Start | Thomas Hoepker | Daniel Biskup
Soviet Union | Yugoslavia | Kosovo
The conflicts about sovereignty, secession and national self-determination kept the Balkans on tenterhooks, even after the wars in Slovenia, Croatia and Bosnia & Herzegovina had come to an end. In 1998 the clash between Serbia and Kosovo, which was largely populated by Albanians, escalated. The province demanded independence, which it tried to gain by military means with the help of the Kosovo Liberation Army (UÇK). Serbia reacted by sending in special police units and the Yugoslavian army, which led to the expulsion of hundreds of thousands of Kosovo-Albanians. The ethnic cleansing moved the international community to intervene, but all attempts to end the conflict through political and diplomatic channels came to nought. On 24 March 1999 NATO began carrying out air attacks against Serbia-Yugoslavia, but without the sanction of a UN mandate, because Russia refused to approve the bombings. Thus the defence alliance attacked a sovereign state for the first time. With the first operational mission in its history the Bundeswehr participated in the NATO intervention, which ended in a truce on 9 June 1999. Slobodan Milošević was forced to withdraw the Serbian troops from Kosovo, after which the international peacekeeping force KFOR was stationed there under the direction of the United Nations.
