Kosovo War

The Kosovo War was fought from 1998 to 1999 between Yugoslav and Serbian security forces and the ethnic Albanian Kosovo Liberation Army, which sought independence for the Serbian province of Kosovo. Serbian operations against Kosovo Albanian civilians produced mass displacement widely characterized internationally as ethnic cleansing, prompting NATO to launch a seventy-eight day bombing campaign against Yugoslav military and infrastructure targets in the spring of 1999 without prior United Nations Security Council authorization. The war ended when Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic agreed to withdraw Serbian forces from Kosovo, after which the territory was placed under United Nations administration and international peacekeeping, a status that preceded its unilateral declaration of independence in 2008.