February 12, 1999
A Bitter Struggle in a Land of Strife
WWASHINGTON -- 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,
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
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,
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.