Historical Dictionary of Terrorism Third Edition

362 • KOSOVO LIBERATION ARMYin Zurich, to raise funds for the KLA. The first prime minister ofKosovo, Hashim Thaçi (1969– ), was the chief leader of the KLA,who eventually joined the Albanian delegation at the Rambouillettalks in February 1999 shortly before they ended in failure. AfterMarch 1998, when Serbian police murdered Adem Jasari, a Kosovarnationalist organizer, many Kosovars turned from supportingthe Democratic League for Kosovo, whose leader, Ibrahim Ragova(1944–2006), had consistently urged nonviolent resistance, to supportingthe KLA, which offered rural farmers and their families achance to arm and defend themselves against an almost certain Serbiancampaign of genocide, known as ethnic cleansing.After the Serbs carried out their 1998 summer offensive against KLAunits, displacing about 200,000 Albanians, they pulled back brieflyfrom October 1998 to February 1999, apparently as a temporizing measurewhile negotiations on Kosovo continued in Rambouillet, France.Returning to the areas from which Yugoslavian forces had withdrawn,KLA units murdered Serbian civilians in reprisal for the deaths ofAlbanians the previous summer but also murdered Albanians whomthey considered to be collaborators, including low-level civil servants.Despite KLA promises to the Albanian population that it would defendthem against any Serbian military offensive, once Operation Horseshoebegan in 1999, the KLA lacked both the needed numbers of fightersand weapons to resist the Serbs, who proceeded to expel Albaniansfrom the regional capital, Pristina, and other towns, often separating andexecuting the men among those being deported. Most observers believethat without the intervention of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization(NATO), lasting from 24 March 1999 to 10 June 1999, the Serbianarmy could have effectively ended the KLA as a fighting force.The KLA fighters and their leaders were not known to be democratsand had an antagonistic relationship with the Democratic League ofKosovo. Like the earlier Afghan Mujahideen, the KLA appeared tobe a guerrilla force that has enjoyed a tactical alliance with Americanand European supporters but that otherwise does not share any commonpolitical agenda with its backers. Following a demilitarizationagreement between the KLA and NATO commanders in late June1999, Hashim Thaçi proceeded to purge the KLA of dissidents andexecuted potential rivals who might challenge his domination of thegroup. Under NATO prodding, the KLA agreed in September 1999to reorganize itself into a nominally civilian self-defense force, to