Genocide in Rwanda and the Kosovo Conflict

 We’ll begin with a brief background of each conflict.  The Rwandan conflict began 

in earnest in 1990 with a civil war between the government and rebel group Rwandan 

Patriotic Front (RPF), organized essentially by the Tutsi ethnic group, one of the 

two main groups in Rwanda.  The Tutsi felt oppressed under the then-president’s 

rule (Habyriama), whose government was thought to favor the other major tribe,

 the Hutu.  In 1990 the RPF began a civil war against the government 

that lasted until 1993 with the signing of the Arusha Agreement.  Tensions

 were still high, however, and shortly after these Agreements, the 

Rwandan president was killed during a mysterious plane crash.  

The next day, Rwanda erupted into violence and chaos as one of the 

worst genocides in history was committed by Hutu extremists against 

the rebel Tutsi as well as moderate Hutu.  It lasted 100 days and roughly 

800,000 people were killed, the majority of which were Tutsi.

The Kosovo conflict sometimes refers to different things, but we will be 

referring to the Kosovo war fought during 1996-1999 between Yugoslav 

and  Serbian forces, and the Kosovo Liberation Army, (KLA), which

 was a separatist group composed of ethnic Albanians living in Kosovo 

who wanted independence from former Yugoslavia. (Yugoslavia at this 

time consisted of only Serbia and Montenegro.) 

                These Albanians felt they were being continually repressed by

 the Serbs, and especially by Milosevic, who was president of Serbia until 

1997, when he became president of Yugoslavia.  This sentiment translated into

 acts of violence beginning in 1996, when the KLA led four simultaneous attacks on

 Serbian security personnel occurring in different parts of Kosovo. 

                Despite some domestic and international efforts to relieve the

 tension expressed by the KLA towards Serbia, in 1997 the violent attacks 

escalated.  Over the next year and a half, attacks by both sides, the Serbians 

(as well as Yugoslav forces), and the Albanians continued.  In the international 

scene, the US supposedly supported the KLA, while NATO demanded the 

Serbians to stop their attacks, and encouraged the Albanians in Kosovo to give

 up their demands for independence.  

               A turning point in the war was in January 1998, during the Racak 

massacre,  where many Albanians were murdered by Serbian forces.  By the middle

 of 1999, several thousand Albanians were killed by Serb forces, thousands more

 had died in retaliation efforts, and an estimated 15,000 were homeless. The 

climax of the war occurred in 1999, when over half the Albanian population fled, 

and several thousand more died.  Serbian and Yugoslav government were finally forced 

to back down after NATO became involved, through a campaign of air strikes.  

 

~ by sanchez09 on April 2, 2008.