Serbs and Albanians: A Brief History of the Balkan Conflict

Why this article exists

Serbs and Albanians are two Balkan peoples who have lived as neighbors for over a thousand years and have a complicated relationship with each other. They have fought, intermarried, traded, ruled each other in different centuries, and produced two separate but overlapping national stories about the same stretches of land.

This article exists because diaspora readers — Albanian-American, Serbian-American, or simply curious outsiders — regularly search for context. The internet’s available summaries are often partisan or shallow, and many are written by someone with a stake in one of the two narratives.

NAR (National Albanian Registry) is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit. We are a registry, not a think tank, not a media outlet, and not a political organization. We cannot take partisan sides on questions like Kosovo’s final status, and we have no business pretending to be historians. What we can do is set out the facts plainly, cite the major sources, present the conflicting narratives where they conflict, and let readers form their own views.

The two main reference articles for everything below are Wikipedia’s Albanian-Serbian conflict entry and Wikipedia’s Kosovo War entry. Where we cite specific casualty figures or dates, we are using those entries’ summaries, which in turn draw from the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY), the UN, and academic histories. Anywhere a fact is contested or a narrative is one of two, we say so.

This is meant to be a fair starting point, not the final word.

The geographic and demographic backdrop

Both peoples are native to the Balkans. The scholarly consensus is that Albanians descend at least partially from the Illyrians, an Indo-European people who lived in the western Balkans before the arrival of Greeks, Romans, and Slavs. The Albanian language is the sole surviving member of its own Albanoid branch of Indo-European, and that linguistic isolation supports a long, continuous regional presence.

Serbs descend from South Slavic populations who migrated into the Balkans during the 6th and 7th centuries AD. The Serbian language is part of the South Slavic branch of Indo-European, closely related to Croatian, Bosnian, and Montenegrin.

Today there are roughly 7 million Serbs worldwide and roughly 7-10 million Albanians, depending on how diaspora populations are counted. The core homelands sit next to each other on the western and central Balkan Peninsula.

The major zones of demographic overlap include:

• Kosovo — approximately 93% ethnic Albanian, approximately 5% Serb, with smaller Bosniak, Turkish, Roma, Ashkali, and Gorani communities. The Serb population is concentrated in the north (around North Mitrovica) and in scattered enclaves elsewhere.
• The Preševo Valley — a region of southern Serbia that is majority ethnic Albanian. It sits inside Serbia’s internationally recognized borders.
• Southern Serbia, northern Montenegro, and parts of North Macedonia — areas with significant Albanian populations alongside Serb, Montenegrin, and Macedonian neighbors.
• The Sandžak region (split between Serbia and Montenegro) and parts of Kosovo where Bosniak Muslim populations live.

This section is descriptive, not normative. It describes who lives where; it does not say who should live where, who has a stronger claim, or what the borders should be. Those are exactly the questions where reasonable people on each side disagree, and where partisan writing usually starts.

The early period: medieval through Ottoman

The medieval Balkans were not a region of nation-states. Power moved between the Byzantine Empire, the various Serbian and Bulgarian medieval states, the Republic of Venice, and a shifting cast of local lords. Both Serbs and Albanians appear in the historical record under their own ethnic names by the 11th century.

The most famous Serbian medieval state is the Serbian Empire under Stefan Dušan (mid-14th century), which at its peak controlled large parts of the southern Balkans — including parts of what is now Albania. Dušan was crowned “Emperor of the Serbs and Greeks” in 1346. The Serbian medieval church, language, and statecraft of this period are central to modern Serbian national identity.

The single most-cited medieval event in the Serbian-Albanian story is the Battle of Kosovo on June 15, 1389 — fought between a Serbian-led coalition under Prince Lazar Hrebeljanović and the Ottoman Empire under Sultan Murad I. Both leaders died in connection with the battle: Murad was killed during or shortly after the fighting, and Lazar was captured and executed. The battle was militarily inconclusive in immediate terms, but it weakened Serbian power and is remembered in Serbian national mythology as a foundational sacrifice. Serbian medieval statehood did not end on the field — the Serbian Despotate continued in various forms until 1459 — but 1389 became the symbolic date of “the fall.”

The role of Albanian forces at the Battle of Kosovo is one of the places where Serbian and Albanian historiography diverge. Some sources cite Albanian contingents fighting alongside Lazar’s coalition; the Albanian lord Teodor II Muzaka is reliably documented as having fought and died in the battle. Other claimed Albanian participants are disputed. As the Wikipedia entry on the battle notes, “Albanian historiography focuses on the role of Albanians” while “Serbian historiography minimises it or ignores it outright.” Both readings are made by serious historians; both are politically loaded.

After 1389, the Ottomans gradually consolidated control. Both peoples lived under Ottoman rule for roughly 500 years, from the late 14th century through the early 20th. During that long period:

• A significant portion of Albanians converted to Islam, while substantial Catholic and Orthodox Albanian communities continued.
• Most Serbs maintained Serbian Orthodox Christianity, with the Serbian Orthodox Church serving as a key vehicle for cultural continuity.
• Migrations reshaped the demographic map: Serbs moved north into Habsburg lands during conflicts with the Ottomans (the “Great Migrations” of 1690 and 1737-1739), and Albanians settled in increasing numbers in Kosovo and other lowland areas.

Modern nationalist narratives on both sides argue heatedly about how to interpret these centuries. Serbian narratives tend to frame the Albanian settlement of Kosovo as a process of displacement against earlier Serbian populations. Albanian narratives tend to frame Albanian presence in Kosovo as continuous and predating Slavic arrival. Academic historians today generally treat both narratives skeptically and emphasize that Ottoman demographic shifts were complex, multi-directional, and not reducible to either side’s simple story.

19th century nationalism and the 1913 borders

Balkan national consciousness emerged later than in Western Europe. It was a 19th-century phenomenon, shaped by Ottoman decline, great-power competition, and the cultural movements of European nationalism.

The key dates:

• 1804 and 1815: Two Serbian uprisings against Ottoman rule, leading to autonomy.
• 1878: The Congress of Berlin recognizes Serbian independence, expanding Serbia’s territory.
• 1878: The League of Prizren is founded — in Kosovo — as the first major organized Albanian national movement, originally formed to resist the partition of Albanian-inhabited lands at the Congress of Berlin.
• 1912: The First Balkan War ends Ottoman rule over most of the southern Balkans; Albania declares independence on November 28, 1912 (Wikipedia: Albanian-Serbian conflict).
• 1913: The Treaty of Bucharest and the subsequent border decisions of the Great Powers assign Kosovo to Serbia, despite its Albanian-majority population.

The 1913 settlement is widely cited as a structural source of later Albanian-Serbian dispute. It established a border that put a large Albanian-majority territory inside the Serbian state without a referendum or local consent process. Serbian historiography frames the same settlement as the recovery of historic Serbian territory from a collapsing Ottoman empire and as part of a regional partition of Ottoman lands among multiple Balkan states. The later phases of the relationship — Yugoslav-era policies, the 1990s war, the 2008 independence declaration, the ongoing Belgrade-Prishtina dialogue — all engage with the borders set in this period.

The period between 1912 and World War I also included violent expulsions of Albanian populations from areas newly incorporated into Serbia and Montenegro. Wikipedia’s entry on Albanians in Serbia summarizes contemporary accounts (including reporting by the journalist Leon Trotsky, then covering the wars) describing the expulsion and killing of “tens of thousands of Albanian civilians” during the 1912-1913 period. Serbian sources from the period frame the same events as the recovery of historic Serbian land. Both framings exist in the academic literature.

The 20th century

World War I and the Yugoslav Kingdom (1918-1941)

Serbia and Montenegro fought on the Allied side in World War I; Albania, newly independent, was occupied by multiple foreign armies. After the war, the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes (renamed Yugoslavia in 1929) absorbed Kosovo into its territory.

Yugoslav-era policies favored Serb settlement in Kosovo and curtailed Albanian-language education and political participation. Land redistribution programs transferred land to Serb settlers, often at the expense of Albanian peasants. These policies are well-documented in academic sources and are not seriously contested.

World War II (1941-1945)

Yugoslavia was invaded by Axis powers in 1941. Kosovo was largely incorporated into Italian-occupied Albania during the war, which reversed many of the inter-war policies. Both Albanians and Serbs fought on multiple sides — including in Yugoslav Partisan units — and the war featured significant inter-ethnic violence in both directions.

Communist Yugoslavia under Tito (1945-1980)

After 1945, Yugoslavia was reorganized as a socialist federal republic under Josip Broz Tito. Kosovo was placed inside the Republic of Serbia as an autonomous region (later autonomous province), which gave it some self-governance, the right to use the Albanian language in schools and administration, and eventually its own university (the University of Prishtina, founded 1969).

The 1974 Yugoslav Constitution expanded Kosovo’s autonomy substantially, giving it many of the powers of a full republic without the formal status. Albanian-language education and cultural institutions expanded significantly during this period.

This was also a period of demographic shift: the Serb share of Kosovo’s population declined from roughly 23% in 1948 to roughly 13% by 1981, while the Albanian share grew. Serbian narratives often attribute this to pressure on Serbs to leave; Albanian narratives attribute it primarily to higher Albanian birth rates and migration patterns. Academic studies generally find both factors at work, with their relative weight contested.

Two protest waves are remembered:

• 1968: Albanian student protests in Prishtina demanding republic status for Kosovo.
• 1981: Larger Albanian protests in Prishtina, met with a state of emergency and significant casualties.

The Milošević era and the 1998-1999 war

In 1989, Slobodan Milošević — then rising to dominance in Serbia and Yugoslavia — pushed through constitutional changes that revoked Kosovo’s autonomy. Albanian-language education was curtailed, Albanian-Kosovars were dismissed from state employment in large numbers, and a parallel Albanian-language education and governance system emerged informally.

Through the early 1990s, the Albanian-Kosovar leadership under Ibrahim Rugova pursued non-violent resistance. As that approach failed to reverse the situation, the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) emerged in the early 1990s, undertaking its first armed campaigns in 1995 and intensifying through 1996-1998 (Wikipedia: Kosovo War).

The Kosovo War ran from February 28, 1998 to June 11, 1999. Yugoslav security forces and the KLA fought a counter-insurgency war that escalated into widespread violence against civilian populations, particularly in rural Albanian-majority areas. After negotiations at Rambouillet failed in early 1999, NATO began an aerial bombing campaign on March 24, 1999, citing humanitarian grounds. The campaign lasted 78 days.

According to figures summarized in the Wikipedia entry on the Kosovo War (drawing on ICTY findings and humanitarian organization data):

• Approximately 13,500 people were killed during the conflict.
• 8,676 to 9,269 Albanian-Kosovar civilians were killed or remain missing.
• 1,641 non-Albanian civilians were killed or remain missing — approximately 1,196 of them Serbs, plus Roma, Bosniaks, and others.
• 454 to 528 civilians were killed during NATO airstrikes.
• Between 1.2 and 1.45 million Albanian-Kosovars were displaced during the war.

The International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) convicted senior Yugoslav and Serbian officials, including in the Milutinović et al. and Šainović et al. judgments, of crimes against humanity — including deportation and forced transfer — for the campaign against Albanian-Kosovar civilians. The ICTY did not characterize the conduct in Kosovo as genocide as a legal matter (Wikipedia: Kosovo War). We use these terms because the legal distinctions matter, and because using stronger or weaker terms than the court used would be misleading.

Yugoslav forces signed the Kumanovo Agreement on June 9, 1999. NATO and UN forces entered Kosovo on June 12, 1999. Kosovo became a UN protectorate under UNSC Resolution 1244, administered by UNMIK with NATO-led KFOR providing security.

Abuses by KLA forces against Serb civilians, Roma, and Albanians accused of collaboration are also documented. The ICTY indicted several KLA figures; the verdicts were mixed, with some acquittals and some convictions. A separate Council of Europe report by Swiss senator Dick Marty in 2010 alleged organized crime and serious abuses by elements of the wartime KLA leadership; those allegations contributed to the establishment of the Kosovo Specialist Chambers in The Hague, which has issued indictments of several former KLA leaders, including former president Hashim Thaçi (proceedings ongoing).

After the war, an estimated 200,000 Serbs and other non-Albanians fled Kosovo during 1999, in part because of fear of reprisals and in part because of documented attacks on the remaining Serb population. This period of post-war violence against Serbs in Kosovo is also part of the historical record and is included in ICTY case files.

After the war: 1999 to today

The post-war period is its own complicated story.

• March 2004: Anti-Serb riots erupt in Kosovo, sparked by the drowning of Albanian children in a river that local rumor (later disproven) attributed to Serbs. Roughly 19 people are killed and dozens of Serb Orthodox churches and monasteries are damaged or destroyed. Kosovo’s government and international authorities condemned the riots; the events are remembered in Serbian collective memory as a key episode of post-war anti-Serb violence.
• February 17, 2008: Kosovo declares independence. The declaration is recognized over time by approximately 111 UN member states, including the United States, most of the European Union, Australia, and Canada (Wikipedia: 2008 Kosovo declaration of independence). It is not recognized by Serbia, Russia, China, India, and several EU member states (Spain, Greece, Cyprus, Romania, Slovakia).
• July 22, 2010: The International Court of Justice issues an advisory opinion that Kosovo’s declaration of independence did not violate international law.
• April 2013: The Brussels Agreement on normalization of relations is signed by the prime ministers of Serbia and Kosovo, mediated by the European Union. It establishes a framework for the integration of Serb-majority municipalities in northern Kosovo into Kosovo’s institutions, in exchange for a degree of self-government for those municipalities.
• 2013-present: Serbia-Kosovo dialogue continues under EU mediation, with periods of progress and rupture. Implementation of the Brussels framework remains incomplete.
• September 23-24, 2023: The Banjska incident — an armed group of roughly 30 Serb militants, later linked to Milan Radoičić (then a senior Kosovo Serb political figure), attacks Kosovo Police in northern Kosovo, killing one Kosovo police officer (Sergeant Afrim Bunjaku) before being driven into the Banjska Monastery, where the standoff ends. Three militants are killed; eight are captured. Kosovo and Western governments characterize the attack as terrorism with alleged ties to elements of Serbian state structures; Serbia denies official involvement (Wikipedia: Banjska attack).

The relationship today is marked by ongoing dispute over Kosovo’s status, periodic tensions in the Serb-majority north of Kosovo, and a normalization process that grinds forward in fits and starts.

Diaspora views

Both Serbian Americans and Albanian Americans have strong feelings about this history. Neither community is monolithic.

On the Albanian-American side, organizations like the Albanian American Civic League (AACL), the National Albanian American Council (NAAC), and others have lobbied US policy in favor of Kosovo’s independence and recognition. The KLA had financial and organizational support from parts of the Albanian-American diaspora during the 1990s.

On the Serbian-American side, organizations have lobbied US policy in the opposite direction, arguing for Kosovo’s continued status as part of Serbia and against further recognition.

Outside of those organized political channels, most Albanian Americans and Serbian Americans live alongside each other in places like New York, Chicago, and Detroit without significant inter-community conflict. The two groups attend the same schools, work in the same offices, and run businesses next to each other. Younger generations on both sides are generally less defined by 1990s memories than their parents were.

NAR does not take a side on Kosovo’s final status. Our registry includes Albanian Americans whose families come from Albania, Kosovo, North Macedonia, Montenegro, the Preševo Valley, and other Albanian-inhabited areas — and we treat them as one community across borders. We report what each side says about the disputed political questions; we do not adjudicate them.

National narratives and cultural memory

Both peoples have powerful national narratives, and any honest article has to name them.

For Serbs, the central narrative is the 1389 Battle of Kosovo — remembered as a moment of foundational sacrifice and as the symbolic beginning of the long Ottoman period. Kosovo is, in the cultural memory of Serbian Orthodoxy, the spiritual heartland of the medieval Serbian church and state, with the seat of the Serbian Patriarchate at Peć and major medieval monasteries (Visoki Dečani, Gračanica) on its territory. For many Serbs, the phrase “Kosovo is Serbia” carries this weight — not only a political claim but a national-religious memory.

For Albanians, the central early-modern narrative is Skanderbeg (Gjergj Kastrioti) and the 1444 League of Lezhë, in which Albanian noble houses united under Skanderbeg to resist Ottoman expansion for roughly 25 years. The League of Prizren in 1878 sits in the same lineage — Albanian self-organization for survival as a people. In the modern period, the figures of Ibrahim Rugova (peaceful resistance) and the KLA (armed resistance) sit in the same memory of struggle for self-determination.

Both narratives selectively emphasize their own role and minimize the other. Modern Balkan historians increasingly question one-sided framings on each side and have produced a more textured picture — one in which both peoples have legitimate, deep-rooted historical presence; in which both have been victims and, at moments, perpetrators; in which the boundaries of “who was here first” and “who suffered more” do not resolve cleanly.

This is the part of the history where readers should be most careful with sources online. National-mythology framings travel further on social media than careful academic ones do.

Where the relationship is now

Belgrade and Prishtina remain in EU-mediated dialogue, with US backing. Cross-border trade exists and is economically meaningful in both directions. The Kosovo-Serbia border is open for ordinary travel.

In northern Kosovo, where most of Kosovo’s remaining Serb population lives, tensions periodically flare around license plates, local elections, and policing. The Banjska incident in 2023 was the most severe armed event in years, but the broader trajectory has been slow normalization rather than renewed war.

Music, social media, and travel have made the “other side” less abstract for many people in their twenties and thirties. Mixed Serb-Albanian marriages are rare but real, and Serbian-Albanian cultural exchange — in film, music, and academia — happens in some quarters.

The relationship is complicated. It is not frozen.

A note from NAR

We’re a 501(c)(3) registry. Our job is to count Albanian Americans accurately, build community infrastructure, and protect the data and identity of the people who register with us. Our job is not to take sides on contested international questions, and on this topic we will not.

If you are an Albanian American — whether your family is from Albania, Kosovo, the Preševo Valley, North Macedonia, Montenegro, the historic Arbëresh communities of southern Italy, or anywhere else in the diaspora — we would be honored to count you.

We treat the Albanian community as one, across every border that history and politics have drawn through it.

Get counted at /register.

Sources

• Wikipedia — Albanian-Serbian conflict
• Wikipedia — Kosovo War
• Wikipedia — 2008 Kosovo declaration of independence
• Wikipedia — Banjska attack
• Wikipedia — Battle of Kosovo (1389)
• International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) — case files and judgments cited in the Wikipedia entries above.