Free Essays,College Free Essays,Free College Essays at Anti Essays

For all this years Serbians were considered a minority group. In the past years Clinton administration's started to increase their involvement in the conflict in Serbia's Kosovo province where threatening new economic sanctions and NATO interventions against Yugoslavia, to increasing military and intelligence ties with Albania. Bordering Albania and Macedonia, Kosovo is the southern province of present-day Serbia, which, together with Montenegro, makes up what remains of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. Further undermine the prospect of democratic reform in Yugoslavia, perpetuate European security dependence on the United States. Bordering Albania and Macedonia, Kosovo is the southern province of present-day Serbia, which, together with Montenegro, makes up what remains of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia.

Serbs are not identified until the 10th century writings of Byzantine emperor Constantine VII. There, they are described as Slavs residing in the area of present-day Kosovo, Montenegro, and Bosnia, and who converted to Eastern Christianity in the 9th century. In the 12th century, Serbs successfully fought against the Byzantine Empire to establish an independent Serbian kingdom. Kosovo was crucial to that kingdom and to the Serbian Orthodox church for the next two centuries. In fact, virtually all of the oldest monuments in Kosovo are Serbian Orthodox and most of place names have a Serbian language root. But in 1389, the Serb dynasty fell to the Ottoman Empire at the battle of Kosovo Polje. Although they fought alongside Serbs during the battle, most ethnic Albanians in the area converted to Islam in the 15th and 16th centuries and participated in the Ottoman administration of Kosovo.

As the Ottoman Empire declined in the 18th and 19th centuries, Kosovo became the focus of competing Serbian and Albanian independence movements. In 1878, the League of Prizren, which sought to create an independent Albanian state, was...