Kosovo Liberation Army

Terrorist group Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) emerged in 1996 and instigated a war between Kosovo and Serbia in the hope of winning Kosovo's independence.

Kosovo, which borders on Albania, is a province of Serbia, which itself is a part of the former Yugoslavia. Kosovo was once the center of Serbian culture and society, but over the past several hundred years, its population has changed: Today, more than 90 percent of its people are of Albanian ethnicity, most of them Muslim. Serbs still consider Kosovo an integral part of their country.

In Communist Yugoslavia, which united several Balkan provinces including Serbia, Kosovo was considered to be a part of Serbia but was administered autonomously. In 1989, during the death throes of the Communist government, Slobodan Milosovic was elected president of Serbia on a nationalist platform. One of his first actions was to strip Kosovo of its independence, replacing Albanian officials with Serbian ones and closing Albanian-language schools. The reaction of the Kosovo Albanians was to boycott all Serbian institutions in a form of peaceful protest, setting up their own shadow government. These tactics did not gain the hoped-for attention and support of the international community, however. After the 1995 Dayton Peace Accords (which resolved a separate [Page 206]war between Serbia and Bosnia) failed to address Kosovo's independence, many Kosovo Albanians began to look for other solutions.

In this atmosphere the KLA emerged. In 1996 and 1997, the KLA, which was originally composed of a few hundred Albanian Muslim veterans of the Bosnian war, attacked several Serbian police stations and wounded many officers. The KLA made its first public statement on December 1, 1997, during a funeral service for an Albanian teacher killed by Serbian police. The speech was a call to arms outlining the KLA's position and objectives. (Prior to this appearance, some observers suspected that the KLA was actually a Serbian tool—an indirect way of stirring up ancient ethnic tensions that would allow Milosovic to move against Kosovo's Albanian population.)

The KLA's stated objectives were the secession of Kosovo from Serbia and the eventual creation of a “Greater Albania,” encompassing Kosovo, Albania, and the ethnic Albanian minority of neighboring Macedonia. The KLA found great moral and financial support among the Albanian diaspora; it used the money to purchase weapons, which were then smuggled over the porous Albania-Kosovo border. As the KLA became better armed, its attacks became more effective; the Serbian president of the University of Pristina, Kosovo's capital, narrowly escaped assassination in January 1997.

In response, the Serbian government began a crackdown against the Kosovo Albanian population, raiding villages and expelling people from their homes. Massacres by the Serbian police were reported, and suspects taken into police custody were often beaten and tortured to extort confessions. The crackdown on the Kosovo Albanian population only increased support for the KLA, which attracted thousands of new recruits. Throughout 1998, the KLA escalated its attacks and Serbia followed suit with reprisals. By the end of the year, the KLA had killed scores of police; the Serbian government had sent 40,000 troops to the region; and an estimated 200,000 Kosovo Albanian refugees had fled into neighboring countries.

The mounting refugee crisis began to attract serious international attention. In February 1999, the allied governments of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), led by the United States, forced the Serbian government and the KLA into truce negotiations in Rambouillet, France. The KLA was prevailed upon to sign the treaty, but the Serbian government refused; in March 1999, NATO commenced air strikes on Serbian forces. The air campaign lasted for 11 weeks. During the campaign, an estimated 1.5 million Albanian refugees are believed to have left the area, about 85 percent of Kosovo's total population. KLA ranks also expanded; by the end of the campaign some observers estimated that the organization had about 20,000 troops, several thousand of whom were well-trained former soldiers. The KLA forces on the ground played an important role—especially during the campaign's final weeks, when the organization was at full strength. By engaging Serbian troops, they were able to concentrate the Serbian forces so that NATO air strikes were much more effective. Between 25 and 50 percent of the Serbian equipment is thought to have been destroyed during the campaign.

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