Kosovo Intervention

Led by the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and the United States, a joint military move into Kosovo in 1999, which was intended to liberate Kosovo from allegedly oppressive Serbian rule and to end further conflict in the region. An Independent International Commission on the Kosovo intervention initiated by the prime minister of Sweden, Goran Perrson, submitted its report to UN secretary-general Kofi Annan on October 23, 2000. According to the report, the origins of the Kosovo conflict can be traced back to the late 1980s and early 1990s. In 1989, Slobodan Milosevic, the new president of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (FRY), withdrew autonomy from Kosovo (a part of Serbia), leading to a decade of discrimination and resentment among Albanian Kosovars. The result was the adoption of a predominant strategy of nonviolence chosen by Kosovars during the 1990s. This was challenged by a guerrilla army, the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA), which gathered ammunition after the meltdown of authority in neighboring Albania in 1997 and garnered support from Kosovars in response to the increasing repression by the FRY.

Armed Conflict Begins

An armed conflict between the KLA and FRY began in February 1998 and escalated in 1999. Although support for the KLA had expanded, the LDK party (Democratic League of Kosovo), led by Ibrahim Rugova, received an overwhelming majority of votes among Kosovars in March 1998 elections.

Between February 1998 and March 1999, approximately 400,000 Kosovars had been driven or fled from their homes. The massacre at Drenica in February 1998, in which 58 people were slain by FRY forces, prefaced nine months of bombings and burnings of villages, as well as disappearances and massacres of Kosovar civilians by the FRY. Not only did Serbian repression arouse greater sympathy among Kosovars for the KLA, but also the violence in Kosovo and attacks on ethnic Serbs there (as well as on FRY police) increased support for Milosevic in the FRY.

Milosevic called for a referendum (held on April 24, 1998) on proposed international mediation in Kosovo and elicited 95% support for his position against such mediation. The referendum was widely considered a sham and deliberately held under a repressive environment to ensure easy support.

The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), the UN Security Council, and the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) considered in 1998 what had occurred and what was to be done. Diplomatic efforts by the UN-sponsored Contact Group led to an agreement between the U.S. Special Envoy, Richard Holbrooke (representing the Contact Group) and FRY President Milosevic in October 1998. This agreement authorized the introduction of unarmed OSCE monitors and the withdrawal of most of the FRY troops (as called for in UNSC Resolution 1199 on September 23, 1998). This deescalation allowed many Kosovars to go home, and it did reduce the level of violence temporarily. However, KLA units took advantage of the lull in fighting to reestablish their control of many positions vacated by the redeployed Serbian troops. Violence escalated again in December 1998 after Serbian forces reentered the province.

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