Summary of the KOSOVO war: causes and consequences [with MAP and VIDEO!]

The wars that took place in the area of Yugoslavia during the last decade of the last century they have marked to a large extent the European continent, emerging many nations of those confrontations and marked a series of tensions that remain until the present. To talk about one of the last wars in the area, in this lesson from a PROFESSOR we must talk about the Kosovo war: summary, causes and consequences.

Index

1. What were the causes of the Kosovo war?
2. Kosovo War Summary
3. Consequences of the Kosovo war

To understand the origin of the Kosovo war we must go far back, until XIX century, where in the Kosovo region the first tensions began to exist between the Serbian and Albanian groups.

For years, major clashes in the area such as the Balkan War or the world wars caused violent clashes between Albanians and Serbs, which made after the World War II dictator Tito will deny any attempt to seek nationalism in the region Yugoslav. Even with this, the government of Titus was marked by numerous

Tito's death brought a period of great unrest in the Kosovar area, in which the nationalist ideas and a serious economic crisis they brought numerous demonstrations over the years. The tension in Kosovo was such that the Yugoslav secret police remained in the area during the 1980s, causing dozens of murders and arrests to curb nationalism. While this was happening, the tension between Albanians and Serbs was growing and many Serbs left the region because of it.

Meanwhile, the rest of the region began to talk about the possible end of Yugoslavia, the tension in Kosovo, which led to numerous killings in demonstrations, forced the president Yugoslav to impose a curfew on Kosovo and change the constitution to curb ethnic hatred of the region. It was this constitutional reform that caused Kosovo to lose the autonomous role that dictator Tito had given it after World War II.

After a unofficial referendum on independence, winning the absolute Yes, the so-called Kosovo War began.

After proclaiming independence, Ibrahim Rugova as President of Kosovo, which ensured that the region did not participate in any of the Yugoslav wars that faced Serbs, Croats and Bosnians in the 1990s and that ended with Yugoslavia as it was known.

The repression exerted by the Serbs against Kosovo made Rugova form the Kosovo Liberation Army, carrying out attacks in 1997 against Serbian policemen and calling for the pressure on the Kosovars to be stopped and the region to achieve its independence. Little by little the KLA separated from Rugova's interests, being a much less peaceful group than the president.

The response from the Serbs was not long in coming and, a few months later, the cities suspected of having the KLA bases of operations they received bombings originating in Serbia. Almost a hundred Albanians, including children and women, were killed in these attacks, prompting the KLA to receive new enemy adherents from Serbia.

But the attack on these cities was not the only attack carried out to take revenge for the death of Serbian policemen, but the President of Serbia, Slobodan Milosevic, ordered a massacre in the city of Prekaz with almost a hundred dead and after that he launched a repression throughout Kosovo in a kind of ethnic cleansing.

NATO's entry into the war

The numerous attacks carried out by the Serbs, the sieges of more than ten cities in Kosovo and the deaths of dozens of civilian men and women made NATO decide to participate in the war. The organization asked Serbia to sign a peace treaty or a massive bombardment would begin on the nation.

Serbia refused to sign the treaty and opposed NATO participating in any way in the war. NATO without consulting the UN launched a bombardment between the months of March to June 1999 against the Serbian population in which some of the greatest powers in the world intervened.

Due to the bombings the call was signed Kumanovo agreement, according to which the Serbs were withdrawing from Kosovo and leaving it in the hands of an international group. The KLA was disbanded and Kosovo remains a disputed territory to this day.

Image: Slideshare

To conclude this lesson we will talk about the consequences Kosovo war, that is, the main elements that took place due to the end of the war and the changes generated by it. The main consequences of the Kosovo war were:

• Yugoslavia had its end, with divisions that ended what had been a great European nation.
• The population of Kosovo had a population reduction from the beginning of the war to its end, partly because of the departure of Serbs, because of the deaths in the war or because of the people who left the region out of fear of revenge.
• We are not totally sure of the low during the war, but demographic studies have shown that they were much higher than those reported by governments.
• It was one of the few wars after World War II in which there were genocide trials.
• Kosovo did not achieve its independence and even today many nations do not consider it as a sovereign region.

Image: Discover the history

If you want to read more articles similar to Kosovo war: summary, causes and consequences, we recommend that you enter our category of Story.

• Malcolm, N., & University Pres New York. (1998). Kosovo: A short history (pp. 218-230). London: Papermac.
• Judah, T. (2002). Kosovo: War and revenge. Yale University Press.
• Bieber, F. D. (2003). Understanding the war in Kosovo. Psychology Press.