Kosovo

(kô`sôvô), Albanian Kosova, Serbian Kosovo i Metohija and Kosmet, officially Republic of Kosovo, republic (2015 est. pop. 1,871,000), 4,126 sq mi (10,686 sq km), SE Europe, a former province of Serbia that unilaterally declared its independence in 2008. Located on the Balkan Peninsula, it is bordered on the north and east by Serbia, on the south by North Macedonia, and on the west by Albania and Montenegro. PrishtinëPrishtinë,
Prishtina,
or Priština
, city (2011 pop. 198,214), E central Kosovo, the capital and largest city of Kosovo. Prishtinë is a commercial center with diverse industries, including woodworking, textiles, and food processing.
..... Click the link for more information. (Priština) is the capital and chief city.

Land, Economy, and People

Kosovo is largely mountainous, with the North Albanian Alps in the west, the Sar Mts. in the south, and the Kopaonik range in the west. Surrounded by the mountains are the fertile valleys of Kosovo and Metohija; the land is drained by the Drin, Ibar, and Južna Morava rivers. Agriculture, stock raising, forestry, and mining are the major occupations. There are rich deposits of lignite (brown coal), lead, nickel, zinc, and other minerals. Unemployment is very high, because of the disruptions caused by the end of Communist rule and the struggle for independence, and the economy is dependent on foreign aid.

Kosovo's population before 1999 was about 80% Albanian; ethnic Albanians now make up about 90% of the inhabitants. Serbs are the largest minority, concentrated especially in the north between the north bank of the Ibar River and Serbia, and this section of the country is under effective Serbian, not Kosovan, control. The Albanian, Serbian, Bosniak, Turkish, and other languages are spoken. The main religions are Islam (largely Albanians), the Serbian Orthodox church (largely Serbs), and the Roman Catholic church.

Government

Kosovo is governed under the constitutional framework of 2001, which was established by the United Nations Interim Administration Mission in Kosovo (UNMIK). In 2008, the European Union Rule of Law Mission (EULEX) largely superseded UNMIK; by mid-2018, when EULEX was scaled back, both UNMIK and EULEX were relegated to monitoring and support roles. The president, who is the head of state, is elected by the Kosovo Assembly to a five-year term. The government is headed by the prime minister, who is chosen by the Kosovo Assembly. Members of the 120-seat, unicameral Kosovo Assembly serve three-year terms; 100 members are directly elected, 10 seats are reserved for Serbs, and 10 seats are reserved for other minorities. Administratively, Kosovo is divided into 30 municipalities.

History

Anciently inhabited by Illyrians and Thracians, the region was part of the Roman and Byzantine empires. Settled by the Slavs in the 7th cent., Kosovo passed to Bulgaria in the 9th cent. and to Serbia in the 12th cent. From 1389, following the Turkish victory at Kosovo FieldKosovo Field
, Serbian Kosovo Polje [field of the black birds], WSW of Priština, Kosovo, site of a battle in which the Turks under Sultan Murad I defeated Serbia and its Bosnian, Montenegrin, Bulgarian, and other allies in 1389.
..... Click the link for more information. , to 1913, it was under Ottoman rule, and the Albanian and Turkish population greatly increased; by 1900 Albanians were the dominant ethnic group in the region. Partitioned in 1913 between Serbia and Montenegro, it was incorporated into Yugoslavia after World War I. Most of the region was incorporated into Italian-held Albania from 1941 to 1944. Following World War II, Kosovo became an autonomous region within Serbia. In 1990, demands for greater autonomy were rebuffed by Serbia, which rescinded Kosovo's autonomous status. Albanians were repressed and Serb migration into the region encouraged; in response Albanians pressed for Kosovo's complete independence.

Harsh Serbian repression and a breakdown in negotiations to settle the issue provoked NATO into attacking Serbia by air in Mar., 1999. Serbia responded by forcing hundreds of thousands of ethnic Albanians to flee Kosovo, creating an enormous refugee problem; perhaps 1.5 million Albanian Kosovars were expelled from their homes or fled. An estimated 7,000 to 10,000 Kosovars were killed by Serbian forces. An agreement resulted in the end of the bombing campaign and withdrawal of Serbian forces from Kosovo in June, and NATO peacekeepers entered the province. Many Serbs fled; those that remain are largely in areas bordering Serbia.

In municipal elections in 2000, Ibrahim RugovaRugova, Ibrahim
1944–2006, ethnic Albanian leader in Kosovo. A scholar and author, he studied at Kosovo's Priština Univ. and the Sorbonne, Paris, and became president of the influential Kosovo Writers Union (1988) and professor of Albanian at Pristina Univ.
..... Click the link for more information. 's moderate independence party, the Democratic League of Kosovo (LDK), won 60% of the vote; Serbs boycotted the polls. The 2001 elections for the provincial assembly, in which Rugova's party won 46% of the vote, saw greater Serb participation. Differences between Albanian parties delayed the formation of a government until Mar., 2002, when a power-sharing agreement led to the election of Rugova as president. Real power, however, resided with the UN adminstration that was imposed after NATO forces entered Kosovo.

The process of rebuilding was slow and marred by retaliatory Albanian attacks on Serbs and other non-Albanians. In Mar., 2004, there was a major outbreak of anti-Serb rioting that many observers believe was orchestrated to drive Serbs from areas of mixed population. Assembly elections in Oct., 2004, resulted in a plurality for Rugova's party, which formed a coalition government with Rugova as president. Kosovo's Serbs largely boycotted the vote.

Rugova survived an assassination attempt in Mar., 2005, but died of natural causes in Jan., 2006; the following month, Fatmir Sejdiu, a law professor and assembly deputy, was elected to succeed Rugova as president. In 2006 Serbia and Kosovo began discussing the province's final status. The vast majority of the Albanians favored independence, a solution rejected by Serbia, which adopted a new constitution in Nov., 2006, that called Kosovo an inalienable part of Serbia.

In Mar., 2007, after months of talks failed to yield a compromise, UN envoy Martti AhtisaariAhtisaari, Martti Oiva Kalevi
, 1937–, Finnish diplomat, political leader, and international mediator; grad. Univ. of Oulu (1959). Joining (1965) the foreign affairs ministry, he was (1973–76) Finland's ambassador to Tanzania.
..... Click the link for more information. presented a proposal for Kosovo's eventual independence to the UN Security Council. Serbia strongly opposed the plan, and Russia, a historical Serbian ally, called for an agreemeent acceptable to both sides, ensuring a veto on any proposal unacceptable to Serbia. Remarks by U.S. President Bush, during a 2007 visit to Albania, that Kosovo would eventually be independent provoked outrage from Serbia's government.

In the Nov., 2007, elections, the Democratic party (PDK) won a plurality; a coalition government, headed by Hashim ThaçiThaçi, Hashim
, 1968–, Kosovar political leader. An ethnic Albanian, he studied history and politics at Priština Univ., becoming active in Kosovo's independence movement. He joined the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) in 1993 and soon moved to Switzerland.
..... Click the link for more information. , was formed with the LDK. Sejdiu remained president. In Feb., 2008, Kosovo declared its independence; the action was not recognized by Serbia, and there were demonstrations—some violent—against the move by Serbs in Serbia and Kosovo. Serbia subsequently sought a de facto partition of Kosovo that would give it control over Serb-majority areas there, and later moved to challenge the legality of Kosovo's declaration at the International Court of Justice, which ruled in July, 2010, international law did not prohibit a unilateral declaration of independence.

In June, 2008, Kosovo's constitution took effect; at the same, Serbs in N Kosovo established parallel government institutions. Sejdiu resigned as president in Sept., 2010, when the constitutional court ruled he could not serve as president and leader of the LDK at the same time. Assembly Speaker Jakup Krasniqi became acting president. The PDK-LDK coalition failed to agree on a new president; subsequently the LDK left the coalition, and a no-confidence vote led to elections in Dec., 2010.

The PDK won a plurality in the election, which was tainted by suspicion of vote fraud in areas strongly supporting the PDK; a partial revote in Jan., 2011, was also criticized by European Parliament observers. Also in Dec., 2010, Thaçi was accused by a Council of Europe parliamentary investigator of being involved with organized crime, including the selling of organs from prisoners held and killed by KLA in the late 1990s. In Feb., 2011, following the formation of a PDK-led coalition that included two smaller parties, Thaçi remained prime minister and the wealthy businessman Behgjet Pacolli was elected president.

Pacolli resigned in March after his election was ruled unconstitutional because there had not been enough legislators present. In April, Atifete Jahjaga, the former deputy director of the police, was elected president. Beginnning in July there were tensions and occasional violence in the north as Kosovo's government attempted to assert control over customs stations on the Serbian border; Serb residents there sought to thwart those attempts, in part by building barricades. Some barricades were removed in Dec., 2011, after confrontations with peacekeepers seeking to restore road access to a base in the north. Freedom of movement for EULEX forces was restored by agreement in Feb., 2012, but barricades remained on many roads. Kosovo also banned goods from Serbia and Bosnia because those governments refused to recognize Kosovan customs stamps. In Dec., 2012, EU, Serbian, and Kosovan negotiators reached an agreement opening several border crossings; subsequent talks aimed at normalizing Serbia-Kosovo relations were inconclusive until Apr., 2013, when an agreement designed to integrate the Serb areas in the north into Kosovo was signed.

In Sept., 2012, the transitional period of internationally supervised independence officially ended. Ramush Haradinaj, a former KLA leader and prime minister in 2005, was acquitted for a second time of war crimes charges in Dec., 2012; a retrial had been ordered after his 2008 acquittal. The verdict was denounced in Serbia. In the June, 2014, elections Thaçi's PDK won a plurality (30%) amid low turnout, but an LDK-led opposition alliance won a larger combined share of the vote (but not a majority). Subsequently the PDK and LDK agreed to form a coalition. LDK leader Isa Mustafa became prime minister, and in 2016 Thaçi was elected president.

In Aug., 2015, Kosovo and Serbia signed an EU-brokered agreement designed to normalize their relationship. Provisions allowing Serb areas greater local powers provoked antigovernment protests in Kosovo, and were later ruled unconstitutional (Dec., 2015). Also in 2015 Kosovo signed an association agreement with the European Union.

In May, 2017, Mustafa's government fell; in the subsequent elections (June) the PDK-led coalition won a plurality of the vote and seats. Ramush Haradinaj, of the Alliance for the Future of Kosovo (and the PDK-led coalition candidate for prime minister), took office in September after the coalition secured the support of smaller parties; a former rebel leader, he has been accused of war crimes by Serbia, but was twice acquitted by an international tribunal. More than 110 nations recognize Kosovo as an independent nation; some 4,000 NATO-led peacekeepers remain in Kosovo.

Bibliography

See S. K. Pavlowitch, The Albanian Problem in Yugoslavia (1982); N. Malcolm, Kosovo: A Short History (1998); M. Vickers, Between Serb and Albanian (1998); T. Judah, Kosovo: War and Revenge (2000).

Kosovo

(formerly Kosovo-Metohija), an autonomous region in Yugoslavia; part of the Socialist Republic of Serbia. Area, 10,900 sq km; population, 1,240,000 (1971). Capital, Priština. Most of the region’s territory is occupied by the large basins of Kosovo Polje and Metohija, through which the Beli Drin and Ibar rivers flow. The climate is of the moderate continental type, with 600-700 mm of precipitation annually (average January temperature, about 0°C; average July temperature, about 20°C). The region’s mountain slopes are covered with broad-leaved forests, many meadows, and mountain pastures.

Kosovo is a mainly agricultural region; about half of the economically active population is involved in agriculture. The major crops include grains (corn, wheat, and barley), and tobacco; there is also truck farming, horticulture, and viticulture. Cattle and sheep are raised in the mountains. Crafts and handicrafts are still very important in the cities, where one-quarter of the population lives, and in rural settlements. Industry employs more than one-tenth of the economically active population. The leading industrial sector is the mining of lead and zinc ore at Trepča and other centers in the Kopaonik Range, which accounts for two-thirds of the total mined in Yugoslavia. Also important are the smelting of lead (four-fifths of Yugoslavia’s total production) and zinc. Lignite, chromites, and magnesite are also mined. Other industry includes chemicals, cement, wood products, paper, textiles, tanning, and food processing.

From the eighth to 12th century, Kosovo was the center first of the state of Raska (Rascia) and then of the Serbian state. The city of Pec was the center of the Serbian archdiocese (after 1346, the patriarchate). In the 15th century, the area was incorporated into the Ottoman Empire, along with the other Serbian lands. From the 16th to 18th century it was the scene of several anti-Turkish revolts. Large numbers of Serbs left the area, and much of the territory was colonized by Albanian Muslims. According to the Treaty of London (1913), Kosovo was divided between Serbia and Montenegro. In 1918, it became part of the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes (after 1929, Yugoslavia). In April 1941 it was occupied by fascist German troops, but in late 1944 it was liberated by the Yugoslav National Liberation Army in conjunction with the National Liberation Army of Albania. From 1945 to 1963 it was the autonomous region of Kosovo and Metohija; from 1963 to 1969, an autonomous province. Since 1969 it has been called Kosovo.

I. S. DOSTIAN and S. N. RAKOVSKII

Kosovo

, Kosova an autonomous province of Serbia and Montenegro, in SW Serbia: chiefly Albanian in population since the 13th century, it declared independence in 1990; Serb suppression of separatists escalated to a policy of ethnic cleansing in 1998, provoking NATO airstrikes against Serbia in 1999: now under UN administration: mainly a plateau. Capital: Pristina. Pop.: 2 325 000 (2001 est.). Area: 10 887 sq. km (4203 sq. miles)

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Land, Economy, and People

Government

History

Bibliography

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Words related to Kosovo

noun a Serbian province in southern Serbia and Montenegro populated predominantly by Albanians

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