Ibrahim Rugova  listen (help·info) (2 December 1944 – 21 January 2006) was the first President of Kosovo, serving from 1992 to 2000 and again from 2002 to 2006, and a prominent Kosovo Albanian political leader, scholar, and writer. He oversaw a popular struggle for independence, advocating a peaceful resistance to Yugoslav rule and lobbying for U.S. and European support, especially during the Kosovo War. He strongly emphasized the heritage of ancient Dardania, the independent kingdom and later province of the Roman Empire that included modern-day Kosovo, to strengthen the country's identity and to promote his policy of closer relations with the West. Owing to his role in Kosovo's history, Rugova has been dubbed "Father of the Nation" and "Gandhi of the Balkans," awarded, among others, the Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought, and posthumously declared a Hero of Kosovo.

Rugova was born to a Albanian family in Yugoslavia (in what became Kosovo); Yugoslav communists executed his father and grandfather while Rugova was still an infant. He studied literature at the University of Pristina and the University of Paris, and a received a doctorate with a dissertation on Albanian literary criticism. As a student, he participated in a civil rights movement for the Albanians, although he formally joined the Communist League of Yugoslavia to secure career advancements. Thereby, he worked as editor of prestigious literary and scholarly publications and research fellow at the Institute of Albanian Studies; in 1988, he was elected president of the Kosovo Writers Union.

Adem Demaçi (born 26 February 1936 in Pristina, Yugoslavia, now Kosovo) is a Kosovo Albanian writer and politician and a longtime political prisoner who spent a total of 28 years in prison for speaking out against the poor treatment of the Albanian minority in Yugoslavia as well as criticizing communism and the regime of Josip Broz Tito. During his imprisonment, he was recognized as a prisoner of conscience by Amnesty International.

Demaçi was first imprisoned 1958-1961. After his release, he served two more prison terms 1964-1974 and 1975-1990. In each case he was arrested for irredentism,but also as a political illuminist of Albanian people in province of Kosovo - in that time part of Yugoslavia.

After his release, he was a Chairman of the Council for the Defense of Human Rights and Freedoms of the People of Kosovo. He received the European Parliament's prestigious Sakharov Prize in 1992. Nominated for Nobel Prize for Peace in 1993. Winner of Peace Prize of Rectors of Europe from the Complutense University of Madrid in 1994. He was a guest during a session of the United States House of Representatives in March 1992.

 Sali Ram Berisha (help·info), (Albanian pronunciation: [saˈli bɛˈɾiʃa]; born 15 October 1944) is an Albanian politician and incumbent prime minister since 2005. A cardiologist by profession, Berisha leads the Democratic Party of Albania (PD) and served as President of Albania from 1992 to 1997. To date, he is the longest-serving democratically-elected leader and the only President of the Republic elected to a second term.

A former secretary of the committee of the Party of Labor in the Faculty of Medicine at the University of Tirana, he abandoned his career as a cardiologist and university professor to become the leader of the Democratic Party in the 1990s. From 1992, after the fall of communism, he served as the President of Albania until his government collapsed in 1997 in the wake of the collapse of pyramid schemes. From 1997 to 2005, Albania was governed by the Socialist Party (PS) for two mandates, while he stayed in opposition.

In 2005, the Democratic Party won the general elections, and he became the Prime Minister after his coalition formed the new government. In 2009, he was re-elected Prime Minister, after the Democrats declared a narrow win of general elections but were forced into a coalition with the Socialist Movement for Integration (LSI) through not winning enough seats on its own for the first time since the start of multi-party democracy in 1991.

Ramush Haradinaj (born 3 July 1968) is a former leader of the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) and former prime minister of Kosovo. He leads the Alliance for the Future of Kosovo (AAK) and is among former KLA officers charged of war crimes during the 1999 Kosovo War by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) at The Hague but was acquitted of all charges on 3 April 2008. However, on 21 July 2010, the Appeals Chamber ordered a partial retrial.

Haradinaj was born on 3 July 1968 in the village of Glođane, near Dečani, in the Yugoslav province of Kosovo (in present-day Kosovo). He spent his youth in his native village with his parents and siblings, and finished High School in Đakovica. After graduating high school, he served in the Yugoslav Army.

After the Kosovo War he attended the University of Pristina where he graduated from the Faculty of Law. Haradinaj also has a Master's degree in business from the American University of Kosovo which is associated with Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT).