06/10/2024 – 16:12
Conflict in the former Yugoslavia ended in 1999, after military intervention by NATO, in its first mission without a UN mandate. Controversial military action shook Europe and broke a taboo for Germany. The Kosovo war came to an end on June 10, 1999, when the UN Security Council approved Resolution 1,244, which formally ended the fighting. A ceasefire had been established since the day before.
Two and a half months earlier, on the night of March 24, 1999, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) had begun the first bombing of targets in the rest of Yugoslavia (comprised of Serbia and Montenegro).
As the first combat mission of the North Atlantic defense alliance without consulting the UN and the first with the participation of German soldiers, this was a break of taboo for NATO and for the German people, who suddenly found themselves involved in a war. NATO’s objective was to force the Yugoslav army to withdraw from Kosovo to avoid expulsions and human rights violations against Albanians living in the province.
The reason for the conflict
The breakup of Yugoslavia began in 1991 with the declarations of independence by Slovenia, Croatia and Macedonia. Bosnia came next, in 1992. Serbia fought or started wars against Slovenia, Croatia and Bosnia; only Macedonia was spared.
There had been foreshadowings of escalation in Kosovo: the president of the Serbian Communist League, Slobodan Milosevic, had already canceled the autonomy of the province of Kosovo in 1989. The expulsion of Albanians from the state administration and the public sector (health and education) in Kosovo had already started and was expanded with the cancellation of autonomy. For a long time, there was non-violent resistance by the Kosovo Albanians, led by the writer Ibrahim Rugova, who later became the founder and first president of Kosovo.
From the mid-1990s, supporters of violent resistance against Serbia became increasingly popular. They organized themselves into the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA). Initially small, it quickly grew into a regular army in the second half of the 1990s.
Belgrade responded to terrorist attacks on Serbian police stations with disproportionate force. The armed conflict culminated in the 1998-1999 Kosovo war, initially within Yugoslavia. NATO’s intervention was triggered by the discovery of 40 Kosovo Albanians dead in the village of Racak in January 1999. At the time, international observers referred to mass murders, which those in power in Belgrade denied.
Rambouillet and the end of diplomacy
On February 6, 1999, a peace conference began at Rambouillet Castle, near Paris, with representatives of the Kosovars (among them five members of the armed separatist group UCK), the Serbian and Yugoslav governments and the then French president, Jacques Chirac. . It was the last diplomatic attempt by the Europeans and the US to force the Kosovo Albanians and Serbs into a ceasefire.
But the negotiations failed, as did an attempt by the US special envoy in Belgrade, Richard Holbrooke, to persuade Milosevic, Serbia’s strongman, to concede.
Controversy over the lack of a UN mandate
In the run-up to the NATO airstrikes, Western politicians, in particular US President Bill Clinton, repeatedly accused Serbia of planning a genocide in Kosovo.
NATO did not seek a mandate or consult the UN, as its action would have been vetoed by Russia and China in the UN Security Council. For Germany’s coalition government, made up of Social Democrats and Greens, taking part in the war with several fighter planes was a difficult decision. Pacifists and supporters of intervention clashed.
Belgrade’s alleged Potkova (“horseshoe”) Plan was for Berlin the justification for getting involved in the Kosovo war. The Serbs’ aim would be to push the province’s ethnic Albanian population across the southern border into Albania. It was never confirmed whether this plan actually existed: the fact is that hundreds of thousands of Albanians fled or were expelled from Kosovo.
Milosevic gives in: pressure from Moscow?
Today, most experts agree that NATO’s war only lasted more than 11 weeks due to miscalculations on both sides. NATO was convinced that Milosevic would send negotiating signals after a few days of bombing. On the other hand, there was speculation in Belgrade that NATO would give in at some point and try to establish a consensus.
Ultimately, Milosevic relented, probably under pressure from Moscow. The former EU special representative for Kosovo, Austrian Wolfgang Petritsch, is sure that Russia, which was in dire economic conditions at the time, needed Western cooperation.
The end of the war was regulated by two international legal acts. The June 9, 1999 military agreement in Kumanovo, a city in what is now North Macedonia, ordered the withdrawal of the Yugoslav army and Serbian police from Kosovo. Responsibility for the region’s security fell into the hands of NATO. The agreement also provided for the disarmament of the KLA.
Independent Kosovo
A day later, the UN Security Council approved Resolution 1244, also known as the Kosovo Resolution, which formed the basis of international law for a solution to the crisis, stipulating that Kosovo would continue to be part of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, albeit with a long-range autonomy.
The United Nations sent the UNMIK interim administration mission to establish a civilian government, as well as the international force KFOR to ensure security in Kosovo. However, the province’s final situation remained open.
After 78 days, around 2,300 air strikes and 3,500 deaths, NATO’s intervention came to an end, and with it the war in Kosovo, which began a year and a half earlier. Nine years later, on February 17, 2008, Kosovo declared its independence and is now recognized by 115 of the 192 UN member countries, including Germany.
Russia, China, as well as five European Union countries (Greece, Romania, Spain, Slovakia and Cyprus) are not among them. And Serbia rejects Kosovo’s statehood to this day.
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