Kosovo

Two peoples’ heartland

In the later Middle Ages Kosovo was the centre of the Serbian empire, and its Orthodox monasteries, such as Dečani, date from then.^[3] In 1389 an Ottoman army defeated the Serbs and their allies at the Battle of Kosovo, near Pristina, and by the mid-15th century the Ottomans ruled all of Serbia.^[3]

Over the following centuries many Serbs left and Albanian speakers became the majority, probably by the 18th century. Kosovo became a symbol of Serbia’s golden age in Serbian epic poetry, while Prizren became a centre of Albanian identity in the late 19th century.^[3]

Serbia took Kosovo in 1912, and after the First World War it became part of the new Yugoslav kingdom. Communist Yugoslavia made it an autonomous province of Serbia, and the 1974 constitution made it a republic in all but name. The Albanian share of the population rose from half in 1946 to four-fifths by 1991.^[3]

1989–99

Slobodan Milošević, president of Serbia from 1989, stripped Kosovo of its autonomy and sent in Yugoslav troops in 1990. In an unrecognised referendum that September, Kosovo’s Albanians voted overwhelmingly to secede. Under Ibrahim Rugova they built their own parallel schools and institutions and resisted peacefully.^[3]

The Kosovo Liberation Army, which appeared in 1996, began attacking Serbian police and officials, and in 1998 open war broke out.^[3] After talks at Rambouillet failed, NATO began bombing Serbia and Kosovo in March 1999. Yugoslav and Serbian forces answered with a campaign of ethnic cleansing that drove hundreds of thousands of Albanians into neighbouring countries.^[3]

In June 1999 a peace agreement replaced Yugoslav and Serbian forces with NATO peacekeepers, and the UN took over the administration. Refugees returned, and many remaining Serbs, facing reprisals, left; the Serb share of the population fell below 10%.^[3]

Independence, and the court

UN-led talks produced a plan by the envoy Martti Ahtisaari in 2007 for self-rule short of full independence, which Serbia opposed.^[4] On 17 February 2008 Kosovo declared independence. Serbia, backed by Russia, called it illegal, and Kosovo was not admitted to the UN.^[4][1]

At Serbia’s request, the UN General Assembly asked the International Court of Justice for its opinion. On 22 July 2010 the Court concluded that the declaration “did not violate international law”, while saying it did not have to decide whether international law gave Kosovo a positive right to independence.^[2] Serbia rejected the opinion.^[1]

“the declaration of independence of Kosovo adopted on 17 February 2008 did not violate international law”^[2]

The north

Pristina has struggled to govern the Serb-majority areas north of the Ibar River, where Serbs set up parallel institutions with Serbia’s support.^[4] In April 2013, in EU-mediated talks, Kosovo and Serbia agreed to give the northern Serbs some autonomy in return for recognising Pristina’s authority there in practice, though Serbia still did not recognise Kosovo’s independence.^[4]

On 24 September 2023 gunmen ambushed a Kosovo police patrol near the village of Banjska in the north, killing an officer, and then barricaded themselves in a monastery. At least three of them were killed before the siege ended; the prime minister, Albin Kurti, said at least 30 heavily armed men had been surrounded.^[5]