The Kosovo War was an armed conflict between the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia and the breakaway state of Kosovo which occurred from 28 February 1998 to 11 June 1999.
History[]
The Yugoslavian government's revocation of Kosovo's autonomy in 1989 - the 600th anniversary of the Battle of Kosovo - led to the formation of the Albanian nationalist Kosovo Liberation Army in 1990. Continued repression by Slobodan Milosevic's Serb nationalist regime led to the start of a KLA insurgency in Kosovo in 1995, and both the Yugoslav govenrment and the United States labelled the KLA as a "terrorist" organization during the insurgency's early years. The short-lived Albanian Civil War of 1997 enabled the KLA to obtain weapons from war-torn Albania, and they clashed with Serb paramilitaries, who engaged in attacks on both KLA insurgents and Kosovar Albanian civilians, killing 2,000 of them.
KLA attacks intensified in 1998 as the international community began to take an interest in the situation of Kosovo's Albanian majority, and, on 5 March 1998, a Serbian attack on KLA leader, Adem Jashari's compound at Prekaz led to the massacre of 60 Albanians, including 28 women and children. The attack on Prekaz led to an intensification of the insurgency, and, after Russian-backed attempts at a diplomatic solution failed, NATO intervened, justifying Operation Allied Force as a "humanitarian war".
From March to June 1999, NATO bombed Yugoslavia in an attempt to pressure Milosevic's government into withdrawing from Kosovo. The Yugoslav military perpetrated a mass expulsion of Kosovar Albanians from their homes amid the NATO bombing campaign, perpetrating what a United Nations investigation found was "a systematic campaign of terror, including murders, rapes, arsons, and severe maltreatments." On 9 June, the Yugoslav government agreed to the Kumanovo Agreement with the KLA and NATO, agreeing to withdraw Yugoslav forces from Kosovo to make was for the establishment of a United Nations administration.
The KLA was largely incorporated into Kosovo's police force, while many other fighters went on to join Albanian nationalist insurgencies in the Presevo Valley of Serbia and in North Macedonia. Up to 1.45 million Kosovar Albanians were displaced as a result of the war, while 200,000 Serbs, Romani, and other non-Albanians fled Kosovo at the end of the war.