June 18, 2013
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Description
The Kosovo War was an armed conflict in Kosovo that lasted from 28 February 1998 until 11 June 1999. It was fought by the forces of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, the Kosovo Albanian rebel group known as the Kosovo Liberation Army and NATO.
The KLA, formed in 1991, initiated its first campaign in 1995 when it launched attacks targeting Serbian law enforcement in Kosovo, and in June 1996 the group claimed responsibility for acts of sabotage targeting Kosovo police stations. In 1997, the organization acquired a large amount of arms through weapons smuggling from Albania, following a rebellion which saw large numbers of weapons looted from the country's police and army posts. It was regarded by the United States, the United Kingdom and France as a terrorist group until 1998, when it was de-listed without explanation. In 1998, KLA attacks targeting Yugoslav authorities in Kosovo resulted in an increased presence of Serb paramilitaries and regular forces whom subsequently began pursuing a campaign of retribution targeting KLA sympathizers and political opponents in a drive which left 1,500 to 2,000 combatants and civilians dead and led to the plight of hundreds of thousands of refugees. After attempts at a diplomatic solution failed, NATO intervened billing the campaign in Kosovo as a "humanitarian war", while Yugoslav forces continued to commit atrocities during the two month-long aerial bombardment of Yugoslavia. Despite initial western claims of hundreds of thousands of Kosovo Albanians killed or missing, subsequent investigations have recovered the remains of several thousand victims, and in 2001 a United Nations court found that although there had been a "a systematic campaign of terror, including murders, rapes, arsons and severe maltreatments", Serb troops had not committed genoicide in the region, because the intent was to remove rather than eradicate the Albanian population.
(via Freebase)
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