By HARIS YURGOVIC
Special to WordSmith
Peace is what everybody wants. Yet war is prevalent. Hatred and killing make so many people unhappy. Most of those people are just regular civilians, many of whom have to fight against their friends. The reasons for the fighting include cultural, racial and religious differences.
One of the countries where war has erupted in recent years is Kosovo, which is in the southern part of Yugoslavia. Kosovo has two ethnic groups, Serbs (Christians) and Albanians (Muslims). Serbs are Orthodox, the same religion as Greeks and Russians, and Albanians are Muslims leftover from the Ottoman Empire. Serbs are southern Slavs who came to the Balkan Peninsula hundreds of years ago they believe Kosovo is their homeland. On the other hand, the Albanians there were the part of Turk Seljuks who for 500 years ruled almost one third of Europe, including the Balkan Peninsula. These ruled Serbia, Montenegro (these two countries form Yugoslavia today), Macedonia, Greece, Bosnia, Croatia, Romania and Bulgaria. Before World War I, these countries were allies and beat the Turks together. Right now only a remnant of Turks remains in Europe. These Christian countries finally won their independence and there were many Muslims left in these countries after the war. These countries came to an agreement to give Muslims today’s Albania and some are left in Bosnia.
Today in Kosovo 87 percent of the population is Albanian and 13 percent Serbian. These groups lived there happily without fighting for much of the century. They fought the Nazis together in World War II and lived peacefully under a Soviet-led government for another 45 years. In 1989, after the collapse of the Soviet Union, these two started to fight each other. Albanians began asking for independence in Kosovo and Serbs do not want to relinquish their homeland.
The U.S. says it is trying to keep the peace in Kosovo. This peace, however, will last only a few years. I propose, not in jest, that the U.S. and its allies invest money to build a great wall between these two countries to end the conflict. Each group must have its homeland. That is the only way to permanent peace.