Kosovo Forum: The Case for Re-Joining Kosovo to Albania

• Published in: The Washington report on Middle East affairs 1999-06, Vol.XVIII (4), p.15
• Main Author: Kortepeter, C Max
• Format: Magazinearticle
• Language: English
• Subjects: History; International relations; Politics
• ISSN: 8755-4917; 2163-2782

During World War I, Kosovo was occupied by Austrians and Bulgarians, but after the new Yugoslav state was proclaimed on Dec. 1, 1918, the Versailles peacemakers left Kosovo within the confines of Serbia in spite of President Woodrow Wilson's peace plan of "self-determination" for ethnic groups. Immediately Serbia attempted to alter the ethnic composition of Kosovo by outlawing the Albanian language, closing Albanian schools, confiscating Albanian farms and sponsoring Serb colonization. Albanian Catholic and Muslim families were often forced to accept Serbian Orthodoxy. [Josip Broz Tito]'s death and the collapse of the Yugoslav economy in the 1980s gave the chance for Slobodan Milosevic, a former Communist functionary who converted himself into an extreme Serbian nationalist, to gain power. Milosevic ended Kosovo's autonomy in 1989 and manipulated Serbian nationalism against Kosovo Albanians. He later used the same tactics to incite Serbs within Yugoslavia against non-Serbian Slavs such as the Bosnians, the Croatians, the Slovenians and the Macedonians. Most recently we have seen the same activities by the Serbian "police" and army in Kosovo. The objective in Kosovo is similar: to change the demography so that a province whose population is 90 percent Albanian can be "cleansed" of Albanians. That would enable the Serbs to absorb Kosovo as a Slav province, providing new lands and spoils for Milosevic's followers and "Greater Serbia."