Related Research Articles
The Kosovo War, was an armed conflict in Kosovo that lasted from 28 February 1998 until 11 June 1999. It was fought between the forces of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, which controlled Kosovo before the war, and the Kosovo Albanian separatist militia known as the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA). The conflict ended when the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) intervened by beginning air strikes in March 1999 which resulted in Yugoslav forces withdrawing from Kosovo.
The history of North Macedonia encompasses the history of the territory of the modern state of North Macedonia.
The Kosovo Liberation Army was an ethnic Albanian separatist militia that sought the separation of Kosovo, the vast majority of which is inhabited by Albanians, from the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (FRY) and Serbia during the 1990s. Albanian nationalism was a central tenet of the KLA and many in its ranks supported the creation of a Greater Albania, which would encompass all Albanians in the Balkans, stressing Albanian culture, ethnicity and nation.
The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) carried out an aerial bombing campaign against the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia during the Kosovo War. The air strikes lasted from 24 March 1999 to 10 June 1999. The bombings continued until an agreement was reached that led to the withdrawal of the Yugoslav Army from Kosovo, and the establishment of the United Nations Interim Administration Mission in Kosovo, a UN peacekeeping mission in Kosovo. The official NATO operation code name was Operation Allied Force whereas the United States called it Operation Noble Anvil ; in Yugoslavia the operation was incorrectly called Merciful Angel, possibly as a result of a misunderstanding or mistranslation.
The Yugoslav Wars were a series of separate but related ethnic conflicts, wars of independence, and insurgencies that took place in the SFR Yugoslavia from 1991 to 2001. The conflicts both led up to and resulted from the breakup of Yugoslavia, which began in mid-1991, into six independent countries matching the six entities known as republics that had previously constituted Yugoslavia: Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro, Serbia, and Macedonia. SFR Yugoslavia's constituent republics declared independence due to unresolved tensions between ethnic minorities in the new countries, which fuelled the wars. While most of the conflicts ended through peace accords that involved full international recognition of new states, they resulted in a massive number of deaths as well as severe economic damage to the region.
The Kosovo Force (KFOR) is a NATO-led international peacekeeping force in Kosovo. Its operations are gradually reducing until Kosovo's Security Force, established in 2009, becomes self-sufficient.
Operation Horseshoe was a 1999 alleged plan to ethnically cleanse Albanians in Kosovo. The plan was to be carried out by Serbian police and the Yugoslav army.
The Republic of Kosova, also known as the First Republic of Kosovo, was a self-declared proto-state in Southeast Europe established in 1991. During its peak, it tried to establish its own parallel political institutions in opposition to the institutions of the Autonomous Province of Kosovo and Metohija held by Yugoslavia's Republic of Serbia.
The 2001 insurgency in Macedonia was an armed conflict which began when the ethnic Albanian National Liberation Army (NLA) insurgent group, formed from veterans of the Kosovo War and Insurgency in the Preševo Valley, attacked Macedonian security forces at the end of January 2001, and ended with the Ohrid Agreement, signed on 13 August of that same year. There were also claims that the NLA ultimately wished to see Albanian-majority areas secede from the country, though high-ranking members of the group have denied this. The conflict lasted throughout most of the year, although overall casualties remained limited to several dozen individuals on either side, according to sources from both sides of the conflict. With it, the Yugoslav Wars had reached the Republic of Macedonia which had achieved peaceful independence from Yugoslavia in 1991.
The Autonomous Province of Kosovo and Metohija, commonly known as Kosovo and abbreviated to Kosmet or KiM, is an autonomous province defined by the Constitution of Serbia that occupies the southernmost part of Serbia. The territory is the subject of an ongoing political and territorial dispute between Republic of Serbia and the partially recognised Republic of Kosovo. Its claimed administrative capital and largest city is Pristina.
North Macedonia is a member state of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). In 1995, the country joined the Partnership for Peace. It then began taking part in various NATO missions, including the International Security Assistance Force and the Resolute Support Mission in Afghanistan. At the 2008 Bucharest summit, Greece vetoed the country's invitation to join; however, NATO member states agreed that the country would receive an invitation upon resolution of the Macedonia naming dispute. Following an agreement in June 2018 to rename the country, representatives of NATO member states signed a protocol on the accession of North Macedonia to NATO on 6 February 2019. Over the next thirteen months, all of NATO's 29 member states ratified the protocol. The accession protocol entered into force on 19 March 2020, allowing North Macedonia to deposit its instrument of accession and thereby become NATO's 30th member state on 27 March 2020.
Numerous war crimes were committed by all sides during the Kosovo War, which lasted from 28 February 1998 until 11 June 1999. According to Human Rights Watch, the vast majority of abuses were attributable to the government of Slobodan Milošević, mainly perpetrated by the Serbian police, the Yugoslav army, and Serb paramilitary units. During the war, regime forces killed between 7,000–9,000 Kosovar Albanians, engaged in countless acts of rape, destroyed entire villages, and displaced nearly one million people. The Kosovo Liberation Army has also been implicated in atrocities, such as kidnappings and summary executions of civilians. Moreover, the NATO bombing campaign has been harshly criticized by human rights organizations and the Serbian government for causing roughly 500 civilian casualties.
United Nations Security Council resolution 1239, adopted on 14 May 1999, after recalling resolutions 1160 (1998), 1199 (1998) and 1203 (1998), the Council called for access for the United Nations and other humanitarian personnel operating in Kosovo to other parts of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia.
Baton Haxhiu is a Kosovo Albanian columnist and journalist who has worked for media such as Koha Ditore, Gazeta Express, Klan Kosova and ABC News Albania. He now works for Euronews Albania and is the general director of Albanian Post.
An incident took place on the Albania–Yugoslav border in April 1999 when the Yugoslav Army shelled several Albanian border towns around Krumë, Tropojë. In these villages, refugees were being housed after fleeing the ongoing war in Kosovo by crossing into Albania. On 13 April 1999, Yugoslav infantry entered Albanian territory to close off an area that was used by the Kosovo Liberation Army to stage attacks against Yugoslav targets.
Kosovo refugees in Albania refers to the mostly ethnic Albanians of Kosovo fleeing the Kosovo War into neighboring Albania in 1999. This crisis was exceptional at the time, as a movement of population this big in such a short period of time was unseen since WWII. In addition to the ones going to Albania, a large number of Kosovo refugees fled to the Republic of Macedonia. Almost all of the remaining 500,000 to 600,000 individuals in Kosovo were also displaced in the region itself, without leaving it.
The OSCE Kosovo Verification Mission (KVM) was an OSCE mission to verify that the Serbian and Yugoslav forces were complying with the UNSC Resolution 1203 to end atrocities in Kosovo, withdraw armed forces from Kosovo, and abide by a ceasefire. The mission was deployed on 25 October 1998, withdrawn in March 1999 and was closed on 9 June 1999.
Task Force ALBA was the name of a humanitarian operation of the Swiss Air Force in Albania under a UNHCR-mission during 1999. The goals of the operation were to restore living conditions, provide humanitarian aid, and prevent the outbreak of civil war. It was the first longterm humanitarian mission for the Air Force abroad and the first use of Swiss Air Force helicopters in the edge region of a war zone.
The Kosovo Agency of Statistics monitors various demographic features of the population of Kosovo, such as population density, ethnicity, education level, health of the populace, economic status, religious affiliations and other aspects of the population. Censuses, normally conducted at ten-year intervals, record the demographic characteristics of the population. According to the first census conducted after the 2008 declaration of independence in 2011, the permanent population of Kosovo had reached 1,810,366.
The 2000 unrest in Kosovo was the result of the United Nations Interim Administration adopting Resolution 1244 on 10 June 1999. The unrest was fought between the Kosovo Force (KFOR), Kosovo Albanians, and Kosovo Serbs. It lasted somewhere from February 16, 2000 – June 6, 2000. An unknown number of Kosovo Albanians and Kosovo Serbs died along with an unknown number injured, while 1 Russian KFOR soldier died from shot wounds and UNMIK vehicles were burned during the unrest.