Vjosa Osmani becomes President of Kosovo

Kosovo is in news -  (Kosovo war and Battle of Kosovo are entirely different!).  With 61+ MPs in favor, Vjosa Osmani, 38, the most voted candidate for MP in history, who was expelled by her party less than a year ago because she stood by her principles, is the new President of the Republic of Kosovo. The peaceful political revolution is complete. Vjosa Osmani-Sadriu is a  jurist and politician serving as the fifth president of Kosovo since 4 April 2021.

Raised in the divided city of Mitrovica, Osmani became a political activist and studied law in Pristina as well as in the United States in Pittsburgh. She worked as an advisor to the president of Kosovo before she was elected to the Assembly. Osmani held the position of Speaker of the Assembly earlier and  also served as acting president   after the resignation of President Hashim Thaçi. Osmani has run successfully on an anti-corruption platform, and has expressed a desire to normalize relations between Kosovo and Serbia.

The Ottoman Empire   was a state[note 6] that controlled much of Southeastern Europe, Western Asia, and Northern Africa between the 14th and early 20th centuries. It was founded at the end of the 13th century in northwestern Anatolia in the town of Söğüt by the Turkoman  tribal leader Osman I. After 1354, the Ottomans crossed into Europe and with the conquest of the Balkans, the Ottoman beylik was transformed into a transcontinental empire. The Ottomans ended the Byzantine Empire with the 1453 conquest of Constantinople. The Ottoman Empire would very slowly decline until its fall after World War I, in which it sided with the losing Central Powers of the German Empire, the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and Bulgaria.

The Kosovo War was an armed conflict in Kosovo that started in February 1998 and lasted until 11 June 1999. It was fought by the forces of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (i.e. Serbia and Montenegro), which controlled Kosovo before the war, and the Kosovo Albanian rebel group known as the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA), with air support from the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO). The KLA, formed in the early 1990s to fight against Serbian persecution of Kosovo Albanians, initiated its first campaign in 1995 when it launched attacks against Serbian law enforcement in Kosovo. In early 1998, KLA attacks targeting Yugoslav authorities in Kosovo resulted in an increased presence of Serb paramilitaries and regular forces who subsequently began pursuing a campaign of retribution targeting KLA sympathisers and political opponents. After attempts at a diplomatic solution failed, NATO intervened, justifying the campaign in Kosovo as a "humanitarian war".  This precipitated a mass expulsion of Kosovar Albanians as the Yugoslav forces continued to fight during the aerial bombardment of Yugoslavia. The war ended with the Kumanovo Treaty, with Yugoslav and Serb forces  agreeing to withdraw from Kosovo to make way for an international presence.

The Battle of Kosovo  took place on 15 June 1389 between an army led by the Serbian Prince Lazar Hrebeljanović and an invading army of the Ottoman Empire under the command of Sultan Murad Hüdavendigâr. The battle was fought on the Kosovo field in the territory ruled by Serbian nobleman Vuk Branković, in what is today Kosovo, about 5 kilometers (3.1 mi) northwest of the modern city of Pristina.  The bulk of both armies were wiped out, and Lazar and Murad were killed. Although the Ottomans managed to annihilate the Serbian army, they also suffered huge casualties that delayed their progress. The Serbs were left with too few men to effectively defend their lands, while the Turks had many more troops in the east. Consequently, the Serbian principalities that were not already Ottoman vassals became so consecutively in the following years.

Kosovo is a partially-recognised state and disputed territory in Southeastern Europe.  On 17 February 2008, Kosovo unilaterally declared its independence from Serbia. It has since gained diplomatic recognition as a sovereign state by 98 UN member states. Kosovo is landlocked in the center of the Balkans, occupying an area of 10,887 km2 (4,203 sq mi).   Kosovo has an upper-middle-income economy. It has experienced solid economic growth over the last decade by international financial institutions, and growth every year since the onset of the financial crisis of 2007–2008. Kosovo is a member of the International Monetary Fund, World Bank, and has applied for membership of Interpol.

Interesting !

 

With regards – S. Sampathkumar
11.4.2021.