Kosovo War History

Conflict in which ethnic Albanians opposed ethnic Serbs & the govt of Yugoslavia

Kosovo conflict, (1998–99) conflict in which ethnic Albanians opposed ethnic Serbs and the government of Yugoslavia (the rump of the former federal state, comprising the republics of Serbia and Montenegro) in Kosovo. The conflict gained widespread international attention and was resolved with the intervention of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO).

In 1989 Ibrahim Rugova, leader of the ethnic Albanians in the Serbian province of Kosovo, initiated a policy of nonviolent protest against the abrogation of the province’s constitutional autonomy by Slobodan Milošević, then president of the Serbian republic. Milošević and members of the Serbian minority of Kosovo had long objected to the fact that Muslim Albanians were in demographic control of an area held sacred to the Serbs. (Kosovo was the seat of the Serbian Orthodox Church as well as the site of the Turkish defeat of the Serbs in 1389 and the Serbian victory over the Turks in 1912.) Tensions increased between the two ethnic groups, and the international community’s refusal to address the issue lent support to Rugova’s more radical opponents, who argued that their demands could not be secured through peaceful means. The Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) emerged in 1996, and its sporadic attacks on Serbian police and politicians steadily escalated over the next two years.