Kosovo Conflict

2158 Words5 Pages
bulb-icon

Recommended: Kosovo conflicts between Albanians and Serbs

The land of Kosovo has been plagued with tension for hundreds of years, being claimed by several surrounding countries. The two biggest contenders, Albanians in Kosovo and Serbia have been fighting for the land, which culminated in a full war from 1998-1999. The war brought international attention to the war crimes committed by both sides, and proved that the two countries had years to go before coming to a solution. The Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) led by Kosovo Albanians, and the Serbian militia led by President Slobodan Milošević committed heinous crimes against their enemies. Crimes range from ethnic cleansing to rape, and destruction of whole villages. The violence created a serious refugee problem that is still relevant today. Thousands of people were forced out of their homes and lost everything in the process. The fear and violence are always there, which is evident in the movie Before the Rain directed by Milcho Manchevski (1994). Before the Rain shows the personal side of the violence before the war. All the characters are affected by the prejudice and hate between the Macedonians and Albanians, and guns and fear are present in everyone. On the other hand, the two documentaries Stolen Kosovo directed by Václav Dvořák and The Weight of Chains directed by Boris Malagurski (2010) discusses the aggression towards the Serbians and the interference of NATO. The conflict in Kosovo does not have a right or wrong side because both countries lost thousands of civilians, and inspired cultural prejudice and hate. Although Kosovo did declare independence in 2008, Serbia does not recognize that, and contention still remains. The problems in Kosovo did not start or stop with the Kosovo war, and it caused wide spread displacement and vi...

... middle of paper ...

...an Border." BBC News Europe. N.p., 26 Jul 2011. Web. 6 Dec 2013.
Malagurski, Boris, dir. The Weight of Chains. Journeyman Pictures, 2010. Film. 6 Dec 2013.
Malcolm, Noel. Kosovo: A Short History. New York City: New York University Press, 1998. Print.
Manchevski, Milcho, dir. Before the Rain. Dir. Marc Baschet. Mikado Film, 1994. Film. 6 Dec 2013.
Norway. Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre. Kosovo:Durable Solutions Still Elusive 13 Years After Conflict. Norwegian Refugee Council, Web.
"Serbia: 9 Arrested for Kosovo War Crimes." Human Rights Watch. N.p., 16 Mar 2010. Web. 6 Dec 2013.
Simons, Marlise. "5 Top Serbs Found Guilty of War Crimes in Kosovo." New York Times [Paris] 26 Feb 2009, Web. 6 Dec. 2013.
"The Charges Against Milosevic." BBC News. 11 Mar 2006. Web. 6 Dec 2013.
"Under Orders: War Crimes in Kosovo." Human Rights Watch. 26 Oct 2001. Web. 6 Dec 2013.

Show More
Related

  • Ethnic Conflict in Bosnia and Kosovo in the 1990s

    465 Words  | 1 Pages

    In 1992 (and with resolutions created earlier) Kosovo's Albanian majority also voted to secede from Serbia and Yugoslavia, hoping to unite with Albania. The conflict in Kosovo could be seen as t...

    Read More

  • Ethnic Breakup in Yugoslavia

    1737 Words  | 4 Pages

    The last two decades of the twentieth century gave rise to turbulent times for constituent republics of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, eventually leading them to split apart. There were a number of damaging aspects of past history and of the political and economic circumstances that contributed to the breakup and eventually caused the situation to snowball into a deadly series of inter-ethnic conflicts. Yugoslavia was reunified at the end of the war when the communist forces of Josip Broz Tito liberated the country. Under Tito, Yugoslavia adopted a relatively liberal form of government in comparison to other East European communist states at the time and experienced a period of relative economic and political stability until Tito’s death in 1980. In addition to internal power struggles following the loss of their longtime leader, Yugoslavia faced an unprecedented economic crisis in the 1980’s. As other communist states began to fall in the late 1980’s and early 1990’s, some former Communist leaders abandoned communism and founded or supported ethno-national parties, blaming the economic suffering on the flaws of communism and other ethnic groups. The ethnic violence that followed would not have been possible without the willingness of politicians from every side to promote ethno-nationalist symbols and myths through media blitzes, which were especially effective due to low levels of education in the former Yugoslavia. Shadows of the events of World War II gave these politicians, especially the Serbs, an opportunity to encourage the discussion and exaggeration of past atrocities later in the century. The ethnic violence in the former Yugoslavia can be traced back to a series of linked damaging factors such as the de...

    Read More

  • Sierra Leone's Revolutionary United Front

    860 Words  | 2 Pages

    “Sierra Leone Rebels Forcefully Recruit Child Soldiers.” HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH. 1 June 2000. Web. 4 Dec. 2013.

    Read More

  • Illegal war in Kosovo

    1062 Words  | 3 Pages

    President Clinton addressed the people of the United States on June 10, 1999 over the United States’ mission in Kosovo. Kosovo is a province of Serbia, which makes this war a civil war. Highlights of his speech outline the goals that he wanted to obtain in this Humanitarian intervention, as he called it. The mission had flaws innate to it from the beginning. The three-tiered goal of the President was clearly stated. The first is to allow the Kosovar people back into their homes. The second is to require Serbian forces to leave Kosovo. The last thing was to deploy an international security force, with NATO at its core, to protect all the people that troubled the land, Serbians and Albanians alike. The message was clear, but was not followed in regards to international law, and NATO’s Charter, and even the three clearly stated missions. The involvement in Kosovo’s war is illegal, and the President of the United States has pushed NATO into committing wartime crimes and has used the Powers-of-Office in an unconstitutional manner, which resulted in the illegal intervention of a sovereign state.

    Read More

  • The Armenian Genocide and the American Response

    2117 Words  | 5 Pages

    Thomassian, Vache. "The Constantinople War Crimes Trials: The Legal Response to the Armenian Genocide." Haytoug Magazine RSS. Haytoug: The Official Publication of the Armenian Youth Federation Western United States, 29 June 2011. Web. 05 Dec. 2013. .

    Read More

  • Bosnian Genocide Essay

    1893 Words  | 4 Pages

    ...d Crimes Against Humanity. Farmington Hills, MI: Macmillan Reference USA, 2004. (accessed March 24, 2014).

    Read More

  • Canada 's The Syrian Refugee Crisis

    1898 Words  | 4 Pages

    According to the 1951 Refugee Convention, refugee is a term applied to anyone who is outside his/her own country and cannot return due to the fear of being persecuted on the basis of race, religion, nationality, membership of a group or political opinion. Many “refugees” that the media and the general public refer to today are known as internally displaced persons, which are people forced to flee their homes to avoid things such as armed conflict, generalized violations of human rights or natural and non-natural disasters. These two groups are distinctly different but fall ...

    Read More

  • Slobodan Milosevic and Genocide in the Former Yugoslavia

    2158 Words  | 5 Pages

    Greenfield, Daniel M. "Crime of Complicity in Genocide: How the International Criminal Tribunals for Rwanda and Yugoslavia Got It Wrong, and Why It Matters." The Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology 98.3 (2008): 921-24. HeinOnline. Web. 18 Apr. 2011.

    Read More

  • Bosnian Genocide: Independence, War, and Atrocities

    284 Words  | 1 Pages

    The Bosnian Serb military are the ones who started and committed the Bosnian genocide and other crimes against humanity. The ICTY charged over 160 individuals for crimes they have committed during the conflict in Yugoslavia.

    Read More

  • NATO Bombing of Serbia

    720 Words  | 2 Pages

    ...perts agree that the air strikes against Kosovo by NATO were illegal because they were never authorized by the security council. However, libertarian expert cite humanitarian international law to justify NATO's actions. For example the former UN Secretary General Kofi Annan stated that NATO was justified and its actions were legitimate and that a new form of intervention was emerging- for cases involving repression of minorities that will and must take precedence over other concerns of the law of states. Thus any fragrance violations of humanitarian law, be it crimes against humanity, violations of human rights in the Geneva convention or ethnic cleansing, may provide a legitimate basis for action on the part of international community because all of these have international consequences and go well beyond sacred principles of the domestic jurisdiction of state.8

    Read More

  • The Croatian War of Independence

    1400 Words  | 3 Pages

    Gagnon, V. P. (2004). The myth of ethnic war: Serbia and Croatia in the 1990s. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press.

    Read More

  • Ethnic Cleansing in Kosovo What Happened Before and After NATO Intervened

    1475 Words  | 3 Pages

    Imagine waking up one day to the thundering of blows given at the door telling you to “open up or be shot down.” It is the Serb police, and they are telling you that you and your whole family had to leave your home immediately. This is how it went for many Albanian people during what some Serb extremists called “demographic genocide.” This was the beginning of what many would call the Kosovo War, and it lasted from March to June 1999. After NATO’s intervention in Kosovo, something strange happened. Now the people being victimized were the Serbs and anyone who was “friendly” to them. In this paper, I will speak about what happened before and after the war in Kosovo.

    Read More

  • The Sebrenica Genocide

    739 Words  | 2 Pages

    On July 11th at 11:00 am more than 20,000 refugees’- women, children, elderly and the sick flee to the Dutch Base 3 miles away. Later that afternoon 2 Dutch F-16 planes drop 2 bombs on Serb positions, the Serbs then threaten to kill the Dutch hostages and ...

    Read More

  • The Syrian Refugee Crisis

    1420 Words  | 3 Pages

    The Web. The Web. 20 Jan 2014. Europe Failing Syrian Refugees. Global Issues.

    Read More

  • Are Human Rights Universal?

    1599 Words  | 4 Pages

    Magno, A., (2001) Human Rights in Times of Conflict: Humanitarian Intervention . Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs, 2 (5). [online] Available from: [Accessed 2 March 2011]

    Read More

More about Kosovo Conflict

Open Document