Historical Dictionary of Terrorism Third Edition

KOSOVO LIBERATION ARMY • 361other hostages, or to punish informers, defectors, or members ofthe group who violate internal rules of group discipline. Often theIRA has substituted the technique of slamming a concrete block orcinderblock down on the knee with the leg outstretched and the heelpropped up, which is quite as catastrophic but does not require shooting.The ultimate effect is to cripple the victim in the leg on which thekneecapping is executed. In fact, the IRA has devised a progressionof kneecapping punishments, from having only one kneecap shot, tohaving both shot, to having one or both ankles shot as well, to havingone or both elbows shot through as well. When both knees, bothankles, and both elbows are shot as part of one punishment, this isreferred to as a “six-pack shooting.”KOSOVO LIBERATION ARMY (KLA). The Ushtria Çlirimtaree Kosovës (UÇK), or Kosovo Liberation Army, emerged from theformer Lëvizja Popullore e Kosovës (LPK), or Popular Movementfor Kosovo formed in 1982, which originally claimed to follow theradical Stalinist ideology of the former dictator of Albania, EnverHoxha. In fact, the group appears to have been primarily an Albanianethnonationalist group seeking independence for the Kosovarsbut claimed to adhere to Enverism to gain support from the formerAlbanian regime. The defining moment for Kosovar militant nationalistswas the 17 January 1982 assassination of three Kosovarmilitants in Germany, presumably by the Yugoslavian secret police.The Yugoslavian government, and even Serbian political dissidentsin Yugoslavia, regard the KLA as a terrorist group whose membersengaged in atrocities against the civilian Serbian minority in Kosovoeven before fighting began in earnest there in 1998.Neither the militant LPK nor its rival, the Democratic League ofKosovo, had much of a following in Kosovo until after 1989, whenSerbian President Slobodan Milosevic ended the limited autonomythat Kosovo’s Albanians had enjoyed. The KLA emerged from anucleus of LPK members in late 1992 but did not carry out its firstmilitary action, an attack on some Serbian policemen, until 1995.The collapse of Albania’s government in 1997 gave the KLA accessto weapons from looted armories, and the KLA shortly thereafter establishedtraining camps in northern Albania around Krume, Kukes,and Bajram Curri. Meanwhile, the KLA built up its connections withKosovars abroad, including a heroin-smuggling ring headquartered