Kosovo Crisis 1999

Kosovo Crisis 1999

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Kosovo Crisis 1999

                        The Kosovo crisis refers traces its roots in the history of the Albanian and Serbian people. This is specifically during the time of occupation in the region of the Ottoman Empire. The tensions and conflicts between these communities are mainly based on an ethno-religious nature that became more rampant during the periodic intervals of the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The tensions and conflicts were greatly fueled by the rise of the Serbian ultra nationalism. This is mainly when there was the collapse of the communist Yugoslavia and consequential development of the separatist pressures on the Albanian majority who lived in Kosovo and the broader Greater Albania movement.

In the spring of 1999, there was a major conflict in Kosovo, which is a province of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia and is located on the southern region of the republic. The conflict involved the forces of the then president of Yugoslavia, President Slobodan Milosevic, executed a terrorist campaign with the aim of vanquishing the ethnic Albanian Muslim majority and in the process bringing about dominance in the nation by the Serbian Orthodox Christian minority[1].

Initially, Milosevic had sparked the ethnic tensions by revoking the region’s semi autonomous status and continued to conduct prosecutions on ethnic Albanians. The ethnic Albanians did not take this action calmly and reacted by staging protests in the entire region. When the protests seemed futile, they resulted in the formation of the Kosovo Liberation Army using it as a machine to gain their independence and consequent disassociation with the then Federal Republic of Yugoslavia.

The escalating violence led to the intervention of NATO in early 1999. NATO conducted peace talks between Kosovo Albanians and Serbs in the French city of Ramboillet. The results of the peace talks were however futile since although the Kosovo Albanians agreed to the proposed agreement on broad autonomy on the province for three years, the Serbs hastily disapproved of the agreement. The agreement further included the possibility of attaining independence with twenty eight thousand NATO troops in the region to ensure peace.

On the contrary, Milosevic increased his armed forces in the region and started to conduct widespread terrorism in the region. His victims were mainly the ethnic Albanian population. NATO’s agreement on the use of force in addition to the declaration by the then president of the United States of America, Bill Clinton on the use of military power to halt the Serbian aggression led to the invasion of Serbia, Montenegro, and Kosovo by NATO forces. The United States of America provided most of the armada and tactical support for the NATO forces that included servicemen war planes and ships.

This was considered as the greatest allied armed forces assault in Europe since the Second World War. However, this did not stop the Serbian forces from driving out ethnic Albanian refugees. In the end, close to a million of the Serbian refugees were driven out the region into the nearby region of Macedonia, Montenegro and Albania. The Kosovo crisis escalated and attempted to spread throughout the region of the Balkans[2].

In a period of ten weeks, NATO forces engaged in warfare with the military and other targets conducting air raids and assaults focusing on targets in Serbia and Kosovo. The raids included close to thirty five thousand flying missions of who ten thousand of these involved the dropping of twenty three thousand missiles and bombs. Peaceful meetings continued in the background with President Slobodan Milosevic finally agreeing to a Finnish- and Russian-brokered peace plan the third of June 1999. This resulted into Yugoslavia conceding partial autonomy to Kosovo although Milosevic continued to maintain his hard stance.

Terrible weather and political fears in the alliance highly hampered the air campaigns rendering them ineffective during the initial stages. Technology advance involving the use of precision guided munitions aided the campaigns enabling the strikes to gain momentum with time. This led to success of NATO in annihilating the various military targets that involved the destruction of the military’s supply centers, electricity grids and water supplies. Research indicates that the assault led to the death of close to five thousand Yugoslav soldiers and police.

This however, also led to the death of close to one thousand two hundred civilians due to the bombings in the urban centers, hospitals, trains in addition to the Chinese embassy in Belgrade. NATO succumbed to minimal losses that included two aircrafts with one being a stealth fighter but ensuring the survival of the American fighter pilots. Ground assault led by the Kosovo liberation army led to the disarmament of many Serbian forces. The offense dealt a great blow on the civilians in the Serbian cities since they lacked access to food, water, health and other basic amenities as a result of the bombings. Ground offensives as supported by Britain were not executed because there was political opposition especially in Italy, Greece and Germany. This was a strong indication of the apparent weakening of the NATO alliance[3].

On 3 June 1999, Milosevic finally gave in viewing the deteriorating situation and agreed to an international peace plan. This plan was aimed at bringing the conflict to an end and giving the ethnic Albanian refugees a chance of returning back to the settlements. The terms of the agreement dictated that the remaining Serbian military and police forces leave Kosovo of which they did beginning on the tenth of June. This was however, after a week long air assault including the United Nation’s troops numbering up to fifty thousand. These troops would move into Kosovo to maintain peace in the land. The agreement failed to ensure the independence of the region but provided for substantial autonomy as indicated by the United Nation’s Security Council. The NATO alliance forces ensured that the Kosovo refugees returned back to their homes in peace.

The NATO offensive was however met with varying criticism during and after then end of the war. Critics accused the coalition in conducting the war in Kosovo under the counterfeit pretence of genocide. The then president of the United States of America, President Bill Clinton together with his administration faced strong criticism over the exaggerated number of Kosovo Albanians that had been killed by Serbians. The Clinton administration overrated the killings in Serbia by comparing them to the Holocaust indicating that over one hundred thousand Kosovo Albanians had been killed by Serbians[4].

Criticism also arose from the Chinese government after the bombing of the Chinese embassy in Belgrade. The Chinese government accused the United States of America of using its overwhelming economic and military prowess to forcefully increase its influence and interfere with the political issues of other sovereign nations. The Chinese government termed the NATO offense as a treacherous model of naked aggression, a new model of colonialism and a treacherous conflict baseless on morality and law. Human rights activists also lauded their criticism on the NATO offensive citing the bombing of civilian residential estates and towns as opposed to the military camps and bases.

Bibliography

Clark, Wesley K. 2001. Waging modern war: Bosnia, Kosovo, and the future of combat. New York: Public Affairs.

Gazzini, Tarcisio. 2001. “NATO coercive military activities in the Yugoslav crisis (1992-1999)”. Symposium. 391-435.

Henriksen, Dag. 2007. NATO’s gamble: combining diplomacy and airpower in the Kosovo crisis, 1998-1999. Annapolis, Md: Naval Institute Press.

Weymouth, Tony, and Stanley Henig. 2001. The Kosovo crisis: the last American war in Europe?London: Reuters.

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