Page 126 - The Winter of Islam and the Spring to Come

THE WINTER OF ISLAM AND THE SPRING TO COME
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The hatred of the Serbs for the Ottomans goes back over 600 years.
During the First Kosovar War, in 1389, Sultan Murat I was stabbed and
seriously injured in the northwest of Pristina by a Serb disguised as a
messenger. Murat eventually died after witnessing the Ottomans' vic-
tory. The second great Ottoman victory in Kosovo took place in 1448,
when Sultan Murat II found himself facing a crusader army led by the
Serbians, and he defeated them. Following the Second Kosova War,
Muslim Turks settled in the Balkans in large numbers.
Throughout the centuries that the Balkans remained under
Ottoman rule there was no ethnic problem of any magnitude, but rather
a general air of peace and security. However, certain international pow-
ers stirred up feelings of nationalism in the Ottoman territories, which
led to the Balkan wars. When these came to an end, those same powers
reshaped the region. This new order turned the Balkans into a battle-
ground in the making.

The Fear of a "Greater Albania" and Kosovo
The new map of the Balkans which was agreed upon at the Treaty
of Versailles at the end of World War I highlights one interesting fact:
Instead of uniting the Albanians – a key segment of the population of
the Balkans – in a single state, they were left scattered over a number of
countries. Why were the Albanians not brought together within com-
mon borders when the map was drawn up?
In the answer to that question lies the fundamental cause of all the
conflict there up to our day. The prospect of the formation of a
"Greater Albanian" state, one made up of Muslim Albanians, is re-
garded by certain international powers as not being in their interests.
The reason why no solution could be found to this decade-long prob-
lem lies in yet the same idea. If Kosovo is recognized as independent, a
"Greater Albania" could again be established in the southern Balkans.
Albanians make up more than 95 percent of the population of
Albania. Moreover, there is an important Albanian population of 35
percent within the borders of Macedonia, and some 50,000 Albanians