Lucian Kim, Special to The Christian Science Monitor

PRISTINA, SERBIA -- The peaceful student protests that Serbian police brutally broke up
last week have focused international attention on Kosovo, one of the most volatile regions
in the Balkans.
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The ethnic Albanians of Kosovo, who make up 90 percent of the population, have faced
Serbian repression since 1989, when Serbia gradually ended Kosovo's autonomy and
assumed direct administrative control. Kosovo Albanians reacted by boycotting Serbian
elections, electing their own "shadow" government, and setting up an independent
education system. In September 1996, shadow-state president Ibrahim Rugova and
Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic signed an agreement returning autonomy to
Kosovo's schools. But because the Serbian government still has not implemented the
accord, Kosovo Albanian university students took matters into their own hands.

Before Yugoslavia fell apart, Kosovo enjoyed an unprecedented level of autonomy within
the Republic of Serbia. Most Kosovo Albanians hoped that one day they, too, would have
a republic in Yugoslavia, on the same level as Slovenia or Croatia. President Milosevic
dashed these hopes when he stirred up vicious Serbian nationalism in the late 1980s.
Kosovo, the heartland of medieval Serbia, was the key.

Milosevic claimed Kosovo's Serbs were being subjected to ethnic cleansing by Albanians.
In 1989, Milosevic assembled more than a million Serbs outside Pristina, Kosovo's capital,
to commemorate the 600th anniversary of the Battle of Kosovo. Although the invading
Turks defeated the Serbs in the battle and subsequently ruled the Balkans for five
centuries, the battle has played a crucial role in Serbian nationalist nostalgia.

Today most Serbs share these emotional ties to Kosovo. Milosevic has attempted to
"Serbify" Kosovo by resettling 15,000 Serb refugees from Croatia, but few Serbs would
voluntarily choose to live in Serbia's poorest region.

For Kosovo Albanians, there is no sign that a change of government in Serbia would affect
their plight. Vuk Draskovic, the charismatic leader of the Serbian Renewal Movement, said
during the just concluded presidential election campaign that Kosovo should get back
what he says is its historical name, "Old Serbia." Serbian Radical Party candidate Vojislav
Seselj, who claimed victory in Sunday's presidential vote, has suggested he would expel
ethnic Albanians from Kosovo to neighboring Albania. In the 250-member Serbian
parliament, Kosovo has 42 seats. But all of them are held by Milosevic's Socialists and
extremist parties.

"At least the previous level of acquired rights has to be reinstated," says Gazmend Pula,
an Albanian human rights activist in Kosovo. Mr. Pula says that most ethnic Albanians
would be satisfied if Kosovo became a federal republic on equal footing with Serbia.

But impatience in the Albanian community is rising. Many Kosovo Albanians question
whether shadow president Rugova's passive resistance is the correct way to deal with
Milosevic. After all, Slovenia, Croatia, and Bosnia all achieved independence through war.

Last week's student demonstrations in seven Kosovo cities merely demanded that the
Rugova-Milosevic education agreement be implemented. For seven years, Kosovo's
Albanian high school and university students have attended classes in private homes.
"Many people say that in an educational sense," a separate, parallel education system is
"a disaster," says Denisa Kostovic, a Kosovo expert based at Cambridge University in
England. "But it is important because it socialized people into the Albanian community."

Ethnic Albanians in Pristina supported the students by turning out in the streets and
preventing an escalation of violence. But for the past year, a mysterious organization
calling itself the Kosovo Liberation Army (UCK) has led attacks on Serbian police stations
and ethnic Albanian "collaborators."

The group has claimed responsibility for 18 killings this year. Some political analysts in
Pristina and Belgrade say that UCK is an invention of the Serbian leadership to justify
cracking down on Albanians. Others say it is likely some attacks were the work of radical
Albanians, while the rest were carried out by Serb agents provocateurs.
 

The United Nations special rapporteur for human rights, Elisabeth Rehn, warns that
growing frustration with Serbian intransigence could plunge Kosovo into "a real explosion
... even civil war." Ms. Rehn contrasts Western Europe's lack of attention to Kosovo with
the more active involvement of the United States. This year, Rugova has met with
Secretary of State Madeleine Albright and US special envoys John Kornblum and Robert
Gelbard.

Last year, while the State Department was closing more than 40 US Information Service
offices abroad, just one new one opened - in Pristina.