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| ==Aftermath== | ==Aftermath== | ||
| A shooting at the Jashari family, in which Adem Jashari, commander of the KLA triad and surrounding Yugoslav troops, took part in 1998, resulted in the deaths of most members of the Jashari family. The death of Jashari and his family created an international reaction against the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. The Prekaz attack led to a rapid rise in KLA popularity among ethnic Albanians, and village militias were formed in many parts of Kosovo. As news of the killings spread, armed Kosovo Albanian militias appeared throughout Kosovo, trying to avenge Jashari's death as Albanians rushed to join the KLA. The event became a rallying myth for KLA recruitment in connection with the armed resistance to Yugoslav forces. | |||
| ] | |||
| The shootout at the Jashari family compound involving Adem Jashari, a KLA commander and surrounding Yugoslav troops in 1998 resulted in the massacre of most Jashari family members.<ref name="DiLellioSchwandersSievers514515516"/><ref name="KoktsidisDam169">{{harvnb|Koktsidis|Dam|2008|pp=169}}.</ref> The deaths of Jashari and his family generated an international backlash against the ].<ref name="Carmichael558">{{cite book|last=Carmichael|first=Cathie|chapter=Demise of Communist Yugoslavia|editor1-last=Stone|editor1-first=Dane|title=The Oxford Handbook of Postwar European History|year=2012|location=Oxford|publisher=Oxford University Press|isbn=978-0-19-956098-1|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=-YEbj56s_OYC|pages=558}}</ref> The Prekaz attack led to a rapid increase of the KLA's popularity among ethnic-Albanians and village militias were formed in many parts of Kosovo.<ref name="Hudson2009">{{cite book|last=Hudson|first=Kimberly A.|title=Justice, Intervention, and Force in International Relations: Reassessing Just War Theory in the 21st Century|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=W4zndspbem4C&pg=PA138|year=2009|publisher=Routledge|isbn=978-0-415-49025-2|page=138}}</ref> As news of the killings spread, armed Kosovo Albanian militias emerged throughout Kosovo, seeking to avenge Jashari's death as Albanians flocked to join the KLA.<ref name="Petersen154">{{cite book|last=Petersen|first=Roger D.|title=Western Intervention in the Balkans: The Strategic Use of Emotion in Conflict|year=2011|location=New York|publisher=Cambridge University Press|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=fKom-fspjGQC|isbn=978-1-139-50330-3|pages=154}}</ref> The event became a rallying myth for KLA recruitment regarding armed resistance to Yugoslav forces.<ref name="DiLellioSchwandersSievers514515516">{{harvnb|Di Lellio|Schwanders-Sievers|2006a|p=514}}. "We concentrate on one symbolic event – the massacre of the insurgent Jashari family, killed in the hamlet of Prekaz in March 1998 while fighting Serbs troops. This was neither the only massacre nor the worst during the recent conflict..."; pp: 515–516.</ref> | |||
| After the event, Adem Jashari himself was portrayed as a |
After the event, Adem Jashari himself was portrayed in the Yugoslav media as a terrorist, which he was under international law, while the Albanian media portrayed him as a "freedom fighter". The victims of the attack would be described as a fall of "martyrs" in the Albanian media, while they were reported in the Serbian media as "collateral effects of the fight against terrorism". On March 13, about 50,000 people demonstrated against the attack, while on March 15, the Catholic Church called for Mass throughout the region, after which about 15,000 Albanians demonstrated in Pristina. | ||
| At the end of March 1998, more than 50,000 people marched in eight American cities and European capitals to protest the attack, mostly by ethnic Albanians. | |||
| ==See also== | ==See also== | ||
Revision as of 20:19, 4 May 2021
42°46′N 20°49′E / 42.767°N 20.817°E / 42.767; 20.817
| Attack on Prekaz | |||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Part of the Kosovo War | |||||||
 One of the houses attacked by Serbian police | |||||||
| |||||||
| Belligerents | |||||||
| Kosovo Liberation Army | |||||||
| Commanders and leaders | |||||||
| Strength | |||||||
| 100 policemen | 28 militants | ||||||
| Casualties and losses | |||||||
| 58 killed | ||||||
The Attack on Prekaz, also known as the Prekaz massacre, was an operation led by the Special Anti-Terrorism Unit of Serbia on 5 March 1998, to capture of terrorist group Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) . During the operation, KLA leader Adem Jashari and his brother Hamëz were killed, along with nearly 60 other family members.
The action of the Serbian police special units was carried out because they were attacks by the KLA terrorist group on the police, and on non-Albanian citizens, as well as on Albanian citizens, if they cooperate with the regular army and police of the state of Yugoslavia. Several Serb police officers and civilians were killed in the ambush.outposts.
Background
See also: Insurgency in Kosovo (1995–98)Adem and Hamëz Jashari were members of the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA), a militant terrorist group of ethnic Albanians that sought the independence of Kosovo from Yugoslavia. Adem Jashari was responsible for organizing the first armed political formation in Srbica (Skënderaj in Albanian) in 1991.
Pursuing Adem Jashari for the murder of a Serbian policeman, Serbian forces again attempted to assault the Jashari compound in Prekaz on 22 January 1998. On 28 February, a firefight erupted between Albanian militants and a Serbian police patrol in the small village of Likošane. Four Serbian policemen were killed and several were injured. The KLA militants, one of whom was Adem Jashari, escaped. Subsequently, Serbian police killed thirteen people in a nearby household. Later that same day, Serbian policemen attacked the neighbouring village of Ćirez and subsequently killed 26 Albanians. However, the Albanian militants managed to escape and the police decided to move in on Adem Jashari and his family. In the Drenica valley, Jashari decided to stay in his home and he instructed his fighters to stay there as well and resist to the last man.
Operation
On 5 March 1998, the KLA launched another attack on a police patrol in Donji Prekaz, which caused the Serbian police to seek retribution, according to the official Serbian public report. After the second attack, the police prepared a brutal response for the Jasharis. They started hunting down local KLA militants who were forced to retreat to Jashari's compound in the same village.
Yugoslav policemen surrounded the group and invited them to surrender, while urging all other persons to clear the premises. The police further alleged that they gave them two hours to comply. Within the given deadline, dozens of civilians complied with the order and dispersed in safety from the stronghold. According to the police, after the two-hour deadline had expired, Adem Jashari, his brother and most of his family-members, however still refused to comply and remained inside the compound. After a tense verbal stand-off, according to official Serbian statements, Jashari's group responded by firing on the police using automatic weapons as well as mortars, hand grenades and snipers, killing two and injuring three policemen.
In the ensuing violence, the Yugoslav police killed more than sixty people, including both Jashari brothers. The only survivor was Besarta Jashari, Hamëz Jashari's daughter. She claimed that the policemen had "threatened her with a knife and ordered her to say that her uncle (Adem Jashari) had killed everyone who wanted to surrender." Goran Radosavljević, a major in the Serbian Interior Ministry, claimed that "Adem Jashari used women, children and the elderly as hostages...". Yugoslav Army General Nebojša Pavković stated that "It was a normal policing action against a well-known criminal. It was successful. The other details I don't remember".
Evidence gathered, on the spot, proved the attack was intended to arrest armed Albanian terrorists. . Police also attacked other homes of members of the Jashari family, as well as the Lushtaku family's residential complex. In response, the UN Security Council addressed Chapter VII of the United Nations Charter not approving the final measure of the chapter which was military intervention. For the simple reason that, Serbian units legally eliminated the terrorist group, which terrorized the local, not the Albanian population. As well as the police and the army of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia .
Burial
The local Council for the Defense of Human Rights and Freedoms was contacted by the police to collect the bodies, but when the council requested documentation about the deceased none was made public. According to the council, the police had moved the corpses to a Pristina morgue before returning them to the Drenica area. On 9 March, the police warned that if the bodies weren't buried by their families they would be buried by the authorities, while the families requested autopsies to be performed.
On 10 March, the police got a bulldozer and dug a mass grave near Prekaz, and buried the bodies, ten of which were still unidentified at that time. Families had hoped that autopsies might be performed, but a group of doctors from Pristina, the families of the deceased, representatives from the Catholic Church, the Muslim community and international human rights organizations were denied access to the area. The heads of the Serbian police accused the organizations that they had smuggled weapons into the region in the past. On 11 March, the bodies were reburied according to Islamic tradition.
Forty-two individuals, Albanians, were identified to have died in Donji Prekaz during the operation. Six Albanians died in the nearby village of Lauša under unclear circumstances.
Aftermath
A shooting at the Jashari family, in which Adem Jashari, commander of the KLA triad and surrounding Yugoslav troops, took part in 1998, resulted in the deaths of most members of the Jashari family. The death of Jashari and his family created an international reaction against the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. The Prekaz attack led to a rapid rise in KLA popularity among ethnic Albanians, and village militias were formed in many parts of Kosovo. As news of the killings spread, armed Kosovo Albanian militias appeared throughout Kosovo, trying to avenge Jashari's death as Albanians rushed to join the KLA. The event became a rallying myth for KLA recruitment in connection with the armed resistance to Yugoslav forces.
After the event, Adem Jashari himself was portrayed in the Yugoslav media as a terrorist, which he was under international law, while the Albanian media portrayed him as a "freedom fighter". The victims of the attack would be described as a fall of "martyrs" in the Albanian media, while they were reported in the Serbian media as "collateral effects of the fight against terrorism". On March 13, about 50,000 people demonstrated against the attack, while on March 15, the Catholic Church called for Mass throughout the region, after which about 15,000 Albanians demonstrated in Pristina.
At the end of March 1998, more than 50,000 people marched in eight American cities and European capitals to protest the attack, mostly by ethnic Albanians.
See also
References
- ^ "Kosovo killings: Belgrade's official version of events". BBC. 12 March 1998.
- Judah 2002, p. 140.
- "Behind the Kosovo crisis". BBC. 12 March 2000.
- Krieger, Heike (2001). The Kosovo Conflict and International Law: An Analytical Documentation 1974–1999. Cambridge University Press. p. 96. ISBN 0-521-80071-4.
- "ICTY/ LIMAJ, Fatmir/ Judgement, ICTY/ BALA, Haradin/ Judgement, ICTY/ MUSLIU, Isak/ Judgement". sim.law.uu.nl. 30 November 2011. Archived from the original on 6 October 2014.
- Elsie 2011, p. 142. sfn error: no target: CITEREFElsie2011 (help)
- Henriksen 2007, p. 127.
- ^ Rights Watch: Violence in Kosovo
- ^ Cite error: The named reference
Kolstø2009was invoked but never defined (see the help page). - Henriksen 2007, p. 128.
- "Behind the Kosovo crisis". BBC. 12 March 2000.
- ^ Under Orders: War Crimes in Kosovo. Human Rights Watch. 2001. pp. 34, 96–7. ISBN 9781564322647.
- Abrahams & Andersen 1998, p. 31.
- ^ Abrahams & Andersen 1998, p. 32.
Sources
- Abrahams, Fred; Andersen, Elizabeth (1998). Humanitarian Law Violations in Kosovo. Human Rights Watch. pp. 30–32. ISBN 978-1-56432-194-7.
- Di Lellio, Anna; Schwanders-Sievers, Stephanie (2006a). "The Legendary Commander: The construction of an Albanian master‐narrative in post‐war Kosovo" (PDF). Nations and Nationalism. 12 (3): 513–529. doi:10.1111/j.1469-8129.2006.00252.x.
- Di Lellio, Anna; Schwanders-Sievers, Stephanie (2006b). "Sacred Journey to a Nation: The Construction of a Shrine in Postwar Kosovo" (PDF). Journeys. 7 (1): 27–49. doi:10.3167/146526006780457315.
- Judah, Tim (2002). Kosovo: War and Revenge. Yale University Press. ISBN 0300097255.
- Koktsidis, Pavlos Ioannis; Dam, Caspar Ten (2008). "A success story? Analysing Albanian ethno-nationalist extremism in the Balkans" (PDF). East European Quarterly. 42 (2): 161–190.
- Henriksen, Dag (2007). Nato's Gamble: Combining Diplomacy and Airpower in the Kosovo Crisis, 1998–1999. Naval Institute Press. ISBN 9781591143581.