Anthropology
The Kosovo conflict is commonly depicted as an ethnic conflict. At face value, the conflict might rightly be considered as such since it opposes two peoples with different languages as well as different religions. Indeed, the Serbs and the Albanians do speak different languages which (notwithstanding their common affiliation to the Indo-European family) are not mutually understandable for their respective locators. In addition, the Serbs practice Christian Orthodoxy while the Albanians overwhelmingly belong to the Muslim faith. For the Albanians, who are the only Balkan people whose national identity rests exclusively on language, the linguistic issue is certainly crucial. By contrast, the Serbs attach fundamental importance to the issue of religion for two main reasons. First, Christian Orthodoxy represents an integral part of the national identity of any of the Christian peoples of the Balkans. Second, the animosity of the Serbs towards Albanians has been nurtured by the fact that the latter are viewed by the former as having descended from "renegades"―that is to say from Christians who in the XVIth century decided to adopt Islam merely for economic reasons and who, as such, can only be devoted to the cause of the "natural enemy" of the Christian peoples of the Balkans: the Turks. In sum, the Serbs view the Albanians as a genuinely different people for cultural and political reasons, while the Albanians perceive the Serbs as genuinely different people from a basically political perspective in which culture intervenes only as an aggravating factor: the Serbs represent the political oppressors who incidentally speak a different language and practice a different religion.
In modern times, the Kosovo issue emerged in the aftermath of the first Balkan War of 1912-1913 which allowed Serbia and Montenegro to recapture from the Ottoman Empire (after five centuries of Turkish rule) the formerly Slavic territory of Kosovo henceforth overwhelmingly populated by ethnic Albanians. Under the circumstances, a harsh regime (political and economic) was immediately instituted in Kosovo. It prevailed until the invasion and break-up of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia by Nazi Germany in 1941. Initially, the Kosovo issue thus appeared as a colonial-type problem whose peculiarity was its taking place in the European continent. When Tito reconstituted Yugoslavia, he attributed to Kosovo the status of a region and, over time, of a province enjoying an extraordinary degree of autonomy: the 1974 Yugoslav Constitution considered Kosovo as one of the eight federal entities of the Federation which, as such, had the right to run its own executive, legislative and judicial affairs with no interference from the Republic of Serbia in which it was geographically situated. During that time, the ethnic Albanians regularly claimed not for independence or integration to Albania but for the upgrading of Kosovo as a Republic of Federal Yugoslavia. In other words, under the Tito regime, the Kosovo issue has become a human rights problem related to the protection of the collective identity of a national minority (majority in its own region) within a multiethnic Federation. The basic nature of the issue changed again in March 1989 when Slobodan Milosevic abolished the autonomous status of Kosovo in blatant violation of art. 402 of the Federal Constitution which required the consent of all the legal entities of the Yugoslav Federation and without giving any political compensation whatsoever to the ethnic Albanians. The latters' immediate reaction remained basically peaceful: in 1990, they proclaimed Kosovo as a federate Republic within the still existing Yugoslav Federation. The Serbian authorities retaliated by stripping Kosovo from all its local residual powers and also by implementing a ruthless repressive policy which generated an apartheid-like situation. Again, the ethnic Albanians responded peacefully through a generalized non-violent civic disobedience. Finally, they unilaterally proclaimed the independence of Kosovo on the basis of an underground referendum (1991); they also set up informal governmental structures under the leadership of Ibrahim Rugova. Given the persistence of the status quo a "Kosovo Liberation Army" (KLA) seeking independence by violent means emerged by 1997. As a consequence, the Kosovo issue reversed to its initial configuration: that of a colonial-type situation.
