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.
Ibrahim Rugova was a Kosovo-Albanian politician, scholar, and writer, who served as the President of the partially recognised Republic of Kosova, serving from 1992 to 2000 and as President of Kosovo from 2002 until his death in 2006. He oversaw a popular struggle for independence, advocating a peaceful resistance to Yugoslav rule and lobbying for U.S. and European support, especially during the Kosovo War.
Albin Kurti is a Kosovar Albanian politician who has been serving as Prime Minister of Kosovo since 2021, having previously held the office from February to June 2020.
The University of Pristina is a public university located in Pristina, Kosovo. It is the institution that emerged after the disestablishment of the University of Pristina (1969–1999) as a result of the Kosovo War. The inauguration of the university was a historical occurrence not only for the people of Kosovo, but for the whole Albanian nation. On 15 February, the solemn Parliament session took place, which is also proclaimed as The University of Pristina's Day. In the composition of the newly established University of Pristina were faculties with their headquarters in Pristina: the Faculty of Philosophy, Faculty of Law and Economics, Faculty of Engineering and Faculty of Medicine. Now the University of Pristina has 17 faculties, of which 14 are academic faculties and 3 are faculties of applied sciences. Contained within the emblem is a translation of the name into Latin, Universitas Studiorum Prishtiniensis.
Bajram Kelmendi (1937–1999) was an ethnic Albanian lawyer and human rights activist in Kosovo, Yugoslavia.
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.
The Committee for the National Defence of Kosovo was an Albanian organization founded in Shkodër on 1 May 1918. It mainly consisted of the political exiles from Kosovo and was led by Hoxha Kadri from Pristina. It had existed in looser form since May 1915.
Mehmet Gega was a teacher and an Albanian rights activist. He was born and raised from a noble family, one of the few traditional tetovarian families with old roots. Since he was a young boy, he had a revolutionary spirit and directly recognized the injustices and systematic terror exerted by the Yugoslav gendarmerie in these lands. As a young man, he was noted for his ingenuity, courage, and willingness to resist the violence exercised by the monarchic powers of that time. He was therefore arrested for the first time in 1939.
Esad Mekuli was an Albanian poet, critic and translator. He was the first president of the Academy of Sciences and Arts of Kosovo. Robert Elsie considered him the father of modern Albanian poetry in Yugoslavia, and his influence in Kosovo remains immense.
The University of Pristina was founded in the Socialist Autonomous Province of Kosovo, Socialist Republic of Serbia, Yugoslavia, in the city of Pristina, for the academic year 1969–1970 and functioned until 1999. However, owing to political upheaval, war, successive mutual expulsions of faculty of one ethnicity or the other, and resultant pervasive ethnic-based polarisation, there came to be two disjoint institutions using the same name, albeit idiosyncratically to reflect ethnic identity. Albanian-language activity continues at the original location, whilst the Serbian-language University of Priština has relocated to North Mitrovica, where it maintains its place within the Serbian education system.
Bardhyl Çaushi (1936–1999) was a Kosovo Albanian human rights lawyer and activist. Highly active in cases of human rights abuses in Kosovo, Çaushi was the dean of the school of law of the University of Pristina and the first head of the Independent Jurists of Kosovo. During the NATO bombing of Yugoslavia he was abducted by Yugoslav forces and held in prisons in Serbia. Çaushi's state was unknown until 2005 when his remains were found and identified. His body was returned to Kosovo, where he was reburied with presidential honours.
The Dubrava Prison massacre was the war time killing of at least 99 Kosovo Albanian prisoners and the wounding of around 200 more in the Dubrava Prison, in north-western Kosovo between 22 and 24 May 1999.
Vladimir Lazarević is a Serbian colonel general of the Third Army Corps, and later the commander of the Priština Corps of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. He was indicted by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia 2003 and was convicted in 2009 of command responsibility for war crimes against Kosovo Albanians during the Kosovo War.
Operation Mountain Storm was carried out on 7 November 2007 by special police forces of the Republic of Macedonia against an armed ethnic Albanian group in the Šar Mountains of Brodec above Tetovo region with ties to Albanian paramilitary of the conflicts in Kosovo (1998–1999), Preševo Valley (2000–2001) and Macedonia (2001).
Kadrush Radogoshi is an Albanian poet, novelist, play-writer, and literary critic from Kosovo. He is a dissident who opposed the revocation of the autonomy of Kosovo from the Milosevic's regime, consequently being arrested and imprisoned. Radogoshi served as President of Writers' Union of Kosovo. In 2010, he settled in Canada.
Fehmi Agani was a sociologist and politician in Kosovo who was considered to be the leading thinker and political strategist of the Democratic League of Kosovo (LDK) in the 1990s. He represented the LDK in international negotiations prior to the 1998–1999 Kosovo War, but was murdered, apparently by Serbian soldiers, during the war because his political attitudes.
Roland Bartetzko is a former German soldier and convicted terrorist who fought with the Croatian Defence Council in the Bosnian War (1992–1995) and the Kosovo Liberation Army in the Kosovo War (1998–1999).
Islam Dobra (1934–2012) was a historian and educator from the Drenica region of Kosovo.
Rexh Xhakli was an Albanian American businessman, political activist and philanthropist. He was an important figure of the Albanian-American community, who has had a prominent personal role in the historical lobbying for Kosovo’s fight for independence. In 2021 he was awarded "Honor of the Nation" Decoration posthumously by President of Albania which is the highest decoration to be given in Albania.
Muhamet Pirraku (1944–2014), was Albanian historian and publicist from Kosovo.
