The Kosovo Conflict

 

What was the Kosovo conflict? 

The Kosovo conflict occurred in 1998–99 when ethnic Albanians fought ethnic Serbs and the government of Yugoslavia in Kosovo. The conflict gained widespread international attention and was resolved with the intervention of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.

How did the conflict begin?

Tensions between the ethnic Serbians, the majority of them Orthodox Christian, and their majority-Muslim ethnic Albanian neighbours to the south had simmered for centuries, exacerbated by frequently shifting geographical and political boundaries during the 20th century.

After the Balkan Wars of 1912-13, the majority-Albanian border region of Kosovo was absorbed into the Christian Serb-Croat Kingdom of Serbia.

Following the Second World War, Serbia became part of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, along with the modern-day states of Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Macedonia, Montenegro, Serbia and Slovenia.

Technically a province of Serbia - a majority Christian and ethnically Slavic nation - Kosovo was given autonomous status, allowing its ethnic Albanian Muslim majority, known as Kosovars, a degree of self-rule.

In the 1980s, tensions began to rise between the opposing powers within Serbia, as Kosovars pushed for increased independence while a rising tide of Serbian nationalism led others to call for the restive province to be placed under stricter central control.

In March of 1981, the first significant protests in Kosovo erupted, marking the beginning of the Yugoslav collapse. Students demonstrated for more autonomy and more liberties, whilst the federal and Serbian authorities answered by sending in troops. It ended with several casualties on both sides, thousands of arrests, and the massive sacking of people from the Kosovar branch of the League of Communists of Yugoslavia. 

In 1989, Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic began the process of abolishing Kosovo’s autonomy. He wanted to bring Kosovo under the direct control of Belgrade, the Serbian capital. Milošević and members of the Serbian minority of Kosovo had long objected to the fact that Muslim Albanians were in demographic control of an area held sacred to the Serbs (Kosovo was the seat of the Serbian Orthodox Church as well as the site of the Turkish defeat of the Serbs in 1389 and the Serbian victory over the Turks in 1912).

Ethnic Albanians were forced out of local government and education and lost their jobs in state-owned industry. In response, they created the Democratic League of Kosovo led by Ibrahim Rugova. The Democratic League of Kosovo established parallel government and education structures and even held its own elections, all with the goal of proving to the international community that Kosovars deserved to be independent.

When this failed to work, Rugova’s more radical opponents gained ground, arguing that peaceful means would not achieve their demands.

Ibrahim Rugova

 

The War

In 1996, the guerilla Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) - viewed as freedom fighters by most Kosovars but considered terrorists by the Serbian state - began open military operations against Serbian authorities. By 1998, counter terror police and Yugoslav armed forces were struggling to reassert control over what had essentially turned into an armed uprising.

The Kosovo Liberation Army launched a series of targeted strikes against Serbian officials, police officers, and other key figures in Kosovo.

Serbian special police and, eventually, Yugoslav armed forces attempted to reassert control over the region. By February of 1998, Yugoslav authorities had started engaging in a full-on war in Kosovo by sending the actual army and divisions, not only law enforcement, to crush the insurgency once and for all. The Yugoslavian troops were well equipped but lacked the full knowledge of the terrain the KLA had.

Atrocities committed by the police, paramilitary groups, and the army caused a wave of refugees to flee the area, and the situation became well publicized through the international media. The Contact Group—an informal coalition of the United States, Great Britain, Germany, France, Italy, and Russia—demanded a cease-fire, the withdrawal of Yugoslav and Serbian forces from Kosovo, the return of refugees, and unlimited access for international monitors. Milosevic, who had become president of Yugoslavia in 1997, agreed to meet most of the demands but failed to implement them.

The KLA regrouped and rearmed during the cease-fire and renewed its attacks. The Yugoslav and Serbian forces responded with a ruthless counteroffensive and engaged in a program of ethnic cleansing. The United Nations Security Council condemned this excessive use of force and imposed an arms embargo, but the violence continued.

During the following months, Kosovo was plagued with war and massacres coming from both sides. In March 1998, Serb security forces stoked the fires by massacring 85 people in a clear attempt to stem the KLA's growing importance in Kosovo. At that point, the violence in Kosovo had reached a critical threshold that demanded sustained international attention. 

The UÇK answered Yugoslav actions by abducting and killing Serbian civilians all around Kosovo, as well as forcible relocations. The UÇK opened up prison camps and used their prisoners for forced labour, often under the threat of summary executions. Answering the Yugoslav army’s destruction of mosques, the UÇK went up to destroy or damage orthodox churches and monasteries.

Diplomatic negotiations began in Rambouillet, France, in February 1999 but broke down the following month.

 

NATO bombing of Yugoslavia

On March 24 1999 NATO began air strikes against Serbian military targets. The NATO bombing campaign lasted 11 weeks and eventually expanded to Belgrade, where significant damage to the Serbian infrastructure occurred. The official NATO operation code name was Operation Allied Force whereas the United States called it Operation Noble Anvil.

In response, Yugoslav and Serbian forces drove out all of Kosovo’s ethnic Albanians, displacing hundreds of thousands of people into Albania, Macedonia (now North Macedonia), and Montenegro.

 

Yugoslavia's refusal to sign the Rambouillet Accords was initially offered as justification for NATO's use of force. NATO countries attempted to gain authorisation from the UN Security Council for military action, but were opposed by China and Russia, who indicated that they would veto such a measure. As a result, NATO launched its campaign without the UN's approval, stating that it was a humanitarian intervention. The UN Charter prohibits the use of force except in the case of a decision by the Security Council under Chapter VII, or self-defence against an armed attack – neither of which were present in this case. It was the first time that NATO had used military force without the expressed endorsement of the UN Security Council, which triggered debates over the legitimacy of the intervention.

 

Milosevic surprised the West when he suddenly accepted their demands to end the conflict on 3 June 1999, after 11 weeks of bombing, and allowed NATO peacekeepers into Kosovo. The Yugoslav government and the NATO-led peacekeeping force signed the Kumanovo Agreement, officially bringing the Kosovo War to an end. Experts credit his capitulation to a combination of factors, including NATO’s strategic attacks on Belgrade and fear of potential US ground offensives. Under the terms of the agreement, Yugoslavia withdrew its troops from Kosovo, UN peacekeeping forces were deployed in Kosovo, which came under UN administration.

 

Ethnic cleansing

Yugoslav and Serbian forces engaged in an ethnic cleansing campaign throughout the duration of the war. By the end of May 1999, 1.5 million people had fled their homes. At the time, that constituted approximately 90 percent of Kosovo’s population.

 

Immediately after the end of the war in June 1999, while the Yugoslav people were turning against the dictator and the opposition was gaining more and more traction, UÇK guerrilla fighters, despite the efforts of KFOR and UN troops, started to harass Serbian civilians in Kosovo. Beatings, assassination, burning of homes and churches became widespread, as well as pressures on Serbian and Roma communities. Everything was fair game to force them to leave Kosovo.

It is estimated that up to 200.000 Serbs were driven out of their homes by UÇK fighters, in addition to the 90.000 Serbs that had fled during the war. Along with them went several thousands of hundreds of Roma people, although their precise number is unknown.

At the end of 2016, a tribunal was established in the International Criminal Court to try Kosovars for committing war crimes against ethnic minorities and political opponents. Additionally, an EU taskforce set up in 2011 found evidence that members of the KLA committed these crimes after the war ended. Previously, the U.N. International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia tried several the KLA members.

 

War Casualties

 

By the end of the war, the Yugoslavs had killed 1,500 to 2,131 combatants, while choosing to heavily target Kosovar Albanian civilians, with 8,676 killed or missing and some 848,000 expelled from Kosovo. The NATO bombing killed about 1,000 members of the Yugoslav security forces in addition to between 489 and 528 civilians. It destroyed or damaged bridges, industrial plants, hospitals, schools, cultural monuments, private businesses as well as barracks and military installations. In the days after the Yugoslav army withdrew, over 164,000 Serbs and 24,000 Roma left Kosovo. Many of the remaining non-Albanian civilians (as well as Albanians perceived as collaborators) were victims of abuse which included beatings, abductions, and murders.

  

Kosovo in the 21^st century

Tensions between Albanians and Serbs in Kosovo continued into the 21st century.

In February 2008, Kosovo declared its independence from Serbia. Several EU powers and the US recognised Kosovo’s independence, but Serbia did not. The EU states of Cyprus, Greece, Romania, Slovakia and Spain have also refused to recognize Kosovo as an independent nation.

The partially recognised Balkan state still feels the impact of the ethnic discrimination that fuelled the war, with 45% of the population today living below the official poverty line, and 17% classed as extremely poor, according to the World Bank.

Left with an unresolved status, NATO peacekeepers remain in place to guarantee security.