Operation Horseshoe
Encyclopedia
Operation Horseshoe is a name attributed to a large-scale antiterrorism campaign which during the NATO bombing escalated to ethnic cleansing
of Kosovo Albanians carried out by Serbian Police and Yugoslav Army
during the Kosovo War
.
The Yugoslav Army and the Serbian Police in early 1999 "in an organized manner, with significant use of state resources" conducted a broad campaign of violence
against Albanian
civilians to expel them from Kosovo
and thus maintain political control of Belgrade
over the province. Serbian campaign of ethnic cleansing was cited in support of the NATO intervention
. After the war, International War Crimes Tribunal
sentenced some of the top Serbian political and military leaders for forcible population transfer
, deportation
and persecution
of Kosovo civilians.
Some authors dispute the existence of such a plan or some of its aspects. Also, it remains unclear whether the codename "Operation Horseshoe" was ever used for a Serbian military operation.
government to a Serbia
n plan to expel the Albanian
population of Kosovo
. The operation's title suggest that Serbian military and police would squeeze the KLA and civilians in an attack launched from three sides, driving out the population as refugees fled through the open southwestern end of the horseshoe
into Macedonia
and Albania
.
The plan was detailed by German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer
in a press conference on 7 April 1999. He stated that the German government had unearthed operational plans agreed by Yugoslav commanders in late February 1999 to carry out a massive ethnic cleansing
operation in Kosovo. According to Fischer, this had been put into effect as early as March 1999 — a month before the start of NATO operations — when Yugoslav President Slobodan Miloševic
had told him that "he would be finished with the ethnic Albanian separatists within a week". Fischer accused Miloševic of engaging in "ethnic warfare" directed against his own people, in which a whole ethnic group had become the "victim of systematic expulsion" to "reorient the political geography" of Kosovo.
Reports from other countries supported Fischer's allegations. The Times
of London reported on 8 April that:
Further details were provided on 9 April by Rudolf Scharping
, the German Defence Minister, at a press conference held in Bonn. He presented maps containing the names of towns and villages which showed arrows representing Yugoslav army and police militia units progressively encircling Kosovo in a horseshoe-shaped pincer movement. He was quoted as saying that: "Operation Horseshoe provided clear evidence that President Miloševic had long been preparing the expulsions from Kosovo and that he had simply used the time gained by the Rambouillet peace talks
to organise army and police units for the campaign."
The Baltimore Sun suggested on 11 April that NATO had known about the Horseshoe plan for some time, but had underestimated its severity. The then British Foreign Secretary later supported the German reports, telling a parliamentary committee "that there was a plan developed in Belgrade known as Operation Horseshoe which was for the cleansing of Kosovo of its Kosovo population. That plan has been around for some time."
attacks culminated in Operation Horseshoe directed not only against KLA fighters but also including systematic expulsions of Kosovar
civilians. During the armed conflict in 1998 Yugoslav Army
and Serbian police used excessive and random force, which resulted in property damage, displacement of population and death of civilians. Some consider that Belgrade
had already unleashed Operation Horseshoe as early as the summer of 1998, when hundreds of thousands of Kosovar Albanians were driven from their home
s.
Withdrawal of OSCE monitors, together with the start of NATO's bombing campaign, encouraged Milosevic to implement this "orchestrated elements to the campaign of expulsions, which could be described as a plan". On 20 March 1999, the Serbian offensive, known as Operation Horseshoe, was already in motion. Obviously, this operation was planned in advance.
, Serbian police and Serb paramilitary, in an organized manner, with significant use of state resources, conducted a broad campaign of violence against Albanian civilians to expel them from Kosovo
and thus maintain political control of Belgrade
over the province.
According to the legally binding verdict of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia
, federal Army and Serbian police after the NATO bombing of Yugoslavia
24 March 1999, systematically attacked villages with Albanian population, abuse
d, robbed
and kill
ed civilians, ordering them to go to Albania
or Montenegro
, burning their house
s and destroying by their property
. Within the campaign of violence
, Albanians were mass expelled from their homes, murdered, sexually assaulted
, and their religious buildings destroyed. Serbian forces committed numerous war crimes during the implementation of "joint criminal enterprise
" whose aim was to "through the use of violence and terror, force a significant number of Kosovo Albanians to leave their homes, across the border, the state government to retain control over Kosovo." Ethnic cleansing
of the Albanian population is performed by the following model: first the army surrounded a place, then followed the shelling, then the police entered the village, and often with them and the army, and then crimes occurs (murders, rapes, beatings, expulsions...).
Serbia
n government also implemented a criminal strategy known as identity cleansing
, which consist of "confiscation of personal identification, passports, and other such documents to make it difficult or impossible for those driven out to return". Expelled Kosovar Albanians were systematically stripped of identity and property documents including passport
s, land titles, automobile license plates, identity cards and other documents. Physicians for Human Rights
reports that nearly 60 percent of respondents to its survey observed Serbian forces removing or destroying personal identification documents. This criminal practice suggesting the government
was trying to block their return.
In addition to confiscating the relevant documents from their holders, efforts were also made to destroy any actual birth records (and other archive
s) which were maintained by governmental agencies, so as to make the "cleansing" complete.
, by March 1999 (prior to NATO bombing), more than 200,000 Albanian civilians were internally displaced, almost 70,000 Albanians had fled the province to neighboring countries and Montenegro, and a further 100,000 Yugoslav nationals, mostly Kosovar Albanians, had sought asylum in Western Europe. Also, thousands of ethnic Albanian villages in Kosovo had been partially or completely destroyed by burning or shelling.
Within three weeks of the start of NATO strategic bombing during the Kosovo War, there were 525,787 refugees from Kosovo in neighboring countries. A month later, on 12 May, the total number of refugees had risen to 781,618. By June 1999, the Yugoslav military, Serbian police and paramilitaries expelled 862,979 Albanians from Kosovo, A claim disputed by many Serbian politicians. and several hundred thousand more were internally displaced, in addition to those displaced prior to March. Approximately 440,000 refugees crossed the border to Albania
and 320,000 to FYR Macedonia. Montenegro
hosted around 70,000 refugees, while Bosnia and Herzegovina
received more than 30,000. Amnesty International
estimated that "nearly one million
people have been forced to flee Kosovo".
Radio Television of Serbia
never showed the columns of Albanians
expelled by Serbian police and paramilitaries, except when a convoy of fleeing Albanians was killed by NATO bombs. Moreover, Milosevic's propaganda trying to convince international public that huge columns of refugees fleeing Kosovo because of NATO's bombing, not Serbian military operations.
charged Slobodan Milosevic and other Serbian officials with crimes against humanity including murder
, forcible population transfer
, deportation
and persecution
of Kosovo civilians:
Presiding Judge Iain Bonomy was imposing sentence said that "deliberate actions of these forces during the campaign provoked the departure of at least 700,000 ethnic Albanians from Kosovo in the short period from late March to early June 1999."
stated that "The United Nations Commissioner for Refugees registered the first refugees outside Kosovo on 27 March ..., three days after the [NATO] bombings began".
The existence of the Horseshoe plan was immediately denied by the Serbian officials. Slobodan Milošević
labeled it as a "fabrication of the German Defence Ministry". Milosevic denied a policy of ethnic cleansing during the NATO bombing in Kosovo, stated that "when aggression stops, when bombing stops, then it will be very easy to continue (the) political process".
Ratomir Tanić, a witness at Milošević's subsequent war crimes trial, said that Horseshoe was a colloquial nickname for a "completely different" Yugoslav army plan, that should come into effect only if the ethic Albanian population take the side of the foreign aggressor in case of aggression on Yugoslavia. Then the Army would "neutralising the Albanian strongholds". Tanić stated that the army leadership didn't use this plan during the Kosovo War, "because there was no external aggression or Albanian rebellion".
In April 2000, Heinz Loquai, a retired German brigadier general, published a book on the war that claimed that the German government's account had been based on a general analysis by a Bulgaria
n intelligence agency of Yugoslav behaviour in the war, which was turned into a specific "plan" by the German Defence Ministry. According to Loquai, the Bulgarian analysis concluded that the goal of the Serbian military was to destroy the Kosovo Liberation Army
, and not to expel the entire Albanian population. He also pointed to a factual flaw in the German government's presentation - it had named the plan "Potkova", which is the Croatian
and Bulgarian
word for horseshoe
, whereas the Serbian
word is potkovica.
Ethnic cleansing
Ethnic cleansing is a purposeful policy designed by one ethnic or religious group to remove by violent and terror-inspiring means the civilian population of another ethnic orreligious group from certain geographic areas....
of Kosovo Albanians carried out by Serbian Police and Yugoslav Army
Military of Serbia and Montenegro
The Military of Serbia and Montenegro were the armed forces of the Serbia and Montenegro...
during the Kosovo War
Kosovo War
The term Kosovo War or Kosovo conflict was two sequential, and at times parallel, armed conflicts in Kosovo province, then part of FR Yugoslav Republic of Serbia; from early 1998 to 1999, there was an armed conflict initiated by the ethnic Albanian "Kosovo Liberation Army" , who sought independence...
.
The Yugoslav Army and the Serbian Police in early 1999 "in an organized manner, with significant use of state resources" conducted a broad campaign of violence
Violence
Violence is the use of physical force to apply a state to others contrary to their wishes. violence, while often a stand-alone issue, is often the culmination of other kinds of conflict, e.g...
against Albanian
Albanians
Albanians are a nation and ethnic group native to Albania and neighbouring countries. They speak the Albanian language. More than half of all Albanians live in Albania and Kosovo...
civilians to expel them from Kosovo
Kosovo
Kosovo is a region in southeastern Europe. Part of the Ottoman Empire for more than five centuries, later the Autonomous Province of Kosovo and Metohija within Serbia...
and thus maintain political control of Belgrade
Belgrade
Belgrade is the capital and largest city of Serbia. It is located at the confluence of the Sava and Danube rivers, where the Pannonian Plain meets the Balkans. According to official results of Census 2011, the city has a population of 1,639,121. It is one of the 15 largest cities in Europe...
over the province. Serbian campaign of ethnic cleansing was cited in support of the NATO intervention
1999 NATO bombing of Yugoslavia
The NATO bombing of Yugoslavia was NATO's military operation against the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia during the Kosovo War. The strikes lasted from March 24, 1999 to June 10, 1999...
. After the war, International War Crimes Tribunal
International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia
The International Tribunal for the Prosecution of Persons Responsible for Serious Violations of International Humanitarian Law Committed in the Territory of the Former Yugoslavia since 1991, more commonly referred to as the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia or ICTY, is a...
sentenced some of the top Serbian political and military leaders for forcible population transfer
Population transfer
Population transfer is the movement of a large group of people from one region to another by state policy or international authority, most frequently on the basis of ethnicity or religion...
, deportation
Deportation
Deportation means the expulsion of a person or group of people from a place or country. Today it often refers to the expulsion of foreign nationals whereas the expulsion of nationals is called banishment, exile, or penal transportation...
and persecution
Persecution
Persecution is the systematic mistreatment of an individual or group by another group. The most common forms are religious persecution, ethnic persecution, and political persecution, though there is naturally some overlap between these terms. The inflicting of suffering, harassment, isolation,...
of Kosovo civilians.
Some authors dispute the existence of such a plan or some of its aspects. Also, it remains unclear whether the codename "Operation Horseshoe" was ever used for a Serbian military operation.
Horseshoe plan
Horseshoe plan (German: Hufeisenplan) was the name given by the GermanGermany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...
government to a Serbia
Serbia
Serbia , officially the Republic of Serbia , is a landlocked country located at the crossroads of Central and Southeast Europe, covering the southern part of the Carpathian basin and the central part of the Balkans...
n plan to expel the Albanian
Albanians
Albanians are a nation and ethnic group native to Albania and neighbouring countries. They speak the Albanian language. More than half of all Albanians live in Albania and Kosovo...
population of Kosovo
Kosovo
Kosovo is a region in southeastern Europe. Part of the Ottoman Empire for more than five centuries, later the Autonomous Province of Kosovo and Metohija within Serbia...
. The operation's title suggest that Serbian military and police would squeeze the KLA and civilians in an attack launched from three sides, driving out the population as refugees fled through the open southwestern end of the horseshoe
Horseshoe
A horseshoe, is a fabricated product, normally made of metal, although sometimes made partially or wholly of modern synthetic materials, designed to protect a horse's hoof from wear and tear. Shoes are attached on the palmar surface of the hooves, usually nailed through the insensitive hoof wall...
into Macedonia
Republic of Macedonia
Macedonia , officially the Republic of Macedonia , is a country located in the central Balkan peninsula in Southeast Europe. It is one of the successor states of the former Yugoslavia, from which it declared independence in 1991...
and Albania
Albania
Albania , officially known as the Republic of Albania , is a country in Southeastern Europe, in the Balkans region. It is bordered by Montenegro to the northwest, Kosovo to the northeast, the Republic of Macedonia to the east and Greece to the south and southeast. It has a coast on the Adriatic Sea...
.
The plan was detailed by German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer
Joschka Fischer
Joseph Martin "Joschka" Fischer is a German politician of the Alliance '90/The Greens. He served as Foreign Minister and Vice Chancellor of Germany in the cabinet of Gerhard Schröder from 1998 to 2005...
in a press conference on 7 April 1999. He stated that the German government had unearthed operational plans agreed by Yugoslav commanders in late February 1999 to carry out a massive ethnic cleansing
Ethnic cleansing
Ethnic cleansing is a purposeful policy designed by one ethnic or religious group to remove by violent and terror-inspiring means the civilian population of another ethnic orreligious group from certain geographic areas....
operation in Kosovo. According to Fischer, this had been put into effect as early as March 1999 — a month before the start of NATO operations — when Yugoslav President Slobodan Miloševic
Slobodan Milošević
Slobodan Milošević was President of Serbia and Yugoslavia. He served as the President of Socialist Republic of Serbia and Republic of Serbia from 1989 until 1997 in three terms and as President of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia from 1997 to 2000...
had told him that "he would be finished with the ethnic Albanian separatists within a week". Fischer accused Miloševic of engaging in "ethnic warfare" directed against his own people, in which a whole ethnic group had become the "victim of systematic expulsion" to "reorient the political geography" of Kosovo.
Reports from other countries supported Fischer's allegations. The Times
The Times
The Times is a British daily national newspaper, first published in London in 1785 under the title The Daily Universal Register . The Times and its sister paper The Sunday Times are published by Times Newspapers Limited, a subsidiary since 1981 of News International...
of London reported on 8 April that:
Further details were provided on 9 April by Rudolf Scharping
Rudolf Scharping
Rudolf Scharping is a German politician .Scharping studied politics, sociology and law at the University of Bonn. He joined the Social Democratic Party in 1966. He was Member of the Rhineland-Palatine Parliament from 1975 to 1994. From 21 May 1991 to 15 October 1994 he was prime minister of the...
, the German Defence Minister, at a press conference held in Bonn. He presented maps containing the names of towns and villages which showed arrows representing Yugoslav army and police militia units progressively encircling Kosovo in a horseshoe-shaped pincer movement. He was quoted as saying that: "Operation Horseshoe provided clear evidence that President Miloševic had long been preparing the expulsions from Kosovo and that he had simply used the time gained by the Rambouillet peace talks
Rambouillet Agreement
The Rambouillet Agreement is the name of a proposed peace agreement between then-Yugoslavia and a delegation representing the ethnic-Albanian majority population of Kosovo. It was drafted by the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation and named for Chateau Rambouillet, where it was initially proposed...
to organise army and police units for the campaign."
The Baltimore Sun suggested on 11 April that NATO had known about the Horseshoe plan for some time, but had underestimated its severity. The then British Foreign Secretary later supported the German reports, telling a parliamentary committee "that there was a plan developed in Belgrade known as Operation Horseshoe which was for the cleansing of Kosovo of its Kosovo population. That plan has been around for some time."
Serbian military operations
Operations before NATO intervention
Serbian military response to KLAKosovo Liberation Army
The Kosovo Liberation Army or KLA was a Kosovar Albanian paramilitary organization which sought the separation of Kosovo from Federal Republic of Yugoslavia in the 1990s....
attacks culminated in Operation Horseshoe directed not only against KLA fighters but also including systematic expulsions of Kosovar
Kosovo
Kosovo is a region in southeastern Europe. Part of the Ottoman Empire for more than five centuries, later the Autonomous Province of Kosovo and Metohija within Serbia...
civilians. During the armed conflict in 1998 Yugoslav Army
Yugoslav Army
Aside from the Yugoslav People's Army, the terms Yugoslav Army, Army of Yugoslavia, or Military of Yugoslavia may refer to:* Yugoslav Partisans , the Yugoslav resistance army during World War II...
and Serbian police used excessive and random force, which resulted in property damage, displacement of population and death of civilians. Some consider that Belgrade
Belgrade
Belgrade is the capital and largest city of Serbia. It is located at the confluence of the Sava and Danube rivers, where the Pannonian Plain meets the Balkans. According to official results of Census 2011, the city has a population of 1,639,121. It is one of the 15 largest cities in Europe...
had already unleashed Operation Horseshoe as early as the summer of 1998, when hundreds of thousands of Kosovar Albanians were driven from their home
Home
A home is a place of residence or refuge. When it refers to a building, it is usually a place in which an individual or a family can rest and store personal property. Most modern-day households contain sanitary facilities and a means of preparing food. Animals have their own homes as well, either...
s.
Withdrawal of OSCE monitors, together with the start of NATO's bombing campaign, encouraged Milosevic to implement this "orchestrated elements to the campaign of expulsions, which could be described as a plan". On 20 March 1999, the Serbian offensive, known as Operation Horseshoe, was already in motion. Obviously, this operation was planned in advance.
Operations after NATO intervention
With the beginning of NATO bombing of Yugoslavia on 24 March 1999, Serbian forces accelerated Operation Horseshoe. In the Spring of 1999, the Yugoslav ArmyYugoslav Army
Aside from the Yugoslav People's Army, the terms Yugoslav Army, Army of Yugoslavia, or Military of Yugoslavia may refer to:* Yugoslav Partisans , the Yugoslav resistance army during World War II...
, Serbian police and Serb paramilitary, in an organized manner, with significant use of state resources, conducted a broad campaign of violence against Albanian civilians to expel them from Kosovo
Kosovo
Kosovo is a region in southeastern Europe. Part of the Ottoman Empire for more than five centuries, later the Autonomous Province of Kosovo and Metohija within Serbia...
and thus maintain political control of Belgrade
Belgrade
Belgrade is the capital and largest city of Serbia. It is located at the confluence of the Sava and Danube rivers, where the Pannonian Plain meets the Balkans. According to official results of Census 2011, the city has a population of 1,639,121. It is one of the 15 largest cities in Europe...
over the province.
According to the legally binding verdict of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia
International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia
The International Tribunal for the Prosecution of Persons Responsible for Serious Violations of International Humanitarian Law Committed in the Territory of the Former Yugoslavia since 1991, more commonly referred to as the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia or ICTY, is a...
, federal Army and Serbian police after the NATO bombing of Yugoslavia
1999 NATO bombing of Yugoslavia
The NATO bombing of Yugoslavia was NATO's military operation against the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia during the Kosovo War. The strikes lasted from March 24, 1999 to June 10, 1999...
24 March 1999, systematically attacked villages with Albanian population, abuse
Abuse
Abuse is the improper usage or treatment for a bad purpose, often to unfairly or improperly gain benefit. Abuse can come in many forms, such as: physical or verbal maltreatment, injury, sexual assault, violation, rape, unjust practices; wrongful practice or custom; offense; crime, or otherwise...
d, robbed
Robbery
Robbery is the crime of taking or attempting to take something of value by force or threat of force or by putting the victim in fear. At common law, robbery is defined as taking the property of another, with the intent to permanently deprive the person of that property, by means of force or fear....
and kill
KILL
KILL is the sixth album by Detroit rock band Electric Six.In initial press releases, the band described the album as being a return to a sound more akin to their debut album, but this was later revealed by front-man Dick Valentine to be more gimmick than truth.An explicit video was released for...
ed civilians, ordering them to go to Albania
Albania
Albania , officially known as the Republic of Albania , is a country in Southeastern Europe, in the Balkans region. It is bordered by Montenegro to the northwest, Kosovo to the northeast, the Republic of Macedonia to the east and Greece to the south and southeast. It has a coast on the Adriatic Sea...
or Montenegro
Montenegro
Montenegro Montenegrin: Crna Gora Црна Гора , meaning "Black Mountain") is a country located in Southeastern Europe. It has a coast on the Adriatic Sea to the south-west and is bordered by Croatia to the west, Bosnia and Herzegovina to the northwest, Serbia to the northeast and Albania to the...
, burning their house
House
A house is a building or structure that has the ability to be occupied for dwelling by human beings or other creatures. The term house includes many kinds of different dwellings ranging from rudimentary huts of nomadic tribes to free standing individual structures...
s and destroying by their property
Property
Property is any physical or intangible entity that is owned by a person or jointly by a group of people or a legal entity like a corporation...
. Within the campaign of violence
Violence
Violence is the use of physical force to apply a state to others contrary to their wishes. violence, while often a stand-alone issue, is often the culmination of other kinds of conflict, e.g...
, Albanians were mass expelled from their homes, murdered, sexually assaulted
Sexual assault
Sexual assault is an assault of a sexual nature on another person, or any sexual act committed without consent. Although sexual assaults most frequently are by a man on a woman, it may involve any combination of two or more men, women and children....
, and their religious buildings destroyed. Serbian forces committed numerous war crimes during the implementation of "joint criminal enterprise
Joint Criminal Enterprise
Joint criminal enterprise ' is a legal doctrine used by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia to prosecute political and military leaders for mass war crimes, including genocide, committed during the Yugoslav wars 1991-1999....
" whose aim was to "through the use of violence and terror, force a significant number of Kosovo Albanians to leave their homes, across the border, the state government to retain control over Kosovo." Ethnic cleansing
Ethnic cleansing
Ethnic cleansing is a purposeful policy designed by one ethnic or religious group to remove by violent and terror-inspiring means the civilian population of another ethnic orreligious group from certain geographic areas....
of the Albanian population is performed by the following model: first the army surrounded a place, then followed the shelling, then the police entered the village, and often with them and the army, and then crimes occurs (murders, rapes, beatings, expulsions...).
Serbia
Serbia
Serbia , officially the Republic of Serbia , is a landlocked country located at the crossroads of Central and Southeast Europe, covering the southern part of the Carpathian basin and the central part of the Balkans...
n government also implemented a criminal strategy known as identity cleansing
Identity cleansing
Identity cleansing is defined as "confiscation of personal identification, passports, and other such documents in order to make it difficult or impossible for those driven out to return".-Kosovo Albanians example:...
, which consist of "confiscation of personal identification, passports, and other such documents to make it difficult or impossible for those driven out to return". Expelled Kosovar Albanians were systematically stripped of identity and property documents including passport
Passport
A passport is a document, issued by a national government, which certifies, for the purpose of international travel, the identity and nationality of its holder. The elements of identity are name, date of birth, sex, and place of birth....
s, land titles, automobile license plates, identity cards and other documents. Physicians for Human Rights
Physicians for Human Rights
Physicians for Human Rights was founded in 1986 by a small group of doctors who believed the unique scientific expertise and authority of health professionals could bring human rights violations to light and provide justice for victims...
reports that nearly 60 percent of respondents to its survey observed Serbian forces removing or destroying personal identification documents. This criminal practice suggesting the government
Government
Government refers to the legislators, administrators, and arbitrators in the administrative bureaucracy who control a state at a given time, and to the system of government by which they are organized...
was trying to block their return.
In addition to confiscating the relevant documents from their holders, efforts were also made to destroy any actual birth records (and other archive
Archive
An archive is a collection of historical records, or the physical place they are located. Archives contain primary source documents that have accumulated over the course of an individual or organization's lifetime, and are kept to show the function of an organization...
s) which were maintained by governmental agencies, so as to make the "cleansing" complete.
Number of refugees
According to the United Nations High Commissioner for RefugeesUnited Nations High Commissioner for Refugees
The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees , also known as The UN Refugee Agency is a United Nations agency mandated to protect and support refugees at the request of a government or the UN itself and assists in their voluntary repatriation, local integration or resettlement to...
, by March 1999 (prior to NATO bombing), more than 200,000 Albanian civilians were internally displaced, almost 70,000 Albanians had fled the province to neighboring countries and Montenegro, and a further 100,000 Yugoslav nationals, mostly Kosovar Albanians, had sought asylum in Western Europe. Also, thousands of ethnic Albanian villages in Kosovo had been partially or completely destroyed by burning or shelling.
Within three weeks of the start of NATO strategic bombing during the Kosovo War, there were 525,787 refugees from Kosovo in neighboring countries. A month later, on 12 May, the total number of refugees had risen to 781,618. By June 1999, the Yugoslav military, Serbian police and paramilitaries expelled 862,979 Albanians from Kosovo, A claim disputed by many Serbian politicians. and several hundred thousand more were internally displaced, in addition to those displaced prior to March. Approximately 440,000 refugees crossed the border to Albania
Albania
Albania , officially known as the Republic of Albania , is a country in Southeastern Europe, in the Balkans region. It is bordered by Montenegro to the northwest, Kosovo to the northeast, the Republic of Macedonia to the east and Greece to the south and southeast. It has a coast on the Adriatic Sea...
and 320,000 to FYR Macedonia. Montenegro
Montenegro
Montenegro Montenegrin: Crna Gora Црна Гора , meaning "Black Mountain") is a country located in Southeastern Europe. It has a coast on the Adriatic Sea to the south-west and is bordered by Croatia to the west, Bosnia and Herzegovina to the northwest, Serbia to the northeast and Albania to the...
hosted around 70,000 refugees, while Bosnia and Herzegovina
Bosnia and Herzegovina
Bosnia and Herzegovina , sometimes called Bosnia-Herzegovina or simply Bosnia, is a country in Southern Europe, on the Balkan Peninsula. Bordered by Croatia to the north, west and south, Serbia to the east, and Montenegro to the southeast, Bosnia and Herzegovina is almost landlocked, except for the...
received more than 30,000. Amnesty International
Amnesty International
Amnesty International is an international non-governmental organisation whose stated mission is "to conduct research and generate action to prevent and end grave abuses of human rights, and to demand justice for those whose rights have been violated."Following a publication of Peter Benenson's...
estimated that "nearly one million
Million
One million or one thousand thousand, is the natural number following 999,999 and preceding 1,000,001. The word is derived from the early Italian millione , from mille, "thousand", plus the augmentative suffix -one.In scientific notation, it is written as or just 106...
people have been forced to flee Kosovo".
Radio Television of Serbia
Radio Television of Serbia
Radio Television of Serbia or Serbian Broadcasting Corporation is the public broadcaster in Serbia. It broadcasts and produces a variety of news, drama, and sports programming through radio, television and the Internet. RTS is, since July 2001, a member of the European Broadcasting Union. RTS is...
never showed the columns of Albanians
Albanians in Kosovo
Albanians are the largest ethnic group in Kosovo . According to the 1991 Serbian census, boycotted by Albanians, there were 1,596,072 ethnic Albanians in Kosovo or 81.6% of population...
expelled by Serbian police and paramilitaries, except when a convoy of fleeing Albanians was killed by NATO bombs. Moreover, Milosevic's propaganda trying to convince international public that huge columns of refugees fleeing Kosovo because of NATO's bombing, not Serbian military operations.
War crime trials
International Criminal Tribunal for the Former YugoslaviaInternational Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia
The International Tribunal for the Prosecution of Persons Responsible for Serious Violations of International Humanitarian Law Committed in the Territory of the Former Yugoslavia since 1991, more commonly referred to as the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia or ICTY, is a...
charged Slobodan Milosevic and other Serbian officials with crimes against humanity including murder
Murder
Murder is the unlawful killing, with malice aforethought, of another human being, and generally this state of mind distinguishes murder from other forms of unlawful homicide...
, forcible population transfer
Population transfer
Population transfer is the movement of a large group of people from one region to another by state policy or international authority, most frequently on the basis of ethnicity or religion...
, deportation
Deportation
Deportation means the expulsion of a person or group of people from a place or country. Today it often refers to the expulsion of foreign nationals whereas the expulsion of nationals is called banishment, exile, or penal transportation...
and persecution
Persecution
Persecution is the systematic mistreatment of an individual or group by another group. The most common forms are religious persecution, ethnic persecution, and political persecution, though there is naturally some overlap between these terms. The inflicting of suffering, harassment, isolation,...
of Kosovo civilians:
- Slobodan MiloševićSlobodan MiloševićSlobodan Milošević was President of Serbia and Yugoslavia. He served as the President of Socialist Republic of Serbia and Republic of Serbia from 1989 until 1997 in three terms and as President of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia from 1997 to 2000...
, President of Yugoslavia and Supreme Commander of the Yugoslav Army - died in 2006 during trial. - Dragoljub OjdanićDragoljub OjdanicDragoljub Ojdanić was former Chief of the General Staff and Defence minister of Yugoslavia...
, Chief of General Staff - sentenced to 15 years in prison. - Nebojša PavkovićNebojša PavkovicNebojša Pavković was Chief of the General Staff of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia....
, Commander of Third Army, which was responsible for Kosovo - sentenced to 22 years in prison. - Vladimir Lazarević, Commander of the Pristina Corps of Third Army - sentenced to 15 years in prison.
- Vlajko StojiljkovićVlajko StojiljkovicVlajko Stojiljkovic was Yugoslavia's Minister of Internal Affairs from 1997 until the deposal of Slobodan Milosevic....
, Interior Minister and Commander of the Serbian police - committed suicide in 2002, after the adoption of a law on cooperation with the Hague Tribunal. - Sreten LukićSreten LukićSreten Lukić, born on 28 March 1955 in Višegrad, Bosnia and Herzegovina, is the former head of the Serbian police in Kosovo during the 1998-99 Kosovo and subsequently Serbian deputy interior minister from 2001 to 2004...
, Chief of Staff of the Serbian Police in Kosovo - sentenced to 22 years in prison. - Nikola ŠainovićNikola ŠainovicNikola Šainović , born 7 December 1948 in Bor, Serbia, Yugoslavia) is a former Prime Minister of Serbia of Montenegrin descent...
, Deputy Prime Minister of Yugoslavia - sentenced to 22 years in prison. - Milan MilutinovićMilan MilutinovicMilan Milutinović is a former President of Serbia. He served as Director of the National Library of Serbia , Ambassador of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia to Greece, Yugoslavia's Federal Minister of Foreign Affairs , and as President of Serbia from 1997 until 2002.After his presidential term...
, President of the Republic of Serbia - acquitted.
Presiding Judge Iain Bonomy was imposing sentence said that "deliberate actions of these forces during the campaign provoked the departure of at least 700,000 ethnic Albanians from Kosovo in the short period from late March to early June 1999."
Controversy
Noam ChomskyNoam Chomsky
Avram Noam Chomsky is an American linguist, philosopher, cognitive scientist, and activist. He is an Institute Professor and Professor in the Department of Linguistics & Philosophy at MIT, where he has worked for over 50 years. Chomsky has been described as the "father of modern linguistics" and...
stated that "The United Nations Commissioner for Refugees registered the first refugees outside Kosovo on 27 March ..., three days after the [NATO] bombings began".
The existence of the Horseshoe plan was immediately denied by the Serbian officials. Slobodan Milošević
Slobodan Milošević
Slobodan Milošević was President of Serbia and Yugoslavia. He served as the President of Socialist Republic of Serbia and Republic of Serbia from 1989 until 1997 in three terms and as President of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia from 1997 to 2000...
labeled it as a "fabrication of the German Defence Ministry". Milosevic denied a policy of ethnic cleansing during the NATO bombing in Kosovo, stated that "when aggression stops, when bombing stops, then it will be very easy to continue (the) political process".
Ratomir Tanić, a witness at Milošević's subsequent war crimes trial, said that Horseshoe was a colloquial nickname for a "completely different" Yugoslav army plan, that should come into effect only if the ethic Albanian population take the side of the foreign aggressor in case of aggression on Yugoslavia. Then the Army would "neutralising the Albanian strongholds". Tanić stated that the army leadership didn't use this plan during the Kosovo War, "because there was no external aggression or Albanian rebellion".
In April 2000, Heinz Loquai, a retired German brigadier general, published a book on the war that claimed that the German government's account had been based on a general analysis by a Bulgaria
Bulgaria
Bulgaria , officially the Republic of Bulgaria , is a parliamentary democracy within a unitary constitutional republic in Southeast Europe. The country borders Romania to the north, Serbia and Macedonia to the west, Greece and Turkey to the south, as well as the Black Sea to the east...
n intelligence agency of Yugoslav behaviour in the war, which was turned into a specific "plan" by the German Defence Ministry. According to Loquai, the Bulgarian analysis concluded that the goal of the Serbian military was to destroy the Kosovo Liberation Army
Kosovo Liberation Army
The Kosovo Liberation Army or KLA was a Kosovar Albanian paramilitary organization which sought the separation of Kosovo from Federal Republic of Yugoslavia in the 1990s....
, and not to expel the entire Albanian population. He also pointed to a factual flaw in the German government's presentation - it had named the plan "Potkova", which is the Croatian
Croatian language
Croatian is the collective name for the standard language and dialects spoken by Croats, principally in Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, the Serbian province of Vojvodina and other neighbouring countries...
and Bulgarian
Bulgarian language
Bulgarian is an Indo-European language, a member of the Slavic linguistic group.Bulgarian, along with the closely related Macedonian language, demonstrates several linguistic characteristics that set it apart from all other Slavic languages such as the elimination of case declension, the...
word for horseshoe
Horseshoe
A horseshoe, is a fabricated product, normally made of metal, although sometimes made partially or wholly of modern synthetic materials, designed to protect a horse's hoof from wear and tear. Shoes are attached on the palmar surface of the hooves, usually nailed through the insensitive hoof wall...
, whereas the Serbian
Serbian language
Serbian is a form of Serbo-Croatian, a South Slavic language, spoken by Serbs in Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro, Croatia and neighbouring countries....
word is potkovica.
See also
- Ethnic cleansingEthnic cleansingEthnic cleansing is a purposeful policy designed by one ethnic or religious group to remove by violent and terror-inspiring means the civilian population of another ethnic orreligious group from certain geographic areas....
- Identity cleansingIdentity cleansingIdentity cleansing is defined as "confiscation of personal identification, passports, and other such documents in order to make it difficult or impossible for those driven out to return".-Kosovo Albanians example:...
- Serbian war crimes in the Yugoslav Wars
- Joint Criminal EnterpriseJoint Criminal EnterpriseJoint criminal enterprise ' is a legal doctrine used by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia to prosecute political and military leaders for mass war crimes, including genocide, committed during the Yugoslav wars 1991-1999....
- War crimes in the Kosovo WarWar crimes in the Kosovo WarThe War crimes in the Kosovo War were a series of war crimes committed during the Kosovo War . Yugoslav security forces invaded Kosovo and killed many Albanian civilians; there were also attacks on on Yugoslav security forces and moderate Albanians by the Kosovo Liberation Army...
External links
- Operation Horseshoe (Committee on Foreign Affairs Report)
- Milosevic and Operation Horseshoe, The GuardianThe GuardianThe Guardian, formerly known as The Manchester Guardian , is a British national daily newspaper in the Berliner format...
, 18 July 1999 - Erasing History: Ethnic Cleansing in Kosovo (Report released by the U.S. Department of State)
- "Operation Horseshoe" —propaganda and reality (World Socialist Web Site)