Ingredients in the Kosovo Conflict

Mother Teresa would express sadness at—but would intimately understand—the fierce racial tensions in Kosovo, which pit its majority Albanian population against a Serb minority rule.

As a child growing up in Skopje, Macedonia, Mother Teresa found herself at the center of just such a situation. Her father was a leader in a movement for Albanian independence in Macedonia, whose predicament is similar to Kosovo's.

In an article in The Los Angeles Times March 23, Isuf Hajrizi fills in some facts about the Albanians and their lands and sheds light on a situation that is becoming a difficult one.

Seven million Albanians today live in Albania itself and in five surrounding countries: Mother Teresa's Macedonia, Serbia, Montenegro, Greece, and the current hot spot, Kosovo.

The Albanians, originally Illyrians, inhabitants of the prized Roman prefecture Illyricum, have been disinherited in their own lands since the sixth century, he writes.

In Kosovo, 200,000 Serbs rule over 2 million Albanians.

The problems there are better characterized as racial conflict, rather than religious: Albanians of different religions have tolerated each other for years in these nations. Muslims predominate, but often join in the feast day celebrations of their Catholic and Orthodox countrymen.

Kosovo is rich in gold, silver, copper, and lead—which, Hajrizi speculates, is the real reason for Serbian interest in the country.