Kosovo is a province of Serbia. Serbia is by far the larger of the two republics which make up the present day Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (the other republic being Montenegro). Serbs and Albanians have lived in Kosovo for many hundreds of years. Often there has been friendship and co-operation. Perhaps, throughout this time, the majority of people have favoured peace, friendship and cooperation. The image created by western media of the people of the region is substantially false. The Rough Guide to Yugoslavia, 1985 edition, reported on Kosovo, “The people are among the friendliest you will meet - you will never have to buy a drink here, you’re always someone’s guest.”

However, on numerous occasions there has been violent conflict, atrocities, house burning, mass expulsions, ethnic hatred, racism, attempts at ethnic cleansing. Over the centuries it would be hard to say which side bears the greater guilt.

Kosovo is the cradle of Serb civilisation. Numerous Christian churches and monasteries were built in Kosovo in the middle ages and have functioned there continuously for 600 years. Unfortunately some 85 of them were looted, vandalised or destroyed by Albanian extremists in 1999 under the protection of NATO troops. Mosues were never targeted by Serbs. Kosovo has power generation plants and very valuable mineral resources.

Place names in Kosovo are Serbian, with the Albanian place names simply being Albanianised Serb words.

For centuries the region was dominated by the Ottoman Turks. Their rule came to an end in 1912 when they were defeated by the Serbs. At the end of the First World War Yugoslavia was created. From November 1918 to February 1919 the Serbian Army carried out massacres of Albanians in Kosovo. At least 1500 men women and children were killed and fifteen villages in the Rugovo Gorge were destroyed. Between 90,000 and 150,000 Albanians left for Turkey, and around 70,000 Serbs moved into the area.

In the Second World War Italians and then Germans occupied the region and the Albanians, fought on the side of the invaders against Serbs. There were dreadful scenes of slaughter as the Albanian set out to exterminate the Serbs. Between Djakovica and Pec in every village every house was burned to the ground. Between 3,000 and 10,000 Serbs and Montenegrins were killed. When the Yugoslav partisans fought back between 3,000 and 25,000 Albanians were killed.

After the war Kosovo was re-established as a province of Serbia (which was one of the six republics that made up former Yugoslavia). There was hostility between Serbs and Albanians in Kosovo and after a period of ill-treatment of Albanians this ill-treatment was officially condemned and Albanians began to win more rights. In 1969 the Albanian language University of Pristina was set up together with other Albanian cultural institutions and ties with Albania. In 1974 Kosovo was declared an autonomous province. A huge amount of economic aid poured into Kosovo from the rest of Yugoslavia - including the rest of Serbia. Yet there was a great deal of harassment of Serbs by Albanians. In 1981 Albanian rioters demanded total independence for Kosovo.

Abuse of Serbs by Albanians was a very serious problem. The Albanians wanted an ethnically pure province. On 9 November 1982 David Binder reported in the New York Times the story of an attempt to set fire to a twelve-year-old Serbian boy. “Such incidents have prompted many of Kosovo’s Slavic inhabitants to flee the province, thereby helping to fulfil a nationalist demand for an ethnically ‘pure’ Albanian Kosovo.”

In 1983 Kosovo Serbs demanded that the Serbian and Federal authorities do more to provide protection from Albanians who, they said, were violating their human rights. In October 1985 2000 Serbs signed a petition for help addressed to the assemblies of Serbia and Yugoslavia. In 1986 there were 50,000 signatures on a petition demanding greater rights for Serbs and Montenegrins in Kosovo. Between 1961-1981 42% of Serbs and 63% of Montenegrins left Kosovo.

In 1988 Mr Milosevic dismissed a number of Albanian leaders from the Communist Party and removed the President of Kosovo. In 1989 Serbia’s National Assembly ended Kosovo’s autonomy and declared a state of emergency.

Now it was to turn of the Serbs to dominate. The Serb authorities dismissed thousands of Albanians from state jobs, including most of the teaching profession. Hundreds were thrown into prison.

An Amnesty International report on Kosovo published in September 1998 complained of “a decade of torture and ill treatment. . . a systematic pattern of human rights violations against the majority ethnic Albanian population - including torture and ill treatment by police, deaths in police custody, and unfair trials for political prisoners.” In the same period, although the vast majority of Kosovo Albanians supported peaceful negotiations with Serbs, the tiny, disorganised, armed gangs, which later grew into the KLA, set about abducting, and murdering Kosovo Albanian “collaborators” and Serb policemen, officials and civilians. They were soon to be partly trained and supplied by Germany, America and the UK.

To give some measure of the seriousness of the conflict in Kosovo it can be compared with the conflict in Northern Ireland. The two provinces are of similar in size. In Kosovo there were far fewer violent deaths than in Northern Ireland in the 25 years up to the Civil War in Kosovo in 1998.

In 1998 there were 2000 deaths in the civil war in Kosovo - 600 being Serbs. In the same year, in the United States, a country allegedly at peace, there were 30,708 gun deaths.

It can clearly be seen that serious human rights abuses were committed by both Albanians and Serbs. Inter-ethnic violence dated back many decades and was not a recent phenomenon. It was not a simple case of “one-sided repression.” The scale of violence was serious, but not such as to justify the hysteria of the international humanitarian concern and the wholly inappropriate bombing that was devoted to it in 1999. Also, the United States was particularly badly qualified to advise others on handling violence within their societies. (38)