Coordinates	12°58′0″N77°34′0″N
Conventional long name	Kosovo
Common name	Kosovo
map caption	Kosovo physical map
Ethnic groups	88% Albanians7% Serbs5% others
Ethnic groups year	2009
Capital
Largest city	capital
Latns	N
Longew	E
Area magnitude	1 E10
Area km2	10,908
Area sq mi	4,212
Percent water	n/a
Population census	1,733,872
Population census year	2011
Population density km2	159
Population density sq mi	412
Gdp ppp year	2011
Gdp ppp	€4.740 / $6.488 billion
Gdp ppp per capita	€2,070
Gdp nominal year	2010
Gdp nominal	$5.601 billion
Gdp nominal per capita	$3,103
Currency	Euro (€); Serbian Dinar
Currency code	EUR; RSD
Time zone	CET
Utc offset	+1
Time zone dst	CEST
Utc offset dst	+2
Drives on	right
Calling code	+381
Footnote1	Officially +381; some mobile phone providers use +377 (Monaco) or +386 (Slovenia) instead. }}

Kosovo (; ; ) is a region in southeastern Europe. For most of the existence of Yugoslavia, it was the Autonomous Province of Kosovo and Metohija (Serbian: Аутономна Покрајина Косово и Метохија, ''Autonomna Pokrajina Kosovo i Metohija'') within Serbia (Serbia then being one of the constituent republics of Yugoslavia), and is still so regarded by Serbia (as declared in the 2006 Constitution of Serbia). In consequence of Yugoslavia's defeat in the Kosovo War, the country relinquished control of this territory, whose governance was taken over by the United Nations. The partially recognised Republic of Kosovo (Albanian: ''Republika e Kosovës''; Serbian: Република Косово, ''Republika Kosovo''), a self-declared independent state, has ''de facto'' control over most of the territory, with North Kosovo being the largest Kosovo Serb enclave. Serbia does not recognise the unilateral secession of Kosovo and considers it a UN-governed entity within its sovereign territory.

Background

Kosovo is landlocked and borders the Republic of Macedonia to the south, Albania to the west and Montenegro to the northwest. The remaining frontier belt is with the Central Serbian region which is the source of international dispute. The largest city and the capital of Kosovo is Pristina (alternatively spelled ''Prishtina'' or ''Priština''), while other cities include Peć (Albanian: ''Peja''), Prizren, Đakovica (''Gjakova''), and Kosovska Mitrovica (''Mitrovica''). Nominally, the name of Kosovo has come to represent a number of different entities over the centuries and its borders have subsequently altered. There have also been periods when no political entity has existed with the name of Kosovo. Today's outline dates back to 1946.

During classical antiquity, the territory roughly corresponding to present-day Kosovo was part of several tribal alliances, including that formed by the Dardani. Upon conquest, the Romans dissolved existing tribal alliances and re-integrated communities centred on Roman civitates as part of the Roman province of Moesia Superior. Subdivisions in Late Roman times created the region of "Dardania". After the collapse of Roman control, the region was contested between Avars, Sklavenes and Byzantines, and later beween the Byzantines, Bulgarians and Serbs.

The name and the region ''Kosovo'' first appears as part of a newly created region within an expanded Serbian medieval state, and soon became its ecclesiastical and secular centre; the region was subsequently enshrined by Serbs as the cradle of their national identity. Following the Battle of Kosovo in 1389, it became part of the Ottoman Empire, while some parts of it remained in the Albanian Principality of Dukagjini, until the middle 15th century. During the Ottoman the region came into close contact with the Ottoman culture Islam was introduced to the population. During the late 19th century, Kosovo was the centre of the Albanian national awakening and the battlefield of the Albanian revolts of 1843–44, 1910 and 1912. In 1912, the Ottoman province was divided between Montenegro and Serbia, both of which became part of Yugoslavia in 1918. During World War II, the majority of Kosovo was part of Italian-occupied Albania, followed by a Nazi German Occupation before becoming an autonomous province of the SR Serbia under the Constitution of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia.

After the Kosovo War and the 1999 NATO bombing of Yugoslavia, the territory came under the interim administration of the United Nations Mission in Kosovo (UNMIK), most of whose roles were assumed by the European Union Rule of Law Mission in Kosovo (EULEX) in December 2008. In February 2008 individual members of the Assembly of Kosovo (acting in personal capacity and not binding the Assembly itself) declared Kosovo's independence as the ''Republic of Kosovo''. Its independence is recognised by and the Republic of China (Taiwan). On 8 October 2008, upon request of Serbia, the UN General Assembly adopted a resolution asking the International Court of Justice for an advisory opinion on the issue of Kosovo's declaration of independence. On 22 July 2010, the ICJ ruled that Kosovo's declaration of independence did not violate international law, which its president said contains no "prohibitions on declarations of independence".

Name

''Kosovo'' (, ) is the Serbian neuter possessive adjective of ''kos'' (кос) "blackbird", an ellipsis for ''Kosovo Polje'', 'blackbird field', the site of the 1389 Battle of Kosovo Field. The name of the field was applied to an Ottoman province created in 1864.

The region currently known as "Kosovo" became an administrative region in 1946, as the Autonomous Province of Kosovo and Metohija. In 1974, the compositional "Kosovo and Metohija" was reduced to simple "Kosovo" in the name of the Socialist Autonomous Province of Kosovo, but in 1990 was renamed back to Autonomous Province of Kosovo and Metohija.

The entire region is commonly referred to in English simply as ''Kosovo'' and in Albanian as '''' (definite form, ) or '''' ("indefinite" form, ). In Serbia, a distinction is made between the eastern and western areas; the term '''' () is used for the eastern part, while the western part is called ''Metohija'' ().

History

Kosovo's current status is the result of the turmoil of the disintegration of Yugoslavia, particularly the Kosovo War of 1998 to 1999, but it is suffused with issues dating back to the rise of nationalism in the Balkans during the last part of Ottoman rule in the 19th century. The Kosovo Albanians claim that the Illyrians, whom they claim as their direct ancestors, were the majority population in the region, and continued to be so throughout history despite failing to create any 'national institutions' in Kosovo until modern times and despite encroachments on their native territories. The Serbians deny this claim. Moreoever, they argue that, even if there is some linguistic connection between the pre-Slavic population of "Dardania" and modern Albanians, this cannot be used to justify modern territorial aspirations since it relies on territorial claims from pre-Migration Age Europe, at a time where there were no states or nations as we know them today. Serbian claims to Kosovo extend even farther than the migrations dated to c. 6–7th century, on the account of admixture with preexisting "Illyrians" and Roman populations and their preservation of certain of their customs. Moreover, in line with the consensus historical viewpoint, they see modern Albanians to have emerged in the Middle Ages after significant admixture with various other ethno-linguistic groups, including Slavs. Finally, Serbs claim that Kosovo very rapidly became the 'heart of Serbia' in the Middle Ages, and revere the Battle of Kosovo, eponymous with the Kosovo region.

Early history

During antiquity, the area which now makes up Kosovo was inhabited by various tribal ''ethnes'', who were liable to move, englarge, fuse and fissure with neighbouring groups. As such, it is difficult to locate any such group with precision. The ''Dardani'', whose exact ethno-linguistic affilitation is difficult to determine, were a prominent group in the region during the late Hellenistic and early Roman eras.

The area was then conquered by Rome in the 160s BC, and incorporated into the Roman province of Illyricum in 59 BC. Subsequently, it became part of Moesia Superior in AD 87. The region was exposed to an increasing number of 'barbarian' raids from the fourth century C.E. onwards, culminating with the so-called Slavic migrations of the 6th to 7th centuries. Archaeologically, the early Middle Ages represent a hiatus in the material record, and whatever was left of the native provincial population fused with the ''Sklavene'' colonists.

The subsequent political and demoghraphic history of Kosovo is not known with absolute certainty until c. 13th century C.E. Archaeological findings suggest that there was steady population recovery and progression of the Slavic culture seen elsewhere throughout the Balkans. The region was absorbed into the Bulgarian Empire in the 850s, where Christianity and a Byzantine-Slavic culture was cemented in the region. It was re-taken by the Byzantines after 1018, and became part of the newly established Theme of Bulgaria. As the centre of Slavic resistance to Constantinople in the region, the region often switched between Serbian and Bulgarian rule on one hand and Byzantine on the other until the Serb principality of Rascia conquered it definitively by the end of the 12th century. An insight into the region is provided by the Byzantine historian-princess, Anna Comnena, who wrote of "Serbs" being the main inhabitants of the region (referring to it as "eastern Dalmatia" and the "former Moesia Superior"). The earliest references to an Albanian population is derived from late eleventh century Byzantine chroniclers, who consistently located the ''Arber'' around the hinterland districts of Dyrrachium, modern Durrës.

The zenith of Serbian power was reached in 1346, with the formation of the Serbian Empire. During the 13th and 14th centuries, Kosovo became a political and spiritual centre of the Serbian Kingdom. In the late 13th century, the seat of the Serbian Archbishopric was moved to Pec, and rulers centred themselves between Prizren and Skopje, during which time thousands of Christian monasteries and feudal-style forts and castles were erected. When the Serbian Empire fragmented into a conglomeration of principalities in 1371, Kosovo became the hereditary land of the House of Branković. In the late 14th and the 15th century parts of Kosovo, the easternmost area of which was located near Pristina, were part of the Principality of Dukagjini, which was later incorporated an anti-Ottoman federation of all Albanian principalities, the League of Lezhë.

In the 1389 Battle of Kosovo, Ottoman forces defeated a coalition of Serbs, Albanians, and Bosnians led by the Tsar Lazar Hrebeljanović. Soon after, parts of Serbia accepted Turkish vassalage and Lazar's daughter was married to the Sultan to seal the peace. By 1455, it was finally and fully conquered by the Ottoman Empire.

Ottoman Kosovo (1455–1912)

Kosovo was part of the Ottoman Empire from 1455 to 1912, at first as part of the ''eyalet'' of Rumelia, and from 1864 as a separate province (''vilayet''). During this time, Islam was introduced to the population. The Vilayet of Kosovo was an area much larger than today's Kosovo; it included all today's Kosovo territory, sections of the Sandžak region cutting into present-day Central Serbia and Montenegro along with the Kukës municipality, the surrounding region in present-day northern Albania and also parts of north-western Macedonia with the city of Skopje (then Üsküp), as its capital. Between 1881 and 1912 (its final phase), it was internally expanded to include other regions of present-day Republic of Macedonia, including larger urban settlements such as Štip (''İştip''), Kumanovo (''Kumanova'') and Kratovo (''Kratova'').

The Serbian position is that archives reveal an overwhelming Serbian demographic majority in Kosovo, which was reversed by the end of Ottoman rule, as Banac summarised: "Ottoman raids, plunder, slaving forays, as well as the general devastation caused by constant wars uprooted large numbers of Serbs even before the 'Great Serb Migration'". This was followed by the transplantation of Albanian pastoralists from the highlands of Albania to the fertile valleys of Kosovo. However, Anscombe highlights that the most common archives – those derived from the Ottomans – do not clarify unequivocally the 'ethnic' character of the region's inhabitants, because the Ottomans classified their subjects along religious lines (''millets''). Anscombe suggests that records show that the demography of Kosovo was very much mixed and that both Serbian and Albanian ethnic groups dominated. Moreover, they seem to indicate more cases of Albanians rebelling than any other ethnicity in the region. However, mainstream historiography clarifies that "there is no conclusive evidence that a people unambiguously identifiable as "Albanian" constituted the majority of the population in Kosovo prior to the Ottoman occupation". Even the relatively "pro-Albanian" history written by Noel Malcolm concedes that "the region probably had a predominantly Orthodox Christian and Slavic population from the eight to the mid-nineteenth centuries". Allowing for the possibility of some connection between the regions inhabitants prior to successive Slavic/ Serbian inflows, the Albanians who 'returned' to Kosovo in modern times were certainly not ''the same'' people, having interbred extensively with Vlachs, Slavs, Greeks and Turks. Whilst there is little evidence of ethnic Albanian institutional presence in medieval Kosovo, this might be due to the fact that they were often baptised into Orthodox Christianity and subjected to a process of "Serbianisation". Prior to Islamification, the Albanians might have existed as transhumance pastoralists inhabiting Balkan highland areas, like the Vlachs, engaging in a symbiotic existence with the predominantly agricultural Slavs who inhabited the valleys and plains.

Kosovo, like Serbia, was occupied by Austrian forces during the Great War of 1683–1699, but the Ottomans re-established their rule of the region. Such acts of assistance by the Austrian Empire (then arch-rivals of the Ottoman Empire), or Russia, were always abortive or temporary at best. In 1690, the Serbian Patriarch of Peć Arsenije III apparently led a group of 37, 000 families from Kosovo to the Christian north, although, this might have been around 30 – 40, 0000 individuals. In 1766, the Ottomans abolished the Patriarchate of Peć and the position of Christians in Kosovo further deteriorated, including full imposition of jizya (taxation of non-Muslims).

Although initially stout opponents of the advancing Turks, Albanian chiefs ultimately came to accept the Ottomans as sovereigns. The resulting alliance facilitated the mass conversion of Albanians to Islam. Given that the Ottoman Empire's subjects were divided along religious (rather than ethnic) lines, Islamicisation greatly elevated the status of Albanian chiefs. Prior to this, they were organised along simple tribal lines, living in the mountainous areas of modern Albania (from Kruje to the Sar range). Soon, they expanded into a depopulated Kosovo, as well as northwestern Macedonia, although some might have been autochthonous to the region. However, Banac favours the idea that the main settlers of the time were Vlachs. As Hupchik states, "Albanians had little cause of unrest" and "if anything, grew important in Ottoman internal affairs", and sometimes persecuted Christians harshly on behalf of their Turkish masters. According to the Serbian viewpoint, the most numerous Albanian migrations occurred during the eighteenth century. These Albanians were almost all of the Muslim faith, and their settlement was defended by the Ottomans, amounting to a mass-colonisation of Kosovo by Albanians and the genocide of Serbian inhabitants. According to the Albanian perspective, this was merely a consolidation of previously held territory.

In the 19th century, there was an awakening of ethnic nationalism throughout the Balkans. This systematised the underlying ethnic tensions into a broader struggle of Christian Serbs against Muslim Albanians. The ethnic Albanian nationalism movement was centred in Kosovo. In 1878 the League of Prizren () was formed. This was a political organisation which aimed to unify all the Albanians of the Ottoman Empire in a common struggle for autonomy and greater cultural rights, although they generally desired the continuation of the Ottoman Empire. The League was dis-established in 1881 but nevertheless enabled the awakening of a national identity amongst Albanians. It would be clear that Albanian ambitions were at odds with Serbian aims. The Kingdom of Serbia wished to incorporate this land formerly within its empire.

20th century

Balkan Wars

The Young Turk movement took control of the Ottoman Empire after a coup in 1912 which disposed of Sultan Abdul Hamid II. The movement supported a centralised form of government and opposed any sort of autonomy desired by the various nationalities of the Ottoman Empire. An allegiance to Ottomanism was promoted instead. An Albanian uprising in 1912 exposed the Empires Northern territories in Kosovo and Novi Pazar which led to an invasion by the Kingdom of Montenegro. The Ottomans suffered a serious defeat at the hands of Albanians in 1912, culminating in the Ottoman loss of most of its Albanian inhabited lands. The Albanians threatened to march all the way to Salonika and reimpose Abdul Hamid.

A wave of Albanians in the Ottoman army ranks also deserted during this period, refusing to fight their own kin. Two months later in September of the same year, a joint Balkan force made up of Serbian, Montenegrin, Bulgarian and Greek forces drove the Ottomans out of most of their European possessions.

The rise of Nationalism unfortunately hampered relations between Albanians and Serbs in Kosovo, due to influence from Russians, Austrians and Ottomans. Kosovo's status within Serbia was finalised the following year at the Treaty of London. Soon, there were concerted Serbian colonisation efforts in Kosovo during various periods between Serbia's 1912 takeover of the province and World War II. So the population of Serbs in Kosovo fell after World War II, but it had increased considerably before then.

An exodus of the local Albanian population occurred. Serbian authorities promoted creating new Serb settlements in Kosovo as well as the assimilation of Albanians into Serbian society. Numerous colonist Serb families moved into Kosovo, equalising the demographic balance between Albanians and Serbs.

First World War and birth of Kingdom of Yugoslavia

In the winter of 1915–16, during World War I, Kosovo saw the retreat of the Serbian army as Kosovo was occupied by Bulgaria and Austria-Hungary. In 1918, the Serbian Army pushed the Central Powers out of Kosovo. After World War I ended, the Monarchy was then transformed into the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenians on 1 December 1918.

Kosovo was split into four counties, three being a part of Serbia (Zvečan, Kosovo and southern Metohija) and one of Montenegro (northern Metohija). However, the new administration system since 26 April 1922 split Kosovo among three Areas of the Kingdom: Kosovo, Raška and Zeta. In 1929, the Kingdom was transformed into the Kingdom of Yugoslavia and the territories of Kosovo were reorganised among the Banate of Zeta, the Banate of Morava and the Banate of Vardar.

In order to change the ethnic composition of Kosovo, between 1912 and 1941 a large-scale Serbian re-colonisation of Kosovo was undertaken by the Belgrade government. Meanwhile, Kosovar Albanians' right to receive education in their own language was denied alongside other non-Slavic or unrecognised Slavic nations of Yugoslavia, as the kingdom only recognised the Slavic Croat, Serb, and Slovene nations as constituent nations of Yugoslavia, while other Slavs had to identify as one of the three official Slavic nations while non-Slav nations were only deemed as minorities.

Albanians and other Muslims were forced to emigrate, mainly with the land reform which struck Albanian landowners in 1919, but also with direct violent measures. In 1935 and 1938 two agreements between the Kingdom of Yugoslavia and Turkey were signed on the expatriation of 240,000 Albanians to Turkey, which was not completed because of the outbreak of World War II.

Second World War

In 1941, Kosovo and Yugoslavia became involved in World War II after the Axis powers invaded Yugoslavia in 1941. Large parts of Kosovo became a part of Italian-controlled Albania, other parts went to Bulgaria and German-occupied Military Administration of Serbia. The Italian Fascist regime of Benito Mussolini with its expansionist and irredentist aims on both Albania and Yugoslavia exploited the nationalist sentiment amongst Albanians to gain favour of the Albanian population for the Italian-run protectorate which ruled Albania, and thus encouraged the establishment of a Greater Albania which included large portions of Kosovo which was achieved in the Second World War.

At the 1944 wartime Bujan conference the Kosovar communist resistance leaders passed a resolution on the postwar assignment of Kosovo to Albania, but their opinion was later disregarded. After numerous uprisings of Partisans led by Fadil Hoxha, Kosovo was liberated after 1944 with the help of the Albanian partisans of the Comintern and became a province of Serbia within the Democratic Federal Yugoslavia.

Kosovo in Communist Yugoslavia

The province as in its outline today first took shape in 1945 as the ''Autonomous Kosovo-Metohian Area''. Until World War II, the only entity bearing the name of Kosovo had been a political unit carved from the former vilayet which bore no special significance to its internal population. In the Ottoman Empire (which previously controlled the territory), it had been a vilayet with its borders having been revised on several occasions. When the Ottoman province had last existed, it included areas which were by now either ceded to Albania, or found themselves within the newly created Yugoslav republics of Montenegro, or Macedonia (including its previous capital, Skopje) with another part in the Sandžak region of Central Serbia.

Tensions between ethnic Albanians and the Yugoslav government were significant, not only due to national tensions but also due to political ideological concerns, especially regarding relations with neighbouring Albania. Harsh repressive measures were imposed on Kosovo Albanians due to suspicions that they there were Kosovo Albanian sympathisers of the Stalinist regime of Enver Hoxha of Albania. In 1956, a show trial in Pristina was held in which multiple Albanian Communists of Kosovo were convicted of being infiltrators from Albania and were given long prison sentences. High-ranking Serbian communist official Aleksandar Ranković sought to secure the position of the Serbs in Kosovo and gave them dominance in Kosovo's nomenklatura.

Islam in Kosovo at this time was repressed and both Albanians and Muslim Slavs were encouraged to declare themselves to be Turkish and emigrate to Turkey. At the same time Serbs and Montenegrins dominated the government, security forces, and industrial employment in Kosovo. Albanians resented these conditions and protested against them in the late 1960s, accusing the actions taken by authorities in Kosovo as being colonialist, as well as demanding that Kosovo be made a republic, or declaring support for Albania.

After the ouster of Ranković in 1966, the agenda of pro-decentralisation reformers in Yugoslavia, especially from Slovenia and Croatia succeeded in the late 1960s in attaining substantial decentralisation of powers, creating substantial autonomy in Kosovo and Vojvodina, and recognising a Muslim Yugoslav nationality. As a result of these reforms, there was a massive overhaul of Kosovo's nomenklatura and police, that shifted from being Serb-dominated to ethnic Albanian-dominated through firing Serbs in large scale. Further concessions were made to the ethnic Albanians of Kosovo in response to unrest, including the creation of the University of Pristina as an Albanian language institution. These changes created widespread fear amongst Serbs that they were being made second-class citizens in Yugoslavia by these changes. In the 1974 Constitution of Yugoslavia, Kosovo was granted major autonomy, allowing it to have its own administration, assembly, and judiciary; as well as having a membership in the collective presidency and the Yugoslav parliament, in which it held veto power.

In the aftermath of the 1974 constitution, concerns over the rise of Albanian nationalism in Kosovo rose with the widespread celebrations in 1978 of the 100th anniversary of the founding of the League of Prizren. Albanians felt that their status as a "minority" in Yugoslavia had made them second-class citizens in comparison with the "nations" of Yugoslavia and demanded that Kosovo be a constituent republic, alongside the other republics of Yugoslavia. Protests by Albanians in 1981 over the status of Kosovo resulted in Yugoslav territorial defence units being brought into Kosovo and a state of emergency being declared resulting in violence and the protests being crushed. In the aftermath of the 1981 protests, purges took place in the Communist Party, and rights that had been recently granted to Albanians were rescinded – including ending the provision of Albanian professors and Albanian language textbooks in the education system.

Due to very high birth rates, the number of Albanians increased from 75% to over 90%. In contrast, the number of Serbs barely increased, and in fact dropped from 15% to 8% of the total population, since many Serbs departed from Kosovo as a response to the tight economic climate and increased incidents of alleged harassment from their Albanian neighbours. While there was tension, charges of "genocide" and planned harassments have been debunked as an excuse to revoke Kosovo's autonomy. For example in 1986 the Serbian Orthodox Church published an official claim that Kosovo Serbs were being subjected to an Albanian program of 'Genocide'.

Even though they were disproved by police statistics, they received wide play in the Serbian press and that led to further ethnic problems and eventual removal of Kosovo's status. Beginning in March 1981, Kosovar Albanian students of the University of Pristina organised protests seeking that Kosovo become a republic within Yugoslavia along with human rights. The protests were brutally suppressed by the police and army, with many protesters arrested. During the 1980s, ethnic tensions continued with frequent violent outbreaks against Yugoslav state authorities resulting in a further increase in emigration of Kosovo Serbs and other ethnic groups. The Yugoslav leadership tried to suppress protests of Kosovo Serbs seeking protection from ethnic discrimination and violence.

Disintegration of Yugoslavia

Inter-ethnic tensions continued to worsen in Kosovo throughout the 1980s.

The 1986 Memorandum of the Serbian Academy warned that Yugoslavia was suffering from ethnic strife and the disintegration of the Yugoslav economy into separate economic sectors and territories, which was transforming the federal state into a loose confederation.

On 28 June 1989, Slobodan Milošević delivered the Gazimestan speech in front of a large number of Serb citizens at the main celebration marking the 600th anniversary of the Battle of Kosovo. Many think that this speech helped Milošević consolidate his authority in Serbia. In 1989, Milošević, employing a mix of intimidation and political manoeuvring, drastically reduced Kosovo's special autonomous status within Serbia and started cultural oppression of the ethnic Albanian population. Kosovo Albanians responded with a non-violent separatist movement, employing widespread civil disobedience and creation of parallel structures in education, medical care, and taxation, with the ultimate goal of achieving the independence of Kosovo.

On July 2, 1990, the self declared Kosovo parliament declared Kosovo an independent country, the Republic of Kosova. In May 1992, Ibrahim Rugova was elected president. During its lifetime, the Republic of Kosova was only recognised by Albania; it was formally disbanded in 2000, after the Kosovo War, when its institutions were replaced by the Joint Interim Administrative Structure established by the United Nations Interim Administration Mission in Kosovo (UNMIK).

Kosovo War

In 1995 the Dayton Agreement ended the Bosnian War, drawing considerable international attention. However, despite the hopes of Kosovar Albanians, the situation in Kosovo remained largely unaddressed by the international community, and by 1996 the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA), an ethnic Albanian guerilla group, had prevailed over the non-violent resistance movement and had started offering armed resistance to Serbian and Yugoslav security forces, resulting in early stages of the Kosovo War.

By 1998, as the violence had worsened and displaced scores of Albanians, Western interest had increased. The Serbian authorities were compelled to sign a ceasefire and partial retreat, monitored by OSCE observers according to an agreement negotiated by Richard Holbrooke. However, the ceasefire did not hold and fighting resumed in December 1998. The Račak massacre in January 1999 in particular brought new international attention to the conflict. Within weeks, a multilateral international conference was convened and by March had prepared a draft agreement known as the Rambouillet Accords, calling for restoration of Kosovo's autonomy and deployment of NATO peacekeeping forces. The Serbian party found the terms unacceptable and refused to sign the draft.

Between 24 March and 10 June 1999, NATO intervened by bombing Yugoslavia aimed to force Milošević to withdraw his forces from Kosovo. This military action was not authorised by the Security Council of the United Nations and was therefore contrary to the provisions of the United Nations Charter. Combined with continued skirmishes between Albanian guerrillas and Yugoslav forces the conflict resulted in a further massive displacement of population in Kosovo.

During the conflict, roughly a million ethnic Albanians fled or were forcefully driven from Kosovo. Altogether, more than 11,000 deaths have been reported to Carla Del Ponte by her prosecutors. Some 3,000 people are still missing, of which 2,500 are Albanian, 400 Serbs and 100 Roma. Ultimately by June, Milošević had agreed to a foreign military presence within Kosovo and withdrawal of his troops.

Since May 1999, the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia has prosecuted crimes committed during the Kosovo War. Nine Serbian and Yugoslavian commanders have been indicted so far for crimes against humanity and violations of the laws or customs of war in Kosovo in 1999: Yugoslavian President Slobodan Milošević, Serbian President Milan Milutinović, Yugoslavian Deputy Prime Minister Nikola Šainović, Yugoslavian Chief of the General Staff Gen. Dragoljub Ojdanić, Serbian Interior Minister Vlajko Stojiljković, Gen. Nebojša Pavković, Gen. ''Vladimir Lazarević'', Deputy Interior Minister of Serbia Vlastimir Đorđević and Chief of the Interior for Kosovo Sreten Lukić. Stojiljković killed himself while at large in 2002 and Milošević died in custody during the trial in 2006. No final judgement concerning the other defendants has been produced so far. The indictment against the nine has alleged that they directed, encouraged or supported a campaign of terror and violence directed at Kosovo Albanian civilians and aimed at the expulsion of a substantial portion of them from Kosovo. It has been alleged that about 800,000 Albanians were expelled as a result. In particular, in the last indictment as of June 2006, the accused were charged with murder of 919 identified Kosovo Albanian civilians aged from one to 93, both male and female.

Six KLA commanders were indicted in two cases: Fatmir Limaj, Isak Musliu and Haradin Bala, as well as Ramush Haradinaj, ''Idriz Balaj'' and ''Lahi Brahimaj''. They were charged with crimes against humanity and violations of the laws and customs of war in Kosovo in 1998, consisting in persecutions, cruel treatment, torture, murders and rape of several dozens of the local Serbs, Albanians and other civilians perceived unloyal to the KLA. In particular, Limaj, Musliu and Bala were accused of murder of 22 identified detainees at or near the Lapušnik Prison Camp. In 2005 Limaj and Musliu were found not guilty on all charges, Bala was found guilty of persecutions, cruel treatment, murders and rape and sentenced to 13 years. The appeal chamber affirmed the judgements in 2007. In 2008 Ramush Haradinaj and Idriz Balaj were acquitted, whereas Lahi Brahimaj was found guilty of cruel treatment and torture and sentenced to six years. Notices of appeal are currently being considered.

UN administration period

On 10 June 1999, the UN Security Council passed UN Security Council Resolution 1244, which placed Kosovo under transitional UN administration (UNMIK) and authorised KFOR, a NATO-led peacekeeping force. Resolution 1244 provided that Kosovo would have autonomy within the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, and affirmed the territorial integrity of Yugoslavia, which has been legally succeeded by the Republic of Serbia.

Some 200,000–280,000, representing the majority of the Serb population, left when the Serbian forces left. There was also some looting of Serb properties and even violence against some of those Serbs and Roma who remained. The current number of internally displaced persons is disputed, with estimates ranging from 65,000 to 250,000. Many displaced Serbs are afraid to return to their homes, even with UNMIK protection. Around 120,000–150,000 Serbs remain in Kosovo, but are subject to ongoing harassment and discrimination due to physical threats for their safety.

International negotiations began in 2006 to determine the final status of Kosovo, as envisaged under UN Security Council Resolution 1244. The UN-backed talks, led by UN Special Envoy Martti Ahtisaari, began in February 2006. Whilst progress was made on technical matters, both parties remained diametrically opposed on the question of status itself.

In February 2007, Ahtisaari delivered a draft status settlement proposal to leaders in Belgrade and Pristina, the basis for a draft UN Security Council Resolution which proposes 'supervised independence' for the province. A draft resolution, backed by the United States, the United Kingdom and other European members of the Security Council, was presented and rewritten four times to try to accommodate Russian concerns that such a resolution would undermine the principle of state sovereignty.

Russia, which holds a veto in the Security Council as one of five permanent members, had stated that it would not support any resolution which was not acceptable to both Belgrade and Kosovo Albanians. Whilst most observers had, at the beginning of the talks, anticipated independence as the most likely outcome, others have suggested that a rapid resolution might not be preferable.

After many weeks of discussions at the UN, the United States, United Kingdom and other European members of the Security Council formally 'discarded' a draft resolution backing Ahtisaari's proposal on 20 July 2007, having failed to secure Russian backing. Beginning in August, a "Troika" consisting of negotiators from the European Union (Wolfgang Ischinger), the United States (Frank G. Wisner) and Russia (Alexander Botsan-Kharchenko) launched a new effort to reach a status outcome acceptable to both Belgrade and Pristina. Despite Russian disapproval, the U.S., the United Kingdom, and France appeared likely to recognise Kosovar independence.

UN administration 1999–present

On 10 June 1999, the UN Security Council passed UN Security Council Resolution 1244, which placed Kosovo under transitional UN administration (UNMIK) and authorised KFOR, a NATO-led peacekeeping force. Resolution 1244 provided that Kosovo would have autonomy within the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, and affirmed the territorial integrity of Yugoslavia, which has been legally succeeded by the Republic of Serbia.

According to the Constitutional Framework, Kosovo shall have a 120-member Kosovo Assembly. The Assembly includes twenty reserved seats: ten for Kosovo Serbs and ten for non-Serb minorities (Bosniaks, Roma, etc.). The Kosovo Assembly is responsible for electing a President and Prime Minister of Kosovo.

Provisional Institutions of Self-Government

In November 2001, the OSCE supervised the first elections for the Kosovo Assembly. After that election, Kosovo's political parties formed an all-party unity coalition and elected Ibrahim Rugova as President and Bajram Rexhepi (PDK) as Prime Minister. After Kosovo-wide elections in October 2004, the LDK and AAK formed a new governing coalition that did not include PDK and Ora. This coalition agreement resulted in Ramush Haradinaj (AAK) becoming Prime Minister, while Ibrahim Rugova retained the position of President. PDK and Ora were critical of the coalition agreement and have since frequently accused the current government of corruption.

Parliamentary elections were held on 17 November 2007. After early results, Hashim Thaçi who was on course to gain 35 per cent of the vote, claimed victory for PDK, the Democratic Party of Kosovo, and stated his intention to declare independence. Thaçi formed a coalition with current President Fatmir Sejdiu's Democratic League which was in second place with 22 percent of the vote. The turnout at the election was particularly low. Most members of the Serb minority refused to vote.

However, since 1999, the Serb-inhabited areas of Kosovo, such as North Kosovo have remained ''de facto'' independent from the Albanian-dominated government in Pristina. Local politics in the Serb areas are dominated by the Serbian List for Kosovo and Metohija. The Serbian List is led by Oliver Ivanović, an engineer from Mitrovica. Within Serbia, Kosovo is the concern of the Ministry for Kosovo and Metohija, currently led by minister Goran Bogdanović.

Declaration of independence

Republic of Kosovo declared independence on 17 February 2008 and over the following days, a number of states (the United States, Turkey, Albania, Austria, Croatia, Germany, Italy, France, the United Kingdom, the Republic of China (Taiwan), Australia, Poland and others) announced their recognition, despite protests by Russia and others in the UN. Currently, recognise the independence of Kosovo and it has become a member country of the IMF and World Bank as the Republic of Kosovo.

The UN Security Council remains divided on the question (). Of the five members with veto power, USA, UK, and France recognised the declaration of independence, and the People's Republic of China has expressed concern, while Russia considers it illegal. , no member-country of CIS, CSTO or SCO has recognised Kosovo as independent. Kosovo has not made a formal application for UN membership yet in view of a possible veto from Russia and China.

The European Union has no official position towards Kosovo's status, but has decided to deploy the European Union Rule of Law Mission in Kosovo to ensure a continuation of international civil presence in Kosovo. , most of the member-countries of NATO, EU, WEU and OECD have recognised Kosovo as independent.

, all of Kosovo's immediate neighbours except Serbia have recognised the declaration of independence. Montenegro and Macedonia announced their recognition of Kosovo on 9 October 2008. Albania, Croatia, Bulgaria and Hungary have also recognised the independence of Kosovo.

The Serb minority of Kosovo, which largely opposes the declaration of independence, has formed the Community Assembly of Kosovo and Metohija in response. The creation of the assembly was condemned by Kosovo's president Fatmir Sejdiu, while UNMIK has said the assembly is not a serious issue because it will not have an operative role. On 8 October 2008, the UN General Assembly resolved to request the International Court of Justice to render an advisory opinion on the legality of Kosovo's declaration of independence from Serbia. The advisory opinion, which is legally non-binding but had been expected to carry "moral" weight, was rendered on 22 July 2010, holding that Kosovo's declaration of independence was not in violation of international law.

Geography

Kosovo represents an important link between central and southern Europe and the Adriatic and Black Seas. Kosovo has an area of 10,908 square km. It lies between latitudes 41° and 44° N, and longitudes 20° and 22° E. The border of Kosovo is approximately 602.09 kilometers long.

Its climate is continental, with warm summers and cold and snowy winters. Most of Kosovo's terrain is mountainous, the highest peak is Đeravica (). There are two main plain regions, the Metohija basin is located in the western part of the Kosovo, and the Plain of Kosovo occupies the eastern part. The main rivers of the region are the White Drin, running towards the Adriatic Sea, with the Erenik among its tributaries), the Sitnica, the South Morava in the Goljak area, and Ibar in the north. The biggest lakes are Gazivoda, Radonjić, Batlava and Badovac. 39.1% of Kosovo is forested, about 52% is classified as agricultural land, 31% of which is covered by pastures and 69% is arable. Phytogeographically, Kosovo belongs to the Illyrian province of the Circumboreal Region within the Boreal Kingdom. According to the WWF and Digital Map of European Ecological Regions by the European Environment Agency, the territory of Kosovo belongs to the ecoregion of Balkan mixed forests.Currently, the 39,000 ha Šar Mountains National Park, established in 1986 in the Šar Mountains along the border with the Republic of Macedonia, is the only national park in Kosovo, although the Balkan Peace Park in the Prokletije along the border with Montenegro has been proposed as another one.

The largest cities are Pristina, the capital, with an estimated 500,000 inhabitants. The old city of Prizren is towards the south west, with a population of 110,000. Peć in the west has 70,000 inhabitants with Kosovska Mitrovica in the north at around 70,000.

North or Northern Kosovo is a region in the northern part of Kosovo with an ethnic Serb majority that functions largely autonomously from the remainder of Kosovo. Ibarian Kolashin, a toponym that predates the political partition, is also used to refer to the area. North Kosovo is by far the largest of the Serb-dominated areas within Kosovo, and unlike the others, directly borders Central Serbia. This has facilitated its ability to govern itself almost completely independently of the Kosovo institutions in a de facto state of partition. Although the Kosovo status process had repeatedly ruled out formalising this partition as a permanent solution, it has been increasingly mooted amidst continued deadlock.

Demographics

According to the Kosovo in Figures 2005 Survey of the Statistical Office of Kosovo, Kosovo's total population is estimated between 1.9 and 2.2 million with the following ethnic composition: Albanians 92%, Serbs 4%, Bosniaks and Gorans 2%, Turks 1%, Roma 1%. CIA World Factbook estimates the following ratio: 88% Albanians, 8% Kosovo Serbs and 4% other ethnic groups. According to latest CIA The World Factbook estimated data, as of July 2009, Kosovo's population stands at 1,804,838 persons. It stated that ethnic composition is "Albanians 88%, Serbs 7%, other 5% (Bosniak, Gorani, Roma, Turk, Ashkali, Egyptian, Janjevci – Croats)"

Albanians, steadily increasing in number, have constituted a majority in Kosovo since the 19th century, the earlier ethnic composition being disputed. Kosovo's political boundaries do not quite coincide with the ethnic boundary by which Albanians compose an absolute majority in every municipality; for example, Serbs form a local majority in North Kosovo and two other municipalities, while there are large areas with an Albanian majority outside of Kosovo, namely in the neighbouring regions of former Yugoslavia: the north-west of Macedonia, and in the Preševo Valley in Central Serbia.

At 1.3% per year, ethnic Albanians in Kosovo have the fastest rate of growth in population in Europe. Over an 82-year period (1921–2003) the population of Kosovo grew to 460% of its original size. If growth continues at such a pace, the population will reach 4.5 million by 2050. However, this is unlikely to happen; until about 1990, Kosovo Albanians had very high birth rates of about 4 children per woman, similar to many poor developing countries, but this has fallen down to about two since then and will likely sink below replacement eventually, as it has in Albania itself. In addition, Kosovo has a high emigration rate now which it did not have before 1990.

By contrast, from 1948 to 1991, the Serb population of Kosovo increased by a mere 12% (one third the growth of the population in Central Serbia). In addition, in the same period, hundreds of thousands have left to settle in more prosperous Central Serbia or Western Europe. 60% of Kosovo's pre-1999 Serbian population resides in Serbia proper following the ethnic cleansing campaign in 1999. The population of Albanians in Kosovo increased by 300% in the same period a rate of growth twenty-five times that of the Serbs in Kosovo. Serbs, similar to most other Eastern European Christian ethnic groups, since about 1990 have had very low birth rates (about 1.5 children per woman) and more deaths than births. This ensures a continued dwindling of the Serb minority as a percentage of the population, even with the dropping births among the Albanians.

Languages

The most common language of Kosovo is Albanian, the first language of 88 - 92% of the population. The native dialect of the Kosovar Albanian population is Gheg Albanian, although Standard Albanian is now widely used as an official language. Serbian is the next most common, spoken as a first language by 5-7% of the population. According to the draft Constitution of Kosovo, Serbian is also an official language. Other minority languages in Kosovo include Turkish, Gorani, Romani and the other Serbo-Croatian languages.

Religion

The two main religions of Kosovo are Islam and Christianity. Muslims make up 90% of Kosovo's population, and followers are mostly Sunni, with a Bektashi Islam minority. If considered an independent state, Kosovo would be one of three Muslim-dominated countries which lie exclusively within Europe - next to Bosnia and Hercegovina and Albania - and the most Muslim of them all percentage wise. Islam was brought into the region with the Ottoman conquest in the 15th century and now nominally professed by most of the ethnic Albanians, by the Bosniak, Gorani, and Turkish communities, and by some of the Roma/Ashkali-"Egyptian" community. Islam, however, does not dominate the Kosovar society, which remains largely secular. About three percent of ethnic Albanians in Kosovo remain Roman Catholic despite centuries of the Ottoman rule. There are an estimated 65,000 Catholics in Kosovo and another 60,000 Kosovar born Catholics outside of Kosovo. The Serb population, estimated at 100,000 to 120,000 persons, is largely Serbian Orthodox. Kosovo is densely covered by numerous Serb Orthodox churches and monasteries. Some 140 churches are reported to have been destroyed and partly looted for the black market in the 1999 to 2004 period, of these 30 in a single outburst of violence in March 2004.

There is also a small number of evangelical Protestants, whose tradition dates back to the Methodist missionaries' work centred in Bitola in the late 1800s. They are represented by the Kosovo Protestant Evangelical Church (KPEC).

According to the governments of the Republic of Kosovo and the Republic of Serbia, there is no official or state religion of Kosovo.

Society

Relations between Albanian and Serb communities

The relations between Kosovo's ethnic Albanian and Serb populations have been hostile since the rise of nationalism in the Balkans during the 19th century, rivalry which became strong after Serbia gained Kosovo from the Ottoman Empire in 1913 and after Albania became independent in the same year. During the Ottoman period however, Serbs and Albanians within Kosovo enjoyed good-neighbourly relations, working together to oppose foreign meddling in the territory on many occasions During the Tito-era of communist rule in Yugoslavia, the ethnic Albanian and Serb populations of Kosovo were strongly irreconcilable with sociological studies during the Tito-era indicating that ethnic Albanian and Serb peoples in Kosovo rarely accepted each other as neighbours or friends and few held interethnic marriages. Ethnic prejudices, stereotypes and mutual distrust between ethnic Albanians and Serbs have remained common for decades. Many camps around Kosovo continue to house thousands of Internally Displaced People, all of which are from minority groups and communities. Because many of the Roma are believed to have sided with the Serbs during the conflict, taking part in the widespread looting and destruction of Albanian property, Minority Rights Group International report that Romani people encounter hostility by Albanians outside their local areas. The report adds:

Culture and media

Although in Kosovo the music is diverse, authentic Albanian music (see ''World Music'') and Serbian music do still exist. Albanian music is characterised by the use of the ''çiftelia'' (an authentic Albanian instrument), ''mandolin'', ''mandola'' and ''percussion''. Classical music is also well known in Kosovo and has been taught at several music schools and universities (at the University of Prishtina Faculty of Arts in Pristina and the University of Priština Faculty of Arts at Kosovska Mitrovica).

Sports

Several sports federations have been formed in Kosovo within the framework of Law No. 2003/24 "Law on Sport" passed by the Assembly of Kosovo in 2003. The law formally established a national Olympic Committee, regulated the establishment of sports federations and established guidelines for sports clubs. At present only some of the sports federations established have gained international recognition.

Rule of law

Following the Kosovo War, due to the many weapons in the hands of civilians, law enforcement inefficiencies, and widespread devastation, both revenge killings and ethnic violence surged tremendously. The number of reported murders rose 80% from 136 in 2000 to 245 in 2001. The number of reported arsons rose 140% from 218 to 523 over the same period. UNMIK pointed out that the rise in reported incidents might simply correspond to an increased confidence in the police force (i.e., more reports) rather than more actual crime. According to the UNODC, by 2008, murder rates in Kosovo had dropped by 75% in five years.

Although the number of noted serious crimes increased between 1999 and 2000, since then it has been "starting to resemble the same patterns of other European cities". According to Amnesty International, the aftermath of the war resulted in an increase in the trafficking of women for sexual exploitation. According to the IOM data, in 2000–2004, Kosovo was consistently ranked fourth or fifth among the countries of Southeastern Europe by number of human trafficking victims, after Albania, Moldova, Romania and sometimes Bulgaria.

Residual landmines and other unexploded ordnance remain in Kosovo, although all roads and tracks have been cleared. Caution when travelling in remote areas is advisable.

Kosovo is extremely vulnerable to organised crime and thus to money laundering. In 2000, international agencies estimated that Kosovo was supplying up to 40% of the heroin sold in Europe and North America. Due to the 1997 unrest in Albania and the Kosovo War in 1998–1999 ethnic Albanian traffickers enjoyed a competitive advantage, which has been eroding as the region stabilises. However, according to a 2008 report by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, overall, ethnic Albanians, not only from Kosovo, supply 10 to 20% of the heroin in Western Europe, and the traffic has been declining.

In 2010, a report by Swiss MP Dick Marty claimed to have evidence that a criminal network tied to the Kosovo Liberation Army and the Prime Minister, Hashim Thaci, executed prisoners and harvested their kidneys for organ transplantation. The Kosovo government rejected the allegation. On 25 January 2011, the Council of Europe endorsed the report and called for a full and serious investigation into its contents.

See also

References

External links

Category:Balkans Category:Kosovan entities Category:Disputed territories in Europe

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The term Kosovo War or Kosovo Conflict is used to describe two sequential, and at times parallel, armed conflicts in Kosovo. From early 1998 to 1999, the war was between the army and police of FR Yugoslavia, and the Kosovo Liberation Army. From March 24, 1999 to June 11, 1999, NATO attacked Yugoslavia, and ethnic Albanian militants continued battles with Yugoslav forces, amidst a massive displacement of population in Kosovo estimated to be close to 1 million people.

NATO countries promoted the war in Kosovo as the first humanitarian war based on short-term military reports and casualty reports that were later criticized as highly inaccurate. It was the centre of news headlines for months, and gained a massive amount of coverage and attention from the international community and media. The NATO bombing and surrounding events have remained controversial.

Pre-NATO intervention

Kosovo in Tito's Yugoslavia (1945–1986)

Tensions between the Serbian and Albanian communities in Kosovo simmered throughout the 20th century and occasionally erupted into major violence, particularly during the First Balkan War, World War I, and World War II. The Socialist 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 the Republic of Macedonia, Montenegro, and Serbia though the majority of its inhabitants were Albanian). 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 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 1969, 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 quelled by the Yugoslav security forces. However, some of the students' demands—in particular, representative powers for Albanians in both the Serbian and Yugoslav state bodies, and better recognition of the Albanian language—were conceded by Tito. The University of Priština 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 further when a new Yugoslav constitution granted an expanded set of political rights. Along with Vojvodina, Kosovo was declared a province and 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 long queues 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 Kosovo towns. The protesters demanded that Kosovo should become the seventh republic of Yugoslavia.

However, this was politically unacceptable to Serbia and the Socialist Republic of 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, the Republic of 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 unauthorized nationalist manifestations, both Albanian and Serbian. According to a report quoted by Mark Thompson, as many as 580,000 inhabitants of Kosovo were arrested, interrogated, interned, or reprimanded. Thousands of these lost their jobs or were expelled from their educational establishments. 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 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. There was a perception among Serbian nationalists that Serbs were being driven out of Kosovo.

In addition to all this, the worsening state of Kosovo's economy made the province a poor choice for Serbs seeking work. Albanians, as well as Serbs, tended to favor their compatriots when employing new recruits, but the number of jobs was too few for the population. To that end, it is believed that a large number of those declaring Albanian ethnicity are in fact from the Roma community who happen to be of Islamic faith. Kosovo was the poorest part of Yugoslavia: the average per capita income was $795, compared with the national average of $2,635 (and $5,315 in Slovenia).

Riots

In 1981 it was reported that some 4,000 Serbs moved from Kosovo to Central Serbia after the Kosovo Albanian riots in March that resulted in several deaths of Serbs and desecration of Serbian Orthodox architecture and graveyards. In 1982 It was concluded that the Serbs were victims of major prejudice and harassment, several murders had been committed by ethnic Albanians, and forming of serious nationalist groups was reality. 33 nationalist formations were dismantled by the Yugoslav Police who sentenced some 280 people (800 fined, 100 under investigation) and seized arms caches and propaganda material.

In 1987 David Binder wrote a report on The New York Times about rising nationalism among Albanians in Kosovo. In his report he tells about Paracin massacre, where an Albanian soldier killed 4 soldiers and wounded 5 in a JNA barracks.

The report quoting Federal Secretary for National Defense, Fleet Adm. Branko Mamula, shows that from 1981–1987, 216 illegal Albanian organizations with 1,435 members were discovered in the JNA. They had prepared the mass killings of officers and soldiers, poisoning food and water, sabotage, breaking in and stealing weapons and ammunition.

Kosovo and the rise of Slobodan Milošević (1986–1990)

In Kosovo, growing Albanian nationalism and separatism led to tensions between Serbs and Albanians. An increasingly poisonous atmosphere led to wild rumors being spread around and otherwise trivial incidents being blown out of proportion.

It was against this tense background that the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts (SANU, from its Serbian initials, САНУ) conducted a survey of Serbs who had left Kosovo in 1985 and 1986. The report concluded that a considerable part of those who had left had been under pressure by Albanians to do so.

Sixteen prominent members of the SANU began work in June 1985 on a draft document that was leaked to the public in September 1986. The SANU Memorandum, as it has become known, was hugely controversial. 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.

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 supremacy at a local level. They claimed that all Serb emigrants had left Kosovo for economic reasons. Other Yugoslav nationalities, notably the Slovenes and Croats, saw a 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 denounced it was Serbian Communist Party official Slobodan Milošević.

In November 1988, Kosovo's head of the provincial committee was arrested. In March 1989, Milošević announced an "anti-bureaucratic revolution" in Kosovo and Vojvodina, curtailing their autonomy as well as imposing a curfew and a state of emergency in Kosovo due to violent demonstrations, resulting in 24 deaths (including two policemen). Milošević and his government claimed that the constitutional changes were necessary to protect Kosovo's remaining Serbs against harassment from the Albanian majority.

Abolition of autonomy (1989–1996)

On 17 November 1988 Kaqusha Jashari and Azem Vllasi were forced to resign from the leadership of the League of Communists of Kosovo (LCK). In early 1989 the Serbian Assembly proposed amendments to the Constitution of Serbia which would remove the word "Socialist" from the Serbian Republic's title, establish multi-party elections, remove the independence of institutions of the autonomous provinces such as Kosovo, and rename Kosovo as the Autonomous Province of Kosovo and Metohija. In February Kosovar Albanians demonstrated in large numbers against the proposal, emboldened by striking miners. Serbs in Belgrade protested against the Kosovo Albanian's separatism. On 3 March 1989 the Presidency of Yugoslavia imposed special measures assigning responsibility for public security to the federal government. On 23 March the Assembly of Kosovo voted to accept the proposed amendments although most Albanian delegates abstained. In early 1990 Kosovar Albanians held mass demonstrations against the special measures, which were lifted on 18 April 1990 and responsibility for public security was again assigned to Serbia.

On 8 May 1989 Milošević became President of the Presidency of Serbia, which was confirmed on 6 December. On 22 January 1990 the 14 congress of the League of Communists of Yugoslavia (LCY) abolished the party's position as the only legal political party in Yugoslavia. In January 1990 the Yugoslav government announced it would press ahead with the creation of a multi-party system.

On 26 June 1990 Serbian authorities closed the Kosovo Assembly citing special circumstances. On 1 or 2 July 1990 Serbia approved the new amendments to the Constitution of Serbia in a referendum. Also on 2 July, 114 ethnic Albanian delegates of the 180 member Kosovo Assembly declared Kosovo an independent republic within Yugoslavia. On 5 July the Serbian Assembly dissolved the Kosovo Assembly. Serbia also dissolved the provincial executive council and assumed full and direct control of the province. Serbia took over management of Kosovo's principle Albanian-language media, halting Ablanian-language broadcasts. On 4 September 1990 Kosovar Albanians observed a 24-hour general strike, virtually shutting down the province.

On 16 or 17 July 1990, the League of Communists of Serbia (LCS) combined with the Socialist Alliance of Working People of Serbia to become the Socialist Party of Serbia (SPS), and Milošević became its first president. On 8 August 1990 several amendments to the federal Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (SFRY) Constitution were adopted enabling the establishment of a multi-party election system.

On 7 September 1990 the Constitution of the Republic of Kosovo was promulgated by the disbanded Assembly of Kosovo. Milošević reposed by ordering the arrest of the deputies of the disbanded Assembly of Kosovo. The new controversial Serbian Constitution was promulgated on 28 September 1990. Multi-party elections were held in Serbia on 9 and 26 December 1990 after which Milošević became President of Serbia. In September 1991 Kosovar Albanians held an unofficial referendum in which they voted overwhelmingly for independence. On 24 May 1992 Kosovar Albanians held unofficial elections for an assembly and president of the Republic of Kosovo.

On 5 August 1991 the Serbian Assembly suspended the Priština daily ''Rilindja'', following the Law on Public Information of 29 March 1991 and establishment of the ''Panorama'' publishing house on 6 November which incorporated ''Rilindja'', which was declared unconstitutional by the federal authorities. United Nations Special Rapporteur Tadeusz Mazowiecki reported on 26 February 1993 that the police had intensified their repression of the Albanian population since 1990, including depriving them of their basic rights, destroying their educations system, and large numbers of political dismissals of civil servants.

Crucially, as both provinces had a vote in the eight member Yugoslav Presidency, this gave Milosevic an automatic four votes when combined with Serbia and Montenegro (which was closely allied to Serbia). Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia and Macedonia thus had to maintain an uneasy alliance to prevent Milošević from driving through constitutional changes. Serbia's political changes were ratified in a July 5, 1990 referendum across the entire republic of Serbia, including Kosovo. As a result of these measures more than 80,000 Kosovo Albanians were expelled from their state jobs in Kosovo. A new Serb curriculum was imposed in all higher education in Kosovo, a move which was rejected by Albanians who responded by creating their parallel education system.

The impact on Kosovo was drastic. The reduction of its autonomy was accompanied by the abolition of its political institutions (including the League of Communists of Kosovo); its assembly and government were 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 sign, although a few did and remained employed in Serbian state companies right up to 1999.

Albanian cultural autonomy was also drastically reduced. TV and radio broadcasts in Albanian ceased. Albanian was no longer an official language of the province. The University of Pristina, 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 Yugoslav troops and police replaced the original Albanian-run security forces. A punitive regime was imposed that was harshly condemned as a "police state". 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 and Switzerland) to find work.

With Kosovo's Communist Party effectively broken up by Milošević's crackdown, the dominant Albanian political party position 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 and violence by Serbian security forces, the referendum achieved a reported 90% turnout among the province's Albanians, 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 war with Slovenia, and the wars in Croatia and Bosnia during the early 1990s. However, as evidenced by the emergence of the KLA, this came at the cost of increasing frustration among Kosovo's Albanian population. In the mid-1990s, Rugova pleaded for a United Nations peacekeeping force for Kosovo. In 1997, Milošević was promoted to the presidency of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (comprising Serbia and Montenegro since its inception in April 1992).

Continuing Serbian repression had radicalized many Albanians, some of whom decided that only armed resistance would change the situation. On April 22, 1996, four attacks on Serbian security personnel were carried out almost simultaneously in several parts of Kosovo. A hitherto-unknown organization calling itself the "Kosovo Liberation Army" (KLA) subsequently claimed responsibility. The nature of the KLA was at first highly mysterious.

It is widely believed that the KLA received financial and material support from the Kosovo Albanian diaspora. In early 1997, Albania collapsed into chaos 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 boosting the growing KLA arsenal. Bujar Bukoshi, shadow Prime Minister in exile (in Zürich, Switzerland), created a group called FARK (Armed Forces of the Republic of Kosova) which was reported to have been disbanded and absorbed by the KLA in 1998. The Yugoslav government considered the KLA "terrorists" and "insurgents", attacking police and civilians, while most Albanians saw the KLA as "freedom fighters".

In 1998, the U.S. State Department listed the KLA as a terrorist organization, and in 1999 the Republican Policy Committee of the U.S. Senate expressed its troubles with the "effective alliance" of the Clinton administration with the KLA due to "numerous reports from reputable unofficial sources ".

In 2000, a BBC article stated that Nato at War shows how the United States, which had described the KLA as "terrorist", now sought to form a relationship with it.

U.S. envoy Robert Gelbard referred to the KLA as terrorists. Responding to criticism, he later clarified to the House Committee on International Relations that "while it has committed 'terrorist acts,' it has 'not been classified legally by the U.S. Government as a terrorist organization.'" On June 1998, he held talks with two men who claimed they were political leaders.

Meanwhile, the U.S. held an "outer wall of sanctions" on Yugoslavia which had been tied to a series of issues, Kosovo being one of them. These were maintained despite the agreement at Dayton to end all sanctions. The Clinton administration claimed that Dayton bound Yugoslavia to hold discussions with Rugova over Kosovo.

The crisis escalated in December 1997 at the Peace Implementation Council meeting in Bonn, where the International Community (as defined in the Dayton Agreement) agreed to give the High Representative in Bosnia sweeping powers, including the right to dismiss elected leaders. At the same time, Western diplomats insisted that Kosovo be discussed, and that Serbia and Yugoslavia be responsive to Albanian demands there. The delegation from Serbia stormed out of the meetings in protest.

This was followed by the return of the Contact Group that oversaw the last phases of the Bosnian conflict and declarations from European powers demanding that Serbia solve the problem in Kosovo.

KLA attacks suddenly intensified, centered on the Drenica valley area, with the compound of one Adem Jashari being a particular focal point. Days after Robert Gelbard described the KLA as a terrorist group, Serbian police responded to the KLA attacks in the Likosane area, and pursued some of the KLA to Cirez, resulting in the deaths of 30 Albanian civilians and four Serbian policemen. The first serious action of the war had begun.

Despite some accusations of summary executions and killings of civilians, condemnations from Western capitals were not as voluble as they would become later. Serb police began to pursue Jashari and his followers in the village of Donje Prekaz. A massive firefight at the Jashari compound led to the massacre of 60 Albanians, of which eighteen were women and ten were under the age of sixteen. This March 5 event provoked massive condemnation from the western capitals. Madeleine Albright stated that "this crisis is not an internal affair of the FRY".

On March 24, Serbian forces surrounded the village of Glodjane, in the Dukagjin operational zone, and attacked a rebel compound there. Despite their superior firepower, the Serbian forces failed to destroy the KLA unit which had been their objective. Although there were deaths and severe injuries on the Albanian side, the insurgency in Glodjane was far from stamped out. It was in fact to become one of the strongest centers of resistance in the upcoming war.

Northern Albania served as another center of KLA activity, centered in the town of Tropojë. Following the 1997 Albanian civil conflict, parts of Albania ended up beyond the reach of national authorities. Moreover, the Albanian army's armories were looted. Many of these looted weapons ended up in the hands of the KLA whilst the KLA took over the border area. This was a staging ground for attacks and for shipping weapons to the Drenica stronghold. The path between these areas crossed Đakovica, the plains of Metohija, and to the Klina opstina, and were those areas hardest hit by KLA activity in the beginning.

The KLA's first goal was thus to merge its Drenica stronghold with their stronghold in Albania proper, and this would shape the first few months of the fighting.

The Serbs also continued their efforts at diplomacy, attempting to arrange talks with Ibrahim Rugova's staff (talks which Rugova and his staff refused to attend). After several failed meetings, Ratko Marković, chairman of the Serbian delegation to the meetings, invited representatives of Kosovo minority groups to attend while maintaining his invitation to the Albanians. Serbian President Milan Milutinović attended one of the meetings, though Rugova did not. He and his staff insisted on talking to Yugoslav officials, not ''Serbian'' ones, and only to discuss the modalities of Kosovo independence.

A new Serbian government was also formed at this time, led by the Socialist Party of Serbia and the Serbian Radical Party. Ultra-nationalist Radical Party chairman Vojislav Šešelj became a deputy prime minister. This increased the dissatisfaction with Serbia's position among Western diplomats and spokespersons.

In early April, Serbia arranged for a referendum on the issue of foreign interference in Kosovo. Serbian voters decisively rejected foreign interference in this crisis. Meanwhile, the KLA claimed much of the area in and around Dečani and ran a territory based in the village of Glođane, encompassing its surroundings. So, on May 31, 1998, the Yugoslav army and the Serb Ministry of the Interior police began an operation to clear the border of the KLA. NATO's response to this offensive was mid-June's Operation Determined Falcon, an air show over the Yugoslav borders.

During this time, the Yugoslav President Milošević reached an arrangement with Boris Yeltsin of Russia to stop offensive operations and prepare for talks with the Albanians, who, through this whole crisis, refused to talk to the Serbian side, but not the Yugoslav. In fact, the only meeting between Milošević and Ibrahim Rugova took place on May 15 in Belgrade, two days after Richard Holbrooke announced that it would take place. One month later, Holbrooke, after a trip to Belgrade where he threatened Milošević that if he did not obey, "what's left of your country will implode", he visited the border areas affected by the fighting in early June; there he was famously photographed with the KLA. The publication of these images sent a signal to the KLA, its supporters and sympathizers, and to observers in general, that the U.S. was decisively backing the KLA and the Albanian population in Kosovo.

The Yeltsin agreement included Milošević's allowing international representatives to set up a mission in Kosovo-Metohija to monitor the situation there. This was the Kosovo Diplomatic Observer Mission (KDOM) that began operations in early July. The American government welcomed this part of the agreement, but denounced the initiative's call for a mutual cease fire. Rather, the Americans demanded that the Serbian-Yugoslavian side should cease fire "without linkage...to a cessation in terrorist activities".

All through June and into mid-July, the KLA maintained its advance. KLA surrounded Peć, Đakovica, and had set up an interim capital in the town of Mališevo (north of Orahovac). The KLA troops infiltrated Suva Reka, and the northwest of Priština. They moved on to the Belacevec coal pits and captured them in late June, threatening energy supplies in the region. Their tactics as usual focused mainly on guerrilla and mountain warfare, and harassing and ambushing Serb forces and police patrols.

The tide turned in mid-July when the KLA captured Orahovac. On July 17, 1998, two close-by villages to Orahovac, Retimlije and Opteruša, were also captured. Similar, even if less systematic events took place in the town of Orahovac and the larger Serb village of Velika hoċa. The Orthodox monastery of Zociste 3 miles (5 km) from Orehovac—famous for the relics of the Saints Kosmas and Damianos and revered also by local Albanians—was robbed, its monks deported to a KLA prison camp, and, while empty, the monastery church and all its buildings were leveled to the ground by mining. This led to a series of Serb and Yugoslav offensives which would continue into the beginning of August.

A new set of KLA attacks in mid-August triggered Yugoslavian operations in south-central Kosovo south of the Priština-Peć road. This wound down with the capture of Klecka on August 23 and the discovery of a KLA-run crematorium in which some of their victims were found. The KLA began an offensive on September 1 around Prizren, causing Yugoslavian military activity there. In Metohija, around Peć, another offensive caused condemnation as international officials expressed fear that a large column of displaced people would be attacked.

In early mid-September, for the first time, some KLA activity was reported in northern Kosovo around Podujevo. Finally, in late September, a determined effort was made to clear the KLA out of the northern and central parts of Kosovo and out of the Drenica valley itself. During this time many threats were made from Western capitals but these were tempered somewhat by the elections in Bosnia, as they did not want Serbian Democrats and Radicals to win. Following the elections, however, the threats intensified once again but a galvanizing event was needed. They got it on September 28, when the mutilated corpses of a family were discovered by KDOM outside the village of Gornje Obrinje; the bloody doll from there became the rallying image for the ensuing war.

UN, NATO, and OSCE (1998-1999)

On 23 September 1998 acting under Chapter VII of the United Nations Charter the UN Security Council adopted Resolution 1199 demanding that all parties in Kosovo and the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (Serbia and Montenegro) cease hostilities and maintain a ceasefire. On 24 September the North Atlantic Council (NAC) of NATO issued an "activation warning" (ACTWARN) taking NATO to an increased level of military preparedness for both a limited air option and a phased air campaign in Kosovo.

The other major issue for those who saw no option but to resort to the use of force was the estimated 250,000 displaced Albanians, 30,000 of whom were out in the woods, without warm clothing or shelter, with winter fast approaching.

Meanwhile, the U.S. Ambassador to the Republic of Macedonia, Christopher Hill, was leading shuttle diplomacy between an Albanian delegation, led by Rugova, and the Yugoslav and Serbian authorities. It was these meetings which were shaping what was to be the peace plan to be discussed during a period of planned NATO occupation of Kosovo.

During a period of two weeks, threats intensified, culminating in NATO's Activation Order being given. All was ready for the bombs to fly; Richard Holbrooke went to Belgrade in the hope of reaching an agreement with Milošević with regards to deploying a NATO presence in Kosovo. He was accompanied by General Michael Short, who threatened to destroy Belgrade.

Officially, the international community demanded an end to fighting. It specifically demanded that the Serbs end its offensives against the KLA whilst attempting to convince the KLA to drop its bid for independence. Moreover, attempts were made to persuade Milošević to permit NATO peacekeeping troops to enter Kosovo. This, they argued, would allow for the Christopher Hill peace process to proceed and yield a peace agreement.

On 13 October 1998 the North Atlantic Council issued issue activation orders (ACTORDs) for the execution of both limited air strikes and a phased air campaign in Yugoslavia which would begin in approximately 96 hours. On 15 October the NATO Kosovo Verification Mission (KVM) Agreement for a ceasefire was signed, and the deadline for withdrawal was extended to 27 October. The Serbian withdrawal commenced on or around 25 October 1998, and Operation Eagle Eye commenced on 30 October.

The KVM was a large contingent of unarmed OSCE peace monitors (officially known as verifiers) that moved into Kosovo. Their inadequacy was evident from the start. They were 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 after the KLA occupied bunkers overlooking the strategic Priština-Podujevo highway, not long after the Panda Bar Massacre, when the KLA shot up a cafe in Peć. The KLA also allegedly assassinated the mayor of Kosovo Polje.

The January to March 1999 phase of the war brought increasing insecurity in urban areas, including bombings and murders. Such attacks took place during the Rambouillet talks in February and as the Kosovo Verification Agreement unraveled in March. Killings on the roads continued and increased. There were military confrontations in, among other places, the Vučitrn area in February and the heretofore unaffected Kačanik area in early March.

On 15 January 1999 the Račak massacre occurred when "45 Kosovan Albanian farmers were rounded up, led up a hill and massacred". The bodies had been discovered by OSCE monitors, including Head of Mission William Walker, and foreign news correspondents. Yugoslavia denied a massacre took place. The controversial Račak incident was the culmination of the KLA attacks and Serbian reprisals that had continued throughout the winter of 1998–1999. The incident was immediately (before the investigation) condemned as a massacre by the Western countries and the United Nations Security Council, and later became the basis of one of the charges of war crimes leveled against Milošević and his top officials. The massacre was the turning point of the war. NATO decided that the conflict could only be settled by introducing a military peacekeeping force under the auspices of NATO, to forcibly restrain the two sides.

The Rambouillet Conference (January–March 1999)

On 30 January 1999 NATO issued a statement announcing that the North Atlantic Council had agreed that "the NATO Secretary General may authorise air strikes against targets on FRY territory" 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 Milošević government, it also included a coded threat to the Albanians: any decision would depend on the "position and actions of the Kosovo Albanian leadership and all Kosovo Albanian armed elements in and around Kosovo."

Also on 30 January 1999 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 organizations. It also called for a peace conference to be held in February 1999 at the Château de Rambouillet, outside Paris.

The Rambouillet talks began on February 6, 1999, with NATO Secretary General Javier Solana negotiating with both sides. They were intended to conclude by February 19. The Serbian delegation was led by then president of Serbia Milan Milutinović, while Milošević himself remained in Belgrade. This was in contrast to the 1995 Dayton conference that ended the war in Bosnia, where Milošević negotiated in person. The absence of Milošević was interpreted as a sign that the real decisions were being made back in Belgrade, a move that aroused criticism in Serbia as well as abroad; Kosovo's Serbian Orthodox bishop Artemije traveled all the way to Rambouillet to protest that the delegation was wholly unrepresentative. At this time speculation about an indictment of Milošević for war crimes was rife, so his absence may have been motivated by fear of arrest. The first phase of negotiations was successful. In particular, a statement was issued by the Contact Group co-chairmen on February 23, 1999 that the negotiations "have led to a ''consensus'' on substantial autonomy for Kosovo, including on mechanisms for free and fair elections to democratic institutions, for the governance of Kosovo, for the protection of human rights and the rights of members of national communities; and for the establishment of a fair judicial system". They went on to say that "a political framework is now in place", leaving the further work of finalizing "the implementation Chapters of the Agreement, including the modalities of the ''invited international'' civilian and military presence in Kosovo". During the next month, however, NATO, under the influence of US diplomats Rubin and Albright, sought to impose a forced, as opposed to invited, military presence. The tilting of NATO towards the KLA organization is chronicled in the BBC Television "Moral Combat: NATO at War" program. This happened despite the fact, quoting General Klaus Naumann (Chairman of NATO Military Committee), that "Ambassador Walker stated in the NAC (North Atlantic Council) that the majority of [ceasefire] violations was caused by the KLA".

In the end, on March 18, 1999, the Albanian, American, and British delegations signed what became known as the Rambouillet Accords while the Serbian and Russian delegations 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 (Stabilization Force) mission there.

While the accords did not fully satisfy the Albanians, they were much too radical for the Serbs, who responded by substituting a drastically revised text that even the Russians (traditional allies of the Serbs) 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.

Events proceeded rapidly after the failure at Rambouillet. The international monitors from the OSCE withdrew on 22 March, 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 and non-military part of the agreement. But the Serbian side had objections to the military part of the Rambouillet agreement, particularly appendix B that foresees free access to all of Serbia for NATO troops, which it characterized as "NATO occupation". The full document was described as "fraudulent" because the military part of the agreement was offered only at the very end of the talks without much possibility for negotiation, and because the other side, condemned in harshest terms as a "separatist–terrorist delegation", completely refused to meet delegation of FRY and negotiate directly during the Rambouillet talks at all.

On 23 March 1999 Richard Holbrooke returned to Brussels and announced that peace talks had failed and formally handed the matter to NATO for military action. Hours before the announcement, Yugoslavia announced on national television it had declared a state of emergency citing an imminent threat of war and began a huge mobilization of troops and resources.

The NATO bombing campaign

On 23 March 1999 at 22:17 UTC the Secretary General of NATO, Javier Solana, announced he had directed the Supreme Allied Commander Europe (SACEUR), General Wesley Clark, to "initiate air operations in the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia." On 24 March at 19:00 UTC NATO started the NATO bombing campaign against Yugoslavia.

NATO's bombing campaign lasted from March 24 to June 11, 1999, involving up to 1,000 aircraft operating mainly from bases in Italy and aircraft carriers stationed in the Adriatic. Tomahawk cruise missiles were also extensively used, fired from aircraft, ships, and submarines. All of the NATO members were involved to some degree—with the exception of Greece. Over the ten weeks of the conflict, NATO aircraft flew over 38,000 combat missions. For the German Air Force (''Luftwaffe''), it was the first time it had participated in a conflict since World War II.

The proclaimed goal of the NATO operation was summed up by its spokesman as "Serbs out, peacekeepers in, refugees back". That is, Yugoslav troops would have to leave Kosovo and be replaced by international peacekeepers to ensure that the Albanian refugees could return to their homes. The campaign was initially designed to destroy Yugoslav air defenses and high-value military targets. It did not go very well at first, with bad weather hindering many sorties early on. NATO had seriously underestimated Milošević's will to resist: few in Brussels thought that the campaign would last more than a few days, and although the initial bombardment was more than just a pin-prick, it was nowhere near the concentrated bombardments seen in Baghdad in 1991. On the ground, the ethnic cleansing campaign by the Serbians was stepped up and within a week of the war starting, over 300,000 Kosovo Albanians had fled into neighboring Albania and the Republic of Macedonia, with many thousands more displaced within Kosovo. By April, the United Nations was reporting that 850,000 people, mostly Albanians, had fled their homes. On 25 March Arkan appeared at the Hyatt hotel in Belgrade where most of Western journalists were staying and warned all of them to leave Serbia.

NATO military operations switched increasingly to attacking Yugoslav units on the ground, hitting targets as small as individual tanks and artillery pieces, as well as continuing with the strategic bombardment. This activity was, however, heavily constrained by politics, as each target needed to be approved by all nineteen member states. Montenegro was bombed on several occasions but NATO eventually desisted to prop up the precarious position of its anti-Milošević leader, Đukanović. So-called "dual-use" targets, of use to both civilians and the military, were attacked, including bridges across the Danube, factories, power stations, schools, houses, nurseries, hospitals, telecommunications facilities and,controversially, the headquarters of Yugoslavian Leftists, a political party led by Milošević's wife, and the Serbian state television broadcasting tower. Some saw these actions as violations of international law and the Geneva Conventions in particular. NATO, however, argued that these facilities were potentially useful to the Yugoslav military and that their bombing was therefore justified.

At the start of May, a NATO aircraft attacked an Albanian refugee convoy, believing it was a Yugoslav military convoy, killing around fifty people. NATO admitted its mistake five days later, but the Serbs accused NATO of deliberately attacking the refugees. On May 7, NATO bombs hit the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade, killing three Chinese journalists and outraging Chinese public opinion. NATO claimed they were firing at Yugoslav positions. The United States and NATO later apologized for the bombing, saying that it occurred because of an outdated map provided by the CIA. This was challenged by a joint report from ''The Observer'' (UK) and ''Politiken'' (Denmark) newspapers which claimed that NATO intentionally bombed the embassy because it was being used as a relay station for Yugoslav army radio signals. The bombing strained relations between China and NATO countries, and provoked angry demonstrations outside Western embassies in Beijing.

In another major incident at the Dubrava prison in Kosovo, the Yugoslav government attributed 85 civilian deaths to NATO bombing. Human Rights Watch research in Kosovo determined that an estimated eighteen prisoners were killed by NATO bombs on May 21 (three prisoners and a guard were killed in an earlier attack on May 19).

By the start of April, the conflict seemed little closer to a resolution and NATO countries began to think seriously about a ground operation—an invasion of Kosovo. This would have to be organized very quickly, as there was little time before winter would set in and much work would have to be done to improve the roads from the Greek and Albanian ports to the envisaged invasion routes through Macedonia and northeastern Albania. U.S. President Bill Clinton was, however, extremely reluctant to commit American forces for a ground offensive. Instead, Clinton authorized a CIA operation to look into methods to destabilize the Serbian government without training KLA troops. At the same time, Finnish and Russian negotiators continued to try to persuade Milošević to back down. He finally recognised that NATO was serious in its resolve to end the conflict one way or another and that Russia would not intervene to defend Serbia despite Moscow's strong anti-NATO rhetoric. Faced with little alternative, Milošević accepted the conditions offered by a Finnish–Russian mediation team and agreed to a military presence within Kosovo headed by the UN, but incorporating NATO troops.

The Norwegian special forces Hærens Jegerkommando and Forsvarets Spesialkommando cooperated with the KLA in gathering intelligence information. Preparing for the invasion on June 12, the Norwegian special forces sat together with the KLA on the Ramno mountain on the border between Macedonia and Kosovo and had an excellent scouting point for what was happening inside Kosovo. Together with British special forces, Norwegian special forces were the first to cross over the border into Kosovo. According to Keith Graves with the television network Sky News, the Norwegians were already inside Kosovo two days prior to the marching in of other forces and were among the first to enter into Pristina. The Hærens Jegerkommando's and Forsvarets Spesialkommando's job was to clear the way between the striding parties and to make local deals to implement the peace deal between the Serbians and the Kosovo Albanians.

Yugoslav withdrawal and entry of KFOR

On June 3, 1999, Milošević accepted the terms of an international peace plan to end the fighting, with the Serbian parliament adopting the proposal amid contentious debate with delegates coming close to fistfights at some points. On 10 June, the North Atlantic Council ratified the agreement and suspended of air operations.

On June 12, after Milošević accepted the conditions, the NATO-led peacekeeping Kosovo Force (KFOR) began entering Kosovo. KFOR had been preparing to conduct combat operations, but in the end, its mission was only peacekeeping. It was based upon the Allied Rapid Reaction Corps headquarters commanded by then Lieutenant General Mike Jackson of the British Army. It consisted of British forces (a brigade built from 4th Armored and 5th Airborne Brigades), a French Army Brigade, a German Army brigade, which entered from the west while all the other forces advanced from the south, and Italian Army and United States Army brigades. The U.S. contribution, known as the Initial Entry Force, was led by the 1st Armored Division which was spearheaded by a platoon from the 2nd Battalion, 505th Parachute Infantry Regiment attached to the British Forces. Subordinate units included TF 1-35 Armor from Baumholder, Germany, the 2nd Battalion, 505th Parachute Infantry Regiment from Fort Bragg, North Carolina, the 26th Marine Expeditionary Unit from Camp Lejeune, North Carolina, the 1st Battalion, 26th Infantry Regiment from Schweinfurt, Germany, and Echo Troop, 4th Cavalry Regiment, also from Schweinfurt, Germany. Also attached to the U.S. force was the Greek Army's 501st Mechanized Infantry Battalion. The initial U.S. forces established their area of operation around the towns of Uroševac, the future Camp Bondsteel, and Gnjilane, at Camp Monteith, and spent four months—the start of a stay which continues to date—establishing order in the southeast sector of Kosovo.

During the initial incursion, the U.S. soldiers were greeted by Albanians cheering and throwing flowers as U.S. soldiers and KFOR rolled through their villages. Although no resistance was met, three U.S. soldiers from the Initial Entry Force lost their lives in accidents.

Following the military campaign, the involvement of Russian peacekeepers proved to be tense and challenging to the NATO Kosovo force. The Russians expected to have an independent sector of Kosovo, only to be unhappily surprised with the prospect of operating under NATO command. Without prior communication or coordination with NATO, Russian peacekeeping forces entered Kosovo from Bosnia and seized the Pristina International Airport.

In 2010 James Blunt in an interview described how his unit was given the assignment of securing the Pristina in advance of the 30,000-strong peacekeeping force and the Russian army had moved in and taken control of the airport before his unit's arrival. As the first officer on the scene, Blunt shared a part in the difficult task of addressing the potentially violent international incident. According to Blunt's account, verified by General Sir Mike Jackson, there was a stand-off with the Russians, and the NATO Supreme Commander, US General Wesley Clark, gave orders to over-power them. Whilst these were questioned by Blunt, they were rejected by General Sir Mike Jackson with the now famous line, "I'm not having my soldiers responsible for starting World War III".

Furthermore, in June 2000, arms trading relations between Russia and Serbia were exposed which lead to the retaliation and bombings of Russian Checkpoints and area Police Stations. Outpost Gunner was established on a high point in the Preševo Valley by Echo Battery 1/161 Field Artillery in an attempt to monitor and assist with peacekeeping efforts in the Russian Sector. Operating under the support of 2/3 Field Artillery, 1st Armored Division, the Battery was able to successfully deploy and continuously operate a Firefinder Radar which allowed the NATO forces to keep a closer watch on activities in the Sector and the Preševo Valley. Eventually a deal was struck whereby Russian forces operated as a unit of KFOR but not under the NATO command structure.

Reaction to the war

The legitimacy of NATO's bombing campaign in Kosovo has been the subject of much debate. One immediate cause of this criticism was the timing of the NATO intervention, coming as it did on the heels of the Monica Lewinsky scandal which led many critics to suspect that the intervention was an opportunistic attempt to distract the American public from the same (references to the film Wag the Dog were a polite way to refer to this suspicion). Some support for this hypothesis may be found in the fact that coverage of the bombing directly replaced coverage of the Monica Lewinsky scandal in American news cycles. Still others point out that before the bombing, rather than being an unusually bloody conflict, the war between the KLA and the Yugoslav security forces had in fact been one of the cleanest civil wars in modern history whereas the humanitarian toll skyrocketed among all concerned (including ethnic Albanians) after the NATO intervention. Perhaps more importantly NATO did not have the backing of the United Nations Security Council. NATO argued that their defiance of the Security Council was justified based on the claims of an "international humanitarian emergency". Criticism was also drawn by the fact that the NATO charter specifies that NATO is an organization created for defense of its members, but in this case it was used to attack a non-NATO country which was not directly threatening any NATO member. NATO claimed that instability in the Balkans was a direct threat to the security interests of NATO members, and military action was therefore justified by the NATO charter; however, the only NATO member country to which the instability was a direct threat was Greece, which opposed the bombing.

Many on the left of Western politics saw the NATO campaign as U.S. aggression and imperialism, while critics on the right considered it irrelevant to their countries' national security interests. Noam Chomsky, Edward Said and Tariq Ali were prominent in opposing the campaign. However, in comparison with the anti-war protests against the 2003 invasion of Iraq, the campaign against the war in Kosovo aroused much less public support.

The personalities were also very different—the NATO nations were mostly led by centre-left and moderately liberal leaders, most prominently U.S. President Bill Clinton, British Prime Minister Tony Blair, Canadian Prime Minister Jean Chrétien, German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder and the Italian Prime Minister Massimo D'Alema. Anti-war protests were generally from the libertarian right, the left, far-left and Serbian émigrés, with many other left-wingers supporting the campaign on humanitarian grounds. The German participation in the operation was one of the reasons for Oskar Lafontaine's resignation from the post of Federal Minister of Finance and the chairman of the SPD.

There was, however, criticism from all parts of the political spectrum for the way that NATO conducted the campaign. NATO officials sought to portray it as a "clean war" using precision weapons. The U.S. Department of Defense claimed that, up to June 2, 99.6% of the 20,000 bombs and missiles used had hit their targets. However, the use of technologies such as depleted uranium ammunition and cluster bombs was highly controversial, as was the bombing of oil refineries and chemical plants, which led to accusations of "environmental warfare". The slow pace of progress during the war was also heavily criticised. Many believed that NATO should have mounted an all-out campaign from the start, rather than starting with a relatively small number of strikes and combat aircraft.

Targets of the NATO bombing campaign

The choice of targets was highly controversial. The destruction of bridges over the Danube greatly disrupted shipping on the river for months afterwards, causing serious economic damage to countries along the length of the river. Industrial facilities were also attacked, damaging the economies of many towns. In fact, as the Serbian opposition later complained, the Yugoslav military was using civilian factories as weapons plants: the Sloboda vacuum cleaner factory in the town of Čačak also housed a tank repair facility, while the Zastava car plant was wrongly bombed, because the weapons factory of the same name exists in the same city, but in a completely different location. There were more similar mistakes that showed a lack of intelligence services.

Only state-owned factories were targeted, leading critics to suspect that the bombing campaign was partly designed to prepare the way for a free market-based reconstruction by wealthy foreign powers. No private or foreign-owned industrial sites were bombed. Perhaps the most controversial deliberate attack of the war was that made against the headquarters of Serbian television on April 23, which killed at least fourteen people. NATO justified the attack on the grounds that the Serbian television headquarters was part of the Milošević regime's "propaganda machine". Opponents of Milošević inside Serbia charged that the managers of the state TV station had been forewarned of the attack but ordered staff to remain inside the building despite an air raid alert.

Within Yugoslavia, opinion on the war was (unsurprisingly) split between highly critical among Serbs and highly supportive among Albanians, although not all Albanians felt that way; some appear to have blamed NATO for not acting quickly enough. Although Milošević was increasingly unpopular, the NATO campaign created a mood of national unity. Milošević did not leave matters entirely to chance, however. Many opposition supporters feared for their lives, particularly after the murder of the dissident journalist Slavko Curuvija on April 11, an act widely blamed on Milošević's secret police. In Montenegro, President Milo Đukanović, who opposed both the NATO bombardment and Serbian actions in Kosovo, publicly expressed fear of a "creeping coup" by Milošević supporters.

Opinion in Yugoslavia's neighbours was much more mixed. Macedonia was the only Yugoslav republic apart from Montenegro not to have fought a war with Serbia and had tense relations between the Macedonian majority and a large Albanian minority. Its government did not approve of Milošević's actions, but it was also not very sympathetic towards the Albanian refugees. Albania was wholly supportive of NATO's actions, as might be expected given the ethnic ties between Albanians on both sides of the border. Croatia, Romania, and Bulgaria granted fly-over rights to NATO aircraft. Hungary was a new member of NATO and supported the campaign. Across the Adriatic, Italian public and political opinion was against the war, but the Italian government nonetheless allowed NATO full use of Italian air bases. In Greece, popular opposition to the NATO bombing reached 96%.

Criticism of the case for war

A number of critics have emerged since the end of the war. They have accused the coalition of leading a war in Kosovo under the false pretense of genocide. U.S. President Clinton and his administration were accused of inflating the number of Kosovo Albanians killed by Serbians. Clinton's Secretary of Defense William Cohen, giving a speech, said, "The appalling accounts of mass killing in Kosovo and the pictures of refugees fleeing Serb oppression for their lives makes it clear that this is a fight for justice over genocide." On CBS' ''Face the Nation'' Cohen claimed, "We've now seen about 100,000 military-aged men missing... they may have been murdered." Clinton, citing the same figure, spoke of "at least 100,000 (Kosovo Albanians) missing". Later, talking about Yugoslav elections, Clinton said, "they're going to have to come to grips with what Mr. Milošević ordered in Kosovo... they're going to have to decide whether they support his leadership or not; whether they think it's OK that all those tens of thousands of people were killed...". Clinton also claimed, in the same press conference, that "NATO stopped deliberate, systematic efforts at ethnic cleansing and genocide." Clinton compared the events of Kosovo to the Holocaust. CNN reported, "Accusing Serbia of 'ethnic cleansing' in Kosovo similar to the genocide of Jews in World War II, an impassioned President Clinton sought...to rally public support for his decision to send U.S. forces into combat against Yugoslavia, a prospect that seemed increasingly likely with the breakdown of a diplomatic peace effort." Clinton's State Department also claimed Yugoslav troops had committed genocide. The ''New York Times'' reported, "the Administration said evidence of 'genocide' by Yugoslav forces was growing to include 'abhorrent and criminal action' on a vast scale. The language was the State Department's strongest yet in denouncing Yugoslav President Slobodan Milošević." The State Department also gave the highest estimate of dead Albanians. ''The New York Times'' reported, "On April 19, the State Department said that up to 500,000 Kosovo Albanians were missing and feared dead" (the entire prewar Albanian population of Kosovo was estimated at 1,300,000 to 1,600,000).

After the bombing of the Chinese embassy in Belgrade, Chinese Premier Jiang Zemin said that the US was using its economic and military superiority to aggressively expand its influence and interfere in the internal affairs of other countries. Chinese leaders called the NATO campaign a dangerous precedent of naked aggression, a new form of colonialism, and an aggressive war groundless in morality or law. It was seen as part of a plot by the US to destroy Yugoslavia, expand eastward and control all of Europe.

The United Nations Charter does not allow military interventions in other sovereign countries with few exceptions which, in general, need to be decided upon by the United Nations Security Council. The issue was brought before the UN Security Council by Russia, in a draft resolution which, ''inter alia'', would affirm "that such unilateral use of force constitutes a flagrant violation of the United Nations Charter". China, Namibia, and Russia voted for the resolution, the other members against, thus it failed to pass.

On April 29, 1999, Yugoslavia filed a complaint at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) at The Hague against ten NATO member countries (Belgium, Germany, France, Great Britain, Italy, Canada, The Netherlands, Portugal, Spain, and the USA). The Court did not decide upon the case because Yugoslavia was not a member of the UN during the war.

In Western European countries, opposition to NATO's intervention was mainly from the libertarian right, and from the far left. In Britain, the war was opposed by many prominent conservative figures including former UK Foreign Secretary Sir Malcolm Rifkind, former Chancellor of the Exchequer Norman Lamont, and journalists Peter Hitchens and Simon Heffer, whereas opposition on the left was confined to ''The Morning Star'' newspaper and left wing MPs like Tony Benn and Alan Simpson. In the U.S. criticism was largely limited to the conservative Republican Party, many of whom voted to approve congressional funding for the war under the premise of "supporting the troops, not the policy" of Democratic President Bill Clinton. The war was opposed primarily by prominent conservative figures in the U.S., including (then Texas Governor) George W. Bush, House Majority Leader Dick Armey, House Majority Whip Tom Delay and Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott. The more liberal Democratic Party largely supported the policy of the Democratic president, with the exception of some elements of the far-left, led by liberal activists, like Ralph Nader.

The war inflicted many casualties. Already by March 1999, the combination of fighting and the targeting of civilians had left an estimated 1,500-2,000 civilians and combatants dead. Final estimates of the casualties are still unavailable for either side.

Casualties

Civilian losses

In June 2000, the Red Cross reported that 3,368 civilians (2,500 Albanians, 400 Serbs, and 100 Roma) were still missing, nearly one year after the conflict.

A study by researchers from the Center for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta, Georgia published in 2000 in medical journal the Lancet estimated that "12,000 deaths in the total population" could be attributed to war. This number was achieved by surveying 1,197 households from February 1998 through June 1999. 67 out of the 105 deaths reported in the sample population were attributed to war-related trauma, which extrapolates to be 12,000 deaths if the same war-related mortality rate is applied to Kosovo's total population. The highest mortality rates were in men between 15 and 49 (5,421 victims of war) as well as for men over 50 (5,176 victims). For persons younger than 15, the estimates were 160 victims for males and 200 for females. For women between 15-49 the estimate is that there were 510 victims; older than 50 years the estimate is 541 victims. The authors stated that it is not "possible to differentiate completely between civilian and military casualties".

In the 2008 joint study by the Humanitarian Law Center (an NGO from Serbia and Kosovo), The International Commission on Missing Person, and the Missing Person Commission of Serbia made a name-by-name list of 13,472 war and post-war victims in Kosovo killed in the period from January 1998 to December 2000. The list contained the name, date of birth, military or civilian status of victim, type of injury/missing, time and place of death. There are 9,260 Albanians and 2,488 Serbs, as well as 1,254 victims that can not be identified by ethnic origin

Civilians killed by NATO airstrikes

Yugoslavia claimed that NATO attacks caused between 1,200 and 5,700 civilian casualties. NATO's Secretary General, Lord Robertson, wrote after the war that "the actual toll in human lives will never be precisely known" but he then offered the figures found in a report by Human Rights Watch as a reasonable estimate. This report counted between 488 and 527 civilian deaths (90 to 150 of them killed from cluster bomb use) in 90 separate incidents, the worst of which were the 87 lives lost at Korisa, where Serb forces made civilians occupy a known military target. Attacks in Kosovo overall were more deadly due to the confused situation with many refugee movements— the one-third of the incidents there account for more than half of the deaths.

Civilians killed by Yugoslav ground forces

Various estimates of the number of killings attributed to Yugoslav ground forces have been announced through the years.

The estimate of 10,000 deaths is used by the U.S. State Department, which cited human rights abuses as its main justification for attacking Yugoslavia.

Statistical experts working on behalf of the ICTY prosecution estimate that the total number of dead is about 10,000. Eric Fruits, a professor at Portland State University, argued that the experts' analyses were based on fundamentally flawed data and that none of its conclusions are supported by any valid statistical analysis or tests.

In August 2000, the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) announced that it had exhumed 2,788 bodies in Kosovo, but declined to say how many were thought to be victims of war crimes. Earlier however, KFOR sources told Agence France Presse that of the 2,150 bodies that had been discovered up until July 1999, about 850 were thought to be victims of war crimes.

Known mass graves:

In 2001, the bodies of more than 800 Kosovo Albanians were found in pits on a police training ground as outside Belgrade and in eastern Serbia.

700 bodies were uncovered in a mass grave located in the Belgrade suburb of Batajnica.

77 bodies were found in the eastern Serbian town of Petrovo Selo.

50 bodies were uncovered nearby the western Serbian town of Peručac.

NATO losses

Military casualties on the NATO side were light. According to official reports, the alliance suffered no fatalities as a result of combat operations. However, in the early hours of May 5, an American military AH-64 Apache helicopter crashed not far from the border between Serbia and Albania.

An American AH-64 helicopter crashed about 40 miles (64 km) northeast of Tirana, Albania's capital, very close to the Albanian/Kosovo border. According to CNN, the crash happened 45 miles (72 km) northeast of Tirana. The two American pilots of the helicopter, Army Chief Warrant Officers David Gibbs and Kevin L. Reichert, died in that crash. They were the only NATO casualties during the war, according to NATO official statements.

There were other casualties after the war, mostly due to land mines. After the war, the alliance reported the loss of the first U.S. stealth plane (an F-117 stealth fighter) ever shot down by enemy fire. Furthermore an F-16 fighter was lost near Šabac and whose remains are on display in Museum of Aviation in Belgrade, 32 unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) from different nations were lost. The wreckages of downed UAVs were shown on Serbian television during the war. Some claim a second F-117A was also heavily damaged, and although it made it back to its base, it never flew again.

Yugoslav military losses

NATO did not release any official casualty estimates. The Yugoslav authorities claimed 462 soldiers were killed and 299 wounded by NATO airstrikes. The names of Yugoslav casualties were recorded in a "book of remembrance".

Of military equipment, NATO destroyed around 50 Yugoslav aircraft including 6 MiG-29s destroyed in air-to-air combat. A number of G-4 Super Galebs which were destroyed in their hardened aircraft shelter by bunker-busting bombs which started a fire which spread because the shelter doors were not closed. At the end of war, NATO officially claimed they destroyed 93 Yugoslav tanks. Yugoslavia admitted a total of 13 destroyed tanks. The latter figure was verified by European inspectors when Yugoslavia rejoined the Dayton accords, by noting the difference between the number of tanks then and at the last inspection in 1995. The NATO officers claimed that Yugoslav army lost 94 tanks (M-84's and T-55's), 132 APCs, and 52 artillery pieces. Yugoslav officers claimed the real numbers were "14 tanks, not 120; 18 armored personnel carriers, not 220; 20 artillery pieces, not 450". Most of the targets hit in Kosovo were decoys, such as tanks made out of plastic sheets with telegraph poles for gun barrels, or old World War II–era tanks which were not functional. Anti-aircraft defences were preserved by the simple expedient of not turning them on, preventing NATO aircraft from detecting them, but forcing them to keep above a ceiling of 15,000 feet (5,000 m), making accurate bombing much more difficult. Towards the end of the war, it was claimed that carpet bombing by B-52 aircraft had caused huge casualties among Yugoslav troops stationed along the Kosovo–Albania border. Careful searching by NATO investigators found no evidence of any such large-scale casualties.

However, the most significant loss for the Yugoslav Army was the damaged and destroyed infrastructure. Almost all military air bases and airfields (Batajnica, Lađevci, Slatina, Golubovci, Kovin, and Đakovica) and other military buildings and facilities were badly damaged or destroyed. Unlike the units and their equipment, military buildings couldn't be camouflaged. thus, defence industry and military technical overhaul facilities were also seriously damaged (Utva, Zastava Arms factory, Moma Stanojlović air force overhaul center, technical overhaul centers in Čačak and Kragujevac). Moreover, in an effort to weaken the Yugoslav Army, NATO targeted several important civilian facilities (Pančevo oil refinery, bridges, TV antennas, railroads, etc.).

KLA losses

Kosovo Liberation Army losses are difficult to analyze. According to some reports there were around 1,000 casualties on KLA side. Difficulties arise in calculating an accurate figure. Things are complicated by the difficulty of determining who was a KLA member. For example, the Yugoslavs considered any armed Albanian to be a member of the KLA, regardless of whether he was officially a card-carrying member, so someone who is counted as a civilian by the Albanian side might be counted as a KLA combatant by the Serbs. Also, many members of the KLA were not wearing uniforms.

Aftermath

Within three weeks, over 500,000 Albanian refugees had returned home. By November 1999, according to the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, 848,100 out of 1,108,913 had returned.

During the war, 90,000 Serbs fled from Kosovo. The Yugoslav Red Cross had also registered 247,391 mostly Serbian refugees by November. The persistent anti-Serb attacks and riots, including against other non-Albanians, had remained in the anarchic stage until some form of order was established in 2001. This order disintegrated during the 2004 progrom against non Albanians.

War crimes

Serbian war crimes

The International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia charged Milošević with crimes against humanity, violating the laws or customs of war, grave breaches of the Geneva Conventions and genocide for his role during the wars in Croatia, Bosnia, and Kosovo.

Before the end of the bombing, Yugoslav President Slobodan Milošević, along with Milan Milutinović, Nikola Šainović, Dragoljub Ojdanić and Vlajko Stojiljković were charged by the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) with crimes against humanity including murder, forcible transfer, deportation, and "persecution on political, racial or religious grounds".

Further indictments were leveled in October 2003 against former armed forces chief of staff Nebojša Pavković, former army corps commander Vladimir Lazarević, former police official Vlastimir Đorđević, and the current head of Serbia's public security, Sreten Lukić. All were indicted for crimes against humanity and violations of the laws or customs of war.

War crimes prosecutions have also been carried out in Yugoslavia. Yugoslav soldier Ivan Nikolić was found guilty in 2002 of war crimes in the deaths of two civilians in Kosovo. A significant number of Yugoslav soldiers were tried by Yugoslav military tribunals during the war.

KLA war crimes

The ICTY also leveled indictments against KLA members Fatmir Limaj, Haradin Bala, Isak Musliu, and Agim Murtezi for crimes against humanity. They were arrested on February 17 and 18, 2003. Charges were soon dropped against Agim Murtezi as a case of mistaken identity, whereas Fatmir Limaj was acquitted of all charges on November 30, 2005 and released. The charges were in relation to the prison camp run by the defendants at Lapusnik between May and July 1998.

In 2008, Carla Del Ponte published a book in which she alleged that, after the end of the war in 1999, Kosovo Albanians were smuggling organs of between 100 and 300 Serbs and other minorities from the province to Albania. The ICTY and the Serbian War Crimes Tribunal are currently investigating these allegations, as numerous witnesses and new materials have recently emerged.

On March 2005, a U.N. tribunal indicted Kosovo Prime Minister Ramush Haradinaj for war crimes against the Serbs. On March 8, he tendered his resignation. Haradinaj, an ethnic Albanian, was a former commander who led units of the Kosovo Liberation Army and was appointed Prime Minister after winning an election of 72 votes to three in the Kosovo's Parliament in December 2004. Haradinaj was acquitted on all counts. The Office of the Prosecutor has appealed his acquittal, and as of July 2008, the matter remains unresolved.

NATO war crimes

The Serbian government and a number of international pressure groups (e.g. Amnesty International) claimed that NATO had carried out war crimes during the conflict, notably the bombing of the Serbian TV headquarters in Belgrade on April 23, 1999, where 16 people were killed and 16 more were injured. Sian Jones of Amnesty stated, "The bombing of the headquarters of Serbian state radio and television was a deliberate attack on a civilian object and as such constitutes a war crime". The ICTY conducted an inquiry into these charges, but did not press charges, citing a lack of mandate.

Military and political consequences

The Kosovo war had a number of important consequences in terms of the military and political outcome. The status of Kosovo remains unresolved; international negotiations began in 2006 to determine the level of autonomy Kosovo would have, as envisaged under UN Security Council Resolution 1244, but failed. The province is administered by the United Nations despite its unilateral declaration of independence on February 17, 2008.

The UN-backed talks, led by UN Special Envoy Martti Ahtisaari, had begun in February 2006. Whilst progress was made on technical matters, both parties remained diametrically opposed on the question of status itself. In February 2007, Ahtisaari delivered a draft status settlement proposal to leaders in Belgrade and Pristina, the basis for a draft UN Security Council Resolution which proposes "supervised independence" for the province, which is in contrary to UN Security Council Resolution 1244. By July 2007, the draft resolution, which was backed by the United States, United Kingdom, and other European members of the Security Council, had been rewritten four times to try to accommodate Russian concerns that such a resolution would undermine the principle of state sovereignty. Russia, which holds a veto in the Security Council as one of five permanent members, stated that it would not support any resolution which is not acceptable to both Belgrade and Priština.

The campaign exposed significant weaknesses in the U.S. arsenal, which were later addressed for the Afghanistan and Iraq campaigns. Apache attack helicopters and AC-130 Spectre gunships were brought up to the front lines but were never actually used after two Apaches crashed during training in the Albanian mountains. Stocks of many precision missiles were run down to critically low levels; had the campaign lasted much longer, NATO would have had to revert back to using "dumb" bombs for lack of anything better. The situation was not any better with the combat aircraft; continuous operations meant skipped maintenance schedules and many aircraft were withdrawn from service awaiting spare parts and service. Also, many of the precision-guided weapons proved unable to cope with Balkan weather, as the clouds blocked the laser guidance beams. This was resolved by retrofitting bombs with Global Positioning System satellite guidance devices that are immune to bad weather. Also, although pilotless surveillance aircraft were extensively used, it often proved the case that attack aircraft could not be brought to the scene quickly enough to hit targets of opportunity. This led to the fitting of missiles to Predator drones in Afghanistan, reducing the "sensor to shooter" time to virtually nothing.

Kosovo also demonstrated that even a high-tech force such as NATO could be thwarted by simple tactics, according to Wesley Clark and other NATO generals who analyzed these tactics a few years after the conflict. The Yugoslav army had long expected to need to resist a much stronger enemy, either Soviet or NATO, during the Cold War and had developed effective tactics of deception and concealment in response. These would have been unlikely to have resisted a full-scale invasion for long, but were probably effective in misleading overflying aircraft and satellites. Among the tactics used were: U.S. stealth aircraft were tracked with radars operating on long wavelengths. If stealth jets got wet or opened their bomb bay doors they would become visible on the radar screens. An F-117 Nighthawk downed with a missile was possibly spotted in this way. 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 nonexistent positions on mountainsides.

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, though General Clark's survey found that in Operation: Allied Force, NATO airmen hit just 25 decoys—an insignificant percentage of the 974 validated hits. However, NATO sources claim that this was due to operating procedures, which oblige troops, in this case aircraft, to engage any and all targets, however unlikely they may be. The targets needed only to look real to be shot at, if detected, of course. NATO claimed that Yugoslav air force had been decimated. "Official data show that the Yugoslav army in Kosovo lost 26 percent of its tanks, 34 percent of its APCs, and 47 percent of the artillery to the air campaign."

Old electronic jammers were used to block U.S. bombs equipped with satellite guidance.

Hispano-Suiza anti-aircraft cannon from the World War II era was used once effectively against slow-flying drone aircraft.

Military decorations

As a result of the Kosovo War, the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation created a second NATO medal, the NATO Medal for Kosovo Service, an international military decoration. Shortly thereafter, NATO created the Non-Article 5 Medal for Balkans service to combine both Yugoslavian and Kosovo operations into one service medal.

Due to the involvement of the United States armed forces, a separate U.S. military decoration, known as the Kosovo Campaign Medal, was established by President Bill Clinton in 2000.

Weaponry used on all sides

A variety of weapons were used by the Yugoslav Armed Forces and the Kosovo Liberation Army, who fought about 90 percent of the conflict. NATO used only aircraft and unknown naval units since its arrival on March 24, 1999.

;FR Yugoslavia The following weapons used by FR Yugoslavia are listed below. Most of them were Yugoslav Made weaponry, while almost all of the AA Units and some other weaponry were Soviet Made. 152 mm field gun-howitzer M84 NORA-A 2K12 Kub

9K31 Strela-1

9K32 Strela-2

9K33 Osa

9K35 Strela-10

AK-47

AK-74u

BOV (APC)

BVP M-80

CZ-99

G-4 Super Galeb

J-22 Orao

M53/59 Praga

M-63 Plamen

M-77 Oganj

M-87 Orkan

M-84 Tank

MiG-21

MiG-29

Mil Mi-24 Hind

S-125 Neva/Pechora

SA.341 GAMA

T-54/55

UAZ-469

Zastava M70

Zastava M72

Zastava M76

Zastava M77

Zastava M77B1

Zastava M80

Zastava M84

Zastava M85/M90

Zastava M87

Zastava M88

Zastava M91

Zastava M92

Zastava M93 Black Arrow

;Kosovo Liberation Army The following weapons used by the Kosovo Liberation Army are listed below. They mostly consist of Soviet Kalashnikov weaponry, also Chinese Derivatives of the AK-47 and some Western Weaponry.

AK-47

Armsel Striker

D-1 Howitzer

RPK

Type 56 Assault Rifle

Zastava M76

AKM

;NATO The following aircraft used by NATO are listed below.

A-10 Thunderbolt

AC-130 Spooky

AH-64 Apache

AV-8B Harrier

B-1 Lancer

B-2 Spirit

B-52 Stratofortress

Dassault Mirage 2000

Dassault Rafale

Boeing E-3 Sentry

F-104 Starfighter

F-117 Nighthawk

F/A-18 Hornet

F-14 Tomcat

F-15 Eagle

F-15 Strike Eagle

F-16 Fighting Falcon

F-4 Phantom

Harrier Jump Jet

MQ-1 Predator

Panavia Tornado

Panavia Tornado ADV

SEPECAT Jaguar

Literature

Kosovo, due to its strategical and historical place in the Balkans, has many sources of literature. Some of it is in Albanian due to its predominant ethnic Albanian population and the rest in other languages. There are many books which cover the 1998-1999 Kosovo conflict written by international authors. A few books worthy of mention are:

''The Dollar and the Gun'': theme connected, documentary-based short stories, about or inspired by, the Kossovo war, written by novelist and thinker Shlomo Kalo. Published in Serbia, England, Israel, Greece, Italy, India.

''Elegy for Kosovo'': Stories by Ismail Kadare

''From Kosovo to Kabul and Beyond'': Human Rights and International Intervention by David Chandler

''Waging Modern War'': Bosnia, Kosovo, and the Future of Combat by Wesley K. Clark

''Love Thy Neighbor'': A Story of War by Peter Maass

''The Tenth Circle of Hell'' (although about Bosnia parallels the situation in Kosovo) by Rezak Hukanovic

''The Balkans'': Nationalism, War & the Great Powers, 1804-1999 by Misha Glenny

''Beyond the Mountains of the Damned'': The War inside Kosovo By McAllester, Matthew

''Madness Visible A Memoir of War'' By Di Giovanni, Janine

and in novels

''From Bosnia with Love'' by Javed Mohammed, ''S'': A novel about the Balkans by Slavenka Drakulic.

See also

War crimes in the Kosovo War

Organ theft in Kosovo

Operation Eagle Eye (Kosovo)

Operation Horseshoe

Strategic Bombardment in the Kosovo War

Milan Milutinovic

Federal Yugoslavia Special Forces

History of Kosovo

Guerrilla Warfare

Mountain Warfare

Serbian-Albanian conflict

2004 unrest in Kosovo

2008 Kosovo declaration of independence

Gallery

References

External links

Indictment of Milosevic United Nations

Text of Rambouillet Treaty – "Interim Agreement for Peace and Self-Government In Kosovo, Rambouillet, France – February 23, 1999," including Appendix B University of Pittsburgh Jurist

Beginning of discussion (May 14, 1999 to June 8, 1999, specifically) of Appendix B of the Rambouillet Treaty on H-Diplo, the diplomatic history forum H-Net

Through My Eyes website Imperial War Museum — Online Exhibition (Including images, videos and interviews with refugees from the War in Kosovo)

Civilian Deaths in Airstrikes Erode NATO Credibility , ''Los Angeles Times''

Reports

Police in Kosovo charge 5, including ex-official, with international organ trafficking

UNDER ORDERS: War Crimes in Kosovo Human Rights Watch

OSCE Kosovo Verification Mission OSCE (Internet Archive)

Operation Allied Force NATO

HUMANITARIAN LAW VIOLATIONS IN KOSOVO HRW (1998)

ABUSES AGAINST SERBS AND ROMA IN THE NEW KOSOVO HRW (1999)

The Ethnic Cleansing of Kosovo U.S. State Department

Ethnic Cleansing in Kosovo: An Accounting U.S. State Department

War and mortality in Kosovo, 1998 99: an epidemiological testimony The Lancet (PDF)

Trebinje danas.com K. Mitrovica: Više od 100 povrijeđenih Srba, UNMIK policajaca i Kfora

Media

War in Europe PBS Frontline

Kosovo fact files BBC News

Focus on Kosovo CNN

How the (2008) Nobel Peace Prize was Won, by Gregory Elich, Counterpunch, published at Global Research. Diplomatic intervention of Finnish president Martti Ahtisaari on the conflict.

Maps

Maps of Kosovo, Perry-Castañeda Library Map Collection

Category:1998 in Kosovo Category:1999 in Kosovo Kosovo Kosovo Kosovo Category:Wars involving the United Kingdom Category:Wars involving the United States Category:History of Kosovo

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Coordinates	12°58′0″N77°34′0″N
country	SFR Yugoslavia
name	Yugoslav People's Army
native name	Југословенска народна армија Jugoslovenska Narodna Armija ---- ''Jugoslovanska ljudska armada
founded	1945
disbanded	1992
branches	Yugoslav Ground Forces (KoV)Yugoslav Navy (JRM)Yugoslav Air Force (JRV)Territorial Defense (TO)
headquarters	Belgrade
commander-in-chief	Josip Broz Tito (1945–1980)Presidency of SFR Yugoslavia (1980–1992)
minister	Federal Secretary of People's Defence
minister title	Minister
commander	Marshal of Yugoslavia (1945–1980)General of the Army or Admiral of the Fleet (1980–1992)
commander title	Commander
age	15–65
conscription	18
manpower data	588,000
manpower age	15–65
available	''circa'' 8,000,000 (1978)
active	620,000
reserve	>3,200,000
deployed
History	History of the JNA
Ranks	Yugoslav People's Army Ranks }}

The Yugoslav People's Army (YPA), also referred to as the Yugoslav National Army (YNA), (Serbo-Croatian, or ''Jugoslovenska Narodna Armija'' – JNA, Cyrillic script: Југославенска народна армија or Југословенска народна армија – JHA; Slovene: ''Jugoslovanska ljudska armada'') was the military of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia.

Origins

The origins of the JNA can be found in the Yugoslav Partisan units of World War II. As part of the antifascist People's Liberation War of Yugoslavia, the People's Liberation Army of Yugoslavia (NOVJ), a predecessor of the JNA, was formed in the town of Rudo in Bosnia and Herzegovina on December 22, 1941. After the Yugoslav Partisans liberated the country from the Axis Powers, that date was officially celebrated as the ''Day of the Army'' in the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (SFR Yugoslavia).

In March 1945, the NOVJ was renamed the Yugoslav Army (''Jugoslovenska Armija'') and finally on its 10th anniversary on December 22, 1951, received the adjective "People's" (''Narodna'').

Organization

The JNA consisted of the ground forces, air force and navy. It was organized into four military regions which were further divided into districts that were responsible for administrative tasks such as draft registration, mobilization, and construction and maintenance of military facilities. The regions were: Belgrade (responsible for eastern Croatia, Serbia and Bosnia and Herzegovina), Zagreb (Slovenia and northern Croatia), Skopje (Republic of Macedonia, Southern Serbia and Montenegro) and Split Naval Region. Of the JNA's 180,000 soldiers, more than 90,000 were conscripts.

In 1990, the army had nearly completed a major overhaul of its basic force structure. It eliminated its old divisional infantry organization and established the brigade as the largest operational unit. The army converted ten of twelve infantry divisions into twenty-nine tank, mechanized and mountain infantry brigades with integral artillery, air defense and anti-tank regiments. One airborne brigade was organized before 1990. The shift to brigade-level organization provided greater operational flexibility, maneuverability, tactical initiative and reduced the possibility that large army units would be destroyed in set piece engagements with an aggressor. The change created many senior field command positions that would develop relatively young and talented officers. The brigade structure had advantages at a time of declining manpower.

Industry

The arms industry was dominant in the Yugoslavian economy. With annual exports of $3 billion, it was twice as large as the second largest industry, tourism. It had modern infrastructure with underground air bases and control centres in several mountains. The biggest and best known installation was the Željava Air Base, also known as the Bihać Underground Integrated Radar Control and Surveillance Centre and Air Base, in Bosnia and Herzegovina.

Several companies in Yugoslavia produced airplanes and specifically combat aircraft, most notably SOKO of Mostar, with the Soko J-22 Orao being its best known product. Another important manufacturer was Utva in Serbia. The Yugoslav military-industrial complex produced tanks (most notably, the M-84), armored vehicles (BOV APC, BVP M-80), various artillery pieces (mortars, multiple rocket launchers, howitzers), anti-aircraft weapons, as well as various types of infantry weapons and other equipment.

Ground forces

The ground forces led in number of personnel. In 1991 there were about 600,000 active-duty soldiers (including 190,000 conscripts), and over two million trained reservists could be mobilized in wartime. Each of the Yugoslav constituent republics had its own Territorial Defence Forces which in wartime would be subordinate to Supreme Command as an integral part of the defence system. The Territorial Defence (Reserve Force) was made up of former conscripts; they were occasionally called up for war exercises.

The ground forces were organised into infantry, armour, artillery, and air defence, as well as signal, engineering and chemical defence corps.

Air force

The Yugoslav Air Force had about 32,000 personnel including 4,000 conscripts, and operated over 1,000 aircraft and 200 helicopters. In 1991, it was the second largest air force in Europe. It was responsible for transport, reconnaissance, and rotary-wing aircraft as well as the national air defence system. The primary air force missions were to contest enemy efforts to establish air supremacy over Yugoslavia and to support the defensive operations of the ground forces and navy. Most aircraft were produced in Yugoslavia. Missiles were produced domestically or supplied by the Soviet Union.

The Yugoslav Air Force had twelve squadrons of domestically produced ground attack fighters. The ground attack squadrons provided close air support to ground force operations. They were equipped with 165 new Soko J-22 Orao, Super Galeb and J-21 Jastreb, and older Soko J-20 Kraguj fighters. Many ground attack fighters were armed with AGM-65 Maverick air-to-surface missiles purchased from the United States. Others were armed with Soviet Kh-23 and Kh-28 missiles. The air force also had about ninety armed Mi-8 helicopter gunships to provide added mobility and fire support for small ground units. A large number of reconnaissance aircraft were available to support ground forces operations. Four squadrons of seventy Galeb, Jastreb, and Orao-1 fighters were configured for reconnaissance missions.

The Yugoslav Air Force had nine squadrons of 130 Soviet-made MiG-21 interceptors for air defence. First produced in the late 1950s, the MiG-21 design was largely obsolete in 1990 and represented a potential weakness in Yugoslavia's air defence. However, the bulk of the MiG-21 fleet consisted mainly of the ''bis'' variant, the latest production MiG-21 model, and was armed with Soviet Vympel K-13 (NATO reporting name: AA-2 "Atoll"), air-to-air missiles and some more modern Molniya R-60 (NATO reporting name: AA-8 "Aphid") missiles as well as twin 23 mm cannons. By 1989, Yugoslavia started developing a new domestic multirole fighter called Novi Avion, which was supposed to replace the MiG-21 and J-21 Jastreb fleets entirely. The design of the new aircraft was influenced by both Mirage 2000 and Dassault Rafale fighter types and it was to enter service by early 2000s. As an interim solution, a modernization package was planned for the MiG-21 and it is speculated that India's MiG-21 Bison upgrade was actually intended for Yugoslav aircraft. In 1987, Yugoslavia acquired 16 MiG-29s.

Although not officially known at the time, Yugoslavia was rumoured to have been interested in the purchase of certain numbers of Su-25 attack-aircraft and Mi-24 gunships. Instead of developing its own fighter plane, the Novi Avion, the country made a request to licence-build the F-20, but due to unstable relations with the US, the request was rejected. By the late 1980s, the licensed production of Aérospatiale SA 330 Puma helicopters was also envisaged, but due to the dissolution of the country, it was never realized.

One of the most impressive structures operated by the JNA Air Force was the underground Željava Air Base near the town of Bihac in Bosnia. The structure was made to withstand a nuclear explosion and was destroyed by the JNA in 1992 to prevent its capture. Željava was home to the 117th Fighter Aviation Regiment, which was composed of the 124th and 125th Fighter Squadrons, equipped with MiG-21Bis fighters, and the 352nd Reconnaissance Squadron, equipped with MiG-21R aircraft.

The Air and Air Defence Forces were headquartered at Zemun and had fighter and bomber aircraft, helicopters, and air defence artillery units at air bases throughout the former Yugoslavia: Batajnica Air Base (Belgrade), Niš Constantine the Great Airport, Slatina Air Base (Priština), Golubovci Airbase (Titograd), Skopski Petrovec, Sarajevo, Mostar, Željava Air Base (Bihać), Pleso (Zagreb), Split Airport, Pula, Zemunik (Zadar), Cerklje ob Krki and many other smaller air bases.

Navy

Minor surface combatants operated by the Yugoslav Navy included nearly eighty frigates, corvettes, submarines, minesweepers, and missile, torpedo, and patrol boats in the Adriatic Fleet. The entire coast of Yugoslavia was part of the naval region headquartered at Split (now part of Croatia).

The Partisans had operated many small boats in raids harassing Italian convoys in the Adriatic Sea during World War II. After the war, the navy operated numerous German and Italian submarines, destroyers, minesweepers, and tank-landing craft captured during the war or received as war reparations. The United States provided eight torpedo boats in the late 1940s, but most of those units were soon obsolete. The navy was upgraded in the 1960s when it acquired ten Osa-I class missile boats and four Shershen class torpedo boats from the Soviet Union. The Soviets granted a license to build eleven additional Shershen units in Yugoslav shipyards developed for this purpose.

In 1980 and 1982, the Yugoslav navy took delivery of two Soviet Koni class frigates. In 1988 it completed two additional units under license. The Koni frigates were armed with four Soviet P-15 Termit surface-to-surface missile launchers, twin 9K33 Osa (NATO reporting name: SA-8 "Gecko") surface-to-air missiles, and anti-submarine rocket launchers.

The Yugoslav navy developed its own submarine-building capability during the 1960s. In 1990, the main combat units of the submarine service were three Heroj class submarines armed with 533 mm torpedoes. Two smaller Sava class submarines entered service in the late 1970s. Two Sutjeska-class submarines had been relegated mainly to training missions by 1990. At that time the navy had apparently shifted to construction of versatile midget submarines. Four Una-class midgets and four Mala-class swimmer delivery vehicles were in service in the late 1980s. They were built for use by underwater demolition teams and special forces. The Una-class boats carried five crewmen, eight combat swimmers, four Mala vehicles, and limpet mines. The Mala vehicles carried two swimmers and 250 kilograms of mines.

The Yugoslav navy operated ten Osa class missile boats and six ''Končar'' class missile boats. The Osa I boats were armed with four P-15 Termit surface-to-surface missile launchers. In 1990, ten domestic ''Kobra'' missile boats were scheduled to begin replacing the Osa I class. The ''Kobra'' class was to be armed with eight Swedish RBS-15 anti-ship missiles, and fifteen of them were ordered in late 1989. Armed with two P-15 Termit launchers, the ''Končar'' class boats were modeled after the Spica class torpedo boats, and there were plans to upgrade them with Swedish-built missiles. Two ''Kobra'' missile boats were built by Croatia as the and both are still in service. The navy's fifteen Topčider-class torpedo boats included four former Soviet Shershen-class and eleven Yugoslav built units.

The Yugoslav navy's mine warfare and countermeasures capabilities were considered adequate in 1990. It operated four Vukov Klanac-class coastal minesweepers built on a French design, four British Ham class minesweepers, and six 117-class inshore minesweepers built in domestic shipyards. Larger numbers of older and less capable minesweepers were mainly used in riverine operations. Other older units were used as dedicated minelayers. The navy used amphibious landing craft in support of army operations in the area of the Danube, Sava, and Drava rivers. They included both tank and assault landing craft. In 1990, there were four 501-class, ten 211-class, and twenty-five 601-class landing craft in service. Most of them were also capable of laying mines in rivers and coastal areas.

The Yugoslav Navy had 10,000 sailors (including 4,400 conscripts and 900 marines). This was essentially a coastal defence force with the mission of preventing enemy amphibious landings along the country's rugged 4,000-kilometer shoreline and coastal islands, and contesting an enemy blockade or control of the strategic Strait of Otranto. The entire coast of Yugoslavia was part of the naval region headquartered at Split. The naval region was divided into three smaller naval districts and a riverine flotilla with major naval bases located at Split, Šibenik, Pula, Ploce and Kotor on the Adriatic Sea, and Novi Sad on the River Danube. The strategic islands of Vis and Lastovo were heavily fortified and unauthorised entry was prohibited. The fleet was organized into missile, torpedo, and patrol boat brigades, a submarine division, and minesweeper flotillas. The naval order of battle included four frigates, three corvettes, five patrol submarines, fifty-eight missile, torpedo, and patrol boats, and twenty-eight minesweepers. One antisubmarine warfare helicopter squadron was based at Split on the Adriatic coast. It employed Soviet Ka-25, Ka-28, and Mi-8 helicopters, and domestic Partisan helicopters. Some air force fighter and reconnaissance squadrons supported naval operations.

Doctrine

The Yugoslav People's Army (JNA) had a unique operational military doctrine for a conventional military force. Yugoslavia based its defence doctrine upon the total war concept of "Total National Defence" which drew upon Yugoslavia's successful partisan history during the Yugoslav People's Liberation War during the Second World War. The "Total National Defence" concept gave the JNA the role of defending borders against aggressors with the intention of delaying an invader long enough for Territorial Defence Forces to enter the field and start wearing the invader down with partisan tactics. The entire Yugoslav population was to be engaged in armed resistance, armaments production, and civil defence under this concept. It was believed by the Yugoslav planners to be the best method by which a smaller nation could properly defend itself against a much stronger invader.

Dissolution

In January 1990, the Communist Party of Yugoslavia was dissolved during its 14th congress of the League of Communists of Yugoslavia. The Yugoslav army was left without an ideological support mechanism. 99% of the officers of the Yugoslav army were members of the party.

The dissolution of Yugoslavia began when independent, non-communist governments were established in the Republics of Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia-Herzegovina and Macedonia. In 1990, the Socialist republic of Slovenia changed its name to Republic of Slovenia and ceased contributing funds to the federal government for a sustained military budget. Soon afterward the Slovenian government began a re-organization of its TO defense and the government brought the TO under its control.

In Croatia the nationalist government formed with paramilitary organizations such as ZNG.

In March 1991, the Yugoslav defense minister, General Veljko Kadijevic organized a meeting in a military complex in Topcider. Present at this meeting were all 6 presidents of the Yugoslav republic, presidents of the autonomous republic, the Yugoslav president and all top military officers. Kadijevic claimed that there are numerous paramilitary organizations in Yugoslavia sponsored by foreign and domestic enemies of the State. He also stated that YPA was dealing with Ustase, Chetniks and other enemies of the socialism stemming from WW2 conflicts. Kadijevic proposed a declaration of martial law. A subsequent vote was held on Kadijevic's recommendation of martial law, and the suggestion was vetoed.

On June 25th 1991, Slovenia and Croatia declared their independence from Yugoslavia. On the same day Slovenian territorial defense units captured Yugoslav control posts on borders with Italy, Hungary and Austria. Slovenian forces also established border control posts on their border with Croatia.

As a result of these actions, the Yugoslav Army attacked; its top commanders citing the constitutional obligation to defend the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Yugoslavia.

On June 27th, 1991, the Yugoslav Army attacked the Slovenian TO units on borders and also in all other areas which were under Slovenian control. The Slovenian TO blockaded all the Yugoslav Army bases in Slovenia and kept them under siege for 10 days.

A general state of war lasted for 10 days and ended on 6 July 1991. The Yugoslav Army suffered approximately 150 casualties. Many Yugoslav Army soldiers and officers were wounded or captured. After the Brioni Agreement was signed, the Yugoslav Army agreed to withdraw from Slovenia by October 10th, 1991, leaving numerous tanks, rifles, trucks and other equipment.

The Yugoslav Army was also sporadically attacked during the withdrawal period throughout Slovenia.

On June 27th, 1991, war in Croatia began. The belligerents were the Yugoslav Army and Serbians on one side and Croatian paramilitary units on the other.

Croatia initiated a siege of the Yugoslav Army's barracks, leaving its soldiers without food, water or electricity for weeks. Some Croatian citizens deserted from the Yugoslav Army and began joining Croatian military forces. Senior officers of the Yugoslav Army also defected to the Croatia, including Air Force Commander-in-Chief Colonel General Anton Tus.

The war has spread to the whole of Croatia. The Yugoslav Army was in a difficult position. Soldiers tried to escape from besieged barracks with more or less casualties. Croats captured large amounts of weapons in the Yugoslav Army barracks. Most of their equipment Croats captured in Varazdin when General Trifunovic gave up fighting with Croats.

Throughout the war the Yugoslav Army gave weapons to the Serbs rebels, allied against the Croatian government.

In August 1991, the battle of Vukovar began. This was the biggest battle in the War in Croatia after Oluja and Bljesak operations. In this battle 90% of the city was destroyed. The Yugoslav Army used fighter and attack aircraft, rocket launchers, large amount of tanks and other equipment.

Macedonia declared independence in August 1991.

In October Vukovar was captured and 80% of Croatian forces were destroyed or captured. Many atrocities were made by the Yugoslav Army in the city.

In mid-October 1991, Yugoslav ground forces, supported by naval and air forces attacked the city of Dubrovnik and the Konavle area where Croats had strongholds. By the 6th of December, the Yugoslav Army had neutralized all Croat formations in the Konavle area, but the Dubrovnik had not been captured.

After these two big operations, the Yugoslav Army signed a peace treaty with Croatia and began to withdraw. The last Yugoslav Army soldier left Croatia in May 1992 when ships of the Yugoslav navy sailed off Vis island to Kumbor in Montenegro.

In February 1992 Veljko Kadijevic resigned.

The Yugoslav Army left Macedonia in March 1992. Macedonia was left without any heavy equipment, weapons or aircraft.

In March 1992 Bosnia declared independence and the War in Bosnia started between Muslims, Croats and Serbs. The Yugoslav Army was in withdrawal and Muslims were attacking Yugoslav Army barracks and soldiers.The Yugoslav Army officially withdrew from Bosnia and Herzegovina in May 1992.

On May 20th, 1992 the Yugoslav People's Army was formally dissolved, the remnants of which reformed into the military of the newly found Federal Republic of Yugoslavia.

Peacekeeping operations

United Nations Emergency Force (1956–1967) – 14.265 soldiers in 22 rotations, Colonel Lazar Mušicki as commander of mission (Aug. 1964 – Jan. 1965);

United Nations Yemen Observation Mission (1963–1964) – one squad;

United Nations Iran–Iraq Military Observer Group (1988–1991) – military observers, General Slavko Jović as commander of mission;

United Nations Transition Assistance Group (1989–1990) – military observers;

United Nations Angola Verification Mission I (1989–1991) – military observers.

Operational experience

Yugoslav Front (World War II)

Trieste crisis

Yugoslav wars

*War in Slovenia (1991)

*War in Croatia (1991)

**Battle of Vukovar

*War in Bosnia (1992)

See also

Yugoslav Partisans

OZNA

KOS

Militaries of the former Yugoslavia:

Military of Bosnia-Herzegovina

Military of Croatia

Military of Macedonia

Military of Montenegro

Military of Serbia

Military of Slovenia

Notes

References

Trifunovska, Snezana, ''Yugoslavia Through Documents: From Its Creation to Its Dissolution'', Martinus Nijhoff Publishers, 1994 ISBN 0-7923-2670-9

Category:Disbanded armies Category:Yugoslav People's Army

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