Events in Kosovo Preceding The 2004 Unrest
More than 164,000 members of Kosovo's minorities have fled the province in the immediate aftermath of the war. This is especially true in the case of Serbs and Roma. Ethnic tensions and territorial dispute have been a major problem in Kosovo for many years that sparked the Kosovo War of 1998-99 in which an estimated 10,000 people died, almost entirely Albanian civilians, which is also the reason cited by the U.S. State Department on the grounds of human rights abuses in order to justify the attacks on Yugoslavia. Since the end of the war, the province has been administered by the UN under the auspices of the United Nations Interim Administration Mission in Kosovo (UNMIK), with security provided by the NATO-led Kosovo Force (KFOR).
Those that remained organized themselves into enclaves guarded by peacekeeping forces. Low-level violence continued after the war. Serbian minorities in Kosovo claimed to have been subjected to "persistent intimidation and harassment", though the level of violence is reported to have declined somewhat since the end of the war. There have also been repeated attacks on Serbian Orthodox churches, shrines and other cultural monuments, with over a hundred being destroyed or damaged. Clashes had also broken out between Serbs and Albanians in the ethically Serb-dominated north of Kosovo, with Albanians harassing Serbs and chasing them out of their homes.
Read more about this topic: 2004 Unrest In Kosovo
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