FROM CORE TO FRONTIER: AN OVERVIEW
Kosovo's institutional setting went through three distinct phases. In tracing changes over time rather than space, this chapter differs from its predecessors, which contrasted coterminous Serbian violence in different locales. Kosovo's first phase lasted from 1989 to 1997, when Serbia bolstered its grip over the province and deployed methods of ethnic policing. A second, transitional, phase began in 1998, when ethnic Albanian guerrillas threatened Serbia's empirical sovereignty by capturing pockets of rural territory for short periods of time. The third began in spring 1999, when Serbia was expelled from the international community and a combined NATO and ethnic Albanian assault fundamentally threatened Serbia's juridical and empirical sovereignty.
It is vital that we recognize the very different Serbian repertoires of violence in each phase. During the first period, Serbia stuck to ethnic policing in Kosovo, despite its simultaneous use of ethnic cleansing in Bosnia. Kosovo's predicament in this period, in other words, resembled that of Vojvodina and the Sandžak. During the second phase, Serbian troops displaced as many as 300,000 persons, but still did not escalate to fullscale ethnic cleansing.[6] Despite widespread rural suffering, the bulk of Kosovo's ethnic Albanians remained in place, and Kosovo's urban areas remained largely undestroyed.[7] It was only in the third and final phase