RESEARCH PAPER - KOSOVO AND METOHIA

Kosovo and Metohija:

Serbia’s troublesome province^*

Dušan T. Bataković

Institute for Balkan Studies Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts Belgrade

Abstract: Kosovo and Metohija, the heartland of medieval Serbia, of her culture, politics and economy (1204–1455), experienced continuous waves of spiralling violence, forced migration and colonization under centuries-long Ottoman rule (1455–1912). A region which symbolizes the national and cultural identity of the Serbian nation as a whole now has an Albanian majority population, who consider it an ancient Albanian land, claiming continuity with ancient Illyrians. Kosovo was reincorporated into Serbia (1912) and Yugoslavia (1918) as a region lacking tradition of inter-ethnic and inter-religious tolerance and cooperation. The two rivalling Kosovo nations, Albanians and Serbs, remained distant, maintaining limited interethnic communication throughout the twentieth century. The mounting national and ideological conflicts, reinforced by the communist ideology, made coexistence almost impossible, even after the 1999 NATO bombing campaign and establishment of KFOR-secured UN administration. Kosovo’s unilateral declaration of independence in February 2008 is a dangerous attempt to establish a second Albanian state extended into the heartland of Serbia, a failed state cleansed of both Serbs and other major non-Albanian communities.

Keywords: Serbia, Kosovo, ethnic strife, nationalism and communism, Kosovo crisis, NATO bombing, war against Yugoslavia, international protectorate

Imagining Kosovo: opposing historical views 

Even the word Kosovo (kos means “blackbird” in Serbian) has opposing significance to the rival ethnic communities. The Serbs see Kosovo (with Metohija) as the Serbian “Holy Land”, whose impressive cultural and economic rise in medieval times was brought to a halt by the Ottoman conquest. For the Serbs, the Battle of Kosovo — or more precisely Kosovo Polje (Blackbird Field) — fought between the Serb and Ottoman armies in 1389, and marked by the death of both rulers, Prince Lazar and Sultan Murad, came to symbolize their plight under foreign rule and their struggle for freedom.¹ During the centuries of Ottoman domination, the sacrifice sustained in the Battle of Kosovo and subsequent hardships acquired legendary proportions and were immortalized in Serbian epic poetry.² Seen as a sacred land, a medieval source of Serbian culture, art, spiritual and political traditions, Kosovo became a pillar of modern Serbian identity. Furthermore, Kosovo has been traditionally perceived as a holy land from which Serbs were repeatedly driven out in the past and from which they are being expelled by a rival ethnic group even today. This situation resulted, as evidenced by Serbian sources, from an organized and systematic action, perpetrated primarily by Muslim Albanians who had been settling in the region as legal and illegal immigrants, and for social, religious and political reasons, at various periods during the rule of the Ottomans, the Italian fascists and Tito’s communists.³
The ethnic Albanians are fond of Kosovo as the stronghold of their main national movement, “Albanian League”, founded in Prizren in 1878 on the eve of the Congress of Berlin. All Albanians, including the Kosovo Albanians, see Kosovo as symbolizing an “ancient Albanian land”, Dardania, which directly, in ethnic terms, links the ancient Illyrians with the modernday Albanian community in the province. This romantic historical notion, originally concocted in Austria-Hungary in the late nineteenth century for the political purpose of finding a common denominator uniting the divided Albanian tribes,⁴ was additionally elaborated between the two world wars, and eventually the Illyrian theory was fully embraced by Albanian historians, becoming an official ideology under the communist dictator Enver Hoxha.⁵ The Illyrian theory views Albanians as direct descendants of the pre-Roman Illyrian tribe and labels Serbs as “Slavic invaders” who did not begin to settle in this ancient Albanian land until the seventh century AD.⁶
The Serbian monasteries and churches in Kosovo and Metohija — including four UNESCO World Heritage Sites of Serbia in Kosovo⁷ — built in unusually large numbers between the early thirteenth and late fifteenth centuries, were, according to Albanian propagandists, constructed on the foundations of earlier “Illyrian churches”. Some of them indeed were built on earlier foundations, but those were the remains of Byzantine-era churches, which is a phenomenon typical of the “Byzantine Commonwealth“.⁸
The Serbian position is supported by tangible evidence. Apart from written historical sources, foreign and domestic, attesting to Serbian presence in the area, there still are in Kosovo thirteen hundred Serb Orthodox Christian churches, monasteries, monuments, and archaeological sites.⁹ The process of ethnic change unfolding from the seventeenth to the twentieth century, by which Albanians gradually replaced Serbs as Kosovo’s majority population, is well documented as well. Among its causes, the primary one was foreign oppression, which often obtained Albanian support. On the other hand, there is no tangible scholarly evidence for ethnic or cultural continuity between ancient Illyrians and modern Albanians: the relevant historical sources of the sixth to eleventh centuries remained completely silent on this matter.¹⁰ Plentiful place-names in Kosovo (including the name of the province) are of Slavic, i.e. Serbian origin. Nothing of this was enough to prevent the creation of a modern Albanian mythology based on the purported continuity with ancient Illyrians, a theory strongly supported by a number of foreign scholars in an often biased and bizarrely passionate way.¹¹
What the Serbs in the case of Kosovo have almost entirely on their side is historical accuracy, while the current demographics are heavily on the Albanian side. It is no wonder then that the contemporary Albanian interpretation of Kosovo’s past is not guided by the historical accuracy motive. Rather it is a case of historical revisionism that, by projecting the current demographic situation back into the past, seeks to provide its legitimacy and thus discredit any claim, past or present, Serbia might lay to Kosovo.¹² The final objective is to secure international recognition of the area of 10,887 square kilometres of this troublesome Serbian province as a new country of “Kosovars“, allegedly a new nation. In actual fact Kosovo is a second Albanian state ethnically cleansed of both Serbs and other non-Albanian communities, a second Albanian state extended into the medieval heartland of contemporary Serbia.

To be continued: From Ottoman dominance to a Serbian and Yugoslav realm

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^* An earlier version of this paper was presented at the University of Ottawa, Canada, on 6 March 2008. 

¹ S. Marjanović-Dušanić, “Patterns of Martyrial Sanctity in the Royal Ideology of Medieval Serbia. Continuity and Change”, Balcanica XXXVII (2006), Institute for Balkan Studies, Belgrade: Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts, 2007; T. A. Emmert, “The Kosovo Legacy”, in Kosovo, ed. W. Dorich (Alhambra, California: Kosovo Charity Found, Serbian Orthodox Diocese of Western America, 1992). For more, see R. Mihaljčić, The Battle of Kosovo in History and the Popular Tradition (Belgrade: Beogradski grafičko-izdavački zavod, 1989).
² S. Koljević, The Epic in the Making (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1978); N. Ćurčija-Prodanović, Heroes of Serbia. Folk Ballads Retold (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1963); C. Stewart, Serbian Legacy (London: George Allen and Unwin, 1959).
³ Documents diplomatiques. Correspondance concernant les actes de violence et de brigandage des Albanais dans la Vieille Serbie (Vilayet de Kosovo) 1898–1899 (Belgrade: Ministère des Affaires Etrangères, 1899); Dj. Slijepčević, Srpsko-arbanški odnosi kroz vekove s posebnim osvrtom na novije vreme (Himelsthür: Eparhija zapadnoevropska, 1983); D. Bogdanović, Knjiga o Kosovu (Belgrade: Srpska akademija nauka i umetnosti, 1985); M. Rakić, Konzulska pisma 1905–1911, ed. A. Mitrović (Belgrade: Prosveta, 1985); A. Urošević, Etnički procesi na Kosovu tokom turske vladavine (Belgrade: Srpska akademija nauka i umetnosti, 1987); Zadužbine Kosova. Spomenici i znamenja srpskog naroda (Prizren–Belgrade: Eparhija raško-prizrenska, 1987); Savremenici o Kosovu i Metohiji 1852–1912, ed. D. T. Bataković (Belgrade: Srpska književna zadruga, 1988); Le Kosovo-Metohija dans l’histoire serbe, ed. R. Samardžić (Lausanne: L’Age d’Homme, 1990); D. T. Bataković, The Kosovo Chronicles (Belgrade: Plato, 1992). 
⁴ S. Skendi, Albanian National Awakening, 1878-1912 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1967). 
⁵ Nathalie Clayer, Religion et nation chez les Albanais aux XIXe-XXe siècles (Istanbul: Les Éditions ISIS, 2002). 
⁶ Albanians and Their Territories, ed. A. Buda (Tirana: 8 Nëntori, 1985); The Truth on Kosova (Tirana: Institute of History, Academy of Sciences of the Republic of Albania, Encyclopaedia Publishing House, 1993). For a recent analysis see Albania and the Albanian identities, ed. A. Zhelyazkova (Sofia: International Center for Minority Studies and Intercultural Relations, 2000); Albanian Identities: Myth & History, eds. S. SchwandnerSievers and B. J. Fischer (London: Hurst & Co, 2002). 
⁷ The Monastery of Visoki Dečani was the first that was listed as a World Heritage site (2004), and the extension in 2006 included the Patriarchate of Peć, the Monastery of Gračanica, and the Church of the Holy Virgin of Ljeviša in Prizren (Serbia: Date of Inscription: 2004; Extension: 2006, Criteria: (ii)(iii)(iv); Property: 2.8802 ha; Buffer zone: 115.3879 ha Autonomous province of Kosovo; N42 39 40 E20 15 56; Ref: 724bis). UNESCO describes them as follows: “The four edifices of the site reflect the high points of the Byzantine-Romanesque ecclesiastical culture, with its distinct style of wall painting, which developed in the Balkans between the 13th and 17th centuries. The Dečani Monastery was built in the mid-14th century for the Serbian king Stefan Dečanski and is also his mausoleum. The Patriarchate of Peć Monastery is a group of four domed churches featuring series of wall paintings. The 13th-century frescoes of the Church of Holy Apostles are painted in a unique, monumental style. Early 14thcentury frescoes in the church of the Holy Virgin of Ljevisa represent the appearance of the new so-called Palaiologian Renaissance style, combining the influences of the eastern Orthodox Byzantine and the Western Romanesque traditions. The style played a decisive role in subsequent Balkan art.” (http://whc.unesco.org/en/list/724/) 
⁸ For more see G. Subotić, Art of Kosovo: The Sacred Land (New York: Monacelli Press, 1998). 
⁹ Comprehensive documentation available in Zadužbine Kosova. Spomenici i znamenja, passim. 
¹⁰ Illyriens et Albanais, ed. M. Garašanin (Belgrade: Académie serbe des Sciences et des Arts, 1990); cf. G. Jandot, L’Albanie d’Enver Hoxha 1944–1985 (Paris: L’Harmattan, 1994), 25–26, quoting Alex Buda, President of the Albanian Academy of Science, on discontinuity between Illyrians and Albanians. 
¹¹ See N. Malcolm, Kosovo. A Short History (New York: New York University Press, 1998), and the review by A. Djilas, “Imagining Kosovo: A Biased New Account Fans Western Confusion”, Foreign Affairs (September 1998). For a less biased but still incomplete history of Kosovo, see M. Vickers, Between Serb and Albanian. A History of Kosovo (London: Hurst & Co., 1988). In French-speaking countries, for an example of ardent support to the Albanian hard-line position, see M. Roux, Les Albanais en Yougoslavie. Minorité nationale, territoire et développement (Paris: Editions de la Maison des Sciences de l’Homme, 1992). 
¹² D. T. Bataković, Kosovo. La spirale de la haine (Lausanne: L’Age d’Homme, 1998); two useful insights into the different and essentially irreconcilable Serbian and Albanian positions on Kosovo can be found in the proceedings of two conferences held under the auspices of European mediators: Kosovo-Kosova. Confrontation or Coexistence, eds. G. Duijzings, D. Janjić and S. Maliqi (Peace Research, University of Nijmegen, Political Cultural Centre 042, 1996), and Kosovo. Avoiding Another Balkan War, eds. Th. Veremis and E. Kofos (Athens: Eliamep, University of Athens, 1998). See also Kosovo. Contending Voices on Balkan Interventions, ed. W. J. Buckley (Grand Rapids, Michigan and Cambridge, UK: William B. Eerdmans Pub. Co., 2000). For a German pro-Albanian view, see Kosovo/Kosova. Mythen, Daten, Fakten, eds. W. Petritch, K. Kaser and R. Pichler (Klagenfurt–Vienna: Wieser Verlag, 1999). More balanced is a standard Italian overview covering the contemporary period, M. Dogo, Kosovo. Albanesi e Serbi: le radici del conflitto (Lungro di Cosenza: Marco, 1992). Balanced and accurate among the latest works is J.-A. Dérens, Kosovo. Année zéro, preface M.-A. Nowicki (Paris: Paris-Méditerranée, 2004). See also a very useful book, A. Troude, Géopolitique de la Serbie (Paris: Elipses, 2006).