Word: kosovo
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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With eight nationalities, three religions, five languages and two alphabets, the polymorphous nation of Yugoslavia has long bubbled with ethnic rivalry. One of those conflicts now threatens to erupt into violence. Angry Serbs are staging increasingly militant demonstrations against their countrymen in Kosovo who are ethnic Albanians. The biggest demonstration so far took place Sept. 3, as 70,000 protesters gathered in the town of Smederevo, near Belgrade, to demand action by the central government...
...Serbs complain that the Kosovo Albanians have launched a campaign of terror and rape to drive them out of the heavily Albanian province. Says Radomir Smiljanic, a well-known Serbian writer: "The harassment of women has become so common that Serbs have to accompany their wives and daughters to work and school." Officials in Kosovo vehemently deny the charges, and non- Serbs elsewhere agree they have been wildly exaggerated by the Serbian press...
Meanwhile, authorities have had to cope with Yugoslavia's long-simmering ethnic tensions. The worst problem is the impoverished southern province of Kosovo, where once dominant Serbs are now outnumbered almost 9 to 1 by ethnic Albanians, many of whom seek independence from Belgrade. Animosity has run high since Yugoslav troops crushed ethnic Albanian riots in 1981. The Serbs complain of rising Albanian persecution in the form of rapes, murders and cattle blindings. Hostility mounted last month when Serbian newspapers quoted former Yugoslav Vice President Fadilj Hodza, a top-ranking ethnic Albanian Communist, as sardonically telling army-reserve officers that...
...called autonomous provinces-that have their own languages, religions and cultures. The Soviets might try to exploit the traditional hostility between the Serbs and the Croats; together they constitute more than 60% of Yugoslavia's 22 million people. Another potential trouble spot is the southern province of Kosovo, the country's poorest region, where friction is developing between Serbs and the rapidly exploding ethnic Albanian population. Two months ago, 50 ethnic Albanians in Kosovo were charged with fomenting political unrest. This could conceivably serve as a Soviet pretext for stirring up trouble in Yugoslavia, as could the thinly...
...have had a cohesive influence. "People have been concentrating on a better standard of living instead of hating their neighbors," says a Western diplomat in Belgrade. But a severe economic downturn could aggravate the glaring inequities, and consequent animosities, between the developed northern republics like Slovenia and hinterlands like Kosovo. Lately the economy has been ailing. Unemployment, estimated at more than 13%, is growing. The current annual inflation rate is estimated at 35%, compared with 14% in 1978. Productivity has slowed, and workers, under the self-management system, have voted themselves inflationary wage increases. Worst of all, the country...