Serbia had long felt that the existence of Kosovo threatened its sovereignty and power in Yugoslavia, but former Yugoslav dictator Josip Broz Tito had been able to suppress this discontent. After Tito’s death in 1980 tensions between Serbia and Kosovo intensified after the Yugoslav state ruthlessly put down Kosovan independence protests in the republic.
Throughout the 1980s future Serbian president Slobodan Miloševic fanned the flames by preying on the Kosovan-Serbian fears of an Albanian uprising and Kosovan independence.government, which ran a referendum in September 1991. The result: ethnic Albanians voted overwhelmingly for independence.
