The Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA; , UÇK) was an ethnic Albanian separatist militia that sought the secession of Kosovo, the vast majority of which is inhabited by Albanians, from the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia during the 1990s. Albanian nationalism was a central tenet of the KLA and many in its ranks supported the creation of a Greater Albania, which would encompass all Albanians in the Balkans, stressing Albanian culture, ethnicity and nation.
Military precursors to the KLA began in the late 1980s with armed resistance to Yugoslav police trying to take Albanian activists in custody.. By the early 1990s there were attacks on police forces and secret-service officials who abused Albanian civilians. By mid-1998 the KLA was involved in frontal battle though it was outnumbered and outgunned. Conflict escalated from 1997 onward due to the Yugoslav army retaliating with a crackdown in the region which resulted in population displacements. The bloodshed, ethnic cleansing of thousands of Albanians driving them into neighbouring countries and the potential of it to destabilize the region provoked intervention by international organizations, such as the United Nations, NATO and INGOs.. NATO conducted a bombing campaign against Yugoslav forces and provided air support to KLA.
In September 1999, with the fighting over and an international force in place within Kosovo, the KLA was officially disbanded and thousands of its members entered the Kosovo Protection Corps, a civilian emergency protection body that replaced the KLA and Kosovo Police Force, as foreseen in United Nations Security Council Resolution 1244. The ending of the Kosovo war resulted in the emergence of offshoot guerrilla groups and political organisations from the KLA continuing violent struggles in southern Serbia (1999–2001) and northwestern Macedonia (2001), which resulted in peace talks and greater Albanian rights. Former KLA leaders also entered politics, some of them reaching high-ranking offices.
The KLA received large funds from Albanian diaspora organizations. There have been allegations that it used narcoterrorism to finance its operations.. Abuses and war crimes were committed by the KLA during and after the conflict, such as massacres of civilians, prison camps and destruction of cultural heritage sites.UNDER ORDERS: War Crimes in Kosovo. executive summary . hrw.org (2001) In April 2014, the Assembly of Kosovo considered and approved the establishment of a special court to try cases involving crimes and other serious abuses allegedly committed in 1999–2000 by members of the KLA. In June 2020 the Kosovo Specialist Chambers and Specialist Prosecutor's Office filed indictments for crimes against humanity and war crimes against a number of former KLA members, including the former president of Kosovo Hashim Thaçi, who were found guilty of war crimes in 2026.
Background
A key precursor to the Kosovo Liberation Army was the People's Movement of Kosovo (LPK). This group, who argued Kosovo's freedom could be won only through armed struggle, traces back to 1982, and played a crucial role in the creation of the KLA in 1993... Fund-raising began in the 1980s in Switzerland by Albanian exiles of the violence of 1981 and subsequent émigrés.. Slobodan Milošević revoked Kosovan autonomy in 1989, returning the region to its 1945 status, ejecting ethnic Albanians from the Kosovan bureaucracy and violently putting down protests.. In response, Kosovar Albanians established the Democratic League of Kosovo (LDK). Headed by Ibrahim Rugova, its goal was independence from Serbia, but via peaceful means. To this end, the LDK set up and developed a "parallel state" with a particular focus on education and healthcare.
Albanian nationalism was a central tenet of the KLA and many in its ranks supported the creation of a Greater Albania, which would encompass all Albanians in the Balkans, stressing Albanian culture, ethnicity and nation. The KLA itself disavowed the creation of a 'Greater Albania'. The KLA made their name known publicly for the first time in 1995,. and a first public appearance followed in 1997, at which time its membership was still only around 200. Critical of the progress made by Rugova, the KLA received boosts from the 1995 Dayton Accords— these granted Kosovo nothing, and so generated a more widespread rejection of the LDK's peaceful methods — and from looted weaponry that spilled into Kosovo after the Albanian rebellion of 1997.. During 1997–98, the Kosovo Liberation Army moved ahead of Rugova's LDK, a fact starkly illustrated by the KLA's Hashim Thaçi leading the Kosovar Albanians at the Rambouillet negotiations of spring 1999, with Rugova as his deputy..
In February 1996, the KLA undertook a series of attacks against police stations and Yugoslav government officers, saying that they had killed Albanian civilians as part of an ethnic cleansing campaign."Unknown Albanian 'liberation army' claims attacks", Agence France Presse, 17 February 1996 Later that year, the British weekly The European carried an article by a French expert stating that "German civil and military intelligence services have been involved in training and equipping the rebels with the aim of cementing German influence in the Balkan area. (...) The birth of the KLA in 1996 coincided with the appointment of Hansjoerg Geiger as the new head of the BND (German secret Service). (...) The BND men were in charge of selecting recruits for the KLA command structure from the 500,000 Kosovars in Albania."Fallgot, Roger (1998): "How Germany Backed KLA", in The European, 21–27 September. pp. 21–27. Matthias Küntzel tried to prove later on that German secret diplomacy had been instrumental in helping the KLA since its creation.Küntzel, Matthias (2002): Der Weg in den Krieg. Deutschland, die Nato und das Kosovo (The Road to War. Germany, Nato and Kosovo). Elefanten Press. Berlin, Germany. pp. 59–64 .
Serbian authorities denounced the KLA as a terrorist organisation and increased the number of security forces in the region. This had the effect of boosting the credibility of the embryonic KLA among the Kosovar Albanian population. Not long before NATO's military action commenced, the U.S. Committee for Refugees and Immigrants reported that "Kosovo Liberation Army ... attacks aimed at trying to 'cleanse' Kosovo of its ethnic Serb population.".
One of the goals mentioned by the KLA commanders was the formation of Greater Albania, irredentist concept of lands that are considered to form the national homeland by many Albanians, encompassing Kosovo, Albania, and the ethnic Albanian minority of neighbouring Macedonia and Montenegro.
Kosovo War
Between 5 and 7 March 1998, the Yugoslav Police launched an operation on Prekaz. The operation followed an earlier firefight (28 February) in which four policemen were killed and several more were wounded; Adem Jashari, a KLA leader, escaped. In Prekaz, 28 militants were killed, along with 30 civilians, most belonging to Jashari's family. Amnesty International claimed that it was a military operation focused primarily on the elimination of Jashari and his family.
On 23 April 1998, the Yugoslav Army (VJ) ambushed the KLA near the Albanian-Yugoslav border. The KLA had tried to smuggle arms and supplies into Kosovo. The Yugoslav Army, although greatly outnumbered, had no casualties, while 19 militants were killed.
According to Roland Keith, a field office director of the OSCE's Kosovo Verification Mission:"Failure of Diplomacy, Returning OSCE Human Rights Monitor Offers A View From the Ground in Kosovo", The Democrat, May 1999, Roland Keith
Upon my arrival the war increasingly evolved into a mid-intensity conflict as ambushes, the encroachment of critical lines of communication and the [KLA] kidnapping of security forces resulted in a significant increase in government casualties which in turn led to major Yugoslavian reprisal security operations... By the beginning of March these terror and counter-terror operations led to the inhabitants of numerous villages fleeing, or being dispersed to either other villages, cities or the hills to seek refuge... The situation was clearly that KLA provocations, as personally witnessed in ambushes of security patrols which inflicted fatal and other casualties, were clear violations of the previous October's agreement [and United Nations Security Council Resolution 1199].
At one point during the Kosovo War, the KLA changed their tactics from hit and run operations to conventional warfare. In July 1998, the KLA captured the towns of Orahovac and Mališevo and expanded their occupation of territory to 40% of Kosovo. However, without enough manpower and heavy weaponry to defend their gains, both towns quickly fell to Yugoslav forces. Their occupation of Orahovac was marred by acts of atrocities committed against Serb civilians. On 24 August 1998, the KLA reverted to guerrilla warfare and employed new tactics including the appointment of new commanders, central authorities, expanded training camps and military prisons.
The KLA had 7 operational zones, those being: Drenica, Pashtrik, Dukagjin, Shala, Llap, Nerodime, Karadak. The KLA had 28 brigades, with 31 formations (including 126th, 127th, and 128th brigades) in total, multiple for each operational zone.
In Drenica, 111th “Adem Jashari” Brigade, 112th “Arben Haliti” Brigade, 113th “Mujë Krasniqi” Brigade, and the 114th “Fehmi Lladrovci” Brigade.
In Pashtrik, 121st “Ismet Jashari” Brigade, 122nd “Imer Krasniqi” Brigade, 123rd “Suhareka” Brigade, 124th “Gani Paçarizi” Brigade, 125th “Pashtriku” Brigade, 126th “Hasi” Brigade, 127th “Dragashi” Brigade, and the 128th “Sulmuese” Brigade.
In Dukagjin, 131st “Jusuf Gërvalla” Brigade, 132nd “Myrtë Zeneli” Brigade, 133rd “Adrian Krasniqi” Brigade, 134th “Bedri Shala” Brigade, 135th “Agim Zeneli” Brigade, 136th “Rugova” Brigade, 137th “Gjakova” Brigade, and the 138th “Agim Ramadani” Brigade.
In Shala, 141st “Mehë Uka” Brigade, and the 142nd “Shala e Bajgorës” Brigade.
In Llap, 151st “Zahir Pajaziti” Brigade, 152nd “Shaban Shala” Brigade, and the 153rd “Hyzri Talla” Brigade.
In Nerodime, 161st “Ahmet Kaçiku” Brigade, 162nd “Arben Bajrami” Brigade, and the 163rd “Gafurr Loku” Brigade.
In Karadak, 171st “Kadri Zeka” Brigade, 172nd “Isa Kastrati” Brigade, and 173rd “Gursel and Bajram Sylejmani” Brigade.
Some sources say that the KLA never won a battle, while others say it won relatively few battles.
Funding The KLA received large funds from the Albanian diaspora in Europe and the United States, but also from Albanian businessmen in Kosovo, notably Ismet Asllani, who dedicated his entire wealth and logistics network to supporting the war effort across regions such as Drenica, Dukagjin, and Llap.. It is estimated that those funds amounted from $75 million to $100 million and mainly came from the Albanian diaspora in Switzerland, United States and Germany. The KLA received the majority of its funds through the Homeland Calls Fund, but significant funds were also transferred directly to the war zones. Apart from the financial contributions, the KLA also received contributions in kind, especially from the United States and Switzerland. These included weapons, but also military fatigues, boots and other supporting equipment..
According to the Stockholm International peace research institute: In 1999, the KLA's source of arms were Switzerland, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Albania, and United States with non-state armament through the Albanian diaspora, whereas the Armed Forces of Serbia and Montenegro were funded by Israel. The weaponry received through Albania were often cheap and faulty often so bad that KLA smugglers could buy a Kalashnikov for as little as $5.