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A broad treatment of the history of the Kosovo region, from the medieval era to the present, follows. For earlier history and for further discussion of the historical Albanian and Serb populations, see Balkans, Albania, and Serbia.
From late antiquity through the late Middle Ages, much of the Balkans lay within the borderlands of the Byzantine Empire. South Slav peoples, including the Serbs, settled throughout the peninsula from the 6th century ce forward. Meanwhile, an ethnically and linguistically distinct Albanian settlement already had begun to develop in the southwest, in what is now Albania. As Byzantine power waned, the Kosovo region became by the later Middle Ages the centre of the Serbian empire under the Nemanjić dynasty. By available accounts, its population was overwhelmingly Serb but did include a small Albanian minority. Between the mid-12th and the mid-14th century the region was richly endowed with Serbian Orthodox sites, such as the Dečani Monastery (Deçan Monastery; 1327–35) with its more than 1,000 frescoes.
Ottoman rule
In 1389 at the Battle of Kosovo, fought just west of Pristina, an army of the Turkish Ottoman Empire defeated a force of Serbs and their allies. By the mid-15th century the Turks had established direct rule over all of Serbia, including Kosovo. In the centuries after the Ottoman victory, a significant portion of Kosovo’s Orthodox Serb inhabitants emigrated northward and westward to other territories, while some converted to Islam. Following the repulse of an Austrian invasion in 1690, during which many Serbs sided with the invaders, an estimated 30,000–40,000 Serbs joined their patriarch in retreating with the Austrian army.
The ethnic balance of the region was changing in favour of Albanian speakers, although it is not clear that they constituted a majority until the 18th century. The abolition in 1766 of the Serbian Orthodox patriarchate at Peć (Pejë) substantially diminished the importance of Kosovo as a Serbian cultural centre. Nevertheless, Kosovo came to symbolize Serbia’s golden age of national greatness. A tradition of epic poetry emerged, in which Kosovo represented Serbs’ national suffering and aspirations. At the same time, ethnic Albanians increasingly identified with the region, and by the late 19th century Prizren had become an important centre of Albanian culture and ethnic identity.
Kosovo in Yugoslavia
Serbia, which had won independence from the Ottoman Empire early in the 19th century, regained control of Kosovo in 1912, following the First Balkan War, but lost it again in 1915, during World War I. An occupation divided between Austria-Hungary and Bulgaria ended in 1918, leaving Kosovo to be incorporated into the new Kingdom of Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes (later renamed Yugoslavia) as a part of Serbia. The advancing Serbian army forced thousands of Kosovar Albanians to flee during 1918–20, and many eventually emigrated to what became Turkey. The new Belgrade government then aided the migration of Serb colonists to Kosovo, despite some resistance from Kosovar Albanians. The Serbs’ numbers increased, but they remained a minority. During World War II, after the Axis powers occupied Yugoslavia in 1941, Kosovo was united with neighbouring Albania under Italian control. Kosovar Albanians then drove out or killed thousands of the interwar Serb colonists.
With the retreat of Axis forces in 1944, ethnic Albanians who wanted Kosovo to remain united with Albania staged a revolt, which was crushed by the Partisan army of Yugoslavia’s new communist government. The postwar government of the new federal Yugoslavia granted Kosovo the status of an autonomous region (and later autonomous province) within the republic of Serbia, but it also continued to suppress nationalist sentiments among Kosovar Albanians.
From the mid-1960s, however, the Yugoslav government followed policies that acknowledged Albanian ethnic identity and enabled Albanians to advance in provincial and federal administrations. This “Albanization” of the province was also stimulated by the increasing departure of Serbs for Serbia proper. As a result of Serb migration and higher Albanian birth rates, the Albanian share of the population rose from half in 1946 to three-fourths in 1981 and to four-fifths in 1991, by which time the proportion of Serbs had fallen to less than one-fifth.
Under the Yugoslav constitution enacted in 1974, Kosovo’s status as an autonomous province was that of a republic in all but name. Yet sharp rises in international energy prices in 1973 and 1979 placed growing strain on the Yugoslav economy, and conflict deepened among republics over the issue of aid to underdeveloped regions, notably Kosovo. Within the province itself, starting with a student protest in Pristina, there was serious civil disorder in several cities during 1981. The demonstrations spread primarily in response to the authorities’ use of lethal force against the protesters, which resulted in a contested number of deaths.
In the intense process of inter-republic bargaining for economic and political advantage, politicians in Serbia began to resent the ability of the Kosovars to act together with representatives of other Yugoslav republics, even against Serbian interests. The indignation felt by Serbs over the situation in Kosovo was capitalized on by Slobodan Milošević, a rising politician whose manipulation of Serb grievances helped him to become leader of Serbia’s communist party in 1987 and president of the Serbian republic in 1989. Having gained control of the communist leadership not only in Serbia but also in the autonomous provinces of Vojvodina and Kosovo and the republic of Montenegro—i.e., four of Yugoslavia’s eight constituent communist parties—Milošević threatened to dominate the government of Yugoslavia. Soon after becoming president, Milošević stripped Kosovo of its autonomy, and Serbia took direct control of the province’s administration. After the province’s ethnic Albanians staged violent protests over these measures, Milošević sent Yugoslav military units to Kosovo in 1990, dissolved the province’s assembly, and closed schools teaching in the Albanian language. In an officially unrecognized referendum held in September that year, the Kosovars voted overwhelmingly to secede from Serbia and Yugoslavia.
The cost to the Yugoslav government in economic aid to the province and the toughness of Serbia’s response to Kosovar Albanian nationalism were among the contributing causes of the breakup of the federal Yugoslav state in 1991. In 1992 a new Yugoslav state was created; it consisted of only Serbia and Montenegro (the name by which it was later known, during 2003–06, before the two component republics separated) and was dominated by the Milošević regime. Kosovo’s Albanians, faced with the Belgrade government’s evident willingness to use military force against them, adopted a course of passive, nonviolent resistance to Serbian control. Under the leadership of the pacifist Ibrahim Rugova, they organized their own network of Albanian-language schools and other civil institutions.
The Kosovar Albanians became increasingly frustrated by the failure of their noncooperation campaign to win for them independence or even autonomy from the Serb-dominated Yugoslav government. Though most Albanians remained committed to nonviolence, the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA), a small ethnic Albanian guerrilla organization that emerged in 1996, began attacking Serbian police and officials in Kosovo. The KLA stepped up its attacks in 1997 with arms obtained in Albania, prompting the Yugoslav military, largely a Serbian force, to stage a major crackdown in the rebel-held Drenica region in early 1998. The brutality of this campaign drove hundreds of new recruits into the KLA’s ranks, and by summer widespread fighting had broken out between the KLA and heavily armed Yugoslav forces, Serbian police, and Serbian paramilitary groups. Yugoslav military tactics also drove thousands of ethnic Albanian villagers from their homes, and by late summer the plight of these refugees had become a source of serious international concern.
International negotiators, especially from the United States, met repeatedly with Yugoslav and Kosovar Albanian representatives in an attempt to end the Kosovo conflict. A cease-fire agreement negotiated in November 1998 broke down by the end of the year, when the Yugoslav army launched a major offensive against the KLA. Talks held at Rambouillet, France, in February 1999 secured no results by mid-March, and NATO soon began an aerial bombardment of selected Serb targets in Serbia and Kosovo. Yugoslav and Serbian forces responded by initiating a widespread campaign of ethnic cleansing against Kosovar Albanians that by June had driven hundreds of thousands of refugees into neighbouring Albania, Macedonia, and Montenegro. The NATO bombardment continued until June, when a peace agreement called for the withdrawal of Yugoslav and Serbian forces from Kosovo and their replacement by NATO peacekeeping troops.
Beginning in mid-1999, the United Nations (UN) sponsored an interim administration in Kosovo. As the terms of the peace agreement were being carried out, Kosovar refugees began returning to the province, and the remaining Serbs—sometimes facing sporadic reprisals—began to flee the region. The Serb share of the population then fell below 10 percent.