Historical Dictionary of Terrorism Third Edition

KOSOVO LIBERATION ARMY • 363be called the Kosovo Protection Corps, while establishing a politicalparty to be called the Progressive Party for the Renaissance ofKosovo. The former military head of the KLA, Agim Çeku (1960– ),became prime minister of Kosovo in March 2006 following theresignation of the previous prime minister and Çeku’s election bythe Kosovo Assembly, an action protested by Serbia, which regardsÇeku as a war criminal, a claim not recognized by the InternationalCriminal Court at the Hague nor by the United Nations.On 9 January 2008 Çeku was succeeded by Hashim Thaçi as primeminister. Although NATO recognized a nominal Serbian sovereigntyover Kosovo, the KLA members adamantly rejected anything short ofindependence from Yugoslavia. The United States extended full recognitionto Kosovo on 18 February 2008 and was followed by at least21 member-states of the European Union but resisted by Spain, whichsaw the move as a dangerous precedent with respect to its own ethnonationalistinsurgency being led by the Basque Fatherland andLiberty group. Serbia and Russia also bitterly protested this move,with Russia hinting that this step would pave the way to Russianrecognition of the secessionist region of Abkhazia in the neighboringRepublic of Georgia. Several ex-KLA members have continuedinsurgent actions in neighboring Macedonia and also in the Preševoregion in southern Serbia. The situation with regard to the relationshipof the Kosovo Protection Corps and recalcitrant KLA members maybe parallel to that of the Irish Republican Army (IRA) followingthe creation of the Irish Free State, in which IRA members loyal tothe Free State became part of the new Irish state’s army while thoserejecting the settlement continued to identify themselves as the IRA.Terrorist action for which credit was claimed in the name of theKLA was the 19 February 2007 bombing in Pristina that destroyedthree vehicles belonging to the UN Mission in Kosovo in retaliationfor the deaths of some Albanian protestors. The Serbian governmentclaims that the KLA killed 988 people and kidnapped 287 from 1January 1998 until 10 June 1999 and that an additional 847 werekilled and another 1,154 kidnapped in the period after 10 June 1999until 11 November 2001, when NATO took control over Kosovo.The Human Rights Watch alleges that most of these victims wereSerbian nationals and members of the Roma (Gypsy) minority. Since1999 the U.S. State Department has not designated the KLA as aForeign Terrorist Organization.