On February 17, 2008 the Serbian province of Kosovo broke ties with the federal government and declared it a separate country. To date, fifty two countries in the United Nations have formally recognized Kosovo as its’ own nation. Kosovo is a relatively small area in the Balkans in southern Europe. It is surrounded by Serbia, Montenegro, Albania, Macedonia and Bulgaria. This region is known collectively as the Balkans, and has been embroiled in war and feuds for the past millennium. Because Kosovo is in the center of the most powerful countries in the region, it has made it the battle ground in regional disputes, as well as the prize. While the actual ethnic makeup of the population of Kosovo has been disputed for centuries, today it is approximately 88% Albanian, and about 7% Serbian. The Serbian government has long contested the right of Kosovo to be autonomous, citing that most of the people living there are, and have been historically, Serbian. They have taken this dispute recently all the way to the United Nations, requesting that the International Court of Justice review the semantics of how Kosovo declared its independence. While such objections have been raised, Kosovo should be considered a sovereign state based on its historical, political and cultural distinctiveness from both Serbia and Albania.

Sovereignty is determined by a nations ability to make decisions for itself, and have other nations respect those decisions. The modern liberal democratic conception of sovereignty was born of Woodrow Wilson, and was presented to the world at the Paris Peace Conference of 1919. One of the things most important concerning the sovereignty of a nation is that it is only valid if other countries recognize that it is indeed a nation. Since Kosovo’s declaration of independence nine months ago, fifty two nations around the world, including the United States, France, Germany and Britain, have recognized its’ autonomy. While historically they have been ruled by the Serbs and are ethnically Albanian, the Kosovars are their own distinct people now through their shared heritage and struggles. The Serbians that are living in Kosovo do not feel the same way as the Albanians, as they are more likely than not transplants from Serbia itself. As well, the population of Kosovo is predominantly Albanian; it was the majority that was being oppressed by the government in Belgrade. They should have the right, just like any other people, to self determination.

Kosovo’s history has been, until very recently, one of violence and struggle. This has been fairly constant since 1355 when the last Nemanjić ruler, Stefan Dušan, died and the empire they had built fell apart. Since then, it has been a back and forth struggle for control of Kosovo, with Bulgaria, the former Ottoman Empire, the former Yugoslavia and Serbia having at one time or another been the ruling entity. The Serbian Kingdom ruled until 1459, when the Turks finally defeated them, even after the Battle of Kosovo was lost to the Ottomans in 1389. The Ottoman Empire controlled the entirety of the Balkans until the fall of their Empire in 1912. During this reign, there was much peace in the area, although there was still some fighting. In 1689 the Austrian army invaded the Ottomans all the way to Kosovo, and they were able to establish Austrian rule for a few months. When they were forced to retreat, they left with a large number of Serbian refugees in their wake.

However, many of these immigrants returned to Kosovo, only a few years later, resenting the hostile treatment from the Austrian nobility. The Serbs were able to retake Kosovo as the Kosovars were unable to wade through the wreckage of the Ottoman Empire to unite with Albania. Coming out of this carnage was the state of Yugoslavia which was called the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes until 1929. During the Second World War, Kosovo was divided into three parts ruled by Bulgaria, German-occupied Serbia and Italian dominated Albania. Even though they fought against it, Kosovo was again joined in the new Yugoslavia, and formally annexed to Serbia, giving it no right to self determination or self rule that the other republics did. This was because the Serbians feared that if Kosovo was made a republic and given access to the right to decide for themselves they would take that opportunity and cede from the entire union. They were, however, granted all the other same rights as the republics.

Under Tito they even had schools taught in Albanian. The years following the death of Tito in 1980 were rife with riots and protests about things from the food at the University of Prishtina to cries for a Kosovo free of Serbian and Yugoslav rule. Throughout the 1980s the Serbian media tried to demonize the Kosovar Albanians, accusing them of degrading acts and rape. When the Yugoslav parliament tried to take away Kosovo’s autonomy in 1990, the Kosovan parliament rebelled and the fighting and politics eventually led to the republic of Kosovo being declared on the 7th of September, and a parallel government being set up.

After the collapse of the USSR, and the subsequent fall of Communism in Eastern Europe, Yugoslavia disintegrated. While the parallel government of Kosovo was invited to the conference in London that would decide the fate of the republics, they were not invited as the government of Kosovo. Kosovo continued to be part of Serbia, and conditions for the people were horrendous. Many were sacked from their jobs, illness rates went up, and segregation began to be implemented between Serbs and Albanians. Tales of this sort continued throughout the 1990s, until in 1997 there appeared a group that called itself the ‘Kosovo Liberation Army’. They began fighting with the Serbian and Yugoslav armies in 1996. They used guerilla tactics, and because of them Serbia justified deporting 250,000 Albanians in 1998. When they tried to do this again in 1999 NATO finally intervened and policed the area for the following four years. While the KLA was demilitarized, the killing did not stop. In 2006 the two sides met to decide the final fate of Kosovo under UN mediation. A draft of a proposal for Kosovo to become a supervised independent province, but it was discarded some months later after it was rewritten several times. Finally, independence was announced in 2008.

Since the Battle of Kosovo more than seven hundred years ago, Kosovo has been a rallying point for much of the Balkans against those who have occupied and oppressed them. Kosovo has become central to the national myths of Serbia, Bulgaria and Montenegro. When Serbia and Montenegro went to war with the Ottoman Empire in 1876, they said it was to avenge what had happened in Kosovo almost five hundred years earlier. Because it has factored so into people’s beliefs, they are reluctant to let the land go. To the Serbs Kosovo is part of their identity – even though Serbia is not part of the Kosovars. The problem is that while Serbia wants Kosovo to be its province, it does not want the people that live in Kosovo to be its people.

While under Serbian rule, there was a push to assimilate the Albanian people in Kosovo into the general population of Serbia. Upwards of 70,000 ‘colonists’ were sent to Kosovo to populate the land. They took over the land that was owned by Albanians, who were rarely compensated for the losses. This in turn forced many to emigrate to Turkey. It is thought that between 1910 and 1920 some 150,000 left Kosovo. When the area became known as Yugoslavia in 1929, the land held by rebels was expropriated and given out, predominantly to the Serbian settlers. There was another forced placement by the Serbs, when Yugoslavia broke up as a country. More than 600,000 Serbs emigrated to Serbia from Croatia and Bosnia in the early 1990s. While most of them assimilated into Serbia proper (and therefore were unnoticeable), the 16,000 that were required to move to Kosovo in another attempt to subjugate the Kosovars stuck out. These immigrations were not unnoticed by the population and they feared that this was only the beginning of an attempt to completely take over their land, and thus they resented the ‘colonists’ and did little to help them settle. The Serbian government continued to try to force the Albanians to leave, creating laws that forbid Albanians to buy land from the Serbs, so they could not easily move to another place and therefore stayed in Kosovo. They also gave the Albanians smaller plots of land, so that they would not be able to survive where they were, and would be forced to emigrate.

The culture in Kosovo is distinctly Albanian, as would be expected when almost 90% of the population is ethnically Albanian. First off, while a number of other languages appear in Kosovo, the main spoken language is Albanian. Where Serbians are for the most part Orthodox Christians, somewhere around 95% of the population is Muslim. There is little economy in Kosovo as a result of years of conflict and poor economic policies. It is hard for Kosovo to control its’ own monetary policies, as it uses the Euro as currency and as of yet has no say in the ECB. The current economic trend is unlikely to continue, as Kosovo has deposits of silver, nickel, iron and zinc. There has also been a deposit of halloysite, which is used to make bone china and is one of only five such deposits in the world. With such rich natural metal and mineral deposits within years Kosovo will be able to support itself financial. There is a leaning in the arts and music towards all things Albanian. However, it is hard to say if there is anything that is culturally Kosovan, as all culture in Kosovo was suppressed under Tito’s rule.

Religiously Kosovo is very different from Serbia. While many Serbians are Orthodox Christian, Albanians are predominantly Muslim. But even before this, the Albanians were not part of the Serbian Churches. This also explains why if one were to look at old church records dating back from when the Serbian Kings ruled Kosovo in the 13th and 14th centuries, the names that are listed are almost completely Serbian and there seems to be no Albanians. One of the reasons that more Albanians converted to Islam was that they did not have a strong national church like the Serbians did. When the Ottoman Empire ruled the area, they used a policy of pacification by conversion to keep the peace. As well, the Patriarch of the Serbian Orthodox Church took to taxing the Christians in the Empire around 1700, which drove many peasants to convert. This is a fundamental difference between the two groups that inhabit Kosovo.

Some might argue, therefore, that Kosovo should not be its’ own country, but a part of a Greater Albania. This should not be so, as there are important historical and cultural differences between the ethnic Albanians in Kosovo and those in Albania. The people of Albania have not had to fight in the same way that those in Kosovo have had to for their independence. As well, with a few exceptions (after WWI, during and after WWII, and after the collapse of Albanian Communism), Albania has been completely indifferent to the plight of Kosovo and its people. Because Albania had so much trouble keeping unity within its’ own borders, it was in an ill position to proceed to push attitudes for a Greater Albania. Albania also felt that to keep the borders that they had gained in their independence movement in 1912 they had to sacrifice their claims to Kosovo, especially since the rest of the Balkan states sought to keep Albania internally divided. While there are groups in both Albania and Kosovo who are still advocating for the creation of a Greater Albania, it is not on the forefront on the political scene in either country, especially since Kosovo’s creation as its’ own country. As it is not really the desire of either side, a Greater Albania is not the answer for Kosovo.

Kosovo has every right to stay a sovereign state. It is obviously distinct from Serbia, and has little to no ties to Albania. While they have been the focal point for the rest of the Balkans, Kosovars do not believe that they are part of anything larger, but are a state unto themselves. Kosovo’s distinct history from the rest of the Balkans is, perhaps, the defining factor in the reasoning behind its independence. It is culturally and ethnically separate from Serbia, and regardless of who used to occupy the area hundreds of years ago, it is now home to Albanians. The Serbians may have a love affair with the idea of Kosovo and what it represents to them, but they are not willing to take the people that live there with the area itself. Albania, with a few exceptions, has never had an interest in possessing Kosovo, let alone a continuous care. If no one can decide who should have it, it can be its own country. There are many areas around the world that this kind of policy would help end the violence and disagreement over ‘ownership’ of certain areas. Maybe if more people were willing to let other people decide things for themselves instead of trying to force them to be part of their preexisting nations then they could all get along instead of fighting over little bits of land.

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