The Kosovo War (also called Kosovo by Albanians) took place inside Kosovo between the Albanian "Kosovo Liberation Army" and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and between the Yugoslav government and Serbian forces. The fighting began in February 1998 and continued until July 1999.

Tensions between Serbs and Albanians in general are not new, as they began in the early twentieth century, and increased in the First Balkan War during 1914 and 1918, and World War II during 1939 and 1945.

Kosovo was annexed to the Kingdom of Yugoslavia after World War I, and came under Serb control, although the Albanian population claimed to join Albania because they considered themselves a historical part of it.

Since that time, Yugoslavia has practiced forms of discrimination against Albanians, deporting thousands of them and preventing the teaching of Albanian in schools, and the Serbs have taken control of the region, despite their being a minority.

Kosovo was granted autonomy under Yugoslav President Josip Broz Tito in 1945, and its name was changed in 1968 from the Autonomous Province of Kosovo and Metohija to the Autonomous Socialist Province of Kosovo.


Direct and indirect causes of the Kosovo war

Tensions between Serbs and Albanians have increased since the breakup of the Yugoslav Federation and the declaration of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (Serbia and Montenegro) in 1992.

Despite the fact that Muslims are a majority in Kosovo by more than 90%, Serbia sees the region as a sacred place for Serb history, due to the presence of the seat of the Serbian Orthodox Church, and the fact that it witnessed two historical events that documented the defeat of the Turks against the Serbs in 1389 and 1912.

Claiming independence

Peaceful protests began in Kosovo in 1989, led by Ibrahim Rugova, the ethnic Albanian leader in the region, against the decision to abolish the autonomy of the Kosovo region by Slobodan Milosevic (then President of the Serbian Republic).

Considering that their demands would not be resolved peacefully, Kosovar Albanians decided in 1996 to form the "Kosovo Liberation Army" (KLA) and began attacking Serbian police and officers for two years.

The Kosovo Liberation Army issued its first statement in late 1997 during the funeral of an Albanian teacher killed by Serbian police, and called for taking up arms for the formation of a "Greater Albania" through the secession of Kosovo from Serbia.

The Serbian army began a campaign of repression against the Kosovar Albanian population, by raiding villages and expelling people from their homes, and many massacres occurred at the hands of the Serbian police, and Albanian detainees were beaten and tortured in detention to obtain information from them.

This led to increased support for the "Kosovo Liberation Army" and a large number of Albanians joined it, and it was removed from the list of "terrorist groups" in the United States in 1998.


start of war

At the beginning of 1998, the attacks of Albanian pro-independence fighters began to increase, under the attempts of the Yugoslav armed forces to impose their control over the region, and were accused of committing many massacres against civilians and Albanian fighters, which exacerbated the number of refugees to Europe.

The Contact Group demanded a ceasefire and the withdrawal of Yugoslav and Serbian forces from the area for the return of refugees, with unlimited access for international observers to the area.

Composed of America, Britain, Russia, Germany, France and Italy, this group is an informal, non-permanent body created for the purpose of coordinating international actors to manage the crisis.

Milosevic agreed to these demands, but did not actually implement them. The Kosovo Liberation Army had nothing but to gather its dispersion and arm itself again during the ceasefire period, and start its attacks again.

The response of the Yugoslav and Serb forces was severe, and a series of ethnic cleansing began throughout Yugoslavia, including even the Albanian non-combatants of defenseless civilians in the villages of children, women and old people.

The United Nations Security Council condemned the "excessive" use of force and declared an arms embargo, yet the war in the region continued.


Rachak massacre

One of the most famous massacres committed by the Yugoslav forces was on January 15, 1999, when the bodies of 45 Albanian civilians who had been executed by firing squad, including a woman and a child, were discovered in the village of Racak in southern Kosovo.

The massacre was condemned by Javier Solana (Secretary General of NATO) and the head of the international observers in Kosovo held the Yugoslav (Serbian) security forces fully responsible for the massacre.

The Yugoslav security forces admitted that they had committed the massacre, and justified their intervention by wanting to arrest a "terrorist group" that had assassinated the Serbian policeman, Svetislas Brzec, and confirmed that the victims were all from the "rebellious Kosovo Liberation Army".

Although it was not the first massacre, but it was the reason for the intervention of NATO forces in the Kosovo war against the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, where the Albanian leader (Rugova) when visiting America and meeting its President Bill Clinton demanded the urgent intervention of the alliance forces.

This massacre alone caused the exodus of 20,000 Albanian civilians from Kosovo, after great panic broke out among the inhabitants of Albanian villages, especially in the more tense regions of Mitrovica and Vuctiern.


Operation Allied Power

Diplomatic negotiations began in France in February 1999, but were interrupted the following month after they failed.

On March 24, NATO forces began bombing Serbian military targets in the "Allied Force" operation, which America called "Operation Noble Anvil" with the aim of forcing Milosevic to stop the massacres against Albanians, and to force Belgrade to withdraw from Kosovo.

The Yugoslav and Serbian forces responded by expelling the Albanians from Kosovo, and the region witnessed the largest exodus of hundreds of people to Albania, Macedonia and Montenegro.

NATO bombing campaign lasted 11 weeks, about 78 days, reached Belgrade, and caused great damage to the infrastructure of Serbia, and the intensity of the bombing inside Serbian territory intensified, forcing Milosevic to announce the withdrawal in exchange for stopping NATO strikes.

In June 1999, Yugoslavia and NATO signed a peace treaty called Kumanovo, which provided for the replacement of Serbian forces with international forces. The Yugoslav forces withdrew, and a million Albanians and 500 displaced people were returned.


human losses

The losses in this war were estimated at about 13,000 dead, 11,000 of whom were Albanians and the rest were Serbs.

The war displaced nearly a million refugees to Albania and Macedonia, and NATO forces killed by mistake 500 civilians from Serbs and Albanians, according to human rights organizations.

political results

Most of the Serbs left Kosovo, and UN peacekeepers were deployed to the area and were administered by the UN.

Tensions did not stop even after the end of the war, and violence between the two sides continued.

In February 2008 Kosovo declared independence from Serbia, and 110 countries, including the United States and most of Europe, recognized it. Serbia and Russia refused to recognize it.