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(Please Note: There is no intentional bias in the summary. The project is of a non-political nature and is far more concerned about the hopes and aspirations of young people than their political leanings.)

The history of Kosovo is contentious. In many areas of the Balkans, the various migratory trends over centuries have muddied the historical claims to the land, and created a heterogeneous population consisting of ethnic Albanians, Serbs, Roma gypsies and others.

However, to focus on historical differences and claims between nationalities is to distort the general harmony which prevailed in post-Second World War Kosovo, and to relieve the political leaders who had created and manipulated the forces of animosity and hatred of their responsibility for what subsequently happened.

Throughout the wars in Slovenia, Croatia and Bosnia and Hercegovina between 1991 and the Dayton Peace Accords of 1995, Kosovo remained peaceful. Although the Kosovar Albanian desire to either regain the autonomy lost in 1991 or to achieve outright independence had not subsided, a policy of passive resistance was adopted, and Ibrahim Rugova, head of the Democratic League of Kosovo (LDK) was elected as the unofficial president of the ‘Republic’. However, after the Dayton Accords were seen to have ‘rewarded’ ethnic cleansing by not rigorously insisting on a return to pre-war demographic patterns, peaceful resistance lost support. Many thought that the aggressive actions of the Bosnian-Serbs were being rewarded where the peaceful policies of Rugova were achieving nothing. In 1997, the collapse of government rule in Albania gave militant Kosovars a plentiful supply of cheap arms, and attacks on Serbian police and army units in Kosovo increased.

In response to an offensive by the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) in the Drenica Valley in February 1998, Slobodan Milosevic, who had in 1989 championed the cause of the Kosovo Serbs, ordered a counter-offensive, which led to the uprooting of thousands of Kosovar Albanians from their homes. Continued KLA attacks led to subsequent recriminations by Yugoslav forces, and the discovery of mass graves, like the one found in the village of Racak in January 1999, increased the pressure on international organisations to react.

The NATO bombing campaign in the spring of 1999 came after several attempts at negotiating a resolution to the violence in Kosovo and to the corresponding humanitarian crisis. Throughout, and perhaps an unfortunate effect of the campaign was an increase in the level of ethnic cleansing in Kosovo, and an estimated 800,000 refugees eventually crossed over into Albania and the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, whilst a significant number were murdered during the so-called ‘cleansing operations’.

The status and future of Kosovo is not clearly defined. Although Kosovo remains a part of the state of Serbia and Montenegro, it is run by a UN administration (UNMiK) and Belgrade has no control over the province. Whatever the outcome, the future peace and stability of Kosovo is dependent on the ability of the different communities to live together, to reconcile the past and look towards the future. In this way, the young people in Kosovo, the future generation of political, economic and community leaders, must be involved in the ongoing process of development.

This is what TIABW seeks to address, giving the young people of Kosovo a forum to express their views, hopes and aspirations for the future.

TIABW will be in Kosovo in January and February 2004.

Read a summary of our research here >>

Read personal thought's about Kosovo here >>

Further Reading

Kosovo: War and Revenge - Tom Judah

Beyond the Mountains of the Damned: The War Inside Kosovo - Matthew McAllester

Understanding the War in Kosovo - Florian Bieber (Editor), Zidas Daskalovski (Editor)