Military


Kosovo Background

Kosovo's border with Albania runs along a ridge of mountains, punctuated by passes and river valleys, from Macedonia to Montenegro. Within Kosovo there are five basins: in the north, Kosovo Polje (500 square kilometers); in the west, Metohija (600 square kilometers); northeast, Little Kosovo (80 square kilometers); east, the Gnjilane basin (400 square kilometers); and in the center the Drenica basin (1,200 square kilometers). Kosovo has some 1,500 settlements with the typical dispersal of small settlements (up to 10,000 people), in which 50 percent of the population lives. The larger cities are Pristina (more than 100,000), Prizren (70,000), Pec (60,000), Kosovska Mitrovica (58,000), Djakovica (46,000), and Gnjilane (40,000).


Kosovo, with a population of 2 million of which more than 90 percent are ethnic Albanians, enjoyed autonomous province status under the 1974 Yugoslav Constitution. Because of emigration to--not from--to other parts of Serbia and because of a low birth rate, ethnic Serbs now constitutive only about 7 percent of the province's population, down from a quarter of the population in the early 1970's.

In 1974, Yugoslav President Tito made Kosovo, along with Vojvodina in the north, an autonomous region within Serbia. After Tito's death as the old Yugoslav Federation was beginning to disintegrate, the Serbian politician Slobodan Milosevic used Serbian nationalism and resentment of the Kosovo Albanians as a springboard to national power. In 1989, Milosevic abrogated Kosovo's constitutional autonomy, concurrently launching a purge of ethnic Albanians from the province's civil service and curtailing government funding for public institutions, including the schools.

In response, the Kosovars, led by Dr. Ibrahim Rugova, a Sorbonne-educated intellectual, set up a shadow government and began a campaign of non-violent resistance to the Serbian oppression. The political leadership of the ethnic Albanian majority in Kosovo has sought greater independence and freedom from Serb authorities since the early 1990s, but Serbia has flatly rejected the idea. Kosovo is revered by Serbs as the cradle of their culture. Near the provincial capital Pristina lies Kosovo Plain, the site of the epic battle of June 28, 1389 in which medieval Serb knights and other Europeans were defeated by the Ottoman Turks, who remained in control of much of the Balkans into this century. Many of the holiest monasteries of the Serbian Orthodox Church lie within Kosovo's borders.

There has seldom been real peace in Kosovo, from the 1968 demonstrations connected with the demand that Kosovo province obtain republic status, through the big student demonstrations of 1981 that are known as the revolution in Kosovo. More than 200,000 people emigrated from Kosovo after the demonstrations of 1981 were supressed. Of the total number, about 6,000 were regarded by the Yugoslav State Security Service as hostile emigration members, including over 20 political organizations such as the Movement for the Liberation of Kosovo, the New Movement for the Liberation of Kosovo, the Federation of Trade Unions of Kosovo, the World Union of Kosovo, the Bali Kombatare, and the New Communist Party of Kosovo "Red Front." Many of these organizations legally registered in their host countries, and were mostly concentrated in Switzerland and Germany. Yugoslav security services concluded that foreign intelligence services, especially Albania's Sigurimi but also French and Russian agencies, were supporting some of these ethnic-Albanian organizations.

Since 1981 the Albanian majority in Kosovo has sought independence or autonomy. However, changes to the Serbian constitution in 1989 through 1991 revoked that autonomous province status and abolished the Parliament and Government of Kosovo. Since that time, Serbian authorities carried out a policy of repression: firing ethnic Albanians from all public jobs and using arrests, brutal and often fatal beatings and other forms of intimidation in violation of commonly accepted human rights standards.

In the face of this repressive policy, ethnic Albanians of the Democratic League of Kosovo led by the author Ibrahim Rugova, opted for a policy of non-violent resistance. Albanians in Kosovo built their own parallel set of political, economic and social institutions, including a shadow parliament with various political parties, independent schools, and trade unions. In 1992, they elected Ibrahim Rugova as president and elected a 130-member parliament.

Albanians in Kosovo boycotted all the institutions of the Yugoslav state, including local and national elections. The Serbian Government's law requiring universal military service is enforced only sporadically. The informal practice of the military has been not to call up ethnic Albanians. Of approximately 100,000 draft evaders living abroad to avoid punishment, 40 percent were estimated to be ethnic Albanian. This number in part reflects the large number of conscription-age men in the Kosovo Albanian community. The climate moderated due to the cessation of hostilities in Bosnia. Nevertheless, leaders of Kosovo's Albanian and Sandzak's Muslim communities maintained that forced compliance of these ethnic groups with universal military service was an attempt to induce young men to flee the country.

In 1991 the Yugloslav Federal State Security Service, which had controlled the connection between the external supporters and groupings in Kosovo and Metohija, disintegrated. The Federal State Security Service had several important intelligence centers in Albania, which supplied important information. With the disintegration of the service, the network also disintegrated. During the war in Bosnia between 1992 and 1995, Serb police made numerous [and unsuccessful] attempts to break the parallel state in Kosovo.

Ongoing tensions between ethnic Serbs and ethnic Albanians worsened in the spring of 1998, with a series of armed clashes throughout the region. On the night of 28 February 1998r, Serbian special police reportedly killed more than 20 ethnic Albanians in a sweep through the Drenica region of Kosovo.

Between February and June 1998 it is estimated that more than 200 ethnic Albanians were killed in Kosovo at the hands of Serbian special police and military forces. Both the police and Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA / UCK) are active in the region and each operates numerous checkpoints throughout Kosovo. Tensions between ethnic Serbs and ethnic Albanians have worsened in recent months to the point of frequent armed clashes, particularly in the Drenica region north and west of Pristina and in the region near the border with Albania. Police checkpoints are numerous throughout Kosovo and the Yugoslav Army is increasingly visible outside garrisons. Armed ethnic Albanians are also increasingly visible and have set up temporary roadblocks at some points. Large demonstrations by both Serbs and ethnic Albanians continue in major Kosovo towns on a daily basis. Ethnic tensions remain high in the Sandzak region as well.

As of mid-1998 it was estimated that the KLA controled about 25-30 percent of the territory of Kosovo. The rural territory most firmly under KLA control is said to encompass a wedge starting between Djakovica and Decani in the south, the top of which is 20-25 km west of Pristina, covering a part of the Pristina-Pec road. The KLA has established authority in this area, and the KLA has fortified these well supplied positions in the region of Drenica, where the conflict began.There are neither large urban centers nor garrisons in the area of Drenica,where Serbian police no longer attempt to enter. An additional 15 percent of Kosovo is said to be effectively under KLA control though without established KLA power structures. The urban-industrial zone, covering some 20 percent of Kosovo's territory, remains entirely under the control of the police, in cooperation with the Army. As much as half of Kosovo is partially controlled by the police during daylight hours and ruled almost entirely by the KLA at night.


The border with Albania between Djakovica and Decani is formally under Serbian control, but the road between the two towns is not secure from KLA attacks. Beginning in May 1998 the KLA effectively asserted 24-hour control over the Pristina-Pec highway. The Serbian police have most of the remainder of the Kosovo road network under control, although roads are not entirely secure and the police are unable to prevent KLA attacks on police patrols and convoys. The police and the Yugoslav Army, with their posts, police stations, and barracks dispersed acrossr Kosovo, are dependent on the condition of roads -- which are susceptible to attacks and ambushes -- for supplying these posts. KLA attacks along the road between Mitrovica and Pec have even blocked supplies to the Yugoslav border troops, which must be supplied by helicopters from the air.

The Contact Group, made up of the United States, the United Kingdom, Germany, France, Italy, and Russia, has met regularly to try to hammer out a unified policy on Kosovo. The Contact Group has issued four demands: a cessation of fighting; the unconditional withdrawal of Serbian special police forces and Yugoslav Army forces from Kosovo; a return of refugees; and unlimited access for international monitors.

Following the June 1998 Moscow meeting with Yeltsin, Milosevic said that he was prepared to meet these demands, apart from withdrawing police and army units, since this would create conditions in which the KLA could easily take over Kosovo and proclaim independence.

The United Nations Security Council, by resolution 1160 adopted on March 31, 1998, condemned the excessive use of force by Serbian police forces against civilians and peaceful demonstrators in Kosovo and acting under Chapter VII of the Charter imposed a comprehensive arms embargo on Yugoslavia. By taking under Chapter VII of the United Nations Charter, the Security Council has determined that the violence in Kosovo is a threat to international peace and security. Both Secretary of State Albright and Secretary of Defense Cohen took the position that the Security Council's authorization was desirable but not required for further NATO action to intervene in Kosovo.

The basic goals of the Clinton Administration policy in Kosovo are a peaceful resolution of the crisis through negotiation resulting in a return of full autonomy for the province. The agenda of the United States, working with the Contact Group, has been getting Yugoslav President Milosevic to remove his special police units and initiate a serious negotiating process, without pre-conditions, with leaders of the ethnic Albanian majority in Kosovo to find a mutually acceptable compromise on the future status of the province. The United States and its partners in the Contact Group do not support independence of Kosovo as a realistic solution to the crisis. Kosovo, unlike Bosnia, is an integral part of Serbia and the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia.

NATO studied a variety of military options for moving against the Serbs and Milosevic. Reportedly, nine preliminary options considered in mid-1998 ranged from stationing troops along Kosovo's borders, to imposing a new `no-fly zone' and a `weapons-exclusion zone' over part of Yugoslavia, to air strikes, and even ground invasions.

In 1992, President Bush warned Serbian leader Slobodan Milosevic that the United States was prepared to use military force against Serb-instigated attacks in Kosovo. When he took office, President Clinton repeated this so-called `Christmas warning.'

The Serbian actions included displacement of the civilian population, the execution of people held in detention, the destruction of food supplies, and the prevention of aid deliveries, all part of a deliberate policy to create a depopulated zone in western Kosovo separating the Kosovar population from Albania. Serbian special police continued their policy that had driven more than 300,000 Kosovo Albanians from their homes and into the forests and mountains by late 1998. With the onset of the Balkan winter, a humanitarian catastrophe of enormous proportions loomed . Advocates of further military action contended that the West must compel the Serbs to cease military operations at once and provide unrestricted access to international aid organizations.

In late September NATO issued an Activation Warning, alerting countries that a military action was contemplated and alerting them that they could be asked soon to put up forces for that military mission. Subsequently NATO took the next of several steps to prepare for the use of force, issuing an Activation Request, a notice that countries must come forward with specific offers of weapons that will be used in military action to put the finishing touches on constituting a force that could be used. The decision to use force, called the Activation Order, would come when NATO votes that the military plan is complete, that the force has been generated to execute that plan, and constitutes the decision by NATO to authorize the use of force.

The attack plan called for US cruise missiles to be launched first against Serb military targets in Kosovo; then, if needed, NATO would mount a wider air campaign outside Kosovo against security facilities in Serbia. Planning for an air campaign against Serbian forces in Kosovo was based on the DELIBERATE FORCE air campaign conducted against Serbian forces in Bosnia in just over three years ago, from 29 August 1995 through 14 September 1995.

Ambassador Holbrooke secured an agreement from Mr. Milosevic to comply with the provisions of UN Security Council Resolution (UNSCR) 1199, with both air and ground regimes to verify compliance. Progress in the diplomatic negotiations was largely due to pressure maintained by the Alliance maintained through deployment of NATO air and naval assets in Italy and in the Adriatic sea.

The OSCE Permanent Council declared on 15 October that the OSCE was prepared to embark upon verification activities related to compliance of all parties in Kosovo with the requirements set forth by the international community with regard to the solution of the crisis in Kosovo. The Kosovo Verification Mission was the largest, most complex and most challenging mission that the OSCE had ever undertaken.

Violence continued and the situation worsened significantly with the killings in Racak on 16 January 1999. Diplomatic efforts continued to try to find a long-term peaceful solution. Both parties accepted the summons to begin negotiations at Rambouillet on 6 February 1999 and began negotiations on an interim political settlement. These talks focused on the full and immediate observance by both parties of the cease-fire and by the FRY authorities of their commitments to NATO, including by bringing VJ and Police/Special Police force levels, force posture and activities into strict compliance with the NATO/FRY agreement of 25 October 1998; and the ending of excessive and disproportionate use of force in accordance with these commitments.

Milosevic gave an undertaking to the US Envoy, Ambassador Richard Holbrooke, that he would reduce the number of Serb forces to the level that they had been before February of 1998. He broke that promise and all the time he planned to continue with the ethnic cleansing. And even while the peace talks were going on in Paris he was massing his troops and tanks for a new offensive on Kosovo. The peace conference, held in Paris, broke up on 19 March with the refusal of the Yugoslav delegation to accept a peaceful settlement. When the peace talks broke down, Serbia launched military forces in a renewed assault on the people of Kosovo. At 1900 hours GMT on 24 March, NATO forces began air operations over the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia to prevent an imminent humanitarian catastrophe.

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