Executive Summary

With the death in 1980 of longtime Yugoslav leader Josep Broz Tito, the relationship between Kosovar Albanians and the Yugoslav government began to deteriorate. Tensions between ethnic Kosovar Albanians and the Yugoslav government rose throughout the 1980s. These tensions peaked in 1989 when Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic officially revoked Kosova/Kosovo’s1 autonomous status within the Republic of Serbia.

In 1998, the progression toward full-blown armed conflict accelerated. Serbian forces2 engaged in sustained military operations, and Kosovar Albanian guerrilla forces, the Kosova/Kosovo Liberation Army, began conducting guerilla activities throughout Kosova/Kosovo. A series of diplomatic initiatives during the year failed to yield concrete progress toward a peaceful resolution.

After the March 1999 withdrawal of most Western observers and the commencement of the NATO air campaign, killings of Kosovar Albanians increased sharply. As refugees flowed across the borders, they reported large-scale killings and atrocities.

A variety of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) began collecting information from these refugees, including the American Bar Association Central and East European Law Initiative (ABA/CEELI), the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), The Center for Peace Through Justice (Center), Physicians for Human Rights (PHR), and Human Rights Watch (HRW). Each of these organizations conducted extensive interviewing of Kosovars concerning what happened during the conflict. In total, there were 3,353 interviews included in this study.

In early 2000, ABA/CEELI and AAAS began working together to assemble and code information necessary to conduct a statistical analysis of the killings in Kosova/Kosovo. To ensure the broadest possible range of data, ABA/CEELI and AAAS approached NGOs that had worked in the field. The Center, PHR, and HRW shared their data for these purposes. All data were maintained and processed with proper respect for the confidentiality of the persons involved.

Through a statistical analysis of these data, this study concludes that approximately 10,500 Kosovar Albanians were killed between March 20 and June 12, 1999, with a 95 percent confidence interval from 7,449 to 13,627. This estimate is consistent with others made by political, legal, and scientific observers.

While an accurate estimate of the total number killed is an important issue with geopolitical consequences, an equally compelling point of inquiry is an examination of the timing and placement of the killings. The findings in this report reveal that a majority of documented killings occurred between late March and mid-April 1999. This timing correlates in substantial part with refugee flows.

Killing patterns established in this report mirror refugee flows closely. If killings are a means of intimidation used to facilitate mass forced evictions, then refugee flows and killings would logically occur together. The fact that the increases in the number of reported killings fluctuate in unison with refugee flows is consistent with the proposition that there was a coordinated campaign targeting ethnic Albanians.

While the inter-organizational technical cooperation underlying this report is itself a promising development, expanded collaboration in the NGO sector would produce further benefits. The results detailed herein demonstrate the utility of pooling information. ABA/CEELI and AAAS hope that this study spurs additional scientific investigation of civilian suffering during the conflict between Yugoslavia and NATO in 1999. ABA/CEELI and AAAS look forward to applying these lessons and helping other NGOs to begin work equipped with a knowledge of the basic rules needed to collect good data, adequate software, and an understanding of the power of collaboration. ABA/CEELI and AAAS invite like-minded NGOs to join them in this ongoing initiative.

1 The Kosovar place names in this report are provided in Albanian and Serbian, with the spelling based upon that used by the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE).

2 The term “Serbian forces,” as used in this report, refers to official Yugoslav armed forces, local Serbian police, Serbian paramilitary groups, and others cooperating with the aforesaid. This editorial choice was made in the interest of both brevity and accuracy. While clearly not all Serbs participated in the campaign, numerous reports confirm that there was a blurring of roles with the only common denominator being allegiance to the Serbian operation in Kosova/Kosovo. See, e.g., Médecins Sans Frontières, Kosovo: Accounts of a Deportation, 1, 4 (1999) http://www.doctorswithoutborders.org/reports/kosovo.htm.