FORMACIONET SHTETËRORE SERBE NË KOSOVË MË 1998-1999
SERBIAN STATE FORMATIONS IN KOSOVO IN 1998-1999

Summary/Abstract: All Serbian forces involved in the Kosovo war during 1998-99 were under the orders of the government in Belgrade. A large number of police forces under the responsibility of the Ministry of Internal Affairs (MIA) were employed in Kosovo. However, classic military units, that had nothing to do with police work, were formed. Thus, the MIA took on military character. A number of different subjects were integrated into these units, including local Serbs and various paramilitary teams. At the same time, the Yugoslav Army (YA) in Kosovo, along with its regular and reserve forces, recruited various criminals and murderers who were serving their sentences in different prisons. Even the arming of local Serbs, both by YU and MIA, had a massive character. These Serbs were tasked with participating in military operations. All military units situated in Kosovo were under the command of the Pristina Corps. During the first part of 1998, only the regular police, the special police, and the state security units were active in Kosovo. The YA units maintained security along the border with Albania and Macedonia. But this configuration changed in April 1998 when a cooperation between MIA and YA commenced; this cooperation will take a more organized form in Jun and July 1999, when the highest political and military leadership of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia approved the “Project to Combat Terrorism in Kosovo” and the formation of the Joint Command. The Joint Command was a military-political body with its seat in Pristina; it was composed of military and high-ranking police officers. Since spring 1998, the MIA and YU units have conducted coordinated operations in Kosovo. Thus, the Serbian forces cooperated closely and carried out their actions under a single chain of command, and thus it was not only directed against the Kosovo Liberation Army but even included their participation in a planned and institutionalized campaign, on the state level, to exterminate Albanian people or to carry out an ethnic cleansing through: physical elimination or mass killings of over 12,000 Albanian individuals, including a significant number of women and children; looting, burning, and destruction of settlements; carrying out rapes on ethnic grounds; violent expulsion of about 1 million Albanians etc.

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