| The tiny,
ethnic Albanian-majority province of Kosovo lived in peace within
the Slavic-dominated government of Yugoslavia for many years after
WWII. But, when Serbian president Slobadan Milosevic began a
crackdown on the province in 1989, this peace and the defacto
self-rule that allowed it was replaced by ten years of repression,
discrimination, and police brutality against ethnic Albanians by
Yugoslav Serbs.
By the late 90s, Yugoslav Army and
special police units were carrying out a military offensive in
Kosovo in which civilians were the primary victims. Yugoslav
government troops committed extrajudicial executions, systematically
destroyed civilian property, and forced thousands of people to flee
their homes.
In response, the ethnic Albanians
formed the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA). Hopelessly outmanned and
outgunned, this rebel force attempted to protect ethnic Albanians
from the most egregious attacks while carrying out guerilla raids
against Yugoslav troops. World attention was mostly muted until
December 1998, when 46 civilians in the tiny village of Racak were
brutally slaughtered by Yugoslav paramilitary troops. International
outrage followed, leading a few months later to the NATO bombing
campaign that eventually ousted Serbian forces from Kosovo
altogether—but not before they expunged nearly a million ethnic
Albanians into neighboring countries.
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Kosovo Albanian men carry into a mosque one of
46 villagers who were massacred in the Kosovo
village of Racak in December, 1998. The brutal
slayings by a Serbian paramilitary group
provoked world outrage and became the turning
point the conflict. |
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