Kosovo: The Disputed Territory

Kosovo is a disputed territory in south-central Balkan Peninsula, that is roughly the size of Los Angeles county, and is home to over 2 million people. There are seven main ethnic groups in Kosovo, which include Albanians, Serbs, Slavic Muslims, Gorani, Ashkali, Turks, and Roma. The largest and most predominant ethnic groups are the Albanians, who constitute over 92% of the population of Kosovo. The second largest ethnic group and the largest minority is constituted by the 120 000 Serbs remaining in Kosovo, who live mostly in the Serb dominated northern Kosovo, with the city of Mitrovica at its core. Other key Serb-dominated areas include Strpce in the south and isolated Serbian villages and enclaves, which are scattered throughout the country. Gorani are a Slavic-speaking ethnic group, whose origins are of mixed Slavic and Albanian parentage, who are located in the southern tip of Kosovo, called the Gora region, and on the slopes of the Shar mountain range, at the border with Macedonia. The Ashkali are Albanianized Roma. The Slavic Muslims, Turks, and Roma are scattered in disparate numbers throughout the cities and villages of Kosovo.
The history of Kosovo is a rich legacy that speaks of centuries of intertwining cultures and religions, whose mutual fusion created a unique set of political circumstances, which gave rise to violent conflicts in the country, in the late 20th century.   The earliest inhabitants of Kosovo were ancient Illyrians and Thracians. The Slavs arrived in the 7th century, and contributed to the ethnic puzzle which was to characterize the underlying foundations of tensions in Kosovo, which most prominently came to the surface in the clash between the Slavic Serbs and Illyrian Albanians.
The Albanians are most likely the only direct descendants of the ancient Illyrian people, who were one of the native peoples of the Balkan Peninsula, well before the Roman conquest and the subsequent Slavic migrations. The first written sources to mention...