In late March, 1999,
NATO began bombing targets in Yugoslavia, demanding
that Serbian troops pull out of the province of
Kosovo. But Serbian police and Yugoslav Army forces
proved more steadfast than most has anticipated, and
what many thought would be a quick weekend of
airstrikes mutated into a intense 11-week bombing
campaign. During the bombing, enraged Serbian troops
brutally expelled over 800,000 ethnic Albanian
residents out of Kosovo altogether, mostly into
neighboring Albania and Macedonia. Exhausted and
traumatized, they carried what few belongings they
could grab before fleeing or being expelled. They also
brought eyewitness accounts of atrocities committed
against ethnic Albanian civilians inside Kosovo by
Yugoslav soldiers, Serbian police, and paramilitaries.
Witnesses and victims told of summary executions, mass
murders, destruction of civilian property, and other
war crimes. After nearly three months of uncertain
living in hastily-erected refugee camps, Serbian
forces finally withdrew in June, 1999. The 800,000
ethnic Albanians joyfully returned home to Kosovo—but
many found homes and villages had been ransacked and
destroyed. Kosovo today remains technically a part of
Serbia, though the ethnic Albanians there continue to
lobby the world community for an independent state.
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Over 40,000 Kosovo Albanians lived in the
sprawling Cegrane refugee camp in Macedonia in
the Spring of 1999. Hundreds of thousands of
Kosovo Albanians were driven from their homes
into camps in Macedonia and Albania in 1999 by
the Serbian military. |
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