2023-06-08 15:53:55
“Kosovo is the heart of Serbia. » This statement made a few days ago by Novak Djokovic, tennis champion, many Serbs subscribe to, in a form of collective denial of reality. It is indeed a long time since Kosovo ceased to be the heart of Serbia. Long before NATO intervened militarily, in the spring of 1999, to put an end to the violent repression by Slobodan Milosevic’s troops against the Albanian-speaking majority of the population.
“Your Algeria is not overseas, on another continent, it is in your Orleans! »had launched André Malraux, when receiving a Serbian friend in 1975. The formula had the merit of pointing out a reality: the evolution of the province located in the south of Serbia had, from that time, taken on the appearance of a colonial fact with a 90% Albanian-speaking population settled in a poor and cramped territory, under the domination of Belgrade.
Kosovo, the cradle of Great Serbian nationalism
If Kosovo was indeed the heart of Serbia, it was in the Middle Ages. Monasteries were then built there; they still occupy a central place in Serbian identity and heritage, especially that of Peć, seat of the Orthodox Patriarchate. But according to the vicissitudes of History, in particular following the Ottoman conquest of the region in the 15th century, the population of this territory has changed profoundly. Serbs left Kosovo in droves, constituting no more than 10% of its population after the Second World War. This territory, the poorest in the region, was nevertheless forcibly included within the Yugoslav entity.
Despite this return to Belgrade, no one among the Serbian population rushed to resettle in the impoverished southern province. The lack of economic development far outweighed the emotional attachment to the historic heartland of medieval Serbia.
The strong man of communist Yugoslavia, Marshal Tito, understood that this situation was untenable and that, sooner or later, the Albanian-speaking population risked revolting. In 1974, he granted autonomy to Kosovo. But in the 1980s, his successor in Belgrade, Slobodan Milosevic, built his power by stoking Greater Serbian nationalism. Kosovo served as a springboard for him: in 1987, he became the idol of an entire people by promising the Serbs of the province to protect them and restore full powers to them.
In the process, he suppressed the autonomy of Kosovo, setting in motion the infernal mechanism that was to cause the implosion of the Yugoslav federation and two bloody wars in Croatia and Bosnia in the 1990s. But far from fulfilling his dream of “Great Serbia”, Milosevic caused the misfortune of the Serbs, massively driven out of Croatia and today recluse in Bosnia in one of the two entities which compose the country, the Republika srpska.
Deadly Illusion
In the same way, his political choices in Kosovo ended up turning against the Serbs. Unable to make the slightest concession, Milosevic took it into his head to “subdue” the Albanian-speaking majority. After years of passive resistance, the UCK (Kosovo Liberation Army) took up arms against Belgrade in 1998. And, faced with the violence of Belgrade’s response, NATO intervened militarily to prevent a new tragedy in the Balkans . Serbia then completely lost control of Kosovo, which became independent in 2008, the logical conclusion of several years of political stalemate and unbridled violence.
To say today, as Novak Djokovic does, repeating word for word what Milosevic said in the 1980s, that Kosovo remains “Heart of Serbia”, it’s feeding a deadly illusion, it’s denying the course of history, in a vain attempt to reverse it. There will be no turning back, except at the cost of another bloody tragedy. As long as the Serbian elites refuse to face this reality, tacitly approving the words of the tennis star, they will remain locked in a sterile past, unable to project themselves towards a future which is called the European Union.
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