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The Kosovo Liberation Army or KLA (Albanian: Ushtria Çlirimtare e Kosovës or UÇK) was a Kosovar Albanian guerilla group which sought the independence of Kosovo from Yugoslavia in the late 1990s.

Its campaign against Serbian security forces precipitated a major Yugoslav military crackdown which led to the Kosovo War of 1998-1999. Military intervention by Yugoslav security forces and Serb militias within Kosovo prompted an exodus of Kosovar Albanians and a refugee crisis that eventually caused NATO to intervene militarily in order to stop what was widely identified (by NATO nations, human rights organizations, the EU, and western media) as an ongoing campaign of ethnic cleansing.

The conflict was ended by a negotiated agreement that requested UN to take over the administration and political process, including local institutional building and determine the final status of the region.

History

The origins of the KLA are in the political movement after the Second World War with its peak at the demonstrations of 1981, when students, youth and the people of Kosovo expressed their determination for the liberation of the region. Even though the participants of these demonstrations in 1981 were arrested or fled from the country they didn’t retreat from seeking for freedom. Wherever they were: as political refugees in European countries or if they survived in Kosovo, during the decade 1981 – 1990 they created several political organizations. These organizations at the core of their programs had the liberation of Kosovo. Their activists were patriots, brewed with the ideals of liberation and national unification, and they where the core of the future army of Kosovo.

The KLA's historical development had four main phases.

First Phase (1981 – 1990)

The First Phase was the clarification of strategies for liberation of Kosovo. The idea for the armed war, following the numerous peaceful attempts of political organizing resulted with a raise of national conscience to the level of the historical responsibility.

Doctors, teachers, and other educated leaders expelled by the Serbian government in the 70s and 80s became commanders of units of the rebel group. Its program was to create an Albanian national republic within the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia by armed resistance, and to eventually join with Albania.

Second Phase (spring 1991 – February 1998)

The Second Phase was the actual organizing of small guerrilla units and the beginning of armed actions against the Serb police. In 1991 a group of Kosovo Albanian patriots from Kosovo, Switzerland and other countries, under the leadership of Adem Jashari, were trained for guerilla resistance. Adem Jashari was the first to create the group of Drenica and in 1992 he started his first military actions. On April the 5th 1993, a landmark meeting was held with the fighters of the guerrilla units and the political activists. Adem Jashari proposed that all actions were to be carried out under the name of the Kosovo Army. It was in this meeting that Adem Jashari was appointed as General Commander of the Army, which in the fall of 1994 was renamed to Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA).

Adem Jashari coordinated his actions with the other zones such as the Llapi group – led by Zahir Pajaziti, the Dukagjini group led by Luan Haradinaj, Ardian Krasniqi, etc. In 1994, after the action in Drenas (ex-Gllogovc) KLA came with its first communiqué, were they took the responsibility for their completed actions.

In February 1996 the KLA undertook a series of attacks against targets that included police stations and Serb government offices in Western Kosovo. The Serbian authorities denounced it as a terrorist organization and increased the number of security forces in the region. This had the counter-productive effect of boosting the credibility of the embryonic KLA among the Kosovo Albanian population.

Its first militarily organized public appearance came in November 28th 1997 during the burial ceremony of Halit Geci, a teacher from Llausha-Skënderaj, killed by the Yugoslav police. At this ceremony, were present dressed in the uniform of the KLA the future commanders and fighters: Rexhep Selimi, Mujë Krasniqi and Daut Haradinaj.

In February – March 1998, Adem Jashari with his military unit, took under the KLA control the Drenica region. Numerous Yugoslav military and police forces armed and equipped with armored vehicles and heavy artillery attacked Drenica. Adem Jashari fought for three days and nights along with his family (parents, brother, women and children) who renounced moving away from their land and instead fought until all 56 of them - men, women and children, from age of 9 to 74 years old - fell in battle.

Third Phase (March 1998 – September 1998)

The Third Phase started after the heroic death of Adem Jashari, when KLA grew rapidly and expanded in all the regions of Kosovo.

During this phase KLA liberated many zones, created its strategic bases, armed itself, created regular divisions which were prepared in training centers as in other modern armies. In spring-summer 1998, the KLA took control of the main strategic road axes in Central Kosovo. The Yugoslav military and police forces were forced to retreat within the major cities of Kosovo.

The Serbian government was initially uncertain about how to react to the KLA. The Ministry of the Interior (MUP) simply ceased patrolling large areas of Kosovo, while the Yugoslav Army (VJ) often ignored KLA activity. Ibrahim Rugova's "shadow government" also faced a dilemma; it was unwilling to endorse the KLA's violent tactics but was wary of losing support to the radicals. Its position worsened after the KLA assassinated a number of Albanians regarded as "collaborators" with the Serbian government.

The meeting between the American diplomat Richard Holbrook with KLA members in Junik marked the recognition of KLA by USA and thereafter by the EU, which was made official in the International Conference for Kosovo in Rambuille, when the KLA was internationally recognized and took the leading role in the Albanian delegation.

A large scale Serb offensive in August – September 1998 caused the KLA defeats and made it abandon a great part of liberated zones. The KLA retreated in the mountain areas. Serb military forces went into the villages and the urban zones that were under KLA administration, as Rahovec, Malisheva etc and committed massacres against civilians, burned and destroyed these locations in order to weaken the local population, aiming to weaken the popular support to KLA.

Fourth Phase (October 1998 – June 1999)

The Fourth Phase started after the Serb offensive, when after KLA experiencing serious hits did not get destroyed, as was the goal officially declared by the Yugoslav regime. In fact KLA outgrew its numbers and reorganized itself swiftly in bigger formations into brigades with a central command structure and training organization. It established a General Staff (Shtabi i Përgjithshem) of between 16-20 members and divided Kosovo into 7 military operational zones, commanded semi-independently by Local Commanders operating under pseudonyms. The size of the KLA at this point according to KLA Spokesman, Jakup Krasniqi, was over 30,000 men strong, while estimates ranged between 20,000 and 50,000.

The KLA also established a political arm, the Drejtoria Politike, led by prominent Kosovo independence activist Hashim Thaçi. Strategic bases, the Supreme Headquarters, hospitals, radio “Kosova e Lirë” and news agency “Kosovapress” were stationed and defended in the Berisha Mountains.

Obligatory enlisting started parallel to the voluntary enlisting by the order of the Supreme Headquarters. The people answered the call for fighting voluntarily, including a considerable number of Kosovo Albanian emigres boys and girls living and working in Western European countries, USA and elsewere. “The Atlantic Division” was formed in USA by Albanian emigres, which after training and armament entered the fighting in the Koshare and Pashtrik fronts.

The KLA built training camps and bases in the safe haven of north-eastern Albania, even establishing its own military academy (the Akademia e Ardhshme Ushtarake) where ethnic Albanians, formerly Yugoslav Army officers, trained new recruits. According to Serbian accounts, the primary KLA training camps in Albania were Labinot, near Tirana, Tropojë, Kukës and Bajram Curri near the Yugoslav-Albanian border.

The KLA continued to rely principally on small arms but expanded its arsenal to include SA-7 and FIM-92 Stinger shoulder-launched anti-aircraft missiles, as well as light artillery such as mortars.

The war strategy in Kosovo was constituted from the political and the military strategy. The political strategy consisted in the concept of mobilizing and making the people aware for the fight against the Serb occupation as the only way to gain freedom, while ensuring the international support and convincing the international factor for the rightness of this war. This strategy was compiled by the KLA Political Leadership.

At this time, the “special war” accusations as a “terrorist” organization, or as a “Marxist-Leninist” revolutionary movement or as “fundamental Islamic” organization towards KLA where revealed and the truth about the KLA was conveyed.

The building of KLA’s political strategy based upon the respecting of universal principles of international documents and applied with uprightness by its fighters in the war field whom did not attack the unarmed civilians and treated war prisoners with correctness and humanity according to international war norms, convinced the democratic world for the right cause of the Albanian fight and ensured the support from the USA and NATO as powerful outer factors for the liberation of Kosovo. By February 1998, the KLA had been removed from the United States State Department's terrorism list.

The military strategies consisted in the concept of the continuity in growth for the armed fight passing from smaller into bigger units, until all of Kosovo would rise and turn into a destructing force against the enemy, and make them leave from the occupied Kosovo. Despite all the efforts this was not achieved mainly because of the lack in armament. The war tactics evolved according to the phases. In the second phase the war was lead according to guerrilla tactics; in the third phase creation of free zones, blocking of road axes and protection of the free zones by applying frontal warfare from positions prepared by engineering work. The tactics of the frontal war was imposed by the need of protecting the civilian population from Serb massacres. The use of this tactics raised the authority of KLA quickly in Kosovo and in the entire World.

During the fourth phase, when the Serb offensive aiming total ethnic cleansing of Albanians started, it was almost impossible for the KLA to lead a frontal war. Therefore KLA retreated from the defense on any cost of the free zones, except for the strategic basis and the supplying routes. At this stage it was passed into the fights without a clear front line thus giving the enemy hard hits with divisions and brigades all over Kosovo. This was also dictated by the fact that with the beginning of the bombardment from NATO the Serb forces were divided masked and settled into inhabited centers, in Albanian houses and properties. KLA actions, during this time, were coordinated with NATO air strikes.

Full-scale war broke out in Kosovo in March 1999. The Serbian and Yugoslav forces launched an offensive against the KLA. Its commander, Sylejman Selimi, a political appointee with no formal military training, was removed in May 1999 and replaced with Agim Çeku, an ethnic Albanian who had previously served in the Croatian Army as brigadier-general. After Çeku's appointment, the KLA began to take a much more aggressive stance by attacking Yugoslav security force units and forcing them into the open, where they were made easy prey for NATO aircraft.

Organization

During the first phase small guerrilla groups were created according to the underground war schemes. In the second phase the groups were widened and the number of the participants was raised. In the third phase divisions were created under the supervision of professional Kosovo Albanian officers that deserted from the Yougoslav army and those with war experience from Croatia and Bosnia.

KLA took a completely regular shape, with organic dressing, uniforms, armament, barracks training centers in and out of Kosovo. In the last fourth phase, the organizing structure was built in Brigades, as most powerful war units.

In May 1999 the structure was formed from the Supreme Headquarters and seven Operating Zones: Drenica’s first Operating Zone with four brigades, Pashtriku’s second Operational Zone with 6 brigades, Dukagjini’s third Operating Zone with 8 brigades, Shala’s fourth operational Zone with 4 brigades, Llapi’s fifth Operating Zone with four brigades, Nerodime’s sixth Operating Zone with 3 brigades, Karadaku’s seventh Operating zone with one brigade which brought the total number of KLA members between 40'000 and 50'000. With this force KLA resisted to the serb offensive in spring 1999 and in alliance with NATO, KLA in the ground and NATO from the air forced the Serb army to leave from Kosovo.

On June 10th 1999, KLA entered victoriously in Prishtina and the rest of the Kosovo cities.

Logistics

The biggest problem for KLA was supply in weapons and ammunition. They were secured outside Kosovo and brought in with extraordinary difficulties that took the lives of many. KLA-s armament was mostly light automatic weapons, machine guns, mortars and anti tank cannons. It is believed that the KLA acquired .50 BMG Barrett M82 sniper rifles through its sympathizers in the United States (according to the documentary The Brooklyn Connection). The biggest contribution for KLA-s logistics was given by the people of Kosovo, emigres in the West through the financing gathered in the fund “Atdheu në rrezik, Vendlindja thërret”. (Nation Call - Fatherland in Danger)

Leadership Supreme Headquarters was created in November 1994, when the first communiqué was published. At the founding meeting participated Adem Jashari, Xhavit Haziri, Nait Hasani, Azem Syla, Xhavit Haliti, Sokol Bashota, and than it was joined by Zahir Pajaziti and others. The Supreme Headquarters expanded and qualified with the development of the war and the KLA growth. It was constituted by the political leadership led by Hashim Thaçi and the military headquarter that included: the intelligence service, logistics, personnel and mobilization, communication, finance, military police, public information and other operative directories as well. The military headquarter was led by KLA-s General Commander Azem Syla.

Members of this headquarter were: Hashim Thaçi, Sokol Bashota, Jakup Krasniqi, Bislim Zyrapi, Rexhep Selimi, Kadri Veseli, Ramë Buja, Lahi Ibrahimaj, Fatmir Limaj. Members of the political leadership were as follows: Adem Demaçi, Xhavit Haliti, Bardhyl Mahmuti, Jakup Krasniqi, Ramë Buja.

Main characteristics of the KLA were the just fight and determination to sacrifice all for freedom of the homeland. Its acts of heroism are amongst the brightest moments in modern Albanian history.

Foreign volunteers

The KLA included in its ranks foreign volunteers from Sweden, Belgium, the UK, Germany, the US , and France . 30-40 Volunteers from the Croatian Forces International Volunteers Association also participated in training KLA troops .

The KLA usually rewarded after service its international volunteers with a passage home, as a gesture of thanks.

Foreign support

In 1996 a British weekly newspaper, The European carried an article by a French expert stating that "German civil and military intelligence services have been involved in training and equipping the rebels with the aim of cementing German influence in the Balkan area. (...) The birth of the KLA in 1996 coincided with the appointment of Hansjoerg Geiger as the new head of the BND (German secret Service). (...) The BND men were in charge of selecting recruits for the KLA command structure from the 500,000 Kosovars in Albania." Former senior adviser to the German parliament Matthias Küntzel proved later on that German secret diplomacy had been instrumental in helping the KLA since its creation.

James Bissett, Canadian Ambassador to Yugoslavia, Bulgaria and Albania in 1990, recalled in 1992 and retired from Foreign Service to eventually take a job as the head of an International organization in Moscow, helping the Russian Government establish a new immigration agency, writes that "...as early as 1998, the Central Intelligence Agency assisted by the British Special Armed Services were arming and training Kosovo Liberation Army members in Albania to foment armed rebellion in Kosovo. (...) The hope was that with Kosovo in flames NATO could intervene ..." According to Tim Judah, KLA representatives had already met with American, British, and Swiss intelligence agencies in 1996, and possibly "several years earlier" and according to The Sunday Times, "American intelligence agents have admitted they helped to train the Kosovo Liberation Army before NATO's bombing of Yugoslavia" .

Aftermath (post-1999)

When the war ended, NATO and Serbian leaders agreed to a peace settlement that would see Kosovo governed by the United Nations with the KLA being demilitarized. The KLA was, however, not a signatory to the peace accords. KLA agreed to be transformed and disarmed .

NATO sought to bring it into the peace process with a promise to establish a 3,000-strong Kosovo Protection Corps drawn from KLA ranks and charged with disaster response, search and rescue, assistance with de-mining, providing humanitarian assistance, and helping to rebuild infrastructure and communities. The KPC's operational sectors were very similar to those established by the KLA, illustrating the continuity between the two organizations. The KPC took over the former Yugoslav Army barracks; each zone had its battalions established there.

Ex-KLA members also made efforts to spread insurgency into neighboring regions . A new insurgent group called the Liberation Army of Presheva, Medvegja and Bujanoc, consisting of KLA veterans and local ethnic Albanians, began operating in the Presheva Valley in southern Serbia in 2000-2001.

In the Republic of Macedonia, a new organization also named UÇK (this time standing for "National Liberation Army" in Albanian) took up arms against the Slav-dominated government.

In early 2002, Greece was on stand-by after pro-Albanian activities had again crossed over the border; these incidents however, attracted little international attention.

The KLA legacy remains powerful within Kosovo. Its former members still play a major role in Kosovar politics.

Its former political head Hashim Thaçi is now the leader of the Democratic Party of Kosovo and the Prime Minister of Kosovo since January 2008, one of the province's leading political opposition parties.

The KLA's former military head, Agim Çeku, after the war became Prime Minister of Kosovo. The move caused some controversy in Serbia, as Belgrade regarded him as a war criminal, though he was never indicted by the Hague tribunal .

Ramush Haradinaj, a former KLA commander, served briefly as Prime Minister of Kosovo before he willfully turned himself up to the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) at The Hague to stand trial on accusations against him for war crimes and was aqquited of all charges.

Fatmir Limaj, one of the senior commanders of the KLA to also went through a trial process in The Hague, and was acquitted of all charges in November 2005 . He is now a key member of the opposition.

Haradin Bala, an ex-KLA prison guard, was sentenced on 30 November 2005 to 13 years’ imprisonment for the mistreatment of three prisoners at the Llapushnik prison camp, his personal role in the "maintenance and enforcement of the inhumane conditions" of the camp, aiding the torture of one prisoner, and of participating in the murder of nine prisoners from the camp who were marched to the Berisha Mountains on 25 or 26 July 1998 and killed. Bala appealed the sentence and the appeal is still pending.

Yugoslav stance

The Yugoslav authorities regarded the KLA a terrorist group and claimed that the KLA comprised only a few hundred radicals. During and after the war the Yugoslav and later Serbian state and media have also called KLA a “Marxist-Leninist” revolutionary movement, a “fundamental Islamic” organization, a "Mafia-funded" organization, etc.

The Serbian government maintained, in a report, that the KLA had killed and kidnapped 3,276 civilians of various ethnic descriptions including some Albanians. According to the report, from January 1 1998 to June 10 1999 the KLA killed 988 people and kidnapped 287; 335 of them civilians, 351 soldiers, 230 police and 72 unidentified. By nationality, 87 of killed civilians were Serbs, 230 Albanians, and 18 of other nationalities. The report continues that following the withdrawal of Serbian and Yugoslav security forces from Kosovo in June 1999, all casualties were civilians, the vast majority being Serbs.

See also

• Kosovo Protection Corps
• Military of Kosovo
• Kosovo Police Service
• KFOR
• Albanian Armed Forces
• Kosovo War
• Serbian-Albanian Conflict

References

1. UNDER ORDERS: War Crimes in Kosovo - 4. March-June 1999: An Overview
2. Conflict In The Balkans: The Overview; Nato Authorizes Bomb Strikes; Primakov, In Air, Skips U.S. Visit - New York Times
3. KPC/KLA Official Outline - http://www.tmk-ks.org/new/english/historiku/historiku.php
4. KPC/KLA Official Outline - http://www.tmk-ks.org/new/english/historiku/historiku.php
5. "Unknown Albanian 'liberation army' claims attacks", Agence France Presse, February 17, 1996
6. http://www.iwpr.net/?p=bcr&s=f&o=248236&apc_state=henibcr5b891da66b3662d9a16bf0d86e537b3b
7. http://www.aimpress.ch/dyn/trae/archive/data/199904/90420-001-trae-tir.htm
8. http://www.cfiva.org/cfiva/history/index.cfm
9. http://www.cfiva.org/cfiva/news/index.cfm?fuseaction=showItem&newsID=13
10. FALLGOT, Roger (1998): "How Germany Backed KLA", in The European, 21 September-27 September. pp 21-27.
11. KUNTZEL, Matthias (2002): Der Weg in den Krieg. Deutschland, die Nato und das Kosovo (The Road to War. Germany, Nato and Kosovo). Elefanten Press. Berlin, Germany. pp. 59-64.
12. James Bissett
13. JUDAH, Tim (2002): Kosovo: War and Revenge. Yale University Press. New Haven, USA. Page 120
14. The Hague, 21 April 2006 - Appeals Chamber
15. MIPT Terrorism Knowledge Base using a web.archive.org copy of 2 April 2007
16. ^ .Victims of the Albanian terrorism in Kosovo-Metohija (Killed, kidnapped, and missing persons, January 1998 - November 2001)
    Žrtve albanskog terorizma na Kosovu i Metohiji (Ubijena, oteta i nestala lica, januar 1998 - novembar 2001)

General references

• "KLA Action Fuelled NATO Victory", Jane's Defence Weekly, 16 June 1999
• "The KLA: Braced to Defend and Control", Jane's Intelligence Review, 1 April 1999
• "Kosovo's Ceasefire Crumbles As Serb Military Retaliates", Jane's Intelligence Review, 1 February 1999
• "Another Balkan Bloodbath? Part Two", Jane's Intelligence Review, 1 March 1998
• "Albanians Attack Serb Targets", Jane's Defence Weekly, 4 September 1996
• "The Kosovo Liberation Army and the Future of Kosovo", James H. Anderson and James Phillips, 05/13/1999, Heritage Foundation, Heritage Foundation (Washington, USA)

External links

• KPC/TMK Official Site
• The KLA: braced to defend and control Jane's
• Kosovo's Army in Waiting TIME
• KLA-NATO Demilitarization and transformation agreement.
• IISS: "The Kosovo Liberation Army" - Volume 4, Issue 7 - August 1998
• KOSOVAPRESS Ex-KLA News Agency, now close to the Democratic Party of Kosovo
• GOVERNMENT OF SERBIA (2003): White Book on KLA (Part 1, Part 2)

• Irregular military
• History of Kosovo
• National liberation movements
• Albanian separatism