247. Paper Prepared in the Defense Intelligence Agency1
Yugoslavia: Tensions in Kosovo (U)
Summary
(C) Recent tensions between Kosovo’s Albanians, who make up nearly 80 percent of the province’s 1.8 million people, and the Serb minority led Yugoslav leaders to dispatch a 380-man federal militia unit (organized to prevent major demonstrations and terrorist acts) to Kosovo in late October 1987. Kosovo is one of Yugoslavia’s two autonomous provinces and the most economically depressed region in the country. Since its founding as an autonomous region, Kosovo’s ethnic Albanians have been struggling for republican status.
(C) Federal officials in Belgrade, who were concerned that the shooting of several soldiers by an ethnic Albanian conscript at a military barracks in Paracin in September, the continued demonstrations by Kosovo’s Serbs against the ethnic Albanians, and the recent expulsion of ethnic Albanians from the League of Communists (LCY) would lead to even more disorders, sent the militia in as a preventive measure. The militia may keep things under control, but it will not solve Kosovo’s endemic problems of poverty, ethnic discrimination, and nationalism. Moreover, should the situation deteriorate beyond the control of the militia, the government will likely send in army units to quell disturbances, as it did in 1981.
(C) The military, especially after the Paracin murders, is again criticizing the civilian leadership for its inability to resolve Yugoslavia’s ills, but it will not intervene unilaterally to take over the government unless a situation of extreme instability threatening national unity were to develop.
[Omitted here is the body of the paper.]
- Source: Reagan Library, Rudolf Perina Files, Subject File, Yugoslavia—Substance 1988 (1). Secret; Noforn.↩