Priština

Priština, capital city of the Serbian province of Kosovo. Priština is primarily a commercial and transport centre for the surrounding silver and lead mining region. Manufactured goods include processed food, jewellery, textiles, and pharmaceuticals. The University of Kosovo (1970) is here. Ethnic Albanians constitute about 90 per cent of the city’s population.

In the 14th century the community became the capital of the Serbian Empire. At present, Priština is the headquarters of both the Serb government of Kosovo, and a series of institutions that the Albanians of Kosovo set up to try to create their own parallel state. In the wave of agitation that began in the early 1980s, Priština's Kosovo University became the focal point for demonstrations by ethnic Albanian students against what they saw as discrimination within the federal Yugoslav state. After Serbian president Slobodan Milošević stripped Kosovo of its autonomy, a privilege enjoyed since 1974, unrest escalated both in the city and throughout the province. The Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA), a guerrilla group fighting for independence, staged a series of attacks on Serbian police and army units; a violent Serbian crackdown in the province followed in 1998, when the city suffered considerable damage. Thousands of ethnic Albanians fled Priština, to return only after NATO’s intervention and deployment of peace-keeping troops in 1999. Fearing Albanian retaliation, many of the resident Serbs of Priština fled for the perceived safety of Serbia. Population 165,844 (2003 estimate).