War of Kosovo

The war of Kosovo took place in 1999 on the territory of the Yugoslavia.

Short history

Since 1987, there exist tensions in Kosovo between the Albanian majority and the Serb minority. The inhabitants of the Kosovo had raised themselves since 1996 against the despotic government of Slobodan Milosevic following the process of abolition of the autonomy of Kosovo which with seriously begun in March 1989 with the contribution of modifications to the Serb Constitution, which showed the handing-over with the Serbia of direct control on the province.

Frustrated by the absence of intervention of the Occident and by the inefficiency of the policy of passive resistance Albanian applied under the direction of Ibrahim Rugova, certain Albanians of Kosovo turned to violence like means of disputing the Serb mode. The first step in this direction was the creation of the “Armée with release of Kosovo” (or UCK) in 1996. The UCK started a terrorism campaign by assassinating Serb leaders, police officers and frontier guards. The Serb ones then took severe police and military countermeasures. The turning point occurred in March 1997, when the government of the Albania crumbled following missed pyramidal financial transactions. Arsenals were plundered and these weapons invariably moved in great number towards Kosovo, where the incipient UCK delivered to the Serb authorities a true war of independence.

The international community reacted to the crisis in 1998, by creating a “group of contact” made up of the Germany, the United States, France, the United Kingdom and Russia which made ultimate diplomatic efforts in February 1999 with the Château of Rambouillet following allegations of Massacre S.

Human Rights Watch estimated that the Serb forces had expelled: 862979 Albanians of Kosovo towards the Macedonia and Albania, and that several hundreds of thousands more had been moved inside their own country; on the whole, more than 80% of all the population from Kosovo (or 90% of the Albanians of Kosovo) their hearths had been driven out.

The failure of the Negotiation S and the possible humane catastrophe pushed NATO to intervene by carrying out an air campaign of Bombardement called Opération Allied Force .

The Général Wesley Clark directed the operations since the Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers in Europe, which began the March 24th 1999.

Those should have been limited to bombardments symbolic systems during 3 or 4 days to bring back Belgrade to the table of the negotiations as that had occurred to finish some with the Guerre of Bosnia but these bombardments finally lasted 78 days.

: 58574 air missions over its 78 days of operations caused the loss of two American apparatuses to the combat (a F-117 and a F-16), more than 800 ground-to-air missiles were drawn by Serb DCA. One counts: 4397 missions anti-radar '' SEAD ''.

On the ground, several Special forces of the nations of NATO operated in discretion, a member of the Special Air Service at killed summer.

Terrestrial units of NATO concentrated in Macedonia while a brigade of the US Army spread itself - with difficulty - in Albania; not having taken part in the engagements, they will be the avant-garde of the future KFOR at the end of those Ci.

These strike which lasted more than 70 days seem to lead to a dead end until the concluding of an agreement between the Federative Republic of Yugoslavia and the special correspondents of the European Union, the Finnish president Martti Ahtisaari, and of Russia, the former Prime Minister Viktor Tchernomyrdine, on June 3rd, 1999. They had come to present the requirements of the G8 to put a term at the conflict of Kosovo to Milosevic.

The June 10th 1999, strike them stop and the Serb forces start to be withdrawn from Kosovo invested by the international force elected by the the United Nations, KFOR within the framework of the Opération Joint Guardian and placed since under the administration of the temporary Mission of the United Nations in Kosovo.

The human losses of this conflict are not clearly defined, several organizations estimate at: 10000 the number of Kosovan killed by the Serb forces, the air raids caused death among 500 and: 1500 dead civilians and of more than 650 Yugoslav soldiers.

One counts three on the whole killed in the forces of NATO including 2 in the accident of a AH-64 in Albania.

At the end of the month of April 2001, the war crimes just started to be the subject of an investigation and on this date, the Armée popular Yugoslavian had accused 183 soldiers and put in examination 62 others for those Ci, without any time to include in these investigations the special forces of police force or the paramilitary forces Serb.

The damage made with the reputation of Milosevic makes him lose the presidential elections in September 2000, it was stopped on March 31st, 2001 to be judged in front of the International penal court for ex-Yugoslavia but it will die before the end of the lawsuit in 2006.

The situation remains still difficult in the province of Kosovo with the death of Ibrahim Rugova, president of Kosovo since 2002.

Negotiations are always in hand concerning the final status of the area in 2007.

Criticisms of the war

The intervention of NATO as well as the real motivations of this war are discussed many.

In Europe, the souverainists, the extreme line and the Communists supported the Serb point of view.

The Public opinion of the countries of NATO was initially mainly in favor of this operation, although a progressive reversal started following the unforeseen length of the conflict and with the multiplication of criticisms of the bombardments, that it is in the Yugoslav media or certain reports/ratios of governmental organizations (see for example Human Rights Watch).

Certain personalities from the left rise against a return of the doctrines of the Guerre right, and show the Western mediums of propaganda. Noam Chomsky, for example, in its book " To dominate the world or to save the planet " , wire-drawer that the Serb massacres were caused by strike NATO, the major part of the former victims being because of UCK, shown to be a terrorist group having assassinated several thousands of Serb like Albanian. The bombardments, having contributed to destroy the industry of Serbia, are also shown to have had inter alia for goal to put at bottom the saving in socialist type of the country, one of the last of Europe.

The project of pipeline Bourgas - Durrës, connecting the Black Sea to the Adriatic Sea, is also presented like an important hidden motivation of this conflict. Such a pipeline would play a crucial role in the race which the Western great powers, in particular Germany and the United States carry out, to control the roads of oils and gas between Europe and the Central Asia (layers of the Caspienne). Thus, the war would have been planned well before the supposed events to have started it, while the paramount role of the Western great powers would have been occulted by the great media. It is for example the thesis supported by Michel Collon in his book " Monopoly - NATO with the conquest of the monde". The construction of the Camp Bondsteel in Serbia east sometimes advanced to support this theory.

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