KOSOVO: Devastating Kosovo War - Serbs Out, Peacekeepers In, Refugees Back.

The Kosovo War was an armed conflict in Kosovo that lasted from 5 March 1998 until 11 June 1999. It was fought by the forces of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia,by this time, consisting of the Republics of Montenegro and Serbia, which controlled Kosovo before the war, and the Kosovo Albanian rebel group known as the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA), with air support from the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) from 24 March 1999, and ground support from the Albanian army.

The KLA, formed in 1991,initiated its first campaign in 1995 when it launched attacks targeting Serbian law enforcement in Kosovo, and in June 1996 the group claimed responsibility for acts of sabotage targeting Kosovo police stations. In 1997, the organisation acquired a large amount of arms through weapons smuggling from Albania, following a rebellion which saw large numbers of weapons looted from the country's police and army posts.

In 1998, KLA attacks targeting Yugoslav authorities in Kosovo resulted in an increased presence of Serb paramilitaries and regular forces who subsequently began pursuing a campaign of retribution targeting KLA sympathisers and political opponents in a drive which killed 1,500 to 2,000 civilians and KLA combatants.

After attempts at a diplomatic solution failed, NATO intervened, justifying the campaign in Kosovo as a humanitarian war. This precipitated a mass expulsion of Kosovar Albanians as the Yugoslav forces continued to fight during the aerial bombardment of Yugoslavia (March–June 1999).

By 2000, investigations had recovered the remains of almost three thousand victims of all ethnicities,and in 2001 a United Nations administered Supreme Court, based in Kosovo, found that there had been a systematic campaign of terror, including murders, rapes, arsons and severe maltreatments, but that Yugoslav troops had tried to remove rather than eradicate the Albanian population.

The war ended with the Kumanovo Treaty, with Yugoslav and Serb forces agreeing to withdraw from Kosovo to make way for an international presence.The Kosovo Liberation Army disbanded soon after this, with some of its members going on to fight for the UÇPMB in the Presevo Valley and others joining the National Liberation Army (NLA) and Albanian National Army (ANA) during the armed ethnic conflict in Macedonia,while others went on to form the Kosovo Police.

After the war, a list was conducted which documented that 13,517 people were killed or went missing in the conflict.The Yugoslav and Serb forces caused the displacement of between 1.2 million to 1.45 million Kosovo Albanians. After the war, around 200,000 Serbs, Romani and other non-Albanians fled Kosovo.

The NATO bombing campaign has remained controversial, as it did not gain the approval of the UN Security Council and because it caused at least 488 Yugoslav civilian deaths, including substantial numbers of Kosovar refugees.

Tensions between the Serbian and Albanian communities in Kosovo simmered throughout the 20th century and occasionally erupted into major violence, particularly during the First Balkan War (1912–13), World War I (1914–18), and World War II (1939–45). After 1945 the socialist government under Josip Broz Tito systematically repressed all manifestations of nationalism throughout Yugoslavia, seeking to ensure that no republic or nationality gained dominance over the others.

In particular, Tito diluted the power of Serbia—the largest and most populous republic by establishing autonomous governments in the Serbian province of Vojvodina in the north and in Kosovo in the south. Kosovo's borders did not precisely match the areas of ethnic Albanian settlement in Yugoslavia,significant numbers of Albanians remained in the Republic of Macedonia, Montenegro and Serbia. Kosovo's formal autonomy, established under the 1945 Yugoslav constitution, initially meant relatively little in practice. The secret police the UDBA cracked down hard on nationalists.

In 1956 a number of Albanians went on trial in Kosovo on charges of espionage and subversion. The threat of separatism was in fact minimal, as the few underground groups aiming for union with Albania had little political significance. Their long-term impact became substantial, though, as some—particularly the Revolutionary Movement for Albanian Unity, founded by Adem Demaçi—would eventually form the political core of the Kosovo Liberation Army founded in 1990. Demaci himself was imprisoned in 1964 along with many of his followers.

Yugoslavia underwent a period of economic and political crisis in 1969, as a massive government program of economic reform widened the gap between the rich north and poor south of the country.

Student demonstrations and riots in Belgrade in June 1968 spread to Kosovo in November of the same year, but Yugoslav security forces quelled them. However, Tito conceded some of the students' demands—in particular, representative powers for Albanians in both the Serbian and Yugoslav state bodies and better recognition of the Albanian language. The University of Pristina was established as an independent institution in 1970, ending a long period when the institution had been run as an outpost of Belgrade University.

The lack of Albanian language educational materials in Yugoslavia hampered the Albanisation of education in Kosovo, so an agreement was struck with Albania itself to supply textbooks.

In 1969 the Serbian Orthodox Church ordered its clergy to compile data on the ongoing problems of Serbs in Kosovo, seeking to pressure the government in Belgrade to do more to protect the interests of Serbs there.

In 1974 Kosovo's political status improved further when a new Yugoslav constitution granted an expanded set of political rights. Along with Vojvodina, Kosovo was declared a province and gained many of the powers of a fully fledged republic: a seat on the federal presidency and its own assembly, police force and national bank.

In Kosovo an increasingly poisonous atmosphere between Serbs and Albanians led to wild rumors being spread and otherwise trivial incidents being blown out of proportion. It was against this tense background that the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts SANU, from its Serbian initials, САНУ conducted a survey of Serbs who had left Kosovo in 1985 and 1986. The report concluded that a considerable number of those who had left had been under pressure from Albanians to do so.

Sixteen prominent members of SANU began work in June 1985 on a draft document that was leaked to the public in September 1986. The SANU Memorandum, as it has become known, was hugely controversial. It focused on the political difficulties facing Serbs in Yugoslavia, pointing to Tito's deliberate hobbling of Serbia's power and the difficulties faced by Serbs outside Serbia proper.

The Memorandum paid special attention to Kosovo, arguing that the province's Serbs were being subjected to physical, political, legal and cultural genocide in an open and total war that had been ongoing since the spring of 1981. It claimed that Kosovo's status in 1986 was a worse historical defeat for the Serbs than any event since liberation from the Ottomans in 1804, thus ranking it above such catastrophes as the Nazi occupation or the First World War occupation of Serbia by the Austro-Hungarians.

The Memorandum's authors claimed that 200,000 Serbs had moved out of the province over the previous 20 years and warned that there would soon be none left unless things change radically. The remedy, according to the Memorandum, was for genuine security and unambiguous equality for all peoples living in Kosovo and Metohija to be established and objective and permanent conditions for the return of the expelled Serbian nation to be created. It concluded that Serbia must not be passive and wait and see what the others will say, as it has done so often in the past.

The SANU Memorandum provoked split reactions: Albanians saw it as a call for Serbian supremacy at the local level, claiming the Serb emigrants had left Kosovo for economic reasons, while the Slovenes and Croats saw a threat in the call for a more assertive Serbia. Serbs were divided: many welcomed it, while the Communist old guard strongly attacked its message. One of those who denounced it was Serbian Communist Party official Slobodan Milosevic.

In November 1988 Kosovo's head of the provincial committee was arrested. In March 1989 Miloševic announced an anti-bureaucratic revolution in Kosovo and Vojvodina, curtailing their autonomy as well as imposing a curfew and a state of emergency in Kosovo due to violent demonstrations, resulting in 24 deaths including two policemen. Milosevic and his government claimed that the constitutional changes were necessary to protect Kosovo's remaining Serbs against harassment from the Albanian majority.

Rugova's policy of passive resistance succeeded in keeping Kosovo quiet during the war with Slovenia, and the wars in Croatia and Bosnia during the early 1990s. However, as evidenced by the emergence of the KLA, this came at the cost of increasing frustration among Kosovo's Albanian population. In the mid-1990s, Rugova pleaded for a United Nations peacekeeping force for Kosovo. In 1997, Milosevic was promoted to the presidency of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia comprising Serbia and Montenegro since its inception in April 1992.

Continuing repression convinced many Albanians that only armed resistance would change the situation. On 22 April 1996, four attacks on Serbian security personnel were carried out almost simultaneously in several parts of Kosovo. A hitherto-unknown organisation calling itself the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) subsequently claimed responsibility. The nature of the KLA was at first mysterious.

It is widely believed that the KLA received financial and material support from the Kosovo Albanian diaspora.In early 1997, Albania collapsed into chaos following the fall of President Sali Berisha. Military stockpiles were looted with impunity by criminal gangs, with much of the hardware ending up in western Kosovo and boosting the growing KLA arsenal. Bujar Bukoshi, shadow Prime Minister in exile in Zürich, Switzerland, created a group called FARK or Armed Forces of the Republic of Kosova which was reported to have been disbanded and absorbed by the KLA in 1998.

The Yugoslav government considered the KLA to be terrorists and insurgents who indiscriminately attacked police and civilians, while most Albanians saw the KLA as freedom fighters. In 1998, the U.S. State Department listed the KLA as a terrorist organisation, and in 1999 the Republican Policy Committee of the U.S. Senate expressed its troubles with the effective alliance of the Democratic Clinton administration with the KLA due to numerous reports from reputable unofficial sources.In 2004, John Pilger claimed that for six years prior to 1998, the KLA had been regarded by the United States as a terrorist group.

Early in 1998, U.S. envoy Robert Gelbard referred to the KLA as terrorists.Responding to criticism, he later clarified to the House Committee on International Relations that while it has committed terrorist acts, it has not been classified legally by the U.S. Government as a terrorist organization.In June 1998, he held talks with two men who claimed they were political leaders of the KLA.

Meanwhile, the U.S. held an outer wall of sanctions on Yugoslavia which had been tied to a series of issues, Kosovo being one of them. These were maintained despite the agreement at Dayton to end all sanctions. The Clinton administration claimed that Dayton bound Yugoslavia to hold discussions with Rugova over Kosovo.

The crisis escalated in December 1997 at the Peace Implementation Council meeting in Bonn, where the international community as defined in the Dayton Agreement, agreed to give the High Representative in Bosnia and Herzegovina sweeping powers, including the right to dismiss elected leaders. At the same time, Western diplomats insisted that Kosovo be discussed, and that Yugoslavia be responsive to Albanian demands there. The delegation from Yugoslavia stormed out of the meetings in protest.

This was followed by the return of the Contact Group that oversaw the last phases of the Bosnian conflict and declarations from European powers demanding that Yugoslavia solve the problem in Kosovo.

KLA attacks intensified, centering on the Drenica valley area with the compound of Adem Jashari being a focal point. Days after Robert Gelbard described the KLA as a terrorist group, Serbian police responded to the KLA attacks in the Likosane area, and pursued some of the KLA to Cirez, resulting in the deaths of 16 Albanian fighters and four Serbian policemen.

Despite some accusations of summary executions and killings of civilians, condemnations from Western capitals were not as voluble as they would become later. Serb police began to pursue Jashari and his followers in the village of Donje Prekaz. A massive firefight at the Jashari compound led to the massacre of 60 Albanians, of which eighteen were women and ten were under the age of sixteen. This March 5, 1998 event provoked massive condemnation from the western capitals. Madeleine Albright stated that this crisis is not an internal affair of the FRY.

On March 24, Yugoslav forces surrounded the village of Glodjane and attacked a rebel compound there. Despite superior firepower, the Yugoslav forces failed to destroy the KLA unit which had been their objective. Although there were deaths and severe injuries on the Albanian side, the insurgency in Glodjane was far from stamped out. It was in fact to become one of the strongest centers of resistance in the upcoming war.

The KLA's first goal was thus to merge its Drenica stronghold with their stronghold in Albania proper, and this would shape the first few months of the fighting.

A new Yugoslav government was also formed at this time, led by the Socialist Party of Serbia and the Serbian Radical Party. Ultra-nationalist Radical Party chairman Vojislav Seselj became a deputy prime minister. This increased the dissatisfaction with the country's position among Western diplomats and spokespersons.

In early April, Serbia arranged for a referendum on the issue of foreign interference in Kosovo. Serbian voters decisively rejected foreign interference in this crisis.Meanwhile, the KLA claimed much of the area in and around Deçan and ran a territory based in the village of Glodane, encompassing its surroundings. So, on May 31, 1998, the Yugoslav army and the Serb Ministry of the Interior police began an operation to clear the border of the KLA. NATO's response to this offensive was mid-June's Operation Determined Falcon, an air show over the Yugoslav borders.

During this time, the Yugoslav President Milosevic reached an arrangement with Boris Yeltsin of Russia to stop offensive operations and prepare for talks with the Albanians, who, through this whole crisis, refused to talk to the Serbian side, but not the Yugoslav. In fact, the only meeting between Milosevic and Ibrahim Rugova happened on 15 May in Belgrade, two days after Richard Holbrooke announced that it would take place.

One month later, Holbrooke, after a trip to Belgrade where he threatened Milosevic that if he did not obey, what's left of your country will implode, he visited the border areas affected by the fighting in early June; there he was famously photographed with the KLA. The publication of these images sent a signal to the KLA, its supporters and sympathisers, and to observers in general, that the U.S. was decisively backing the KLA and the Albanian population in Kosovo.

The Yeltsin agreement included Milosevic's allowing international representatives to set up a mission in Kosovo to monitor the situation there. This was the Kosovo Diplomatic Observer Mission (KDOM) that began operations in early July. The American government welcomed this part of the agreement, but denounced the initiative's call for a mutual cease fire. Rather, the Americans demanded that the Serbian-Yugoslavian side should cease fire without linkage to a cessation in terrorist activities.

All through June and into mid-July, the KLA maintained its advance. KLA surrounded Pec, Đakovica, and had set up an interim capital in the town of Malisevo north of Orahovac. The KLA troops infiltrated Suva Reka, and the northwest of Pristina. They moved on to the Belacevec coal pits and captured them in late June, threatening energy supplies in the region. Their tactics as usual focused mainly on guerilla and mountain warfare, and harassing and ambushing Yugoslav forces and Serb police patrols.

The tide turned in mid-July when the KLA captured Orahovac. On 17 July 1998, two close-by villages to Orahovac, Retimlije and Opterusa, were also captured. Similarly, less systematic events took place in Orahovac and the larger Serb-populated village of Velika Hoca. The Orthodox monastery of Zociste three miles (5 km) from Orehovac—famous for the relics of the Saints Kosmas and Damianos and revered also by local Albanians—was robbed, its monks deported to a KLA prison camp, and, while empty, the monastery church and all its buildings were levelled to the ground by mining. This led to a series of Serb and Yugoslav offensives which would continue into the beginning of August.

A new set of KLA attacks in mid-August triggered Yugoslavian operations in south-central Kosovo south of the Pristina-Peć road. This wound down with the capture of Klecka on August 23 and the discovery of a KLA-run crematorium in which some of their victims were found. The KLA began an offensive on September 1 around Prizren, causing Yugoslavian military activity there. In western Kosovo, around Pec, another offensive caused condemnation as international officials expressed fear that a large column of displaced people would be attacked.

In early mid-September, for the first time, KLA activity was reported in northern Kosovo around Podujevo. Finally, in late September, a determined effort was made to clear the KLA out of the northern and central parts of Kosovo and out of the Drenica valley itself. During this time many threats were made from Western capitals but these were tempered somewhat by the elections in Bosnia, as they did not want Serbian Democrats and Radicals to win.

Following the elections, however, the threats intensified once again but a galvanising event was needed. They got it on September 28, when the mutilated corpses of a family were discovered by KDOM outside the village of Gornje Obrinje; the bloody doll from there became the rallying image for the ensuing war.

Morale was a serious problem for Serb forces; intelligence surveys found that many soldiers disagreed with their comrades' actions. One tank commander reported, for the entire time I was in Kosovo, I never saw an enemy soldier and my unit was never once involved in firing at enemy targets. The tanks which cost $2.5 million each were used to slaughter Albanian children,I am ashamed.

However, when retreating from Kosovo after NATO intervention, Yugoslav units appeared combat effective with high morale and displaying large holdings of undamaged equipment.Weeks before the end of hostilities, David Fromkin has noted that it seemed possible that NATO unity might crack before Yugoslav morale did.When Clinton announced it would not deploy ground troops, that made a tremendous boost to Serbian morale.

On 9 June 1998, US President Bill Clinton declared a state of emergency due to the unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security and foreign policy of the United States imposed by Yugoslavia and Serbia over the Kosovo War.

On 23 September 1998 acting under Chapter VII of the United Nations Charter the UN Security Council adopted Resolution 1199. This expressed grave concern at reports reaching the Secretary General that over 230,000 people had been displaced from their homes by the excessive and indiscriminate use of force by Serbian security forces and the Yugoslav Army,demanding that all parties in Kosovo and the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (Serbia and Montenegro) cease hostilities and maintain a ceasefire.

On 24 September the North Atlantic Council (NAC) of NATO issued an activation warning (ACTWARN) taking NATO to an increased level of military preparedness for both a limited air option and a phased air campaign in Kosovo.The other major issue for those who saw no option but to resort to the use of force was the estimated 250,000 displaced Albanians, 30,000 of whom were out in the woods, without warm clothing or shelter, with winter fast approaching.

Meanwhile, the U.S. Ambassador to the Republic of Macedonia, Christopher Hill, was leading shuttle diplomacy between an Albanian delegation, led by Rugova, and the Yugoslav and Serbian authorities. It was these meetings which were shaping what was to be the peace plan to be discussed during a period of planned NATO occupation of Kosovo. During a period of two weeks, threats intensified, culminating in NATO's Activation Order being given. NATO was ready to begin airstrikes, and Richard Holbrooke went to Belgrade in the hope of reaching an agreement with Milosevic.

Officially, the international community demanded an end to fighting. It specifically demanded that the Yugoslavia end its offensives against the KLA whilst attempting to convince the KLA to drop its bid for independence. Moreover, attempts were made to persuade Milosevic to permit NATO peacekeeping troops to enter Kosovo. This, they argued, would allow for the Christopher Hill peace process to proceed and yield a peace agreement.

On 13 October 1998, the North Atlantic Council issued activation orders (ACTORDs) for the execution of both limited air strikes and a phased air campaign in Yugoslavia which would begin in approximately 96 hours.On 15 October the NATO Kosovo Verification Mission (KVM) Agreement for a ceasefire was signed, and the deadline for withdrawal was extended to 27 October.The Serbian withdrawal commenced on or around 25 October 1998, and Operation Eagle Eye commenced on 30 October.

The KVM was a large contingent of unarmed Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) peace monitors (officially known as verifiers) that moved into Kosovo. Their inadequacy was evident from the start. They were nicknamed the clockwork oranges in reference to their brightly coloured vehicles. Fighting resumed in December 1998 after both sides broke the ceasefire,and this surge in violence culminated in the killing of Zvonko Bojanic, the Serb mayor of the town of Kosovo Polje. Yugoslav authorities responded by launching a crackdown against KLA militants.

The January to March 1999 phase of the war brought increasing insecurity in urban areas, including bombings and murders. Such attacks took place during the Rambouillet talks in February and as the Kosovo Verification Agreement unraveled in March. Killings on the roads continued and increased. There were military confrontations in, among other places, the Vučitrn area in February and the heretofore unaffected Kačanik area in early March.

On 15 January 1999 the Racak massacre occurred when 45 Kosovan Albanian farmers were rounded up, led up a hill and massacred.The bodies had been discovered by OSCE monitors, including Head of Mission William Walker, and foreign news correspondents.Yugoslavia denied a massacre took place.The Racak massacre was the culmination of the KLA attacks and Yugoslav reprisals that had continued throughout the winter of 1998–1999. The incident was immediately condemned as a massacre by the Western countries and the United Nations Security Council, and later became the basis of one of the charges of war crimes leveled against Milosevic and his top officials.

This massacre was the turning point of the war. NATO decided that the conflict could only be settled by introducing a military peacekeeping force under the auspices of NATO, to forcibly restrain the two sides. Pristina, the capital of Kosovo, had been subjected to heavy firefights and segregation according to OSCE reports.

On 30 January 1999 NATO issued a statement announcing that the North Atlantic Council had agreed that the NATO Secretary General may authorise air strikes against targets on FRY territory to compel compliance with the demands of the international community and to achieve a political settlement. While this was most obviously a threat to the Milosevic government, it also included a coded threat to the Albanians: any decision would depend on the position and actions of the Kosovo Albanian leadership and all Kosovo Albanian armed elements in and around Kosovo.

Also on 30 January 1999 the Contact Group issued a set of non-negotiable principles which made up a package known as Status Quo Plus,effectively the restoration of Kosovo's pre-1990 autonomy within Serbia, plus the introduction of democracy and supervision by international organisations. It also called for a peace conference to be held in February 1999 at the Château de Rambouillet, outside Paris.

The Rambouillet talks began on 6 February 1999, with NATO Secretary General Javier Solana negotiating with both sides. They were intended to conclude by 19 February. The FR Yugoslavian delegation was led by then president of Serbia Milan Milutinovic, while Milosevic himself remained in Belgrade. This was in contrast to the 1995 Dayton conference that ended the war in Bosnia, where Milosevic negotiated in person.

The absence of Milosevic was interpreted as a sign that the real decisions were being made back in Belgrade, a move that aroused criticism in Yugoslavia as well as abroad; Kosovo's Serbian Orthodox bishop Artemije traveled all the way to Rambouillet to protest that the delegation was wholly unrepresentative. At this time speculation about an indictment of Milosevic for war crimes was rife, so his absence may have been motivated by fear of arrest.

The first phase of negotiations was successful. In particular, a statement was issued by the Contact Group co-chairmen on 23 February 1999 that the negotiations have led to a consensus on substantial autonomy for Kosovo, including on mechanisms for free and fair elections to democratic institutions, for the governance of Kosovo, for the protection of human rights and the rights of members of national communities; and for the establishment of a fair judicial system.

They went on to say that a political framework is now in place, leaving the further work of finalising the implementation Chapters of the Agreement, including the modalities of the invited international civilian and military presence in Kosovo.

While the accords did not fully satisfy the Albanians, they were much too radical for the Yugoslavs, who responded by substituting a drastically revised text that even Russia an ally of FR Yugoslavia found unacceptable. It sought to reopen the painstakingly negotiated political status of Kosovo and deleted all of the proposed implementation measures.

Among many other changes in the proposed new version, it eliminated the entire chapter on humanitarian assistance and reconstruction, removed virtually all international oversight and dropped any mention of invoking the will of the people of Kosovo in determining the final status of the province.

On 18 March 1999, the Albanian, American, and British delegations signed what became known as the Rambouillet Accords while the Yugoslav and Russian delegations refused. The accords called for NATO administration of Kosovo as an autonomous province within Yugoslavia, a force of 30,000 NATO troops to maintain order in Kosovo; an unhindered right of passage for NATO troops on Yugoslav territory, including Kosovo; and immunity for NATO and its agents to Yugoslav law.

They would have also permitted a continuing Yugoslav army presence of 1,500 troops for border monitoring, backed by up to 1,000 troops to perform command and support functions, as well as a small number of border police, 2,500 ordinary MUP for public security purposes although these were expected to draw down and to be transformed, and 3,000 local police.

Although the Yugoslav government cited military provisions of Appendix B of the Rambouillet provisions as the reason for its objections, claiming that it was an unacceptable violation of Yugoslavia's sovereignty, these provisions were essentially the same as had been applied to Bosnia for the SFOR Stabilisation Forcemission there after the Dayton Agreement in 1995. The two sides did not discuss the issue in detail because of their disagreements on more fundamental problems.

In particular, the Serb side rejected the idea of any NATO troop presence in Kosovo to replace their security forces, preferring unarmed U.N. observers. Milosevic himself had refused to discuss the annex after informing NATO that it was unacceptable, even after he was asked to propose amendments to the provisions which would have made them acceptable.

Events proceeded rapidly after the failure at Rambouillet and the alternative Yugoslav proposal.The international monitors from the OSCE withdrew on 22 March, for fear of the monitors' safety ahead of the anticipated NATO bombing campaign.

On 23 March, the Serbian assembly accepted the principle of autonomy for Kosovo and non-military part of the agreement, while rejecting a NATO troop presence.

On 23 March 1999 at 21:30 UTC Richard Holbrooke returned to Brussels and announced that peace talks had failed and formally handed the matter to NATO for military action.Hours before the announcement, Yugoslavia announced on national television it had declared a state of emergency citing an imminent threat of war and began a huge mobilisation of troops and resources.

On 23 March 1999 at 22:17 UTC the Secretary General of NATO, Javier Solana, announced he had directed the Supreme Allied Commander Europe (SACEUR), US Army General Wesley Clark, to initiate air operations in the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia.On 24 March at 19:00 UTC NATO started its bombing campaign against Yugoslavia.

NATO's bombing campaign lasted from 24 March to 11 June 1999, involving up to 1,000 aircraft operating mainly from bases in Italy and aircraft carriers stationed in the Adriatic. Tomahawk cruise missiles were also extensively used, fired from aircraft, ships, and submarines. With the exception of Greece, all NATO members were involved to some degree. Over the ten weeks of the conflict, NATO aircraft flew over 38,000 combat missions. For the German Air Force (Luftwaffe), it was the second time it had participated in a conflict since World War II after the Bosnian War.

The proclaimed goal of the NATO operation was summed up by its spokesman as Serbs out, peacekeepers in, refugees back. That is, Yugoslav troops would have to leave Kosovo and be replaced by international peacekeepers to ensure that the Albanian refugees could return to their homes. The campaign was initially designed to destroy Yugoslav air defences and high-value military targets. It did not go very well at first, with bad weather hindering many sorties early on.

NATO had seriously underestimated Milosevic's will to resist: few in Brussels thought that the campaign would last more than a few days, and although the initial bombardment was not insignificant, it did not match the intensity of the bombing of Baghdad in 1991.

NATO military operations switched increasingly to attacking Yugoslav units on the ground, hitting targets as small as individual tanks and artillery pieces, as well as continuing with the strategic bombardment. This activity was, however, heavily constrained by politics, as each target needed to be approved by all nineteen member states. Montenegro was bombed on several occasions but NATO eventually desisted to prop up the precarious position of its anti-Milosevic leader, Đukanovic.

At the start of May, a NATO aircraft attacked an Albanian refugee convoy, believing it was a Yugoslav military convoy, killing around fifty people. NATO admitted its mistake five days later and the Yugoslavs accused NATO of deliberately attacking the refugees.

A later report conducted by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) entitled the Final Report to the Prosecutor by the Committee Established to Review the NATO Bombing Campaign Against the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia opined that civilians were not deliberately attacked in this incident and that neither the aircrew nor their commanders displayed the degree of recklessness in failing to take precautionary measures which would sustain criminal charges.

On May 7, NATO bombs hit the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade, killing three Chinese journalists and outraging Chinese public opinion. The United States and NATO later apologised for the bombing, saying that it occurred because of an outdated map provided by the CIA although this was challenged by a joint report from The Observer (UK) and Politiken (Denmark) newspapers which claimed that NATO intentionally bombed the embassy because it was being used as a relay station for Yugoslav army radio signals.

However the report by the newspaper contradicts findings in the same report by the ICTY which stated that the root of the failures in target location appears to stem from the land navigation techniques employed by an intelligence officer. In another incident at the Dubrava prison in Kosovo in May 1999, the Yugoslav government attributed as many as 85 civilian deaths to NATO bombing of the facility after NATO cited Serbian and Yugoslav military activity in the area.

A Human Rights Watch report later concluded that at least nineteen ethnic Albanian prisoners had been killed by the bombing, but that an uncertain number probably more than 70 were killed by Serbian Government forces in the days immediately following the bombing.

By the start of April, the conflict appeared little closer to a resolution and NATO countries began to seriously consider conducting ground operations in Kosovo. British Prime Minister Tony Blair was a strong advocate of ground forces and pressured the United States to agree; his strong stance caused some alarm in Washington as American forces would be making the largest contribution to any offensive.U.S. President Bill Clinton was extremely reluctant to commit American forces for a ground offensive.

Instead, Clinton authorised a CIA operation to look into methods to destabilise the Yugoslav government without training KLA troops.At the same time, Finnish and Russian diplomatic negotiators continued to try to persuade Milosevic to back down. Tony Blair would order 50,000 British soldiers to be made ready for a ground offensive: most of the available British Army.

Milosevic finally recognised that Russia would not intervene to defend Yugoslavia despite Moscow's strong anti-NATO rhetoric. He thus accepted the conditions offered by a Finnish–Russian mediation team and agreed to a military presence within Kosovo headed by the UN, but incorporating NATO troops.

The Norwegian special forces Hærens Jegerkommando and Forsvarets Spesialkommando cooperated with the KLA in gathering intelligence information. Preparing for an invasion on 12 June, Norwegian special forces worked with the KLA on the Ramno mountain on the border between Macedonia and Kosovo and acted as scouts to monitor events in Kosovo. Together with British special forces, Norwegian special forces were the first to cross over the border into Kosovo.

Norwegians were in Kosovo two days prior to the entry of other forces and were among the first into Pristina. The Hærens Jegerkommando's and Forsvarets Spesialkommando's job was to clear the way between the contending parties and to make local deals to implement the peace deal between the Serbians and the Kosovo Albanians.

On 3 June 1999, Milosevic accepted the terms of an international peace plan to end the fighting, with the national parliament adopting the proposal amid contentious debate with delegates coming close to fistfights at some points.On 10 June, the North Atlantic Council ratified the agreement and suspended air operations.

On 12 June, after Milosevic accepted the conditions, the NATO-led peacekeeping Kosovo Force (KFOR) began entering Kosovo. KFOR had been preparing to conduct combat operations, but in the end, its mission was only peacekeeping. It was based upon the Allied Rapid Reaction Corps headquarters commanded by then Lieutenant General Mike Jackson of the British Army. It consisted of British forces a brigade built from 4th Armored and 5th Airborne Brigades, a French Army Brigade, a German Army brigade, which entered from the west while all the other forces advanced from the south, and Italian Army and United States Army brigades.

The first NATO troops to enter Pristina on the 12th of June 1999 were Norwegian special forces from FSK Forsvarets Spesialkommando and soldiers from the British Special Air Service 22 S.A.S, although to NATO's diplomatic embarrassment Russian troops arrived first at the airport. The Norwegian soldiers from FSK Forsvarets Spesialkommando were the first to come in contact with the Russian troops at the airport. FSK's mission was to level the negotiating field between the belligerent parties, and to fine-tune the detailed, local deals needed to implement the peace deal between the Serbians and the Kosovo Albanians.

The U.S. contribution, known as the Initial Entry Force, was led by the 1st Armored Division, commanded by Brigadier General Peterson, and was spearheaded by a platoon from the 2nd Battalion, 505th Parachute Infantry Regiment attached to the British Forces.

Other units included 1st and 2nd Battalions of the 10th Special Forces Group(Airborne) from Stuttgart Germany and Fort Carson, Colorado, TF 1–6 Infantry (1-6 infantry with C Co 1-35AR) from Baumholder, Germany, the 2nd Battalion, 505th Parachute Infantry Regiment from Fort Bragg, North Carolina, the 26th Marine Expeditionary Unit from Camp Lejeune, North Carolina, the 1st Battalion, 26th Infantry Regiment from Schweinfurt, Germany, and Echo Troop, 4th Cavalry Regiment, also from Schweinfurt, Germany.

Also attached to the U.S. force was the Greek Army's 501st Mechanised Infantry Battalion. The initial U.S. forces established their area of operation around the towns of Uroševac, the future Camp Bondsteel, and Gnjilane, at Camp Monteith, and spent four months—the start of a stay which continues to date—establishing order in the southeast sector of Kosovo.

During the initial incursion, the U.S. soldiers were greeted by Albanians cheering and throwing flowers as U.S. soldiers and KFOR rolled through their villages. Although no resistance was met, three U.S. soldiers from the Initial Entry Force lost their lives in accidents.

On 1 October 1999, approximately 150 paratroopers from Alpha Company, 1/508th Airborne Battalion Combat Team from Vicenza, Italy parachuted into Urosevac as part of Operation Rapid Guardian. The purpose of the mission was primarily to warn Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic of NATO resolve and of its rapid military capability. One U.S. soldier, Army Ranger Sgt. Jason Neil Pringle, was killed during operations after his parachute failed to deploy.

The paratroopers of the 1/508th then joined paratroopers of the 82nd Airborne and K.F.O.R. in patrolling various areas of Kosovo, without incident, through 3 October 1999.

On 15 December 1999, Staff Sergeant Joseph Suponcic of 3rd Battalion/10th Special Forces Group Airborne was killed, when the HMMWV in which he was a passenger struck an anti-tank mine planted by Albanians and meant for the Russian contingent with which SSG Suponcic's team was patrolling in Kosovska Kamenica.

Following the military campaign, the involvement of Russian peacekeepers proved to be tense and challenging to the NATO Kosovo force. The Russians expected to have an independent sector of Kosovo, only to be unhappily surprised with the prospect of operating under NATO command. Without prior communication or coordination with NATO, Russian peacekeeping forces entered Kosovo from Bosnia and Herzegovina and occupied Pristina International Airport ahead of the arrival of NATO forces.

This resulted in an incident during which NATO Supreme Commander Wesley Clark's wish to forcibly block the runways with NATO vehicles, to prevent any Russian reinforcement, was refused by KFOR commander General Mike Jackson.

In 2010, James Blunt described in an interview how his unit was given the assignment of securing Pristina during the advance of the 30,000-strong peacekeeping force and how the Russian army had moved in and taken control of the city's airport before his unit's arrival. Blunt shared a part in the difficult task of addressing the potentially violent international incident. According to Blunt's account there was a stand-off with the Russians, and the NATO Supreme Commander, Wesley Clark, gave provisional orders to over-power them. Whilst these were questioned by Blunt, they were rejected by General Jackson, with the now famous line, I'm not having my soldiers responsible for starting World War III.

Furthermore, in June 2000, arms trading relations between Russia and Yugoslavia were exposed which led to the retaliation and bombings of Russian Checkpoints and area Police Stations. Outpost Gunner was established on a high point in the Presevo Valley by Echo Battery 1/161 Field Artillery in an attempt to monitor and assist with peacekeeping efforts in the Russian Sector.

Operating under the support of ⅔ Field Artillery, 1st Armored Division, the Battery was able to successfully deploy and continuously operate a Firefinder Radar which allowed the NATO forces to keep a closer watch on activities in the Sector and the Presevo Valley. Eventually a deal was struck whereby Russian forces operated as a unit of KFOR but not under the NATO command structure.

Because of the country's restrictive media laws, the Yugoslav media carried little coverage of events in Kosovo, and the attitude of other countries to the humanitarian disaster that was occurring there. Thus, few members of the Yugoslav public expected NATO intervention, instead thinking that a diplomatic agreement would be reached.

Support for the Kosovan War and, in particular, the legitimacy of NATO's bombing campaign came from a variety of sources. In a 2009 article, David Clark claimed Every member of NATO, every EU country, and most of Yugoslavia's neighbours, supported military action.Statements from the leaders of United States, Czech Republic and United Kingdom, respectively, described the war as one upholding our values, protecting our interests, and advancing the cause of peace,"the first war for values and one to avert what would otherwise be a humanitarian disaster in Kosovo.

Others included the then U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan who was reported by some sources as acknowledging that the NATO action was legitimate who emphasised that there were times when the use of force was legitimate in the pursuit of peace though Annan stressed that the UN Security Council should have been involved in any decision to use force. The distinction between the legality and legitimacy of the intervention was further highlighted in two separate reports.

One was conducted by the Independent International Commission on Kosovo, entitled The Kosovo Report,which found that:

Yugoslav forces were engaged in a well-planned campaign of terror and expulsion of the Kosovar Albanians. This campaign is most frequently described as one of ethnic cleansing,intended to drive many, if not all, Kosovar Albanians from Kosovo, destroy the foundations of their society, and prevent them from returning.

It concluded that the NATO military intervention was illegal but legitimate, The second report was published by the NATO Office of Information and Press which reported that, the human rights violations committed on a large scale in Kosovo provide an incontestable ground with reference to the humanitarian aspect of NATO's intervention. Some critics note that NATO did not have the backing of the United Nations Security Council meant that its intervention had no legal basis, but according to some legal scholars, there are nonetheless certain bases for that action that are not legal, but justified.

Aside from politicians and diplomats, commentators and intellectuals also supported the war. Michael Ignatieff called NATOs intervention a morally justifiable response to ethnic cleansing and the resulting flood of refugees, and not the cause of the flood of refugees while Christopher Hitchens said NATO intervened only, when Serbian forces had resorted to mass deportation and full-dress ethnic cleansing.

Writing in The Nation, Richard A. Falk wrote that, the NATO campaign achieved the removal of Yugoslav military forces from Kosovo and, even more significant, the departure of the dreaded Serbian paramilitary units and police while an article in The Guardian wrote that for Mary Kaldor, Kosovo represented a laboratory on her thinking for human security, humanitarian intervention and international peacekeeping.

The latter two which she defined as, a genuine belief in the equality of all human beings; and this entails a readiness to risk lives of peacekeeping troops to save the lives of others where this is necessary.Reports stated there had been no peace between Albanians and Serbs, citing the deaths of 1,500 Albanians and displacement of 270,000 prior to NATO intervention.

Some criticised the NATO intervention as a political diversionary tactic, coming as it did on the heels of the Monica Lewinsky scandal, pointing to the fact that coverage of the bombing directly replaced coverage of the scandal in American news cycles.Also, some point out that before the bombing, rather than there being an unusually bloody conflict, the KLA was not engaged in a widespread civil war against Yugoslav forces and the death toll among all concerned including ethnic Albanians skyrocketed following NATO intervention.

U.S. President Clinton and his administration were accused of inflating the number of Kosovo Albanians killed by state forces.After the bombing of the Chinese embassy in Belgrade, Chinese President Jiang Zemin said that the US was using its economic and military superiority to aggressively expand its influence and interfere in the internal affairs of other countries.

Chinese leaders called the NATO campaign a dangerous precedent of naked aggression, a new form of colonialism, and an aggressive war groundless in morality or law. It was seen as part of a plot by the US to destroy Yugoslavia, expand eastward and control all of Europe.

The United Nations Charter does not allow military interventions in other sovereign countries with few exceptions which, in general, need to be decided upon by the United Nations Security Council; this legal enjoinment has proved controversial with many legal scholars who argue that though the Kosovo War illegal, it was still legitimate.

The issue was brought before the UN Security Council by Russia, in a draft resolution which, inter alia, would affirm that such unilateral use of force constitutes a flagrant violation of the United Nations Charter. China, Namibia, and Russia voted for the resolution, the other members against, thus it failed to pass.

The war inflicted many casualties. Already by March 1999, the combination of fighting and the targeting of civilians had left an estimated 1,500–2,000 civilians and combatants dead.Final estimates of the casualties are still unavailable for either side.

Perhaps the most controversial deliberate attack of the war was that made against the headquarters of Serbian television on April 23, 1999, which killed at least fourteen people.

Privately NATO European members were divided about the aims and necessity of the war.Most European allies did not trust the motives of Kosovan Albanians and according to NATO General Wesley Clark, There was a sense among some that NATO was fighting on the wrong side in a war between Christians and Muslims.

By contrast, Susan Sontag, who witnessed the 3-year long siege of Sarajevo, said that the NATO intervention came "eight years too late" and that Milosevic should have been stopped already during the bombing of Dubrovnik in 1991.

In June 2000, the Red Cross reported that 3,368 civilians mainly Kosovar Albanians, but with several hundred Serbs, and Roma were still missing, nearly one year after the conflict, most of whom it concluded had to be presumed dead.

A study by researchers from the Center for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta, Georgia published in 2000 in medical journal the Lancet estimated that 12,000 deaths in the total population could be attributed to war.This number was achieved by surveying 1,197 households from February 1998 through June 1999. 67 out of the 105 deaths reported in the sample population were attributed to war-related trauma, which extrapolates to be 12,000 deaths if the same war-related mortality rate is applied to Kosovo's total population.

The highest mortality rates were in men between 15 and 49 (5,421 victims of war) as well as for men over 50 (5,176 victims). For persons younger than 15, the estimates were 160 victims for males and 200 for females.For women between 15–49 the estimate is that there were 510 victims; older than 50 years the estimate is 541 victims. The authors stated that it was not possible to differentiate completely between civilian and military casualties.

In the 2008 joint study by the Humanitarian Law Centre an NGO from Serbia and Kosovo, The International Commission on Missing Person, and the Missing Person Commission of Serbia made a name-by-name list of war and post-war victims. According to the Kosovo Memory Book, 13,421 people were killed in Kosovo during the conflict, from 1 January 1998 up until December 2000. Of that sum, 10,533 were Albanians, 2,238 were Serbs, 126 Roma, 100 Bosniaks and others.

Yugoslavia claimed that NATO attacks caused between 1,200 and 5,700 civilian casualties. NATO's Secretary General, Lord Robertson, wrote after the war that the actual toll in human lives will never be precisely known but he then offered the figures found in a report by Human Rights Watch as a reasonable estimate.

This report counted between 488 and 527 civilian deaths,90 to 150 of them killed from cluster bomb use in 90 separate incidents, the worst of which were the 87 Albanian refugees who perished at the hands of NATO bombs, near Korisa. Attacks in Kosovo overall were more deadly due to the confused situation with many refugee movements—the one-third of the incidents there account for more than half of the deaths.

Various estimates of the number of killings attributed to Yugoslav forces have been announced through the years. An estimated 800,000 Kosovo Albanians fled and an estimated 7,000 to 9,000 were killed, according to The New York Times.The estimate of 10,000 deaths is used by the United States Department of State, which cited human rights abuses as its main justification for attacking Yugoslavia.

Statistical experts working on behalf of the ICTY prosecution estimate that the total number of dead is about 10,000. Eric Fruits, a professor at Portland State University, argued that the experts' analyses were based on fundamentally flawed data and that none of its conclusions are supported by any valid statistical analysis or tests.

In August 2000, the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) announced that it had exhumed 2,788 bodies in Kosovo, but declined to say how many were thought to be victims of war crimes.Earlier however, KFOR sources said that of the 2,150 bodies that had been discovered up until July 1999, about 850 were thought to be victims of war crimes.

Known mass graves:

- In 2001, 800 still unidentified bodies were found in pits on a police training ground just outside Belgrade and in eastern Serbia.

- At least 700 bodies were uncovered in a mass grave located within a special anti-terrorist police unit's compound in the Belgrade suburb of Batajnica.

- 7 bodies were found in the eastern Serbian town of Petrovo Selo.

- 50 bodies were uncovered near the western Serbian town of Peručac.

Military casualties on the NATO side were light. According to official reports, the alliance suffered no fatalities as a direct result of combat operations. However, in the early hours of May 5, an American military AH-64 Apache helicopter crashed not far from the border between Serbia and Albania.

Another American AH-64 helicopter crashed about 40 miles (64 km) northeast of Tirana, Albania's capital, very close to the Albanian/Kosovo border.According to CNN, the crash happened 45 miles (72 km) northeast of Tirana.The two American pilots of the helicopter, Army Chief Warrant Officers David Gibbs and Kevin L. Reichert, died in that crash. They were the only NATO fatalities during the war, according to NATO official statements.

There were other casualties after the war, mostly due to land mines. During the war, the alliance reported the loss of the first US stealth plane an F-117 Nighthawk ever shot down by enemy fire.Furthermore, an F-16 fighter was lost near Sabac and 32 unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) from different nations were lost.The wreckages of downed UAVs were shown on Serbian television during the war.

Some American sources claim a second F-117A was also heavily damaged, and although it made it back to its base, it never flew again.A-10 Thunderbolts have been reported as losses, with two shot down and another two damaged. Three American soldiers riding a Humvee in a routine patrol were captured by Yugoslav Special Forces across the Macedonian border.

At first, NATO claimed to have killed 10,000 Yugoslav troops, while Yugoslavia claimed only 500; the NATO investigative teams later corrected it to a few hundred Yugoslav troops killed by air strikes. In 2001, the Yugoslav authorities claimed 462 soldiers were killed and 299 wounded by NATO airstrikes.Later, in 2013, Serbia claimed that 1,008 Yugoslav soldiers and policemen had been killed by NATO bombing.

NATO initially claimed that 5,000 Yugoslav servicemen had been killed and 10,000 had been wounded during the NATO air campaign.NATO has since revised this estimate to 1,200 Yugoslav soldiers and policemen killed.

Of military equipment, NATO destroyed around 50 Yugoslav aircraft including 6 MiG-29s destroyed in air-to-air combat. A number of G-4 Super Galebs were destroyed in their hardened aircraft shelter by bunker-busting bombs which started a fire which spread quickly because the shelter doors were not closed. At the end of war, NATO officially claimed that they had destroyed 93 Yugoslav tanks. Yugoslavia admitted a total of 3 destroyed tanks.

The latter figure was verified by European inspectors when Yugoslavia rejoined the Dayton accords, by noting the difference between the number of tanks then and at the last inspection in 1995.NATO claimed that the Yugoslav army lost 93 tanks - M-84's and T-55's, 132 APCs, and 52 artillery pieces.Newsweek, the second-largest news weekly magazine in the U.S, gained access to a suppressed US Air Force report that claimed the real numbers were 3 tanks, not 120; 18 armored personnel carriers, not 220; 20 artillery pieces, not 450.

Another US Air Force report gives a figure of 14 tanks destroyed.Most of the targets hit in Kosovo were decoys, such as tanks made out of plastic sheets with telegraph poles for gun barrels, or old World War II–era tanks which were not functional. Anti-aircraft defences were preserved by the simple expedient of not turning them on, preventing NATO aircraft from detecting them, but forcing them to keep above a ceiling of 15,000 feet (5,000 m), making accurate bombing much more difficult.

Towards the end of the war, it was claimed that carpet bombing by B-52 aircraft had caused huge casualties among Yugoslav troops stationed along the Kosovo–Albania border. Careful searching by NATO investigators found no evidence of any such large-scale casualties.

However, the most significant loss for the Yugoslav Army was the damaged and destroyed infrastructure. Almost all military air bases and airfields namely Batajnica, Lađevci, Slatina, Golubovci and Đakovica and other military buildings and facilities were badly damaged or destroyed. Unlike the units and their equipment, military buildings couldn't be camouflaged.

Defence industry and military technical overhaul facilities were also seriously damaged namely Utva, Zastava Arms factory, Moma Stanojlovic air force overhaul center, technical overhaul centers in Cačak and Kragujevac. Moreover, in an effort to weaken the Yugoslav Army, NATO targeted several important civilian facilities like the Pancevo oil refinery, Novi Sad oil refinery, bridges, TV antennas, railroads, etc.

Around 1,500 Kosovo Liberation Army soldiers were killed, according to KLA's own estimates.HLC registered 2,057 KLA insurgents killed in its comprehensive database.

The Yugoslav and Serb forces caused the displacement of between 1.2 million to 1.45 million Kosovo Albanians.After the end of the war in June 1999, numerous Albanian refugees started returning home from neighboring countries. By November 1999, according to the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, 848,100 out of 1,108,913 had returned.

According to the 1991 Yugoslavia Census there were 194,190 Serbs and 45,745 Romani in Kosovo.According to the Human Rights Watch, 200,000 Serbs and thousands of Roma fled from Kosovo during and after the war.The Yugoslav Red Cross had also registered 247,391 mostly Serbian refugees by November.

The persistent anti-Serb attacks and riots like 2000 unrest in Kosovo, including against other non-Albanians, had remained in the anarchic stage until some form of order was established in 2001. This order disintegrated during the 2004 unrest in Kosovo, called an anti-Serb pogrom. More than 164,000 Serbs had left Kosovo during the seven weeks since Yugoslav and Serb forces withdrew and the NATO-led Kosovo Force (KFOR) entered the province.

For the government of Serbia, cooperation with the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia is still regarded as a distressing obligation, the necessary price for joining the European Union.Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic, along with Milan Milutinovic, Nikola Sainovic, Dragoljub Ojdanic and Vlajko Stojiljkovic were charged by the ICTY with crimes against humanity including murder, forcible transfer, deportation, and persecution on political, racial or religious grounds.

In 2001, then-President Vojislav Kostunica fought tooth and nail against attempts to put Milosevic before an international court but was unable to prevent this happening after further atrocities were revealed.In October 2003, there were more indictments against former armed forces chief of staff Nebojsa Pavkovic, former army corps commander Vladimir Lazarevic, former police official Vlastimir Đordevic, and Sreten Lukic. All were indicted for crimes against humanity and violations of the laws or customs of war.

Later, the United Nations International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) legally found that FRY and Serbian forces used violence and terror to force a significant number of Kosovo Albanians from their homes and across the borders, in order for the state authorities to maintain control over Kosovo.

This campaign was conducted by army and Interior Ministry police forces (MUP) under the control of FRY and Serbian authorities, who were responsible for mass expulsions of Kosovo Albanian civilians from their homes, as well as incidents of killings, sexual assault, and the intentional destruction of mosques.

The ICTY also leveled indictments against KLA members Fatmir Limaj, Haradin Bala, Isak Musliu, and Agim Murtezi for crimes against humanity. They were arrested on February 17 and 18, 2003. Charges were soon dropped against Agim Murtezi as a case of mistaken identity, whereas Fatmir Limaj was acquitted of all charges on November 30, 2005 and released. The charges were in relation to the prison camp run by the defendants at Lapusnik between May and July 1998.

In 2008, Carla Del Ponte published a book in which she alleged that, after the end of the war in 1999, Kosovo Albanians were smuggling organs of between 100 and 300 Serbs and other minorities from the province to Albania.

In March 2005, a U.N. tribunal indicted Kosovo Prime Minister Ramush Haradinaj for war crimes against the Serbs. On March 8, he tendered his resignation. Haradinaj, an ethnic Albanian, was a former commander who led units of the Kosovo Liberation Army and was appointed Prime Minister after winning an election of 72 votes to three in the Kosovo's Parliament in December 2004. Haradinaj was acquitted on all counts along with fellow KLA veterans Idriz Balaj and Lahi Brahimaj.

The Office of the Prosecutor appealed their acquittals, resulting in the ICTY ordering a partial retrial. However, on 29 November 2012 all three were acquitted for second time on all charges.According to Human Rights Watch (HRW), 800 non-Albanian civilians were kidnapped and murdered from 1998 to 1999. After the war, 479 people went missing most of them Serb.

In April 2014, the Assembly of Kosovo considered and approved the establishment of a special court to try cases involving crimes and other serious abuses committed in 1999-2000 by members of the KLA.There have been many reports of abuses and war crimes committed by the KLA during and after the conflict, such as massacres of civilians, prison camps, and destruction of medieval churches and monuments.

The Yugoslav government and a number of international pressure groups (e.g., Amnesty International) claimed that NATO had carried out war crimes during the conflict, notably the bombing of the Serbian TV headquarters in Belgrade on April 23, 1999, where 16 people were killed and 16 more were injured. Sian Jones of Amnesty stated, The bombing of the headquarters of Serbian state radio and television was a deliberate attack on a civilian object and as such constitutes a war crime.

However, a later report conducted by the ICTY entitled Final Report to the Prosecutor by the Committee Established to Review the NATO Bombing Campaign Against the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia concluded that, In so far as the attack actually was aimed at disrupting the communications network, it was legally acceptable and that, NATO's targeting of the RTS building for propaganda purposes was an incidental albeit complementary aim of its primary goal of disabling the Serbian military command and control system and to destroy the nerve system and apparatus that keeps Milosević in power.

In regards to civilian casualties, it further stated that though they were,unfortunately high, they do not appear to be clearly disproportionate.

Some countries supported and others never the NATO interventions as below:

– Egypt supported NATO intervention in Kosovo and withdrew its ambassador from Belgrade.

- Libyan Jamahiriya leader, Muammar Gaddafi opposed the campaign and called on world leaders to support Yugoslavia's legitimate right to defend its freedoms and territorial integrity against a possible aggression.

– Cambodia was against the campaign.

- China deeply condemned the bombing, saying it was an act of aggression against the Yugoslav people, especially when NATO bombed its embassy in Belgrade on May 7, 1999, riots and mass demonstrations against the governments of the United States and Great Britain were reported against both the attack and the operation overall.Jiang Zemin, the President of the country at the time, called once more for an immediate halt to the airstrikes and demanded peaceful negotiations.

India condemned the bombing.The Indian foreign ministry also stated that it urged all military actions to be brought to a halt and that 'FR Yugoslavia be enabled to resolve its internal issues internally.

Indonesia was against the campaign.

Jordan supported NATO intervention in Kosovo and withdrew its ambassador from Belgrade.

Japan's PM Keizō Obuchi advocated the bombing, stating that Yugoslavia had an uncompromising attitude.Moreover, Japan's foreign minister Masahiko Kōmura said that, Japan understands NATO's use of force as measures that had to be taken to prevent humanitarian catastrophe.

Malaysia – Malaysia supported the bombing, stating that it was necessary to prevent genocide in Kosovo.

Pakistan's government was concerned about developing situations in Kosovo and called for UN intervention.

United Arab Emirates – United Arab Emirates supported NATO intervention in Kosovo.The UAE population contributed large amounts of money toward humanitarian aid, set up and ran a highly efficient refugee camp while building an airstrip for incoming relief supplies at Kukes in Northern Albania.

Vietnam – Vietnam was against the bombing campaign.

Albania strongly supported the bombing campaign. This resulted in the breaking of diplomatic ties between Albania and the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, who accused the Albanian government of harbouring KLA insurgents and supplying them with weapons.

Turkey – The Turkish population, as a result of historical, cultural, and religious ties to the Balkans supported their government's anti-Serb and pro-NATO position.Turkey, a NATO member, supported and was involved in the bombing campaign though it expressed hesitation about a ground offensive.The Turkish government stressed that NATO's involvement was not about undermining Yugoslav territorial integrity, but about reversing the genocidal policies of the Milosevic government.

France – In France, a combatant, the bulk of the population supported the action but factions on the far left and far right opposed it.French officials however felt aggrieved their traditional ally Serbia was subjected to military action by NATO.

Federal Republic of Yugoslavia – Slobodan Milosevic, the president of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia called the bombings, an unlawful act of terrorism and the key to colonize Yugoslavia. The Yugoslav population also strongly opposed the bombing and showed defiance with cultural-related themes. Milosevic also stated that, the only correct decision that could have been made was the one to reject foreign troops on our territory. The Yugoslavs who opposed Milosevic also opposed the bombing, saying that it supports Milosevic rather than attacking him.

Greece – Greece took no active part in the NATO campaign and 96% of the Greek population was opposed to the NATO bombings.

Germany - Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder newly elected government supported the NATO campaign, however German public opinion was not prepared for a prolonged campaign.

Italy – The bombing was met with mixed reactions in Italy. Following former Prime Minister Romano Prodi's decision of authorising the use of Italian airbases and military infrastructures to the coalition forces, Massimo D'Alema's centre-left government authorised the country's participation in the air campaign.The bombing was also supported by Silvio Berlusconi and the centre-right opposition. Domestic opposition to the NATO bombing campaign against Serbia was strong.

Russia – Russia strongly condemned the campaign. The president Boris Yeltsin stated that, Russia is deeply upset by NATO's military action against sovereign Yugoslavia, which is nothing more than open aggression.They also condemned NATO at the United Nations saying that NATO air strikes on Serbia were an illegal action. Some Russians volunteered to go to Kosovo, not only to fight the KLA, but also to oppose NATO.

United Kingdom – As a contributor to the bombing, the United Kingdom strongly supported the bombing campaign, as did a majority of the British population.

Czech Republic – The Czech Republic, as a newcomer to NATO, supported the bombing. Representatives of the Czech Republic did not want to criticise the actions of NATO, even though most of population was against it.

Bulgaria – Bulgaria allowed its airspace to be used by NATO aircraft for attacks.Despite Bulgaria's ambitions of joining both NATO and the European Union, the leftist opposition organised street protests in Sofia over the NATO bombing of Yugoslavia, the public was reportedly divided because of sympathy for their fellow Slavs and Christian Orthodox Serb neighbours. Several NATO missiles and aircraft strayed off course into Bulgaria.

Australia supported the campaign. Prime Minister John Howard stated that, history has told us that if you sit by and do nothing, you pay a much greater price later on.

The United Nations had mixed reactions to the bombing, it was carried out without its authorisation, however, Kofi Annan, the UN Secretary-General said, It is indeed tragic that diplomacy has failed, but there are times when the use of force is legitimate in the pursuit of peace.

The Kosovo war had a number of important consequences in terms of the military and political outcome. The status of Kosovo remains unresolved; international negotiations began in 2006 to determine Kosovo's level of autonomy as envisaged under UN Security Council Resolution 1244, but efforts failed. The province is administered by the United Nations despite its unilateral declaration of independence on February 17, 2008.

The UN-backed talks, led by UN Special Envoy Martti Ahtisaari, had begun in February 2006. Whilst progress was made on technical matters, both parties remained diametrically opposed on the question of status itself.In February 2007, Ahtisaari delivered a draft status settlement proposal to leaders in Belgrade and Pristina, the basis for a draft UN Security Council Resolution which proposes supervised independence for the province, which is in contrary to UN Security Council Resolution 1244.

By July 2007, the draft resolution, which was backed by the United States, United Kingdom, and other European members of the Security Council, had been rewritten four times to try to accommodate Russian concerns that such a resolution would undermine the principle of state sovereignty.Russia, which holds a veto in the Security Council as one of five permanent members, stated that it would not support any resolution which is not acceptable to both Belgrade and Pristina.

The campaign exposed significant weaknesses in the U.S. arsenal, which were later addressed for the Afghanistan and Iraq campaigns. Apache attack helicopters and AC-130 Spectre gunships were brought up to the front lines but were never used after two Apaches crashed during training in the Albanian mountains. Stocks of many precision missiles were reduced to critically low levels. For combat aircraft, continuous operations resulted in skipped maintenance schedules, and many aircraft were withdrawn from service awaiting spare parts and service.

Also, many of the precision-guided weapons proved unable to cope with Balkan weather, as the clouds blocked the laser guidance beams. This was resolved by retrofitting bombs with Global Positioning System satellite guidance devices that are immune to bad weather. Although pilotless surveillance aircraft were extensively used, often attack aircraft could not be brought to the scene quickly enough to hit targets of opportunity. This led missiles being fitted to Predator drones in Afghanistan, reducing the sensor to shooter time to virtually zero.

Kosovo also showed that some low-tech tactics could reduce the impact of a high-tech force such as NATO; the Milosevic government cooperated with Saddam Hussein's regime in Iraq, passing on many of the lessons learned.The Yugoslav army had long expected to need to resist a much stronger enemy, either Soviet or NATO, during the Cold War and had developed effective tactics of deception and concealment in response. These would have been unlikely to have resisted a full-scale invasion for long, but were probably used to mislead overflying aircraft and satellites.

Among the tactics used were:

- U.S. stealth aircraft were tracked with radars operating on long wavelengths. If stealth jets got wet or opened their bomb bay doors, they would become visible on the radar screens. An F-117 Nighthawk downed by a missile was possibly spotted in this way.

- Dummy targets such as fake bridges, airfields and decoy planes and tanks were used extensively. Tanks were made using old tires, plastic sheeting and logs, and sand cans and fuel set alight to mimic heat emissions. They fooled NATO pilots into bombing hundreds of such decoys, though General Clark's survey found that in Operation: Allied Force, NATO airmen hit just 25 decoys—an insignificant percentage of the 974 validated hits.

However, NATO sources claim that this was due to operating procedures, which oblige troops, in this case aircraft, to engage any and all targets, however unlikely they may be. The targets needed only to look real to be shot at, if detected, of course. NATO claimed that Yugoslav air force had been devastated. Official data show that the Yugoslav army in Kosovo lost 26 percent of its tanks, 34 percent of its APCs, and 47 percent of the artillery to the air campaign.

As a result of the Kosovo War, the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation created a second NATO medal, the NATO Medal for Kosovo Service, an international military decoration. Shortly thereafter, NATO created the Non-Article 5 Medal for Balkans service to combine both Yugoslavian and Kosovo operations into one service medal.

Due to the involvement of the United States armed forces, a separate U.S. military decoration, known as the Kosovo Campaign Medal, was established by President Bill Clinton in 2000.

The Kosovo Campaign Medal (KCM) is a military award of the United States Armed Forces established by Executive Order 13154 of President Bill Clinton on May 3, 2000. The medal recognises military service performed in Kosovo from March 24, 1999 through December 31, 2013.

A variety of weapons were used by the Yugoslav security forces and the Kosovo Liberation Army, NATO only operated aircraft and naval units during the conflict.

The weapons used by Yugoslav government were mostly Yugoslav made, while almost all of their AA units were Soviet made.

The weapons used by the Kosovo Liberation Army were mostly Soviet Kalashnikovs and Chinese derivatives of the AK-47 and some Western weaponry.



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