A Successful Humanitarian Intervention: The Kosovar Case

The end of the Cold War began the increasing acceptance of the concept of foreign military intervention
in order to prevent the mass violation of human rights by the governments of sovereign states. The end
of the Cold War and the dissolving of the Warsaw Pact also led to the question of NATO’s purpose, as it
was mainly formed to counter the Warsaw Pact of the Soviet Union. Therefore, when Slobodan
Milošević Yugoslav government launched its military ethnic cleansing program directed at the Muslim
population of Kosovo, NATO sought to reestablish its questioned foothold in the international arena and
intervened into the issue (Alexander, 2000).

Historically, the area of Kosovo has long been considered part of Serbia. Since the famed Battle of the
Blackbirds in 1389 which saw Serbia fighting off an Ottoman invasion near Kosovo’s present day capital
Pristina, Kosovo has been thought of as a Serbian territory. Subsequent battles in Kosovo stretching
from 1389 to 1453 saw the defeat of numerous Balkan armies against the Ottomans, essentially allowing
Ottoman domination of the region. Serbians also tied the primarily Muslim Albanians to the Ottomans as
sympathizers to their Empire, further complicating the matter. The Kosovars enjoyed extended
privileges when under the reign of Joseph Tito when they were part of Yugoslavia. These privileges
included self-autonomy and a pseudo-form of independence within Yugoslavia without actually being
independent. Once Slobodan Milosevic gained presidency of Serbia, he stripped the territory of self-
autonomy, in March of 1998 (Hedges, 1997). As the majority Kosovars were Muslim, he pressured the
Yugoslav government to refuse to recognize the rights of the majority because Kosovo was an area
sacred to the Serbs, such as Cathedral church of Christ the Savior. He planned to replace Albanian
language and culture with Serbian institutions. Ethnic tension and violence rose dramatically when
Ibrahim Rugova’s passive policy of resistance failed, and the small revolutionary group Kosovo Liberation
Army (the KLA) began to fight against the tyranny of the Serbian Milošević government. In 1999,
Yugoslavia was bombed by NATO for 78 days, leading to the withdrawal of Yugoslav troops from the
Serbian province of Kosovo. As a result, Kosovo was made independent as a NATO statelet and under
the joint governance of UNMIK (the United Nations Mission in Kosovo) and the KLA (Glazebrook, 2016).

NATO's goals in connection to the contention in Kosovo were set out in the Statement issued at the
Extraordinary Meeting of the North Atlantic Council held at NATO on 12 April 1999 and were reaffirmed
by Heads of State and Government in Washington on 23 April 1999 (NATO, 1999):

• A verifiable end to all military activity and the prompt consummation of violence and
suppression;

• The withdrawal of the military, police and paramilitary powers from Kosovo;

• Positioning international military presence in Kosovo;

• The secured return of all those displaced from their homes and a liberal access to all forms of
humanitarian aid;
• ensuring the foundation of a political structure for Kosovo based on the Rambouillet Accords, in
compliance with international law and the Charter of the United Nations

On 13 October 1998, the North Atlantic Council issued actuation orders (ACTORDs) for the execution of
both restricted air strikes and a staged air battle in Yugoslavia. On 15 October the NATO Kosovo
Verification Mission (KVM) Agreement for a truce was agreed upon. The Serbian withdrawal initiated
close by 25 October 1998, and Operation Eagle Eye started on 30 October (NATO, 2002). The inadequacy
of the KVM, a contingent of unarmed Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) to
monitor peace, was made evident when the fighting broke out once again in December 1998. A
statement was issued by NATO on January 30th, 1999 announcing that the Secretary General of NATO
may authorize airstrikes on the Yugoslav territory to compel compliance with demands. The campaign,
which had involved over 1000 aircrafts, started on the 24th of March and lasted till the 11th of June,
1999. NATO’s concerns for the humanitarian perspective to the refugee crisis in Kosovo led it to
intervene into the inhuman violence against the ethnic Albanians in Kosovo. Its humanitarian war led its
image to metamorphose into that of a humanitarian agency at the international arena, and this meant
that its resume for proficiency or expertise, and its image of integrity in the field depended on the
degree of success they had in their mission to help the Kosovo Albanians. This was an evolution for
NATO, as it was no longer defined just by its military and diplomatic identity, but also developed a new
humanitarian character (Huysmans, 2002).

Reference

1. Alexander, K. (2000). NATO's Intervention in Kosovo: The Legal Case for Violating Yugoslavia's
"National Sovereignty" in the Absence of Security council Approval. [ebook] pp.1-3. Available at:
http://www.hjil.org/articles/hjil-22-3-alexander.pdf [Accessed 15 Feb. 2019].
2. Glazebrook, D. (2016). Kosovo: NATO’s Success Story? [online] CounterPunch.org. Available at:
https://www.counterpunch.org/2016/01/06/kosovo-natos-success-story/ [Accessed 15 Feb.
2019].
3. Hedges, C. (1997). Resistance to Serbia Turns Violent in Kosovo. [online] Nytimes.com. Available
at: https://www.nytimes.com/1997/02/17/world/resistance-to-serbia-turns-violent-in-
kosovo.html [Accessed 15 Feb. 2019].
4. Huysmans, J. (2002). Shape-shifting NATO: humanitarian action and the Kosovo refugee
crisis. Review of International Studies, 28(03).
5. NATO. (1999). NATO's role in relation to the conflict in Kosovo. [online] Available at:
https://www.nato.int/kosovo/history.htm [Accessed 16 Feb. 2019].
6. NATO. (2000). Operation Allied Force Former "Determined Force. [online] Available at:
https://web.archive.org/web/20110927191114/http://www.afsouth.nato.int/archives/operatio
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