their homes, a provision that was a lost cause from
the start. A NATO-led implementation force,
IFOR (supported by US units), was sent to ensure
that the agreement was carried out on the ground;
suspected war criminals were to be arrested and
tried by the International Tribunal set up at The
Hague; at the head of the list of war criminals were
Karadzic and General Mladic, both of whom were
still in Bosnian-Serb territory in 2004. The princi-
pal culprit, Milosˇevic ́ was left unharmed because
‘ethnic cleansing’ had created workable cohesive
territories which are now populated overwhelm-
ingly either by Muslims, Croats or Serbs. Thus the
greatest wrong perpetrated by the wars also created
the possibility of ending it. Croatia recovered
Vucovar and eastern Slavonia, sending thousands
of Serbs as refugees to Serbia. The Dayton peace
terms have been supervised in Bosnia since 1996
by the 35,000-strong IFOR. It has been successful
in policing the frontiers and preventing renewed
bloodshed but not in enforcing other parts of the
agreement such as the free movement of people, or
the return of refugees to their homes; not all the
principal war criminals have been apprehended.
Milosˇevic ́’s next victims of ‘ethnic cleansing’ were
the Albanians in Kosovo.
As long as Milosˇevic ́ remained in power in
Belgrade there could be no peace; Kosovo became
the next flash point. The Dayton Peace Accords in
1995 had ignored the issue. Kosovo a province of
Yugoslavia is inhabited by 1.8 million Kosovari
ethnic Albanians and just 200,000 Serbs. Milosˇevic ́
had risen to power on the back of beating the
nationalist drum there. After Bosnia it became his
last bloody repression. The Albanian nationalist
movement led by Ibrahim Rugosa had demanded
independence as Yugoslavia was breaking up, but
Rugosa had no thought of resorting to violence.
The militants prepared to fight were at first a small
group, the Kosovan Liberation Army, KLA,
founded in 1993 but of little significance until they
acquired arms through Albania in 1997. Even so
they were no match for the Serbs. Serb attempts to
annihilate them, to counter sporadic attacks on
their police and military, led to their committing
brutal reprisals. From that point in 1998 the con-
flict escalated until a massive counter-attack by the
Serbs drove the small number of fighters into the
hills and with them a quarter of a million Kosovans
fleeing in terror of their lives.
The West could not simply stand by as a new
wave of atrocities spread through the villages and
towns, but Clinton thought he could achieve a
solution through mediation and negotiation.
Public opinion in Europe and the US was deeply
divided. So diplomacy was tried. In February
1999 Madeleine Albright, Clinton’s secretary of
state made a final effort. Kosovan Albanian and
Serb delegates assembled at Rambouillet in the
outskirts of Paris. Madeleine Albright tabled the
American settlement terms, telling the Kosovans
that if they did not sign them they would lose
NATO support, and the Serbs that rejection
would entail the use of force to expel them from
Kosovo. The terms were tough. A referendum
three years hence would decide the future of
Kosovo. The Kosovar Albanians were unhappy
and wanted immediate independence. For the
Serbs the terms were humiliation. They were
required to withdraw their military and police
while Kosovo would be occupied by a peace-
keeping NATO force. NATO troops would also
enter the rest of Yugoslavia. The Kosovans reluc-
tantly accepted, Milosˇevic ́ rejected these terms. In
the face of Russian objections NATO now went
ahead to make good their threat. Fears that pro-
voking the Russians could lead to a catastrophic
widening of the conflict as some people warned,
were groundless. President Yeltsin was dependent
on the economic assistance of the US quite apart
from being unable to threaten NATO’s forces
convincingly.
NATO began bombing the Serb military in
Kosovo on 24 March 1999. The war had begun
without resort to the United Nations where the
Russian veto would have blocked action. Clinton
expected the Serbs to submit quickly to the air
war. But the Serbs did not withdraw. On the con-
trary they resorted to ethnic cleansing, massacring
innocent civilians and driving 800,000 Kosovan
ethnic Albanians across the borders of Albania,
Macedonia and Montenegro. Here they were
housed and fed in makeshift refugee camp sites
organised in Macedonia and Montenegro by
NATO under UN auspices. The Albanians cared924 GLOBAL CHANGE: FROM THE 20th TO THE 21st CENTURY