Kosovo: Monitored Secession

The conflict in Kosovo can be considered an ethno-territorial conflict par excellence, one which experts on the region identified as the Balkan’s “Gordian Knot” from early on. Kosovo (see Fig. 7.1) encompasses an area of 10,887 km2 and is home to approximately 2 million inhabitants. It was an autonomous province of the Republic of Serbia within the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia after 1974 that concurrently had equal status (just like autonomous Vojvodina) in the federal executive body as the six republics.