A tiny slice of land is all that Kosovo's Serbs and ethnic Albanians have in common. They speak different languages, have different religious beliefs and hold different versions of history. Today two million Albanians constitute over 90 % of the population.
Albanians, who are mostly Muslims, claim they are Kosovo's original inhabitants, the descendants of the ancient Illyrians. It is the umbilical cord that connects them to their mythical past and it is the home of modern Albanian nationalism, not just in Kosovo but for all Albanians. To the Serbs it is the cradle of their civilization and the medieval seat of their Orthodox Church.
A key date in Kosovo's history is June 28, 1389, when a Serbian prince fought the invading Ottoman Turks at Kosovo - and lost. To this day, the story has a powerful grip on the Serbian imagination. The call to "revenge Kosovo" has been a battle cry for much of Serb history.
For most of the 20th century, Kosovo was a province of Serbia kept under a tight leash, economically depressed and beset with unrest and uprisings.
Then on June 28, 1989 at the 600th anniversary of the Kosovo battle, Serbian president Slobodan Milosevic at the peak of his power summoned his fellow Serbs to wage war for Greater Serbia leading to the bloody collapse of Yugoslavia.
Mr. Milosevic's true nemesis was Kosovo, says Sonja Biserko, director of the Helsinki Committee for Human Rights in Serbia. He was determined to suppress the Kosovo Liberation Army: ?The Kosovars at first opted for peaceful resistance to Serbian rule under Mr Milosevic, declaring their independence and running a parallel state. But after 1995 most Albanians realized their case was not going to be taken up by the international community and that started their radicalization that inevitably led to the emergence of the Kosovo Liberation Army. Milosevic then turned on Kosovo with a heavy hand. His attempts in 1999 to drive hundreds of thousands of Albanians out of the province brought on NATO's intervention.?
Kosovo is now an international protectorate run by the U.N. Mission for Kosovo or UNMIK. Technically, it remains a province of Serbia. So the age-old feud between Serbs and Albanians continues. Albanians overwhelmingly seek independence. A majority of Serbs is opposed, though some would accept partition.
In the meantime, U.N. efforts to improve life for Kosovars are faltering. Its latest program to privatize real estate and large businesses has stalled amid legal disputes between Serbia and the Kosovo governors.
Despite $10 billion of Western aid, more than half of Kosovo's population lives below the poverty line and still more are jobless. Like its neighbors, the province suffers from organized crime and traffic in drugs and human beings.
Alex Anderson, project director for Kosovo of the Brussels-based International Crisis Group, says progress is stymied because of murky and overlapping authorities. The United Nations administers the province, the European Union largely funds it. NATO led forces provide security, and the United States wields diplomatic power.
?All this makes for messy governance,? says Mr. Anderson. ?The United Nations administration has very few mechanisms for probing or taking into account and mobilizing pressures and advocacy from below. It responds to commands from New York and pressures and initiatives from powerful member states of the U.N. It responds to commands from New York and pressures and initiatives from powerful member states of the United Nations. The U.N. administration left to itself acts like a kind of dead hand, and we have seen several initiatives start off promisingly but then grind to a halt.?
Mr. Anderson says continued ambiguity over Kosovo's future makes Albanians restless and distrustful: ?One could see this uncertainty manifested in the failure of the U.N's recent weapons amnesty program promising $250,000 to the Kosovo community that turns over the most weapons. It failed miserably, collecting something less than 200 weapons in the whole province. No municipality was interested to gather even a minimal number of weapons in order to win this development money."
After four years of peace, ethnic tensions in Kosovo seem under control. But Albanian and Serb communities barely mix, and old wounds still fester. Albanians resent Serbs for rejecting independence and are generally contemptuous of them.
Amnesty International warned recently that Serbs and Roma who make up less than six percent of the population remain at risk of Albanian revenge attacks.