11 JUNE 1999 – KOSOVO DEFENSE CAMPAIGN BEGINS

11 JUNE 1999 – KOSOVO DEFENSE CAMPAIGN BEGINS

After an extended NATO air campaign that began 24 March 1999, a NATO-led international peacekeeping force called the Kosovo Force (KFOR) deployed to the Serbian autonomous region of Kosovo on 11 June 1999 to maintain the tenuous peace between warring ethnic factions in the region.

The roots of the conflict between Kosovan Serbs and Kosovan Albanians are centuries-old but came to a boiling point in the aftermath of Yugoslavia’s dissolution in the early 1990’s and the ensuing genocidal conflicts in Bosnia and Croatia.

In 1998 Kosovo, home an ethnic Albanian majority and a sizable ethnic Serbian minority, became the site of a civil war between Albanian separatists and the Serbian government of Slobodan Milošević, who had grown infamous for his perpetration of crimes against humanity in Bosnia.

By March 1999, efforts to arbitrate the conflict and end the cycles of ethnic cleansing had failed, and NATO began a bombing campaign targeted against the Serbian central authorities. 

In early June, Serbia agreed to allow an international peacekeeping force into Kosovo oversee the return of refugees and maintain peace during the reconstruction process.

The 30,000-strong KFOR began fanning out across Kosovo on 12 June. The peacekeepers discovered that much of the region had descended even further into lawlessness with the departure of the Serbian government’s troops, with ethnic Albanians using the vacuum to exact revenge on ethnic Serbs.

KFOR peacekeepers, including elements of the U.S. Army’s 1st Infantry Division, 82d Airborne Division, and 1st Armored Division, quickly quelled the unrest and facilitated the flood of returning refugees. 

The Kosovo Defense Campaign officially ended on 31 December 2013, and a KFOR peacekeeping group of under 4,000 troops remains in Kosovo, having successfully restored stability to the region.