Kosovo War (1998–1999): Conflict and NATO Intervention

The Kosovo War was fought between February 1998 and June 1999 in Kosovo, then a province of Serbia within the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. It began as a conflict between Yugoslav and Serbian security forces and the ethnic Albanian Kosovo Liberation Army, and it ended after a 78-day NATO bombing campaign forced Belgrade to withdraw. The war displaced most of Kosovo’s Albanian population, placed the territory under United Nations administration and opened the road to its declaration of independence in 2008.

Background

Kosovo holds a central place in Serbian national history, symbolised by the medieval Battle of Kosovo of 1389, but by the late twentieth century roughly 80 to 90 per cent of its population was ethnic Albanian. Under Yugoslavia’s 1974 constitution it enjoyed wide autonomy. In 1989 Slobodan Milošević, who had built his rise to power on Serbian grievances in Kosovo, pushed through constitutional changes that stripped most of that autonomy away.

Albanians were dismissed in large numbers from state jobs, schools and hospitals. Under Ibrahim Rugova and his Democratic League of Kosovo, they responded with non-violent resistance, building a parallel system of schools, health care and elections. The approach won international sympathy but few results. When the 1995 Dayton Agreement ended the war in Bosnia without addressing Kosovo, many Albanians concluded that peaceful methods had failed.

The Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) emerged in the mid-1990s and began attacking Serbian police and officials. Its capacity grew after the collapse of state authority in neighbouring Albania in 1997, when large quantities of weapons were looted from army depots.

Escalation in 1998

In late February and early March 1998, Serbian special police attacked villages in the Drenica region. At Prekaz, an assault on the family compound of the KLA leader Adem Jashari between 5 and 7 March killed around 58 people, many of them women and children. The killings turned the KLA from a small group into a mass movement.

Through the summer of 1998 Yugoslav army and police units launched large offensives, burning villages and driving hundreds of thousands of people from their homes. In September the UN Security Council adopted Resolution 1199 demanding a ceasefire. In October the American envoy Richard Holbrooke negotiated an agreement with Milošević that reduced Yugoslav forces and brought in unarmed monitors from the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE).

The truce did not hold. On 15 January 1999, 45 Albanians were killed in the village of Račak. The head of the OSCE mission, William Walker, called it a massacre, and the event hardened Western opinion.

Rambouillet and the decision to bomb

Western powers summoned both sides to talks at the chateau of Rambouillet, near Paris, in February 1999, followed by a second round in Paris in March. The proposals offered Kosovo substantial autonomy with a NATO-led force to enforce it. The Kosovo Albanian delegation signed on 18 March 1999. The Yugoslav delegation refused, objecting in particular to the presence of NATO troops.

On 24 March 1999 NATO began Operation Allied Force, an air campaign against military and, increasingly, infrastructure targets across Yugoslavia, including bridges, power plants and the state television building in Belgrade. It was the first time NATO had gone to war against a sovereign state, and it acted without authorisation from the UN Security Council, where Russia and China opposed military action. The campaign was directed by NATO Secretary General Javier Solana and the alliance’s military commander, the American general Wesley Clark.

The air war and the expulsions

As the bombing began, Yugoslav forces carried out a large-scale campaign of expulsions in Kosovo. Around 850,000 Albanians fled or were forced across the borders into Albania, Macedonia and Montenegro, and hundreds of thousands more were displaced inside Kosovo. Villages were burned, identity documents confiscated and many civilians killed.

NATO aircraft flew tens of thousands of sorties over 78 days. The alliance lost no personnel in combat, although a US F-117 stealth aircraft was shot down on 27 March. Several strikes caused civilian deaths, including the hit on a passenger train at Grdelica on 12 April and attacks on refugee columns. On 7 May NATO bombed the Chinese embassy in Belgrade, killing three Chinese journalists, which NATO said was the result of outdated maps. Human Rights Watch estimated that around 500 civilians were killed by NATO action.

On 27 May 1999 the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia indicted Milošević for crimes against humanity in Kosovo, the first time a sitting head of state had been charged by an international court.

The end of the war

Under pressure from continued bombing, the threat of a ground campaign and the loss of Russian diplomatic support, Milošević accepted a peace plan presented by the Finnish president Martti Ahtisaari and the Russian envoy Viktor Chernomyrdin on 3 June 1999. The Military Technical Agreement was signed at Kumanovo in Macedonia on 9 June. NATO suspended its bombing on 10 June, the day the UN Security Council adopted Resolution 1244.

Resolution 1244 placed Kosovo under a UN Interim Administration Mission (UNMIK) while formally recognising Yugoslav sovereignty. NATO-led Kosovo Force (KFOR) troops entered on 12 June. On the same day, a small Russian contingent from Bosnia raced to occupy Pristina airport before NATO forces arrived, briefly causing a tense stand-off.

Consequences

Albanian refugees returned with remarkable speed. At the same time, much of Kosovo’s Serb and Roma population fled or was driven out amid revenge attacks, and an estimated 200,000 people left. The Humanitarian Law Center’s Kosovo Memory Book records about 13,500 people killed or missing in connection with the conflict from 1998 to 2000, most of them Albanians but also more than 2,000 Serbs and several hundred Roma and others.

Milošević lost power after disputed elections and mass protests in Belgrade in October 2000. He was transferred to The Hague in 2001 and died in 2006 before his trial ended. Kosovo declared independence on 17 February 2008, a step Serbia rejects. In 2010 the International Court of Justice gave an advisory opinion that the declaration did not violate international law.

Legacy

The war fuelled a lasting debate about “humanitarian intervention”, the idea that force may be used without UN approval to stop mass atrocities. It contributed to the later doctrine of the “responsibility to protect”. It also strained relations between NATO and Russia, which saw the bombing of a fellow Slavic and Orthodox country as a dangerous precedent.

Timeline

• 1989, March: Serbia curtails Kosovo’s autonomy.
• 1998, 5–7 March: Serbian forces attack the Jashari compound at Prekaz.
• 1998, October: Holbrooke–Milošević agreement brings in OSCE monitors.
• 1999, 15 January: 45 Albanians killed at Račak.
• 1999, 18 March: The Kosovo Albanian delegation signs the Rambouillet accords; Yugoslavia refuses.
• 1999, 24 March: NATO begins Operation Allied Force.
• 1999, 27 May: Milošević indicted by the Hague tribunal.
• 1999, 9 June: Military Technical Agreement signed at Kumanovo.
• 1999, 10 June: UN Security Council adopts Resolution 1244; bombing ends.
• 1999, 12 June: KFOR troops enter Kosovo.

Why it matters

The Kosovo War was the last of the wars of Yugoslavia’s breakup and a turning point for NATO, which for the first time fought a war to change a government’s behaviour inside its own borders. Its outcome still shapes relations between Serbia and Kosovo and the wider argument about when outside powers may intervene.