Status Updates From Kosovo: What Everyone Needs...

The government in Belgrade was keen to change the demographics of Kosovo, especially given the hostility of the majority Albanians. Kosovo as such had disappeared from the map, divided between 3 new Yugoslav provinces. This was the fate of all of the new Yugoslavia, the authorities being keen to diminish old regional cum ethnic loyalties in a bid to create loyalty to something higher—that is, Yugoslavia itself.

Schools have always played a major part in the Albanian story in Kosovo. The Turks had resisted schooling in Albanian because they were keen to prevent the emergence of an Albanian national identity. The Austrians, by contrast, keen to cultivate it, opened schools in Kosovo during their brief stay there during the First World War. These were soon shut down by the new Yugoslav authorities.

Serbia was the little David standing up to the Austro-Hungarian Goliath. It is hardly surprising, given that the Kosovo Albanians had lost their chance to unite with Albania and had been massacred by the Serbs in 1912 and 1913, that they should welcome the new invaders. But of course, this was to leave them on the wrong side of history at the end of the war.

The Balkan Wars & now the First World War were absolutely devastating to the people of Kosovo & of course, the rest of the region. The Serbs naturally regarded the taking of Kosovo as a liberation, but by now only 30 or 40% of its population was still Serb. Albanians clearly regarded this as conquest, especially as for generations their leaders had been striving for the unification of all lands inhabited by Albanians

Serbia, Montenegro, and Greece all had states and armies to mobilize, unlike the Albanians, so it is hardly surprising that they were unable to successfully resist in Kosovo. Indeed, if it had not been for Great Power politicking, it is possible that there would have been no Albania at all.

By the end of the fighting in 1912, Serbia had taken much of Kosovo, but Montenegro too was in possession of Pec (etc). The Turks had been driven out, but parts of what was emerging as Albania were also occupied by the Serbs & Greeks in the south, & Skadar was in the hands of the Montenegrins. Greece took southern Macedonia including Thessalonika; Serbia took most of the rest, including the Albanian-inhabited parts.

The years between 1878 and 1912, which saw the end of the Ottoman Empire in the Balkans, were—in Kosovo and Macedonia especially—ones of unrest, revolts, and instability. In 1908 the modernizing Young Turk revolution was initially welcomed by most in Kosovo, as in Albania, although few actually understood what it was about.

Initially, the League [of Prizren] was not opposed by Istanbul, but by 1880, relations had deteriorated. Important voices were now calling for the creation of an independent Albanian state.. In 1881 it was crushed by Turkish troops. Its important legacy however was that, for the first time, it was seen that Albanians could actually work together for their common national interest, something they had never done before

The 18th century saw an increased pace of conversion to Islam in the region, more commonly among Albanians than Serbs.

The vast majority of people in Kosovo were peasants, but power lay with the Muslim Albanian aristocracy. As Muslims, Albanians could and did rise to the highest positions in the Ottoman Empire… Albanians were forced to confront their future w/ the reemergence of the Balkan Christian states in 1804

Noel Malcolm, the British historian who wrote an important history of Kosovo, argues that his research in European archives leads him to conclude that much of the story of the "Great Migration" is actually false. He argues that the situation was far more confused—some Serbs or Orthodox refused to rise up, some fought on the Ottoman side, and many Albanians, including some Muslims, fought on the Austrian side.

The second key date is 1690. Almost three hundred years after Lazar's Battle of Kosovo, the Ottoman advance was finally halted at the siege of Vienna in 1683. After that Habsburg forces began to reverse the Turkish tide. In 1688 Belgrade was taken, & forces led by Count Eneo Piccolomini swept south to Kosovo & to Skopje. Serbs & Catholic Albanians were called upon to rise up and throw off the Ottoman yoke. Many did.

Contrast the Serbian experience with Bosnia, where, lacking such a church and institutions, many Slavs converted to Islam in the wake of the conquest in 1463, thus eventually giving birth to the nation that identifies itself today as Bosniak, or Bosnian Muslim.

Two key dates need concern us here. The first is 1557 when the Patriarchate in Peć was restored thanks to the intervention of Mehmed Sokollu, grand vizier to Suleiman the Magnificent…The effect of this act reverberates thru history to this day. The church as the spiritual guardian of the Serbian nation was reborn and rejuvenated..Had this not happened, the history of Kosovo would doubtless have been very different

historians believe that Serbs…were by far the majority in Kosovo until the Ottoman conquest, & that after that this began to change, albeit very slowly over centuries. Conversion also played its part. Some Serbs converted to Islam under the Turks..By contrast, a far higher proportion of Albanians converted, perhaps because they did not have a nat church like the Serbs, & Cath was not so deeply entrenched among them

Rugova toyed w/ the idea of renaming Kosovo "Dardania," after the ancient Illyrian tribe supposed to have lived in Kosovo in antiquity..They argue that the ancient Dardanians were the ancestors of the Albanians but more important in this context, Roman Catholics. Thus, they argue, Albanians were historically part of Western civ & their churches were usurped & turned into Ortho ones by the invading Slavs, who were not

"Kosovo" itself comes from the Serbian word Kos, which means blackbird...to call it Kosovo, or Kosova in Albanian, emphasizes its territorial unity.

But even this is not without controversy, given the Slavic origin of the name. After all, if the root of Kosovo's name is Slav, then that would seem to contradict the Albanian argument that they had lived here before the Serbs and thus that Kosovo belongs to them

For as long as anyone can remember, the history of Kosovo has been a battlefield pitting Serbs against Albanians. Each believes different things because each has been taught different things, and as they reach further back into time it becomes easier to argue whatever they want in order to find support for their view of the present. This quarrel is best illustrated in the issue of Kosovo’s name.

…the issue of Albanians as a people caught between East and West continues to be openly discussed. In 2007…Kadare argued that Albanians could and should deepen their links with Europe and even Catholicism by placing less emphasis on their Ottoman past and Islam. This idea was rejected by Qosja, who said that it was not possible to separate the Albanian identity from these elements of their history and tradition.

Skanderbeg became..a medieval hero w/ whom [Albanians] can identify. He is, however, a "very ambivalent figure." Born Gjergj Katriot in 1403, he was the son of an Albanian noble subdued by the Ottomans & sent to Istanbul as a hostage. There he was converted to Islam, fought alongside the sultan..

But in 1443, Skanderbeg turned against the Turks, converted back 2 Xtianity, & freed large parts of what is today Albania

The Serbs, as Slavs, began to arrive in waves of migration from the middle of the sixth century AD. Albanians claim descent from the tribes that inhabited the region before the Romans. The "who was there first" argument has long been fought in the trenches of academia. The Albanians say they were in Kosovo first, as Illyrians & Dardanians, & thus have the right of first ownership, & that the Slavs invaded their land.

The wars of the 1990s sent 100s of 1000s of people fleeing. Some 600,000 Serbs were estimated to have ended up as refugees from Bosnia & Croatia in Serbia…

Over the centuries Serbs have been in constant movement. For example, when the Ottomans arrived in Kosovo in the 14th century, most scholars seem to agree that the majority of the pop were Serbs, or at least Orthod Christians that would later identify as Serbs

But where were the Serbs in the past, & where are they now? As with the Albanians, it would be wrong & misleading to talk only of the Serbs of Kosovo. They are simply a very small part of a much bigger nation. To make sense of the Kosovo story, one has to see the bigger picture. The Serbs, even more so than the boundaries of Serbia, have moved, shifted, fled, & migrated through the centuries, in and out of Kosovo…

But where were [Serbia's] borders? How far did its authority stretch, & where were the Serbs? These were the questions that bedeviled the dying Yugoslavia & for which the wars of the 1990s were fought, not just on the battlefield but in words too. For example, argued its politicians, academics, & diplomats, Kosovo should remain in Serbia, because it was legally part of the Serbian state & historically Serbian

Sometimes Kosovo has been part of Serbia, sometimes not. Let's look at the last 100 years: In 1912 Serbian forces retook Kosovo from the Ottomans. In 1915 they lost it, only to return it again in 1918. But then Serbia itself disappeared from the map, dissolved into the new Kingdom of Serbs, Croats, & Slovenes, which in 1929 was officially renamed Yugoslavia, "the land of the South Slavs."

Albanians came late to…nat identity. One major reason was because, during the long centuries of Ottoman domination, when the majority converted to Islam, there was no nat church, as the Serbs or Greeks, to nurture a separate nationhood. Second, as Muslims, many Albanians…prospered under the Ottoman Empire…Albanians served as grand viziers to the sultan, & communities flourished in Istanbul, Egypt, & elsewhere

Albanian is the one thing that all Albanians have in common, despite regional variations between the Gheg dialect of the north, & the Tosk dialect of the south. This…stands in direct contradiction to what makes a Serb, a Bosniak, and a Croat, since whatever they chose to call their languages now, in essence they all speak the same…it is religion that has defined the other nations of the Balkans.