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Top 10 Facts About the Kosovo War

Kosovo War
The Kosovo War was a quick and highly destructive conflict that displaced 90 percent of the population. The severity of the unrest in Kosovo and the involvement of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) brought the Kosovo conflict to international attention in the late 1990’s. The conflict led to the displacement of thousands and lasting tension between Serbs and Albanians. The brutality of the war is largely credited with launching The Borgen Project, a humanitarian organization that has helped hundreds of thousands of people.

10 Facts about the Kosovo War

    1. The Kosovo War was waged in the Serbian province of Kosovo from 1998 to 1999. Ethnic Albanians living in Kosovo faced the pressure of Serbs fighting for control of the region. Albanians also opposed the government of Yugoslavia, which was made up of modern day Serbia, Montenegro, Croatia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Slovenia and Macedonia.
    2. Muslim Albanians were the ethnic majority in Kosovo. The president of Serbia, Slobodan Milosevic, refused to recognize the rights of the majority because Kosovo was an area sacred to the Serbs. He planned to replace Albanian language and culture with Serbian institutions.
    3. The international community failed to address the escalation of tension between the Albanians and the Serbs. In doing so, they inadvertently supported radicals in the region. Ethnic Albanians in Kosovo formed the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) in the early 1990s. The militant group began attacks on Serbian police and politicians and were engaged in an all-out uprising by 1998.
    4. Serbian and Yugoslav forces tried to fight growing KLA support through oppressive tactics and violence. The government destroyed villages and forced people to leave their homes. They massacred entire villages. Many people fled their homes.
    5. As the conflict grew worse, international intervention rose. The Contact Group (consisting of the U.S., Britain, Germany, France, Italy and Russia) demanded a cease-fire, the withdrawal of Yugoslav and Serbian forces from Kosovo and the return of refugees. Yugoslavia at first agreed but ultimately failed to implement the terms of the agreement.
    6. Yugoslav and Serbian forces engaged in an ethnic cleansing campaign throughout the duration of the war. By the end of May 1999, 1.5 million people had fled their homes. At the time, that constituted approximately 90 percent of Kosovo’s population.
    7. Diplomatic negotiations between Kosovar and Serbian delegations began in France in 1999, but Serbian officials refused to cooperate. In response, NATO began a campaign of airstrikes against Serbian targets, focusing mainly on destroying Serbian government buildings and infrastructure. The bombings caused further flows of refugees into neighboring countries and the deaths of several civilians.
    8. In June 1999, NATO and Yugoslavia signed a peace accord to end the Kosovo War. The Yugoslav government agreed to troop withdrawal and the return of almost one million ethnic Albanians and half a million general displaced persons. Unfortunately, tensions between Albanians and Serbs continued into the 21st century. Anti-Serb riots broke out in March 2004 throughout the Kosovo region. Twenty people were killed and over 4,000 Serbs and other minorities were displaced.
    9. In February 2008, Kosovo declared independence from Serbia. Subsequently, Yugoslavia ceased to exist in 2003 and became the individual countries of Serbia and Montenegro. Serbia, along with numerous other countries, refused to recognize Kosovo’s independence.
    10. At the end of 2016, a tribunal was established in the International Criminal Court to try Kosovars for committing war crimes against ethnic minorities and political opponents. Additionally, an EU taskforce set up in 2011 found evidence that members of the KLA committed these crimes after the war ended. Previously, the U.N. International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia tried several the KLA members.

Overall, the Kosovo War was one of Europe’s most chaotic conflicts, leaving lasting impressions on all those living in the region. Not only has the conflict been coined with the terms genocide and crimes against humanity, but the involvement and bombings from NATO also caused widespread controversy.

– Lindsay Harris

Photo: Flickr

 

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Eight Facts About the Libyan Crisis

8 Facts About the Libyan Crisis
Disputes in Libya date back to the 7th century when the Arabs conquered Libya and first spread Islam. Since then, it has developed first into a united country, then into a divided one. Now, the Libyan crisis is worsening. Here are eight facts about the Libyan crisis:

  1. Conflict in Libya has a long history. The beginning of the conflict in Libya dates back to the 7th century when Islam spread widely and became the national religion. In 2011, Arab Spring protests led to the first civil war in Libya.
  2. The conflict that led to the 2011 civil war began in 1969. Muammar Gaddafi led a group of military officers in a protest against King Idris in 1969, which landed Gaddafi in power of the new Libyan African Republic. As all power and wealth within Libya were under Gaddafi’s control, many pro-monarchy civilians lashed out, and anti-Gaddafi groups formed.
  3. Protests in neighboring countries spurred the war on. Word spread of revolts in neighboring countries, which inspired protests in Benghazi and other cities in Libya. War broke out in early 2011 as rebels opposed the Gaddafi government, but security forces defeated them. With the National Transitional Council, the main opposition group, now recognized as the new Libyan government, the first civil war ended in October 2011. The second civil war began in 2014, as the conflict began between various rebel groups seeking control of Libyan territory.
  4. During the Libyan civil war of 2011, it is estimated that between 10,000 and 15,000 people were killed. Death sources are from rebel sides, government forces and civilians. To date, since the 2014 crisis broke out, there have been 5,871 civilian deaths in Libya.
  5. Countries across the world have aided Libya’s citizens in a number of ways. Over the course of the Libyan crisis, the European Union has given almost $160 million in aid. Aid came in different forms: civilian resources, transportation, sanitation, healthcare resources, food supplies. Many other countries around the world have also donated generously, but those within the EU take the lead as a combined force.
  6. The Libyan crisis has produced thousands of refugees who flee to neighboring countries, for example, Egypt, seeking asylum. In May 2011, already around 746,000 people had fled Libya since the beginning of the War. Most Libyans fled to Italy, where 36,222 refugees currently reside. Surrounding European countries also continue to allow migrants to seek refuge.
  7. Gaddafi’s capture was a major turning point. The rebels captured and killed Colonel Gaddafi on Oct. 20, 2011. This is a key event within the Libyan crisis because the beginning of the conflict started with pro-Gaddafi forces and anti-Gaddafi rebels.
  8. International organizations tried to help Libya in solving civil issues. In March 2011, the United Nations Security Council issued a no-fly zone over Libya. NATO then authorized air strikes in order to protect civilians. Many countries give help by providing Libya with vital resources for its citizens, such as warmth, food and shelter.

For now, Libya continues its division while the international community continues providing aid. Recently, African leaders have held a mini-summit in Congo to discuss what further action is necessary. They decided that lifting the arms embargo was necessary to begin a more proactive approach to ending the war in Libya. Over 29 countries in the Middle East and Europe are continuing to open their borders to refugees, which is the greatest help that Libyan citizens can receive at present.

– Georgia Boyle

Photo: Flickr

Ten Facts About the Afghanistan War

10 Facts About the Afghanistan War
Following the September 11 attacks on New York and Washington D.C., President George W. Bush vowed to “win the war against terrorism.” This included the launch of a U.S.-led operative in Afghanistan, with the goal of toppling the terrorist groups Al-Qaeda and the Taliban. Today, going into its 16th year, the war is the longest conflict the U.S. has ever been involved in and continues to inhibit the lives of thousands of civilians. Here are 10 facts about the ongoing Afghanistan War.

  1. The current volatile situation in Afghanistan is the latest in a long history of conflicts. The U.S. invasion of Afghanistan in 2001 came after over 20 years of war in the country. A Soviet Invasion in 1979 prompted opposition from several militant groups, called the Mujahideen. The U.S., Pakistan, China, Iran and Saudi Arabia all provided funding and arms to the Soviet opposition. These contributions stemmed from a desire to resist the Soviet spread of communism but ended up contributing to budding extremism and violence in militant groups.
  2. By 1985, half of the Afghan population was already displaced due to war and conflict with the Soviets. By 1989, the last of the Soviet troops left Afghanistan after peace accords were reached between the USSR, Pakistan, the U.S. and Afghanistan. However, the existing government quickly toppled and the country dissolved into a brutal civil war, resulting in the Taliban seizing Kabul and quickly enforcing their influence across the country.
  3. President George W. Bush signed a joint resolution into law on September 18, 2001, authorizing the use of force against those responsible for the September 11 attacks. The resolution was later cited as justification by the Bush administration for decisions such as the invasion of Afghanistan, eavesdropping on American citizens with the absence of a court order, and the operation of a detention camp at Guantanamo Bay.
  4. The movement in Afghanistan began covertly by the CIA on September 26, 2001. Just 15 days after the attacks in the U.S., the CIA backed Northern Alliance Liaison Team – codenamed JAWBREAKER – and was on the ground and operating in Afghanistan, thus officially beginning the Afghanistan War.
  5. The British invaded Afghanistan alongside the U.S. In October of 2001, the U.S. and British militaries began a bombing campaign against the forces of the Taliban. Other countries, like Canada, France, Australia and Germany pledged future support at the time the bombing began.
  6. On November 14, 2001, after the fall of the Taliban in Kabul, the UN Security council passed Resolution 1378, which called for the participation of the United Nations in forming a transitional administration and facilitating the growth and spread of stability. In December, several leaders from major factions in Afghanistan traveled to a U.N. conference in Bonn, Germany. The factions signed and an interim government was decided upon.
  7. Since the beginning of the conflict, more than four dozen countries have contributed troops to the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force in Afghanistan.
  8. In April 2002, President Bush promised: “By helping to build an Afghanistan that is free from evil and is a better place to live, we are working in the best traditions of George Marshall.” The statement was meant to invoke reconstructions similar to that of post-World War II. Soon afterward, the U.S. Congress appropriated over $38 billion in reconstruction assistance to Afghanistan from 2001 to 2009.
  9. In 2011, President Barack Obama pledged the gradual exit of American troops from Afghanistan. Unfortunately, due to continuously escalated situations with the Taliban, 8,400 U.S. troops will remain in Afghanistan through 2017. “We have to deal with the realities of the world,” says President Obama.
  10. As of 2015, the U.S. committed over $685 billion to funding the war in Afghanistan. Along with the Iraq War, the Afghanistan War has been the most expensive in U.S. history.

Stability in Afghanistan has made significant strides in the past several decades. The country’s GDP grew an average of 9.4% per year from 2003 to 2012. Life expectancy in the country has increased by nearly 20 years in the past decade. In 2002, less than a million children were enrolled in school, while now the number surpasses eight million. When the U.S. first invaded the country, only six percent of citizens had access to reliable electricity, while the number now reaches more than 28 percent.

Despite the country’s advances, basic amenities such as infrastructure and access to healthcare and education are still severely lacking. The length of the Afghanistan War and U.S. airstrikes, drone presence and ground troops have devastated the country’s ability to develop independently, and the Taliban continues to terrorize much of the country, causing thousands of Afghan refugees to continue to flee persecution.

– Peyton Jacobsen

Photo: Flickr

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Afghanistan: Past and Future

Afghanistan_economy Afghanistan is a nation with a turbulent history. It is a nation embattled as a result of the many conflicts that have transpired within its borders. In recent years, Afghanistan has sustained a steady disfiguration of its landscape as a result of the protracted War on Terror, along with the various terrorist activities in the nation which several militaries, the North American Treaty Organization (NATO) most notably among them, have sought to suppress. Before the War on Terror, Afghanistan started to incur devastating losses in a war with the Soviet Union from 1979 to 1989, during which over one million Afghanis were killed. Afghanistan was again challenged by a brutal civil war in the 1990s in which extensive violence led to more casualties and internally displaced persons. Conflict in Afghanistan has thus resulted in enduring regional instability over the past 35 years, much to the detriment of national infrastructure improvement. Consequently, economic development has been difficult to implement as well as sustain. Afghanistan performs poorly in many areas considered benchmarks of human development. On the actual human development index, Afghanistan ranks 172nd in the world out of the 187 countries that were surveyed. The performance of the nation’s economy is consistent with the assertions of its human development index ranking. The gross domestic product (GDP) per capita in Afghanistan is $1,399 and is ranked 161st in the world by the World Bank. The country’s literacy rate is also among the lowest in the world at 28.1%. In spite of Afghanistan’s persisting limitations, it has seen significant progress over the course of the past decade. Enrollment in Afghanistan’s schools has increased to nearly eight million from its 2002 total of just one million. Access to basic health resources increased from 9% to 60% between 2003 and 2012, and the number of healthcare facilities saw an increase of over 100% in the same period. Significant improvements were observed in the country’s energy infrastructure as well. Since 2004, the number of Afghani homes with access to grid power increased from 6% to 25%. As a result of investment in these areas, especially in the case of healthcare, both employment and the economy at-large have performed well and experienced steady growth. For the entirety of the War on Terror, total GDP exhibited average growth of 9.2% topping out at 11.8% in 2012 as a result of advantageous weather conditions and, as a result, a booming agricultural sector. The agricultural sector in Afghanistan, which constitutes over 70% of the country’s economy, has been aided by the administration of the World Bank’s National Solidarity Program. The National Solidarity Program has also led to the creation of 34,000 Community Development Councils. Many of these councils have garnered further investment from the World Bank totaling $1.12 billion, funding thousands of projects that these local collectives have sought to introduce. With the complete withdrawal of NATO security forces from Afghanistan set to take place in 2014, the economic outlook for the country is riddled with unresolved security concerns. Since 2001, the security apparatus in Afghanistan has been comprised almost exclusively of foreign troops, and their withdrawal is anticipated to have potentially severe implications for future development efforts. Contrastingly, in yet another period of war, Afghanistan has seen unprecedented growth of infrastructure considered necessary for poverty-reduction. In spite of security concerns that will likely take a long time to address, there is certainly cause to be optimistic about the progress that has been forged in Afghanistan since 2002. – Benjamin O’Brien Sources: Transparency International, World Bank Photo: Able2know

3 Foreign Policy TED Talks Worth Watching

“On Being a Woman and a Diplomat” – Madeleine Albright

Highlight Quote: “From some people, I think they thought [women’s rights] was a soft issue. The bottom line is I decided women’s issues are the hardest issues, because they are the ones that have to do with life and death in so many aspects.”

Madeline Albright was the first woman to hold the post of Secretary of State. Both amusing and straightforward, she uses this Q&A session to address the need to place women’s rights in the States’ top priorities in foreign policy, as well as increase the role of women in the political sphere as a whole.

Albright’s draws from her vast experience to illustrate her points. She explains how women leaders are better at communicating across ideological barriers, from weapons debates with Finland to reconciling Hutu and Tutsi leaders after the Rwandan genocide. Finally, Albright speaks of women’s tendency to hinder their own progress by criticizing powerful women in the workplace.

 

“The Global Power Shift” – Paddy Ashdown

Highlight Quotes: “Suddenly and for the very first time, collective defense, the thing that has dominated us as the concept of securing our nations, is no longer enough. It used to be the case that if my tribe was more powerful than their tribe, I was safe; if my country was more powerful than their country, I was safe; my alliance, like NATO, was more powerful than their alliance, I was safe. It is no longer the case. The advent of the interconnectedness and of the weapons of mass destruction means that, increasingly, I share a destiny with my enemy.”

Ashdown has had a long and illustrious international career, serving in MI6, then as a member of Parliament and after as the Representative for Bosnia and Herzegovina. In 20 minutes, Ashdown delivers us more food for thought than we can chew on at once.

Ashdown discusses the global shift in power, a phenomenon we are witnessing as it becomes ever more globalized and shared. Unlike the past, where a single superpower has risen, Ashdown projects a globe with multiple powers. Thus, co-existing will depend less on dominance and more on cooperation.

He points out that the interconnectivity of the world has a far deeper effect than what we imagine. Our future, our safety, our resources increasingly depend on each other, and with the world evolving the way it is, the idea of a nation no longer being able to bully its way to dominance is a novel one. This is an idea that sounds encouraging, but will take much getting used to. For global powers, the implications of a world where willingness trumps will is going to take adjustment.

 

“Time to End the War in Afghanistan” – Rory Stewart

Highlight Quote: “Because the worst thing we have done in Afghanistan is this idea that failure is not an option. It makes failure invisible, inconceivable and inevitable. And if we can resist this crazy slogan, we shall discover – in Egypt, in Syria, in Libya, and anywhere else we go in the world – that if we can often do much less than we pretend, we can do much more than we fear.”

Rory Stewart, a British MP, offers a refreshingly honest talk about the reality of the war in Afghanistan. A war that was so well sold to the public – wrapping philanthropy, revenge, idealism, and power into one – has ended up being a bloody, costly disaster, leaving both America’s psyche and Afghanistan itself irreparably wounded. Stewart compares intervention in Afghanistan to intervention in other countries asks the question: why didn’t it work here?

In answering, Stewart says the unsayable – that America’s arrogance and self-interest ultimately undermined any possible chance it had of improving the situation of the Afghan population at the cost of the lives of American soldiers. Stewart focuses not on pumping money or destroying dictators, but working with those who fully understand and comprehend the complexities of foreign intervention, and can deal with the challenges and frustrations it may bring.

– Farahnaz Mohammed

Source: TED Paddy Ashdown, TED Madeline Albright, TED Rory Stewart
Source: The Self Employed

Global Universal Threats

Global Universal Threats
Bujar Nishani, the Albanian President, asserts that crime, poverty, and terrorism are interconnected and that together, they create new global universal threats. The president also said that development, security, and human rights are interconnected. Thus, there is a push for international organizations to shift their focuses to meet the change in global challenges.

In 1949, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) was established to protect Western countries against the threats of the Soviet Union. However, after the Cold War, these threats shifted as the political environment of Europe changed. The President asserts that the “central role of NATO throughout this process has been strengthened in guaranteeing the security of the Euro-Atlantic zone.” The shift in NATO’s priorities has occurred in recent years due to the new global threats which arose after the Cold War. Some of these priorities included: the Partnership for Peace, separate relations with Russia and Ukraine, dialogue with Mediterranean countries, and more.

In recent years NATO has been involved militarily to fight against terrorism and other new global threats. In order to improve NATO’s abilities to address these threats, the Prague Summit of 2002 established 3 key goals which included establishing a NATO Reaction Force. The U.N. Organization expressed the need for major reform of NATO’s capacity so that new global threats are efficiently addressed. The President also stated that “very powerful countries feel unimmunized and even vulnerable when faced with the asymmetric dangers of global effects,” and thus, countries have been increasingly more cooperative with each other to fulfill their responsibilities of improving security, maintaining peace, and tackling these global threats.

– Leen Abdallah

Source: Hurriyet Daily News