The move was ostensibly directed against harassment of Kosovo’s Serbian minority by its Albanian majority, and Milosevic had prepared for it since 1987, when he told a crowd of angry Serbs outside Kosovo’s capital, Pristina, that “no one will beat you again.” Most analysts, however, saw the speech as laying the ground for revoking Kosovo and Vojvodina’s autonomy, both precursors to Milosevic’s twin strategy of forcible integration within Serbia and annexation of Serb territories outside Serbia.

Map B.17: Serbia's Autonomous Regions (click to enlarge)

Kosovo’s Albanian leaders responded to the loss of autonomy with non-violent protest, and established parallel structures of government, including economic and social institutions and a shadow parliament made up of representatives from political parties and trade unions.

In September 1991, Kosovo held a referendum for independence from Yugoslavia, which was boycotted by Kosovo’s Serbs, as happened in Croatia and Bosnia & Herzegovina. Kosovo’s Albanians voted overwhelmingly in favor of independence, but the referendum had no standing as Kosovo’s government was not officially recognized, and the autonomous provinces did not have the right to vote on secession anyway (this regulation was a prime cause of the outbreak of conflict in Croatia).

In 1992, Ibrahim Rugova of the Democratic League of Kosovo (LDK) was elected Kosovo’s “president” in unofficial elections, and the Albanian population in Kosovo elected a 130-member parliament.

Though Kosovo’s parallel government kept the province running, the years 1992-99 saw endless human rights violations by Serbian security forces, and revenge killings by Albanian guerrillas, as well as a steady stream of Serbian migration out of the province. Serbian migration from Kosovo had in fact begun when the province was granted autonomy in 1974. Since 1974, the proportion of Serbs had declined from around 20% to below 10% of Kosovo’s population.

Serb-Albanian polarization grew steadily through the 1990s. Already under two governments — Serbian and parallel Albanian — Kosovo began to be socially segregated, with separate schools and public spaces for Serbs and Albanians.

Lauded by the international community for adhering to non-violent resistance in the face of Serbian discrimination, Kosovo’s Albanians were taken aback when they were not invited to the Dayton conference in fall 1995, and Kosovo was not on the Dayton agenda. A radical minority in favor of armed rebellion had grown during the shadowy years following the loss of autonomy, and after failing to get on the Dayton conference agenda the majority of Kosovo Albanians who had supported Rugova’s non-violent resistance concluded that conflict was the surest means to international engagement. Rugova’s credibility suffered a major setback, and the beneficiaries were Kosovo’s Albanian guerrillas.

The Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA), until now a marginal band of ragtag guerrillas, swelled with new recruits, and an influx of money and arms from the Albanian Diaspora, especially the Diaspora in the U.S. Starting in 1996, a few months after the Dayton Agreement brought an end to the war in Bosnia & Herzegovina, the KLA launched a campaign to intimidate Serbian government and security forces through individual assassinations.

The Serbian authorities retaliated with arbitrary and indiscriminate attacks against Albanian civilians, primarily through forced searches, mass arrests, beatings and occasional killings. A cycle of reprisals and counter-reprisals fed a rapidly deteriorating situation, which finally came to a head in late 1998.

In March 1998, the Serbian government launched a major assault on the central Drenica valley, a known launching pad for KLA ambushes of Serbian police forces. On March 5, a unit of Serbian commandos attacked a series of villages in the valley, killing around 85 people, including at least 24 women and children. The massacre galvanized both local and Diaspora Albanians, and the KLA became a force to contend with — better armed and certainly better funded than the Serbian forces.

Within a month, the KLA loosely controlled approximately 40% of Kosovo’s territory. Serbian civilians remaining in the areas of KLA control were subject to gangland harassment, including assault, kidnapping and sporadic killing, to force them to leave.

Serbian forces intensified counterattacks during the summer of 1998, and by mid-August Serbia had retaken most of the territory previously held by the KLA, who retreated to the hills. Serbian forces engaged in widespread looting, burned down crops and terrorized the Albanian population. Between May and September 1998, roughly 250,000 civilians were displaced.

Dismayed by the spiraling violence in Kosovo, and reluctant to support independence for the province, the international community was caught in the dilemma of trying to stop the Serb government’s repression without conceding Albanian claims. Neighboring Macedonia, with its own Albanian population, was a pressing concern — many Macedonian Albanians had already joined the KLA in Kosovo, and any move towards independence for Kosovo could easily spark a secessionist war in Macedonia.

As a half way to meeting these concerns, the UN Security Council passed Resolution 1160 on March 31, 1998, which condemned violence on all sides, called for a negotiated settlement and imposed an arms embargo on Yugoslavia. Milosevic responded by holding a referendum in Yugoslavia on whether there should be international mediation in the Kosovo conflict; the vote was overwhelming in favor of no involvement.

To ratchet up the pressure on Milosevic, NATO issued an Activation Warning alerting member countries that a military action against Yugoslavia was being contemplated and that they could be asked to contribute forces and support for the mission.

Under intense international pressure, Kosovo’s Albanians and the Serbian government met in Rambouillet (France) for negotiations between February 6 and 22, 1999. The talks were cosponsored by the British and French foreign ministries, with negotiators from the U.S., Austria and Russia. After two weeks, both sides were presented with an interim agreement that provided substantial autonomy and self-government for Kosovo within Yugoslavia, protected by a strong NATO presence on the ground. The final status of Kosovo would be worked out by an international conference meeting over a three-year period.

The Serbian government rejected the Rambouillet proposals, but used the conclave to buy time while massing troops and paramilitary units in northeastern and north-central Kosovo. NATO, whose threats of an air attack had brought the Serbian government to the negotiating table in the first place, was left with little option but to make good the threat.

In a final effort to avoid bombing, U.S. special envoy Richard Holbrooke flew to Belgrade to push Milosevic into signing the proposals. He left empty handed on March 23 and the next day, NATO began air strike without waiting for approval from the UN Security Council.

NATO’s air strikes against Yugoslavia were meant to be directed chiefly at military targets in Kosovo and Serbia, but these were few and far between, and the strikes were soon extended to a wide range of other facilities, including bridges, oil refineries, power supplies and communications. The first impact of the strikes was to accelerate Milosevic’s ethnic cleansing of Kosovo — within days, tens of thousands of Albanian refugees poured out of the province with accounts of killings, atrocities and forced expulsions.

The mass exodus from Kosovo stirred debate on whether NATO should have used ground forces as well as air power in order to prevent ethnic cleansing in the province. Though analysts had warned that Milosevic might use NATO air strikes as cover to drive Albanians out of Kosovo, NATO never seriously considered the use of ground troops to deter Serbian forces.

Politically, it would have been very difficult for the Clinton administration to convince a skeptical Congress that ground troops were a necessary preventive measure, and without a U.S. commitment few of the other NATO member states were prepared to take the lead.

Privately, NATO commanders hoped that the rapidly expanding KLA would provide a deterrent force on the ground, but the KLA proved unequal to the task Close to half a million refugees entered Albania and Macedonia, where the UNHCR and NATO worked together to provide them food and shelter. This was the first time that NATO engaged in refugee protection.

In early June, after close on eleven weeks of intensive bombing, the Serbian Parliament approved the Rambouillet agreement and Yugoslavia began to withdraw its security forces from Kosovo.

On June 10, the UN Security Council passed Resolution 1244, making Kosovo an international protectorate. The resolution provided for a time bound international administration, the UN Interim Administration Mission in Kosovo (UNMIK), and a NATO led Kosovo Protection Force (KFOR). The international administration was tasked with returning Kosovo to peace, building the local administration and laying the ground for Albanian-Serb coexistence.

Map B.18: The Kosovo Protection Force (click to enlarge)

On June 12, a KFOR contingent of 50,000 troops moved into Kosovo and divided the province into five patrol zones: U.S. troops patrolled the eastern zone; Britain, the central zone, including the capital Pristina; France, the western zone; Italy, the northern sector; and Germany, the southern zone.

The division into zones of control was along the lines of the NATO mission in Bosnia & Herzegovina: while it made sense from the operational point of view, it did little to help integrate the province’s warring Serbs and Albanians. As the Albanians returned to a devastated Kosovo, Serbs began to stream out. In many instances, as from the capital, Pristina, returning Albanians drove out Serb residents.

By the time the Interim Administration was set up, the few thousand Serbs that remained in Kosovo were concentrated in a northwestern strip, around the town of Kosovska Mitrovica. The town itself was partitioned into Serbian and Albanian sections, with French troops in between.

Though the U.S. and the E.U. hoped that this de facto partition would disappear as the province stabilized, and UNMIK took a number of steps towards gradual reintegration, the issue of partition did not go away. As long as the status of Kosovo remained open to future negotiations — which the Rambouillet Accords promised — neighboring Albanian areas in South Serbia and Macedonia would be unstable. Albanians from both regions had fought for Kosovo’s independence, with the goal of themselves seceding once it was achieved.

The danger that Kosovo’s independence would spark secessionist movements in Serbia and Macedonia was one of the main reasons why any consideration of independence for the province was postponed. But the U.S. and E.U. failed to use the time they had bought to strengthen integrative mechanisms within Serbia or Macedonia, and it was Macedonia that suffered.

Almost immediately after UNMIK took over in Kosovo, attention moved to overthrowing Milosevic in Serbia. Macedonia’s Albanian problem was allowed to fester, until it erupted into violence in 2001.

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Chapter Contents
			The Balkans Conflict
		·	The Rise of Nationalism
		·	Secession and War
		·	Bosnia's Ethnic Cleansing
		·	Humanitarian Intervention
		·	A Shaky Peace
		·	Crisis in Kosovo
		·	Macedonia's Albanians

Related Texts
·	UNSCR 1160
·	UNSCR 1244
·	Rambouillet Accords

Related Articles
·	Why Milosevic Decided to Settle the Conflict Over Kosovo When He Did(RAND Research Brief)
·	The Lessons of Kosovo's Two Wars, by Richard Haass
·	The Lessons and Non-Lessons of the Air and Missile War in Kosovo(CSIS Report)
·	Moving Away from Partition? Bosnia-Herzegovina & Kosovo
·	Kosovo's Next Masters by Chris Hedges

Related IWPR Articles
·	KLA Fights To Block Partition
·	Agani's Last Interview
·	Clampdown on Southern Serbia