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206———Kosovo Liberation Army

war between Serbia and Bosnia) failed to address was prevailed upon to sign the treaty, but the Serbian
Kosovo’s independence, many Kosovo Albanians government refused; in March 1999, NATO com-
began to look for other solutions. menced air strikes on Serbian forces. The air cam-
In this atmosphere the KLA emerged. In 1996 and paign lasted for 11 weeks. During the campaign, an
1997, the KLA, which was originally composed of estimated 1.5 million Albanian refugees are believed
a few hundred Albanian Muslim veterans of the to have left the area, about 85 percent of Kosovo’s
Bosnian war, attacked several Serbian police stations total population. KLA ranks also expanded; by the
and wounded many officers. The KLA made its first end of the campaign some observers estimated that
public statement on December 1, 1997, during a the organization had about 20,000 troops, several
funeral service for an Albanian teacher killed by thousand of whom were well-trained former soldiers.
Serbian police. The speech was a call to arms outlin- The KLA forces on the ground played an important
ing the KLA’s position and objectives. (Prior to this role—especially during the campaign’s final weeks,
appearance, some observers suspected that the KLA when the organization was at full strength. By engag-
was actually a Serbian tool—an indirect way of ing Serbian troops, they were able to concentrate the
stirring up ancient ethnic tensions that would allow Serbian forces so that NATO air strikes were much
Milosovic to move against Kosovo’s Albanian more effective. Between 25 and 50 percent of the
population.) Serbian equipment is thought to have been destroyed
The KLA’s stated objectives were the secession of during the campaign.
Kosovo from Serbia and the eventual creation of a Following the war, the United Nations sent a
“Greater Albania,” encompassing Kosovo, Albania, multinational peacekeeping force of 50,000 into the
and the ethnic Albanian minority of neighboring region. All Serbian government forces were removed,
Macedonia. The KLA found great moral and financial and many Kosovo Serbs left as well. In contrast,
support among the Albanian diaspora; it used the almost all the Kosovo Albanian refugees returned;
money to purchase weapons, which were then smug- the population of the province is now believed to be
gled over the porous Albania-Kosovo border. As the about 95 percent Albanian. The presence of the U.N.
KLA became better armed, its attacks became more forces quickly quelled the retaliatory violence by
effective; the Serbian president of the University of returning refugees on their former Serb neighbors.
Pristina, Kosovo’s capital, narrowly escaped assassi- The KLA has submitted to demilitarization, and
nation in January 1997. several of its most important leaders have gone on to
In response, the Serbian government began a form political parties. The KLA parties won 37 seats
crackdown against the Kosovo Albanian population, in Kosovo’s first parliamentary elections in November
raiding villages and expelling people from their 2001.
homes. Massacres by the Serbian police were During the Rambouillet negotiations, the interna-
reported, and suspects taken into police custody were tional community had hoped to reestablish Kosovo’s
often beaten and tortured to extort confessions. The autonomy, not full independence, as it was believed an
crackdown on the Kosovo Albanian population only independent Kosovo would tend to destabilize
increased support for the KLA, which attracted thou- the entire region and lead to further war. Independ-
sands of new recruits. Throughout 1998, the KLA ence remains, at the time of this writing, a dream
escalated its attacks and Serbia followed suit with deferred; the new Kosovo parliament is actually
reprisals. By the end of the year, the KLA had killed prohibited from voting on the subject. But as even the
scores of police; the Serbian government had sent pacifist Albanian parties claim independence as their
40,000 troops to the region; and an estimated 200,000 goal, and the KLA itself remains a potent political
Kosovo Albanian refugees had fled into neighboring force whose goal of “Greater Albania” has not altered.
countries.
The mounting refugee crisis began to attract Further Reading
serious international attention. In February 1999, the
Columbus, Frank, ed. Kosovo-Serbia: A Just War? Commack,
allied governments of the North Atlantic Treaty NY: Nova Science, 1999.
Organization (NATO), led by the United States, Daalder, Ivo H., and Michael E. O’Hanlon. Winning Ugly:
forced the Serbian government and the KLA into NATO’s War to Save Kosovo. Washington, DC: Brookings
truce negotiations in Rambouillet, France. The KLA Institution, 2000.