that borders in Europe are inviolable.
Within months of their rebellion, the guerrillas had won some territory in Kosovo, repelling Mr. Milosevic’s police units backed by soldiers of the Yugoslav Army. But by last summer, Mr. Milosevic had ordered his forces to quell the insurgency by the most brutal means possible.
In hundreds of villages, Serb armored personnel carriers and tanks fired on homes, storehouses and farm animals. To escape the violence, more than 200,000 ethnic Albanians, many of them women and children — many of their husbands having joined the guerrillas — camped in the hills of Kosovo. In the village of Obrinje more than 20 members of one family, ranging in age from 2 years to over 90, were massacred by Serb police seeking revenge for the killing of two of their officers by guerrillas.
By last fall, with television images of impoverished families set to spend a freezing winter in plastic shelters, the United States and its NATO allies decided to seek a diplomatic solution.
A cease-fire, brokered by the American diplomat Richard C. Holbrooke, called on Mr. Milosevic to withdraw some of his troops and police officers. Families returned home, though many of their houses had been burned by the Serb forces and their livestock killed. International monitors arrived in Kosovo to try to insure that the fighting did not resume.
But Kosovo is a small place — about the size of Connecticut — and the hatred between the Serbs and the Albanians so intense that it was impossible that normality could return. Skirmishes resumed, and by early January the cease-fire had fallen apart.
Again, it was a massacre — this time of 45 ethnic Albanian civilians in Racak — that caught the attention of the West. A peace conference was called and the two sides were summoned to negotiate for the first time. The goals were to achieve peace in Kosovo and to give the ethnic Albanians autonomy from the Serb Government. It is anticipated that for at least three years, this form of self-rule will be watched over by international troops and observers.
If peace does come to Kosovo and Serbian rule is all but removed, it would represent a victory for Western diplomacy and an end to Mr. Milosevic’s goal, enunciated 10 years ago in that angry speech, of a greater Serbia.
Source: The New York Times, February 3, 1999