Historical Context
“THE great river of life flows not evenly for all peoples. In places it crawls sluggishly through dull flats, and the monuments of a dim past moulder upon the banks that it has no force to overflow; in others it dashes forward torrentially, carving new beds, sweeping away old landmarks; or it breaks into backwaters apart from the main stream, and sags to and fro, choked with the flotsam and jetsam of the ages.
Such backwaters of life exist in many corners of Europe—but most of all in the Near East. For folks in such lands time has almost stood still. The wanderer from the West stands awestruck amongst them, filled with vague memories of the cradle of his race, saying, “This did I do some thousands of years ago; thus did I lie in wait for mine enemy; so thought I and so acted in the beginning of Time.”
M. Edith Durham, High Albania, 1909
While Prishtina and Kosovo may now be considered much more the home of the “Young Europeans” than “the land of the living past,” there is no doubt as to the tremendous significance of ancient cultures, languages, and identities in terms of explaining contemporary Kosovo. For many centuries, Kosovo has remained a battleground between Albanians and Serbs, and at various times, a host of other actors. The 1998-1999 Kosovo conflict resulted in hundreds of thousands (some estimate millions) of displaced persons, and thousands (if not tens of thousands) of casualties. Notwithstanding NATO intervention, and the continuing commitment of considerable resources by the United Nations, the European Union, and the United States, the competing claims to the territories of Kosovo remain unresolved.