Latest news with #KosovoLiberationArmy
Arab News
19-04-2025
- Politics
- Arab News
1998
DUBAI: By the standards of many recent conflicts, the Kosovo war in 1998 and 1999 was brief. It began with an armed uprising by the Kosovo Liberation Army against Serbian rule over the Kosovo region of rump Yugoslavia. President Slobodan Milosevic's regime in Belgrade responded with overbearing force, spawning a massive refugee crisis and raising the specter of a Bosnia-like slaughter of Kosovar Muslims. NATO intervened with a prolonged campaign of bombing, leading to a peace accord and an end to the fighting. In February 2008, Kosovo declared its independence from Serbia amid unprecedented scenes of joy and jubilation. The US and several EU member countries recognized Kosovo as an independent state, but Serbia, backed by Russia, did not. Since then Kosovo, a parliamentary democracy with a lower-middle-income economy, has been in a kind of limbo. As someone who grew up a child of the Bosnian war in Sarajevo in the 1990s, the events in nearby Kosovo are etched forever in my mind. I am all too aware of the ancient hatreds that lay beneath the events there. Historically, Kosovo lay at the heart of the Serbian empire, having been the site of the coronations of a number of Serbian kings during the Middle Ages. Arab News' front page covered escalating Serbian assaults on Albanian villages in Kosovo. Despite gaining a measure of autonomy under the former Yugoslavia in 1974, the mainly Muslim ethnic Albanian population of the province chafed at the continued dominance of ethnic Serbs. In the late 1980s, the leader of the Kosovars, Ibrahim Rugova, initiated a policy of non-violent resistance to the abrogation of the province's constitutional autonomy by Milosevic. The president and members of Kosovo's Serbian minority had long fretted about the fact that ethnic Albanians were in demographic and political control of a region that held deep significance to Orthodox Christian Serbs. During the 1992-1995 war in Bosnia, and even after the break-up of Yugoslavia, Kosovars began to be viewed with growing suspicion by Serb nationalists. Popular support, meanwhile, swung in favor of ethnic Albanian radicals who were convinced their demands for autonomy could not be secured through Rugova's peaceful methods. In 1996, the Kosovo Liberation Army emerged, carrying out sporadic attacks against Serbian police and politicians in a campaign that grew in intensity over the following two years. The heavy-handed response of the Serbian police, paramilitary groups and army triggered a massive refugee crisis that drew the attention of the international media and community. An informal coalition made up of the US, the UK, Germany, France, Italy and Russia, known as the Contact Group, demanded an immediate ceasefire, among other things. Kosovo conflict begins with armed uprising by the Kosovo Liberation Army. NATO launches campaign of airstrikes against Serbia. NATO airstrikes end 11 weeks after they began. Yugoslavia ceases to exist, renamed State Union of Serbia and Montenegro. Montenegro declares independence on May 21, 2006. First direct talks since 1999 between ethnic Serbian and Kosovar leaders on future status of UN-run Kosovo take place in Vienna. Kosovo unilaterally declares independence from Serbia, a move still contested by some to this day. The UN Security Council condemned what it described as an excessive use of force by Serbia and imposed an arms embargo but this failed to halt the violence. On March 24, 1999, NATO began a campaign of airstrikes targeting Serbian military targets. In response, Serbian forces drove hundreds of thousands of Kosovars into Albania, Macedonia (now North Macedonia) and Montenegro. Though the wartime suffering of the Kosovars elicited sympathy and support from the Islamic world, some leaders criticized NATO for sidestepping the UN and labeled its military campaign a 'humanitarian war.' The legitimacy of organization's unilateral decision to launch airstrikes was questionable under international law. However, the UN secretary-general at the time, Kofi Annan, supported the intervention on principle, saying: 'There are times when the use of force may be legitimate in the pursuit of peace.' Arab countries such as Libya and Iraq, which had close relations with Yugoslavia, predictably insisted on a political solution. The Gulf states, led by Saudi Arabia, maintained a focus on the provision of humanitarian assistance and efforts to find a peaceful resolution to the conflict. Saudi Arabia was the first country to respond with aid, dispatching two relief flights that delivered more than 120 tonnes of aid, including tents, dates, blankets and carpets, according to official statements at the time. A Saudi C-130 Hercules relief plane carrying aid flew daily from Jeddah or Riyadh to Albania's capital, Tirana, where Saudi Embassy and air force personnel handled the cargo. Hundreds of displaced Kosovars queue up at Cegrane refugee camp in Macedonia to get supplies after their arrival. AFP The Kingdom also provided a field hospital in Tirana, which opened on May 24, 1999, and 10 other health centers across Albania and Macedonia. A Saudi telethon appeal on April 16 raised almost $19 million. The Islamic Relief Organization in Jeddah, which helped organize it, said it sent $12 million in humanitarian aid. A separate Kuwaiti TV fundraising initiative raised $7 million in one day, with the emir, Sheikh Jaber Al-Ahmed Al-Sabah, personally donating $1 million. Organizations from the UAE set up one of the largest relief camps in Kukes, near the Albanian border, which provided about 10,000 Kosovar refugees with food and access to basic amenities, including a fully equipped field hospital. The Red Crescent set up refugee camps in Macedonia and Albania. The NATO bombing campaign lasted 11 weeks and eventually expanded to Belgrade, causing heavy damage to the city's infrastructure and the inadvertent deaths of many civilians. In June 1999, the Yugoslav government accepted a peace proposal mediated by Russia and Finland. NATO and Yugoslavia signed a peace accord outlining plans for the withdrawal of troops and the return of nearly 1 million refugees and 500,000 internally displaced Kosovars. Most ethnic Serbs left the region. NATO's humanitarian military intervention saved the lives of thousands of innocent Kosovars.
New European
12-03-2025
- New European
A place of peace and resistance
Weaving through a makeshift chicane, easing off the accelerator momentarily, we pass the raised bar of the first checkpoint. It appears unmanned, but there is a sense that someone is watching. Yet this is not a war zone, at least not today, but the approach to Visoki Dečani Monastery in Kosovo, a Unesco World Heritage Site, listed in 2021 as one of Europe's most endangered heritage sites. It has also been on Unesco's List of World Heritage in Danger for almost 20 years. Since the war in 1999, this 14th-century Serbian Orthodox monastery has been guarded by Nato peacekeepers. Signs warn us not to take photos. Camouflaged soldiers and vehicles patrol the banks of the River Bistrica, the surrounding foothills of the so-called 'Accursed Mountains'. The perimeter is crowned with barbed wire. At the gate, Nato soldiers inspect our documentation. We enter through a narrow arch to be greeted by a young monk. There is a 20-strong brotherhood here, and for the weekend, their home is our home. Before us stands the monastery, a mix of Gothic and Byzantine styles. Most of its original frescoes are intact. 'Without people, this is just a monument,' says Father Sava, the abbot at Visoki Dečani. They produce candles here and cheese, while tending the surrounding land and orchards. Self-sufficiency is the aim – the wine comes from their own vineyards. The church economy provides much-needed employment for locals. Substantially reduced by empire and communism, the monastery has been threatened by the refusal to implement a court ruling granting it 24 hectares of land. It needed that land to keep going. Eventually the Kosovo government backed down. After 700 years of often turbulent history, the monks of Visoki Dečani have taken on a strong symbolic resonance. The feast day of the monastery's patron saint, Holy King Stefan of Dečani, on November 24, is attended by thousands. Coachloads of pilgrims observe the liturgy, light candles and buy souvenirs. Where Kosovo's status is concerned, Father Sava insists that any solutions must be focused on people, not territories. 'Too many people identify as belonging to a community as opposed to humanity,' he says remorsefully. A proposed land swap between Serbia and Kosovo became a big issue during Donald Trump's first term, leading Father Sava to ponder, in jest or not, what kind of land deal might appeal to this most transactional of presidents. At the same time, he recognises the need to explore new ways to reach out to young people. The monks are no longer required to make a journey on foot to Constantinople in order to discuss matters of the church, as had been the case during the Ottoman empire. His long-standing nickname, Cyber-monk, arises from his embrace of social media. Communicating the inner life of the monastery builds connections beyond the faithful. On the rear window of a passing 4×4 is a flag of the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA), the force that fought against the Serbians. Several of the KLA's former leaders are on trial for war crimes and crimes against humanity at the Kosovo Specialist Chambers in The Hague. Albanian nationalist songs blare out from the stereo. It is a daily provocation – the monks try to ignore it. In A Time to Keep Silence , in which he described his stays in monasteries across Europe, Patrick Leigh Fermor described the 'nineteen hours a day of absolute and god-like freedom' that made up the monastic daily routine. For the monks of Visoki Dečani, there is no such luxury. Contemporary reality dictates that they can't afford to keep silent. Ian Bancroft is a writer and diplomat based in the former Yugoslavia
