Kosovo

The term Kosovo War contains 2 conflicts:

• 1996-99: Guerrilla conflict between Albanian separatists and the Serbian and Yugo Slav security forces, which Albanians characterised as a national liberation struggle and Serbs saw as Terrorism.

• 1999: War between Yugo Slavia and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) between March 24 and June 10, 1999, during which NATO heavily bombed Yugoslav targets, Albanian fighters continued to attack Serbian forces and Kosovo Serb civilians, and Serbia-n/Yugoslav forces continued to fight Albanian rebels, amidst a massive displacement of the Albanian population of Kosovo.

  • On the ground, the fighting worsened and produced massive outflows of refugees from Kosovo: within a week of the war starting, over 300,000 Kosovo Albanians had fled into neighboring Albania and Macedonia, with many thousands more displaced within Kosovo. By April, the United Nations was reporting that 850,000 people - the vast majority of them Albanians - had fled their homes.

    • A postwar statistical analysis of the patterns of displacement, conducted by Patrick Ball of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, found that there was a direct correlation between Serbian security force operations and refugee outflows, with NATO operations having very little effect on the displacements.

Slobodan Milosevic came to power in 1987.