SPLIT in two, awash with weapons and pulsing with hatred, Kosovska Mitrovica, the flashpoint of the violence that has erupted in Kosovo, is an apt symbol of the conflict between ethnic Albanians and Serbs.

The town’s northern half is almost totally Serb and Orthodox Christian, the southern half ethnic Albanian and overwhelmingly Muslim. French UN troops, stationed on a bridge over the dividing River Ibar, keep an uneasy peace.

It was at the bridge on Wednesday that Albanians massed to protest against the drowning of three boys who, they claimed, had been driven by Serbs into the river.

Kosovo, the southernmost province of Serbia, covers only 11,000 square kilometres, barely a third the size of Belgium, and has a population of 1.8 million, of whom only about 100,000 are Serbs. It is one of the most underdeveloped areas of Europe; about 60 per cent of the working-age population is unemployed. Health care is poor. The maternal mortality rate is 150 per 100,000 births, the highest in Europe, and the infrastructure is crumbling.

The only growth industry, and one of the few areas where Serbs and Albanians co-operate, is organised crime. Kosovo’s porous borders are a magnet for those smuggling cigarettes, drugs and refugees into Western Europe.

Kosovo has been under UN administration since the war ended in 1999 and has recently enjoyed comparative peace, thanks to the 17,000 troops of the Kosovo peacekeeping force. The UN, the EU and numerous NGOs have been labouring to build a civic society there and were hoping to hold elections in October.

But the surface calm was deceptive. Kosovo’s future remains unresolved and there has been little, if any, progress towards resolving the deep-rooted causes of the conflict: a visceral loathing between Serbs and Albanians that goes back centuries.

Serbs regard Kosovo as their Jerusalem, and the battle of Kosovo Polje in 1389 is the pivotal event in Serb history.

Trying to defend Christian Europe, the Serbs were defeated by the Ottoman Turks, opening the doors to centuries of Muslim oppression.

Thus was born the historical legend of a “heavenly people”, stubborn, proud and ready to fight to the death. When, in the 19th century, the Ottoman empire began to fall apart and its subject peoples rose up, the defeat at Kosovo Polje and centuries of subjugation were used by Serb writers and thinkers as the basis of modern-day Serb nationalism.

Under Tito’s rule, from the end of the Second World War to 1980, Kosovo was an autonomous province of Serbia.

Despite the vast resources spent on it, and Yugoslavia’s mantra of “Brotherhood and Unity”, Kosovo remained deeply divided between its majority population of ethnic Albanians and the Serb minority.

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