The Balkan states have long been in turmoil. Kosovo has recently played a central role in this turmoil. The hypernationalism of the Serbs and the Albanians has caused the conflicts in different ways. There are many different ethnic groups who reside there, each believing that they have the right to the land and that the other groups don't belong there. Kosovo is under control of the Serbian government and ninety percent of it's population is Albanian.
Nationalism in this case is not based in what state they live in, rather that of what ethnicity they belong to. "Ethnicity is a form of identification or distinctiveness that is usually rooted in a common biological ancestry in a distant past, or more accurately a people's belief in a common biological ancestry." (Sodaro 145) Animosity between the ethnic groups of the Serbs and the Albanians have stemmed from ancient times. It has escalated for centuries into some of the most horrible fighting known to man. As Campbell explains "being passionate about history is one thing, but to burst suddenly into a killing frenzy that knows no moral bounds because some Serbian prince name Lazar failed to defend his homeland against invading Turkish hordes in 1389" (55) This quote accurately describes the stupidity of the actions by the ethnic groups against one another. "The idea of nationalism proclaims "we are a people and we belong together"" (Sodaro 146). But that idea can be taken to!.
o far, when it is, that is called hypernationalism. .
Serbians are Slavic people, they had been influenced greatly by the Byzantine Empire and at the height if it's own empire, Serbia included many lands and was considered more civilized than the Roman Empire. (Campbell 81) The Albanians are a non-Slavic people, with a completely different culture and language than the rest of the other Balkan ethnicities. They also have religious differences, Serbians being that of Christian Orthodoxy and the Albanians being Islamic.