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Kosovo is a piece of land about the size of Connecticut. After the Balkan wars the land was split up and international powers from the west were in charge of dividing the boarders. The area of Kosovo was populated by 90% Albanians, it would only make sense that the land be given to Albania. However Serbia regarded the land as the birthplace of their culture and used their close ties to the west in order to secure that the land would come under Serbian territory.
Soon after Milosevec came into power he addressed a huge prong of Serbs on the site of Kosovo Polo, the "Field of Blackbirds" where the Serbian army had been defeated by the Turks exactly six hundred years earlier. Milosevic's fiery speech promised that Serbia would never again relinquish it's control over Kosovo. (Sodaro 157).
The Serbs were determined to control and preserve Kosovo in their own way, while Albania has been trying to at least get Kosovo recognized as an independent nation, if not under their control. In 1989 Parliamentary Albanian leaders in Kosovo declared Kosovo and independent republic in response to Milosevic's "Field of Blackbirds" speech. Milosevic immediately suspended Kosovo's parliament and it's government. He also declared that any public administration, such as hospitals and schools, were not to accept Albanians. This placed the Albanians in a hard position, it was the beginning of the aggression against them. Some fled to Albania, however many did not want to give up their homes, or they couldn't so they were forced to stay and endure. Schools and hospitals for Albanians appeared in people's homes and wherever else they could find. All medical instruments and training came from the black market. This for ten years until heavy fighting broke out.
"Nationalism can assume an arrogant stance that regards other countries with contempt, at times unleashing unprovoked aggression" (Sodaro 147) The Serbs held the Albanians in deep contempt and began to ethnically cleanse Albanians from the state of Kosovo.