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THE KOSOVO CRISIS—THE MICRO REVIEW
intermediary between the FRY and Western powers. As a result of
these actions, by mid-June, the FRY’s leadership again returned to a
position of appeasement, limiting its military actions against the grow-
ing KLA presence. The FRY also accepted the presence of a perma-
nent foreign monitoring regime—the Kosovo Diplomatic Observer
Mission (KDOM)—which came into effect on July 6, 1998, under
Russian pressure.
These attempts to appease the West and Russia once again left
Kosovo prone to advances by the KLA, who controlled an estimated
30
40 percent of Kosovo by mid-July. The KLA took advantage of peri-
ods of FRY restraint to take territory, claiming to have “liberated” it
on a path toward independence. To reverse this trend, FRY authori-
ties again launched a major counteroffensive to root out the KLA,
beginning in late July. During this campaign, the West was more
relaxed against the FRY than in the early summer. While still paying
lip service to the crisis and condemning FRY military aggression, the
West, led by the United States, was reluctant to take additional steps
toward military intervention. One reason for this disinclination was an
underlying misalignment between Western strategic policy goals and
Kosovo Albanian political demands. The West did not endorse the
outright demand for independence, fearing regional destabilization
and the setting of a precedent that could have dire long-term conse-
quences. The Kosovo Albanian political leadership and population,
however, were largely united on this goal. Their differences lay largely
in the means by which such an outcome should be achieved. This
incongruence placed the West’s strategic policy closer to that of the
FRY, which in theory also claimed to support greater autonomy for
Kosovo within the internationally recognized jurisdiction of the
31
FRY. Some analysts even suggested that the West secretly wished for
a quick and decisive FRY victory in the summer offensive, to humble
the Kosovo Albanians away from independence and toward autonomy. 32
Given the KLA’s tactics, which the United States itself had branded
as “terrorist” in February 1998, and their rigid demands for inde-
pendence, the Americans were reluctant to be seen as the KLA’s air
force, should they intervene through air strikes. 33
It was only when it became clear that the status quo was leading to
a massive humanitarian disaster that the West decided to reengage in
its attempt to end the crisis. The aggressive nature of the FRY offen-
sive, involving the military, paramilitary, and interior police, led to
high numbers of Albanian refugees and internally displaced civilians.
Throughout the summer of 1998, tens of thousands of Albanians in
Kosovo became refugees, as an estimated 300 villages were emptied.