Political background
It is best to avoid the subject "Kosovo" when you visit Serbia. It might be interesting to understand the political background some more in order to see why. The Kosovo conflict is the term used to describe two sub-sequential and parallel conflicts that Kosovo had. The war was in Kosovo between the army and police of FR Yugoslavia and the Kosovo liberation army. NATO attacked Yugoslavia from march 24, 1999 to June 11, 1999 and the ethnic Albian militants continued with the battles with the Yugoslavia forces there was massive population displacement in Kosovo and it was estimated that around one million people were displaced. At the core of the war was more religious, where neighbors rose against neighbor, Muslims against orthodox Christians, orthodox Christians against the western Christians. For over the past millennium, Yugoslavia straddled the borders of three groups of faiths i.e. the Roman Catholicism, orthodox Christians and the Islam.
The ethnicity between Serb of the Slavic origin and the ethnic Albians who in origin are Illyrian fueled the conflict.
As the first humanitarian war, NATO countries promoted the war in Kosovo based on short term military reports and casualty reports and they were later criticized that they were greatly inaccurate. This gained massive amount of attention and much coverage from the international community and the media, and it was the centre of the news headlines for several months. Up to date it has remained controversial about NATO bombing and the events that surrounded it.
Yugoslavia was attacked by NATO within air power. By early 1999 the main aim of NATO was to attain full independence of Kosovo. There were widespread rapes, murders, assaults, murder of ethnic Albanian civilians by the militia and the Serbia army. This had started and accelerated even before the NATO bombing. To avoid being exterminated hundreds of thousands fled the province. Full independence was the only feasible ultimate option of the Muslim population since it was probably seen that there can never be any future association with Yugoslavia government.
Throughout the 20th century the tension between the Serbian and the communities in Kosovo simmered and though occasionally erupted into major violence. This was particularly during the First Balkan war, World War 1 and world war two.
Josip Broz Tito social government systematically repressed the nationalist manifestations through Yugoslavia in order to ensure that no Yugoslavia nationalist gained dominance over the others. The largest and most populous republic of Serbia was diluted by the autonomous governments in north Serbia province of Vojvodina and south Kosovo.
The borders of Kosovo did not precisely match the ethnic areas for Albian settlement in Yugoslavia.
Nationalist were cracked down by Tito's secret police. The underground groups aiming for the union with Albania were politically small and thus the fact of separatism was minimal.
The impact was substantial and Yugoslavia underwent an economic and a political crisis.
Since the death of Tito, Yugoslavia has been gradually disintegrating, the country lost most of its population in 1990,s when Croatia, Macedonia, Slovenia and Bosnia-Herzegovina achieved their independence. In July 1999 Yugoslavia consisted of only four provinces: i.e. Montenegro (which has a large number of local autonomy), Kosovo, Serbia and Vojvodina.