The Origins of Kosovo's Armed Rebellion

During the early and mid-1990s, there was some indication that at least a handful of Kosovo Albanians were planning armed rebellion. In 1993, Serbian police arrested 100 men, including fifteen former military officers, charging them with creating a clandestine ethnic Albanian defense ministry for the shadow Kosovo state.^[49] The authorities said the group was part of Rugova's LDK, but the League's leaders denied the charge. In 1994 and 1995, Serbian forces arrested an additional 400 persons, including dozens of former ethnic Albanian police officers, charging them with membership in a secret police force.^[50] Human rights groups said the trials were unfair and relied on coerced information, but there seems to have been some merit to the Serbian claims.^[51]

One small but important group was the Popular Movement for Kosova, or LPK, ^[52] which emerged from a 1993 split within the radical Popular Movement for the Republic of Kosova (LPRK), active since the late 1970s.^[53] Supported initially by communist Albania, the LPRK began with a leftist critique of Yugoslav socialism, arguing it had become complacent. The LPRK's most pressing concern was self-determination for Kosovo, however, not social reform. Following the province's 1981 wave of demonstrations, Serbian and Yugoslav authorities arrested or forced into exile most LPRK cadres.^[54]

In the early 1990s, a handful of LPRK activists initiated limited training exercises in northern Albania, some of which were reportedly coordinated with LDK official Bujar Bukoshi, then prime minister of Kosovo's Bonn-based government-in-exile.^[55] From Europe, Bukoshi had more freedom than his colleagues in Kosovo to explore the potential for armed resistance. These early efforts soon petered out, however, and the training camps were disbanded. The dearth of arms, money, and international support seemed overwhelming. Would-be fighters had few modern weapons, and the Albanian authorities were unwilling to permit arms smuggling. Low-key training in remote mountainous areas was one thing, but weapons acquisition and cross-border infiltration into Kosovo was far too risky.

In 1993, the LPRK split into the Popular Movement for Kosova (LPK), rooted in Europe's Kosovo diaspora, and the National Movement for the Liberation of Kosova (LKCK), based more heavily in Kosovo itself. The Popular Movement seized the initiative, creating the Kosova Liberation Army during a secret 1993 Macedonian meeting.^[56] Conditions were still not right for a serious armed effort, however, as the small KLA had few members, modern weapons, and no territorial safe haven alongside Kosovo. Although Albania was a logical platform for crossborder activities, the government remained unsupportive.^[57] Albania's politicians were sympathetic to Kosovo's plight, but feared antagonizing Serbia as well as Western powers. Instead, they promoted both human and sovereignty rights for Kosovo in international venues, provided Ibrahim Rugova's Democratic League with international connections, and helped open an LDK office in Tirana. In 1992, Albania's sympathies for Kosovo had been briefly bolstered by contributions to Albanian Democratic Party leader Sali Berisha, who won the country's first postcommunist elections. Soon after, however, Berisha backtracked to reassure Western diplomats, and in 1994, Berisha abandoned the notion of Kosovo independence altogether, throwing his support behind a plan for Kosovo's territorial autonomy within Serbia.^[58]