Kosovo War
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The term Kosovo War or Kosovo Conflict is often used to describe two sequential armed conflicts (a civil war followed by an international war) in the southern Serbian province of Kosovo (Kosova in Albanian), part of the former Yugoslavia. The conflict evolved in three distinct stages following several decades of occasionally violent clashes between Serbs and Albanians in the province:
- 1989-96: Curtailment and eventual abolition of Kosovo's autonomy within Serbia, accompanied by large-scale repression of Albanians by Serbian security forces and growing tension between Serbs and Albanians in the province.
- 1996-99: Guerrilla conflict between Albanian separatists and the Serbian and Yugoslav security forces, which Albanians characterised as a national liberation struggle and Serbs saw as terrorism.
- 1999: War between Yugoslavia and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization between March 24 and June 10 1999, during which NATO heavily bombed Yugoslav targets and military units, Albanian guerrillas continued to attack Serbs and Serbian/Yugoslav forces conducted widespread ethnic cleansing of the Albanian population of Kosovo.
Origins of the conflict
Kosovo in Titoist Yugoslavia (1945-1986)
Serbs and Albanians had both long regarded Kosovo as their own historical space. For Serbs, it was the center of their culture [1] as well as the site of the Battle of Kosovo in 1389, which resulted in a catastrophic defeat of Serbia at the hands of the invading Ottomans (traditionally interpreted as Serbia's sacrifice for Christianity).
Tensions between the two communities had been simmering throughout the 20th century and had occasionally erupted into major violence, particularly during the First Balkan War, World War I and World War II. The Communist government of Josip Broz Tito systematically repressed nationalist manifestations throughout Yugoslavia, seeking to ensure that no Yugoslav republic or nationality gained dominance over the others. In particular, the power of Serbia - the largest and most populous republic - was diluted by the establishment of autonomous governments in the province of Vojvodina in the north of Serbia and Kosovo in the south. Kosovo's borders did not precisely match the areas of ethnic Albanian settlement in Yugoslavia (significant numbers of Albanians were left in Macedonia, Montenegro and Serbia proper, while the far north of Kosovo remained largely ethnic Serbian). Nonetheless, most of its inhabitants following 1945 were ethnic Albanians.
Kosovo's formal autonomy, established under the 1945 Yugoslav constitution, initially meant relatively little in practice. Tito's secret police cracked down hard on nationalists. In 1956, a number of Albanians were put on trial in Kosovo on charges of espionage and subversion. The threat of separatism was in fact minimal, as the few underground groups aiming for union with Albania were politically insignificant. Their long-term impact was substantial, though, as some - particularly the Revolutionary Movement for Albanian Unity, founded by Adem Demaci - were much later to form the political core of the Kosovo Liberation Army. Demaci himself was imprisoned in 1964 along with many of his followers.
Yugoslavia underwent a period of economic and political crisis in 1968, as a massive government program of economic reform widened the gap between the rich north and poor south of the country. Student demonstrations and riots in Belgrade in June 1968 spread to Kosovo in November the same year, but were put down by the Yugoslav security forces. However, some of the students' demands - particularly for real representative powers for Albanians on both Serbian and Yugoslav state bodies, and better recognition of the Albanian language - were conceded by Tito. Pristina University was established as an independent institution in 1970, ending a long period when the institution had been run as an outpost of Belgrade University. The Albanianisation of education in Kosovo was hampered by the lack of Albanian-language educational materials in Yugoslavia, so an agreement was struck with Albania itself to supply textbooks.
In 1974, Kosovo's political status was improved still further when a new Yugoslav constitution granted an expanded set of political rights. Along with Vojvodina, it gained many of the powers of a fully-fledged republic: a seat on the federal presidency and its own assembly, police force and national bank. Power was still exercised by the Communist Party, but it was now devolved mainly to ethnic Albanian communists.
Tito's death on May 4, 1980 ushered in a long period of political instability, worsened by growing economic crisis and nationalist unrest. The first major outbreak occurred in Kosovo's main city, Pristina, in March 1981 when Albanian students rioted over poor food in their university canteen. This seemingly trivial dispute rapidly spread throughout Kosovo and took on the character of a national revolt, with massive popular demonstrations in many Kosovar towns. The protesters demanded that Kosovo should become the seventh republic of Yugoslavia. However, this was politically unacceptable to Serbia and Macedonia. Some Serbs (and possibly some Albanian nationalists as well) saw the demands as being a prelude to a "Greater Albania" which could encompass parts of Montenegro, Macedonia and Kosovo itself. The Communist Yugoslav presidency quelled the disturbances by sending in riot police and the army and proclaiming a state of emergency, although it did not repeal the province's autonomy as some Serbian Communists demanded. The Yugoslav press reported that about 11 people had been killed (although others claimed a death toll as high as 1,000) and another 4,200 were imprisoned.
Kosovo's Communist Party also suffered purges, with several key figures (including its president) expelled. Hardliners instituted a fierce crackdown on nationalism of all kinds, Albanian and Serbian alike. Kosovo endured a heavy secret police presence throughout most of the 1980s that ruthlessly suppressed any unauthorised nationalist manifestations, both Albanian and Serbian. According to a report quoted by Mark Thompson, as many as 580,000 Kosovars were arrested, interrogated, interned or reprimanded. Thousands of these lost their jobs or were expelled from their educational establishments. It was notable, given Kosovo's later history, that this repression was masterminded by Albanians, not Serbs.
During this time, tension between the Albanian and Serbian communities continued to escalate. In 1969, the Serbian Orthodox Church had ordered its clergy to compile data on the ongoing problems of Serbs in Kosovo, seeking to pressure the government in Belgrade to do more to (as they saw it) protect the Serbian faithful. In February 1982, a group of priests from Serbia proper petitioned their bishops to ask "why the Serbian Church is silent" and why it did not campaign against "the destruction, arson and sacrilege of the holy shrines of Kosovo." Such concerns did attract interest in Belgrade. Stories appeared from time to time in the Belgrade media claiming that Serbs and Montenegrins were being persecuted, although few appear to have been reliably substantiated. Nonetheless, there was a genuine perception among Serbian nationalists in particular that Serbs were being driven out of Kosovo, with some claiming that Serbs were being subjected to "genocide" by Albanians.
Yugoslavia's census returns suggested that there was not in fact a great Serbian exodus from Kosovo. It was certainly true that many Serbs and Montenegrins had been expelled from Kosovo during World War II, but between the 1940s and 1990s their numbers had remained relatively constant at somewhere between 200,000 and 260,000. Their proportion of the population, however, changed significantly. It stood at 27.5% in 1948, 13.9% in 1981 and 10.9% in 1991, according to the census results. A major factor in this was the extremely high Albanian birthrate. The population of Kosovo thus grew overall, but most of the increase was accounted for by Albanians, not Serbs.
An additional factor was the worsening state of Kosovo's economy, which made the province a poor choice for Serbs seeking work. Albanians naturally tended to favour other Albanians when filling jobs, not that there were many jobs to go round. Kosovo was by some way the poorest part of Yugoslavia: in 1979 the average per capita income was $795, compared with the national average of $2,635 (and $5,315 in Slovenia).
The province's poverty eventually became a major political issue not just in Serbia but in Yugoslavia as a whole. Despite economic problems throughout Yugoslavia, the other republics were still required to contribute to a "Solidarity Fund" for the poor southern parts of the country at a rate said to exceed a million dollars a day. The fund made little visible differences to Kosovo, not least because much of it was diverted to corrupt party officials or squandered on white elephants such as a huge football stadium in Pristina. Such grotesque waste was, not surprisingly, unpopular among the other republics and attracted resentment.
Kosovo and the rise of Slobodan Milosevic (1986-1990)
Yugoslavia's political decay following Tito's death was caused by many factors, not just the obvious issue of ethnicity: economic, political, constitutional and even personal issues divided the republics' leaders. In Kosovo, however, these issues manifested themselves mainly in the form of growing ethnic tension between Serbs and Albanians. An increasingly poisonous atmosphere led to wild rumours being traded and otherwise trivial incidents being blown out of all proportion.
It was against this tense background that sixteen prominent members of the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts (SANU, from its Serbian initials) began work in June 1985 on a document that was eventually leaked to the public in September 1986. The SANU Memorandum, as it has become known, was hugely controversial - even incendiary - and has come to be seen by many as the manifesto of the disastrous "Greater Serbia" project of the 1990s. It focused on the political difficulties facing Serbs in Yugoslavia, pointing to Tito's deliberate hobbling of Serbia's power and the difficulties faced by Serbs outside Serbia proper. This would have been controversial at the best of times, but the authors used such strong language in making their case that they virtually invited accusations of promoting Serbian supremacism.
The Memorandum paid special attention to Kosovo, arguing that the province's Serbs were being subjected to "physical, political, legal and cultural genocide" in an "open and total war" that had been ongoing since the spring of 1981. It claimed that Kosovo's status in 1986 was a worse historical defeat for the Serbs than any event since liberation from the Ottomans in 1804, thus ranking it above such catastrophes as the Nazi occupation or the First World War occupation of Serbia by the Austro-Hungarians. The Memorandum's authors claimed that 200,000 Serbs had moved out of the province over the previous twenty years and warned that there would soon be none left "unless things change radically." The remedy, according to the Memorandum, was for "genuine security and unambiguous equality for all peoples living in Kosovo and Metohija [to be] established" and "objective and permanent conditions for the return of the expelled [Serbian] nation [to be] created." It concluded that "Serbia must not be passive and wait and see what the others will say, as it has done so often in the past."
The SANU Memorandum met with many different reactions. The Albanians saw it as a call for Serbian supremacism at a local level. Other Yugoslav nationalities - notably the Slovenes and Croats - saw an threat in the call for a more assertive Serbia. Serbs themselves were divided: many welcomed it, while the Communist old guard strongly attacked its message. One of those who initially denounced it was a Serbian Communist Party official named Slobodan Milosevic. He soon realised that Serbian popular feeling on the Kosovo issue could be used to boost his own personal power.
In April 1987, Milosevic attended a huge rally of Serbs held to mark the 1389 Battle of Kosovo Polje. He seized the moment to declare to his audience that "Nobody, either now or in the future, has the right to beat you." This was a reference not only to the anti-nationalist repression of the (Albanian-dominated) Kosovo police but also implicitly to Serbia's perceived inferior position within Yugoslavia. His declaration made him a nationalist hero within Serbia virtually overnight. He used his newfound prestige to push aside his mentor and longstanding friend, Ivan Stambolic, and become President of Serbia.
Kosovo presented a significant obstacle for Milosevic's ambitions both within Serbia and in Yugoslavia as a whole. The Serbian Assembly could not approve any republic-wide laws without the approval of its two provincial Assemblies. In Vojvodina which was mostly Serb-populated, this did not present a problem. However, the Albanian-led Communist Party in Kosovo (led after 1986 by Azem Vllasi) took a more assertive position towards the Serbian government and could be expected to put up strong opposition to any moves to reassert Serbian authority over Kosovo. The province could also help to block Milosevic at the federal level. Under the decentralized 1974 Constitution which was adopted by Tito, the Yugoslav Federal Presidency had eight members, six from the republics and two from the Serbian autonomous provinces including Kosovo. This meant that Serbia's vote was equal to Kosovo's - it could easily be outvoted by the other republics. The obvious solution was to ensure that Serbia controlled Kosovo's federal representation.
For two years from 1987, Milosevic's government stoked Serbian fears of an alliance of Albanians, Slovenes and Croats conspiring against the Serbian people. Lurid claims to that effect were aired on Belgrade television (and were responded to just as lurid a fashion by the state television services of the other republics). More ominously, Milosevic took steps to rein in Kosovo's political leadership. In November 1988, Kosovo's president Azem Vllasi was arrested and the province's communist leadership was dismissed en masse. In March 1989, Milosevic announced an "anti-bureaucratic revolution" in Kosovo and Vojvodina, curtailing their autonomy and imposing a curfew and a state of emergency in Kosovo. This was met with violent demonstrations, resulting in 24 deaths (including two policemen) when rock-throwing protesters were met with gunfire from Serbian security forces. Milosevic and his government maintained that the constitutional changes were necessary to protect Kosovo's remaining Serbs against harassment from the Albanian majority.
Kosovo under Serbian rule (1990-1996)
Milosevic took the process of retrenchment a stage further in 1990 when he abolished the autonomy of Kosovo and Vojvodina. Crucially, though, he did not abolish their two seats on the Federal Presidency. This therefore gave Serbia three out of eight votes on the Presidency, four when Montenegro (which was closely allied to Serbia) was counted. Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia and Macedonia thus had to maintain an uneasy alliance to prevent Milosevic from driving through constitutional changes. Serbia's political changes were ratified in a 5 July, 1990 referendum across the entire republic of Serbia, including Kosovo; although most Albanians voted against it, the result was a foregone conclusion given the much greater population of Serbia proper.
The impact on Kosovo was drastic. The extinction of its constitutional powers was accompanied by the abolition of its political institutions, with its assembly and government being formally disbanded. As most of Kosovo's industry was state-owned, the changes brought a wholesale change of corporate cadres. Technically, few were sacked outright: their companies required them to sign loyalty pledges, which most Albanians would not or could not sign, although some did and remained employed in Serbian state companies right up to 1999. Most state-employed Albanians were thus replaced by Serbs, with an estimated 115,000 Albanians losing their jobs.
Albanian cultural autonomy was also drastically reduced. The only Albanian-language newspaper, Rilindja, was banned and TV and radio broadcasts in Albanian ceased. Pristina University, seen as a hotbed of Albanian nationalism, was purged: 800 lecturers at Pristina University were sacked and 22,500 of the 23,000 students expelled. Some 40,000 Serbian troops and police replaced the original Albanian-run security forces. A punitive regime was imposed that was harshly condemned as a "police state" by the outside world and likened by some to South Africa's recently abandoned policy of apartheid. Poverty and unemployment reached catastrophic levels, with about 80% of Kosovo's population becoming unemployed. As many as a third of adult male Albanians chose to go abroad (particularly to Germany) to find work and support their families back home with hard currency rather than increasingly worthless Yugoslav dinars.
With Kosovo's Communist Party effectively broken up by Milosevic's crackdown, the position of dominant Albanian political party passed to the Democratic League of Kosovo, led by the writer Ibrahim Rugova. It responded to the abolition of Kosovo's autonomy by pursuing a policy of peaceful resistance. Rugova took the very practical line that armed resistance would be futile given Serbia's military strength and would lead only to a bloodbath in the province. He called on the Albanian populace to boycott the Yugoslav and Serbian states by not participating in any elections, by ignoring the military draft (compulsory in Yugoslavia) and most important by not paying any taxes or duties to the State. He also called for the creation of parallel Albanian schools, clinics and hospitals. In September 1991, the shadow Kosovo Assembly organized a referendum on independence for Kosovo. Despite widespread harassment by Serbian security forces, the referendum achieved a reported 90% turnout and a 98% vote - nearly a million votes in all - which approved the creation of an independent "Republic of Kosovo". In May 1992, a second referendum elected Rugova as President of Kosovo. The Serbian government declared that both referendums were illegal and their results null and void.
The slide to war (1996-1998)
Rugova's policy of passive resistance succeeded in keeping Kosovo quiet during the bloody wars in Slovenia, Croatia and Bosnia during the early 1990s. However, this came at the cost of increasing frustration and stagnation among the population of Kosovo. The status of Kosovo was not addressed by the 1995 Dayton Accords which had ended the war in Bosnia, and Rugova's pleas for a United Nations peacekeeping force for Kosovo had fallen on deaf ears. Milosevic was still in place, having engineered his promotion to the presidency of the rump Yugoslavia (now consisting only of Serbia and Montenegro).
Continuing Serbian repression had radicalised many Albanians, some of whom decided that only armed resistance would effect a change in the situation. On April 22 1996, four attacks on Serbian civilians and security personnel were carried out virtually simultaneously in several parts of Kosovo. A hitherto unknown organisation calling itself the "Kosovo Liberation Army" (KLA) subsequently claimed responsibility. The nature of the KLA was at first highly mysterious; Rugova suggested that it was a setup by the Serbian secret police to justify increased repression of the Albanians (which duly occurred in the wake of the shootings). In reality it was a small, mainly clan-based but not very well organised group of radicalised Albanians, many of whom came from the Drenica region of western Kosovo. Its strategy was extremely simple and remained constant right up until the outbreak of war in 1999: to provoke the Serbian security forces into committing reprisals which in turn would boost support for the KLA and, crucially, force NATO to step in to end the bloodshed.
Most Albanians saw the KLA as legitimate "freedom fighters" whilst the Serbian government called them terrorists. Some Albanian exiles chose to support the KLA with money and weapons. Bujar Bukoshi, shadow Prime Minister in exile (in Zurich, Switzerland), created a group called AFRK (Armed Forces of the Republic of Kosova) which was reported to have been disbanded and absorbed by the KLA in 1998. The response of outside powers was ambivalent: in February, 1998, the United States' Special Representative to Yugoslavia, Robert Gelbard, denounced the KLA as a terrorist organization but neither the United States nor most other powers made any serious effort to stop money or weapons being channeled into Kosovo. There was a widespread belief that the Dayton Accords had settled the Yugoslav nightmare once and for all and many Western politicians were reluctant to open yet another Yugoslav can of worms. A six-nation "Contact Group" was established in January 1997 to coordinate international policy on Kosovo, bringing together Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Russia and the United States. The group was unable to agree on anything much and nothing significant was done to alleviate the growing conflict.
The situation was worsened in late 1997 after Albania collapsed into anarchy following the fall of President Sali Berisha. Military stockpiles were looted with impunity by criminal gangs, with much of the hardware ending up in western Kosovo and so boosting the growing KLA arsenal. The conflict soon took on the character of a guerrilla war, although it was still largely confined to western Kosovo. Against the KLA, the Serbian authorities deployed the regular Serbian police and the heavily armed paramilitary police of the Serbian Ministry of the Interior (MUP), which had already acquired an unpleasant reputation for brutality. It also emerged that militia were becoming involved, under the control of the secret police and the ultra-nationalist gangster Arkan, who had been elected to the Serbian Assembly by the Kosovo Serbs in December 1992. The predictable result was that the two sides embarked on a cycle of bloody attacks followed by bloody reprisals.
By the summer of 1998, the violence had left hundreds dead and driven possibly as many 300,000 people from their homes. Refugee Albanians were fleeing into Macedonia, threatening the fragile unity of that country. This presented a potentially catastrophic strategic dilemma for NATO and the European Union: if civil war broke out in Macedonia between that country's Slavs and Albanians, the security interests of all four of its neighbours, Serbia, Albania, Greece and Bulgaria. All four countries had potential territorial claims on Macedonia and Turkey had also made known its interest in protecting the interest of its former subjects, the Albanians. The overspill from a war in Kosovo thus directly threatened the whole of the southern Balkans and presented a major strategic threat to NATO and the EU. Both organisations, plus the United States and the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) decided that something had to be done.
The international community sought to end the fighting, persuade the KLA to drop its bid for independence and convince Milosevic to permit NATO peacekeeping troops to enter Kosovo. They only succeeded in the first objective and then only partially: a ceasefire was brokered commencing from October 25, 1998. A large contingent of unarmed OSCE peace monitors moved into Kosovo. Their inadequacy was evident from the start. They were cruelly nicknamed the "clockwork oranges" in reference to their brightly coloured vehicles (in English, a "clockwork orange" signifies a useless object.) The ceasefire broke down within a matter of weeks and fighting resumed in December 1998.
Racak and the Rambouillet Conference (January-March 1999)
KLA attacks and Serbian reprisals continued throughout the winter of 1998-99, culminating on January 15 1999 with the mass killing of 45 Albanian men in the village of Racak during a joint operation by the Serbian police and Yugoslav army. The incident was immediately condemned by the international community and the United Nations Security Council, and later became the basis of one of the charges of war crimes leveled against Milosevic and his top officials. The details of what happened at Racak are still somewhat controversial. Serbian sources claimed that the Albanians had died in battle but UN war crimes prosecutors were able to present a strong case at Milosevic's subsequent war crimes trial that the victims had in fact been deliberately massacred. Although the war crimes tribunal has not yet ruled on the issue, it is fair to say that the massacre explanation is generally accepted internationally.
It was decided that the conflict could only be settled by introducing a proper military peacekeeping force under the auspices of NATO, to forcibly restrain the two sides. A carefully coordinated set of diplomatic initiatives was announced simultaneously on January 30, 1999:
- NATO issued a statement announcing that it was prepared to launch air strikes against Yugoslav targets "to compel compliance with the demands of the international community and [to achieve] a political settlement". While this was most obviously a threat to the Milosevic government, it also included a coded threat to the Albanians: any decision would depend on the "position and actions of the Kosovar leadership and all Kosovar armed elements in and around Kosovo." In effect, NATO was saying to the Serbs "make peace or we'll bomb you" and to the Albanians "make peace or we'll abandon you to the Serbs."
- The Contact Group issued a set of "non-negotiable principles" which made up a package known as "Status Quo Plus" - effectively the restoration of Kosovo's pre-1990 autonomy within Serbia, plus the introduction of democracy and supervision by international organisations. It also called for a peace conference to be held in February 1999 at the Chateau Rambouillet outside Paris.
The biggest problem for both sides was that the Contact Group's non-negotiable principles were mutually unacceptable. The Albanians were absolutely unwilling to accept a solution that would retain Kosovo as part of Serbia. The Serbs did not want to see the pre-1990 status quo restored, and were implacably opposed to any international role in the governance of the province. The negotiations thus became a somewhat cynical game of musical chairs, each side trying to avoid being blamed for the breakdown of the talks. To add to the farce, the NATO Contact Group countries were desperate to avoid having to make good on their threat of force - Greece and Italy were strongly opposed to the whole idea and there was vigorous opposition to military action in every NATO country. Consequently, when the talks failed to achieve an agreement by the original deadline of February 19, they were extended by another month.
In the end, on 18 March, 1999 the Albanians signed what became known as the Rambouillet Accords while the Serbian delegation refused. The accords called for NATO administration of Kosovo as an autonomous province within Yugoslavia; a force of 30,000 NATO troops to maintain order in Kosovo; an unhindered right of passage for NATO troops on Yugoslav territory, including Kosovo; and immunity for NATO and its agents to Yugoslav law. These latter provisions were much the same as had been applied to Bosnia for the SFOR (Stabilisation Force) mission there. However, the Albanians had very nearly refused - and did refuse in February, prompting a two-week break in the talks - before the KLA hardliners finally caved in. Their motives for signing are still somewhat murky. Some analysts believe they signed the agreement only because they knew that it would not be put into effect and that they truly would not settle for anything other than full independence. Another factor may have been the dramatic appeal made to them by the foreign minister of Albania, Paskal Milo, who warned the delegates that Kosovo faced "extinction" if agreement was not reached, and the heavy pressure applied by United States Secretary of State Madeleine Albright. The Albanians may also have gambled that the Serbs would not sign under any circumstances.
If the accords did not go far enough to fully satisfy the Albanians, they were much too radical for the Serbs, who responded by substituting a drastically revised text that even the Russians found unacceptable. It sought to reopen the painstakingly negotiated political status of Kosovo and deleted all of the proposed implementation measures. Among many other changes in the proposed new version, it eliminated the entire chapter on humanitarian assistance and reconstruction, removed virtually all international oversight and dropped any mention of invoking "the will of the people [of Kosovo]" in determining the final status of the province. Even the word "peace" was deleted. The Serbian delegation must have known that the new version would never be accepted by the Albanians or the Contact Group. It was immediately apparent that Milosevic had decided to call NATO's bluff, believing that the alliance would either not make good on its threat or would do no more than launch a few pinprick raids that could easily be absorbed. Perhaps most fundamentally, Milosevic appears to have calculated that he had more to lose by making peace than waging war - although the KLA was undefeated, its defeat was nonetheless just a matter of time in the face of the far more powerful Serbian and Yugoslav security forces.
Critics of the Kosovo war have claimed that the Serbian refusal was prompted by unacceptably broad terms in the access rights proposed for the NATO peacekeeping force. These would allow (in the words of the agreement's Appendix B) "free and unrestricted access throughout [Yugoslavia] including .. the right of bivouac, maneuver, billet, and utilization of any areas or facilities as required for support, training and operations." This was based on standard UN peacekeeping agreements such as that in force in Bosnia, but was not very well worded and would have given broader rights of access than were really needed. It has been claimed that Appendix B would have authorised what would amount to a NATO occupation of the whole of Yugoslavia, not just Kosovo, and that its presence in the accords was the cause of the breakdown of the talks. In fact, Appendix B was never even discussed at Rambouillet: a NATO force of any kind, with any access regime, was fundamentally unacceptable to the Serbian delegation. It was only some time later that Appendix B began to be cited by pro-Serbian individuals as the reason for the talks' breakdown.
Events proceded rapidly after the failure at Rambouillet. The international monitors from the OSCE withdrew on March 22, for fear of the monitors' safety ahead of the anticipated NATO bombing campaign. On March 23, the Serbian assembly accepted the principle of autonomy for Kosovo [1] but condemned the accords in the harshest terms as a "fraudulent document" signed by the "separatist-terrorist delegation". The following day, March 24, NATO bombing began.
The NATO bombing campaign
NATO started its bombing campaign on March 24, 1999 The legitimacy of NATO's bombing campaign in Kosovo has been the subject of debate. NATO did not have the backing of the United Nations to use force in Yugoslavia. Regardless, some argue that atrocities committed by the Serbian leadership were reason enough to intervene. NATO's officials sought to portray the bombing campaign to the Western public as a "clean war". However, technologies like depleted uranium ammunition were used as well and the bombing was responsible for the deaths of civilians. Serbian TV was deliberately bombed, some believe that this was due to it broadcasting pictures of damage caused by the NATO bombing. Many Serbians and international associations argued that several war crimes were committed by the NATO during the campaign, and also point out that these alleged crimes were never investigated.
Kosovo Albanians fled inter-ethnic conflict, but also the bombing and infrastructure destruction, in the hundreds of thousands into neighboring Albania and Macedonia (which quickly closed its borders). But before those nations closed their borders Serbian forces on April 7, 1999 closed border crossings out of Kosovo to prevent ethnic Albanians from leaving. Refugees were redirected back to homes, to Montenegro and Southern Serbia. The West protested this decision, and the borders were reopened after few days. At least eight hundred thousand refudgees fled the province, including 100,000 who left before the war began and 100,000 Serbs who left Kosovo fleeing the bombing. Most of these were ethnic Albanians who fled into Albania.
Kosovo Albanian refugees were hit by NATO |
Passenger bus hit and destroyed |
On May 7, NATO bombs dropped on the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade. The United States and NATO later apologized for the bombing, saying that it occurred because of an outdated map provided by the CIA. However reports from the Observer (UK) and Politiken (Netherlands) newspapers (among others) have disputed that assertion, and reported that NATO intentionally bombed the Embassy because it was being used as a relay station for Yugoslav army radio signals. [1] The bombing strained relations between China and NATO countries.
Electricity and water supplies were bombed |
The final proposal that ended the bombing rejected the heavy NATO presence throughout Yugoslavia, but Serbia agreed to have a military presence within Kosovo headed by the UN. In practice NATO had more troops on the ground in its KFOR force than the UN did in its UNMIK force.
The Kosovo War was significant from a military standpoint in that it marked the first effective use of low technology local ground forces in combination with high technology air power provided by the United States. This combination would prove effective in the United States campaign against the Taliban in Afghanistan in 2001.
NATO flew 38,000 combat missions over Kosovo. Yugoslavia claimed these attacks caused between 1,200 and 5,700 civilian casualties. Human Rights Watch claims a total of only 500 civilian deaths occurred in 90 separate incidents. NATO acknowledged killing at most 1,500 civilians. NATO reported the loss of three helicopters, 32 UAVs and five airplanes, all American including the first stealth plane (a F-117 Fighter Bomber) shot down by enemy fire, and suffered no combat casualties; however, its reports are not verified. Several of these were lost in accidents and not by enemy action. Yugoslav army officially claims it shot down seven helicopters, 30 UAVs, 61 planes and 238 cruise missiles; however, its claims are not verified. The Yugoslav army was largely intact in Kosovo despite the heavy bombing, and it was a surprise for NATO when they saw the scale of the retreating forces. Around 50 Yugoslavian aircraft were lost but only 13 tanks and armored vehicles — most of the targets hit in Kosovo were decoys, and the anti-aircraft defence was preserved during the conflict (radars were mostly turned off) so NATO missions were flown on 5 km altitude. There were up to 5000 military casualties according to NATO estimates, while the Serbian figure is around 1000. A total of around 4500 mostly Albanian bodies were dug up around Kosovo, mostly from the sites including 10-20 bodies, and in several cases from mass graves with up to 100 bodies. There were no widespread mass-graves as in the case of Bosnia, and few mass graves include Serbian bodies, killed by KLA during and after the conflict. The International Red Cross compiled a list of over 3000 missing Albanians. Most of them turned to be prisoners transfered to Serbia, and have been released, although some 1000 still remain in Serbia today. There are also around 1,500 missing Serbian civilians, who are believed to be dead.
The aftermath of the Kosovo War has seen a reduction of Kosovo's Serbian population by nearly 75%. This was caused largely by Serbs fleeing out of fear of the KLA and other Albanian extremists. The Serbs also alleged that KFOR force showed little will to help the Serbs. NATO, who advertised the war as a struggle to help return refugees, 90% of whom had left their homes after the beginning of the bombing, now let Serbs and other non-Albanians, including Gypsies, Gorans, and Turks, who totalled 400,000, to leave Kosovo. KFOR has opposed any return of Serbian refugees to Kosovo, claiming it can not grant them security, despite having almost 45,000 soldiers at their disposal and ability, even obligation, to ask for additional troops from Serbia.
War Crimes Trials
http://www.iacenter.org/warcrime/indictmt.htmYugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic along with Milan Milutinovic, Nikola Sainovic, Dragoljub Ojdanic and Vlajko Stojiljkovic was charged by the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTFY) with crimes against humanity including murder, forcible transfer, deportation and "persecution on political, racial or religious grounds". This charge was made in May 1999, during the bombing. Yugoslav military and police forces are linked in the indictment to 12 instances causing the deaths of over 600 civilians. Former armed forces chief of staff Nebojsa Pavkovic, former army corps commander Vladimir Lazarevic, former police official Vlastimir Djordjevic and the current head of Serbia's public security, Sreten Lukic were indicted in October 2003 with crimes against humanity and violations of the laws or customs of war.
Fatmir Limaj, Haradin Bala, Isak Musliu and Agim Murtezi of the KLA were indicted by ICTFY for crimes against humanity, including murder, torture and imprisonment, and five counts of violations of the laws or customs of war, including murder and cruel treatment. They were arrested Feb. 17-18, 2003. Charges were soon dropped against Agim Murtezi as a case of mistaken identity. The charges were in relation to Lapusnik prison camp run by the defendants between May and July 1998.
War crimes prosecutions have also been carried out in Yugoslavia. Yugoslav soldier Ivan Nikolic was found guilty in 2002 of war crimes in the deaths of two civilians in Kosovo.
In the case of NATO, the Tribunal claims it has no jurisdiction to prosecute for possible war crimes committed against Serbian civilians.
Yugoslav tactics that worked against NATO
The tactics used by the Yugoslav army to avoid damage to its military at Kosovo were quite efficient, according to Wesley Clark and other NATO generals who analyzed these tactics a few years after the conflict. [1]
The Yugoslav army, with its military doctrine developed during the Cold War
with the main purpose to resist much stronger enemy (Russian or American invasion) has put many of these tactics to work. While it may be argued that these effects were not enough to block a technological highly advanced army from causing serious damage to civilian infrastructure, some of these techniques were provably effective, especially in preserving army inside Kosovo virtually intact:
- U.S. stealth aircraft were tracked by using radars operating on long wavelengths. Also, if stealth jets got wet or started to drop bombs they would become visible on the radar screens. An F-117 stealth bomber was downed in this way.
- The precision-guided missiles were often confused and unable to pinpoint radars, because radar beams were reflected off heavy farm machinery like old tractors and plows.
- Many low tech approaches were used to confuse heat-seeking missiles and infrared sensors. Decoys such as small gas furnaces were used to simulate nonexisting positions on Kosovo mountainsides. Scout helicopters would land on flatbed trucks and rev their engines before being towed to camouflaged sites several hundred metres away. Heat-seeking missiles from NATO jets would then locate and go after the residual heat on the trucks. Similar tactics were planned in the case of the ground invasion - covert placement of heat emmiters on territory that NATO troops were to enter, tricking B-52s into carpet-bombing their own positions and causing friendly-fire incidents.
- Dummy targets were used very extensively. Fake bridges, airfields and decoy planes and tanks were used. Tanks were made using old tires, plastic sheeting and logs, and sand cans and fuel set alight to mimic heat emissions. They fooled NATO pilots into bombing hundreds of such decoys. NATO claimed that Yugoslav air force had been decimated. In reality, as it turned out after the war, most of Yugoslav planes and armored vehicles survived unscathed.
- Bridges and other strategic targets were defended from missiles with laser-guidance systems by bonfires made of old tires and wet hay, which emit dense smoke filled with laser-reflecting particles.
- Old electronic jammers were used to block U.S. bombs equipped with GPS guidance.
- Yugoslav jets flew combat missions over Kosovo at extremely low altitudes, taking advantage of mountainous terrain to remain undetected by AWACS flying radars.
- Hispano-Suisa anti-aircraft cannons from the WWII era were used efficiently against drones predator drones while Apache attack choppers and C-130 Hercules gunships considered too vulnerable to be deployed at all after two Apaches suffered accidents during training in Albanian mountains.
External links
- Kosovo current events
- Kosovo News
- B92 Kosovo News
- Civilian Casualties and Destruction in NATO bombing
- Focus on Kosovo (CNN special)
- Human Rights Watch - UNDER ORDERS: War Crimes in Kosovo (an overview)
- Human Rights Watch report on atrocities against Kosovo Serbs and Roma after June 1999
- Human Rights Watch report on civilan casualties caused by NATO bombing
- Human Rights Watch report on humanitarian violations by both sides
- Indictment of Milosevic
- Albanian Kosovo Crisis Center
- Kosova Press - the KLA news agency
- Books and reports on Kosovo, in Serbian and English - People
- Kosovo after the war, destruction of Serbian heritage
- Account of destroyed Serbian Orthodox churches in Kosovo and Metohia
- Kosovo the Land of the Living Past
- Milosevic trial links
- Serb Kosovo Coordination Center
- Yugoslav tactics that worked (Associated Press)