On March 17 and 18, 2004, violent rioting by ethnic Albanians took place throughout
Kosovo, spurred by sensational and ultimately inaccurate reports that Serbs had been
responsible for the drowning of three young Albanian children. For nearly forty-eight
hours, the security structures in Kosovo—the NATO-led Kosovo Force (KFOR), the
international U.N. (UNMIK) police, and the locally recruited Kosovo Police Service
(KPS)—almost completely lost control, as at least thirty-three major riots broke out
across Kosovo, involving an estimated 51,000 participants.
 
The violence across Kosovo represents the most serious setback since 1999 in the
international community’s efforts to create a multi-ethnic Kosovo in which both the
government and civil society respect human rights. From the capital Pristina/Prishtine,1
to cities like Prizren and Djakovica/Gjakove, to small villages like Slatina/Sllatine and
Belo Polje/Bellopoje, large ethnic Albanian crowds acted with ferocious efficiency to rid
their areas of all remaining vestiges of a Serb presence, and also targeted other minorities
such as Roma, including Ashkali who are Albanian-speaking Roma. In many of the
communities affected by violence, in attacks both spontaneous and organized, every single
Serb, Roma, or Ashkali home was burned. In the village of Svinjare/Frasher, all 137 Serb
homes were burned, but ethnic Albanian homes were left untouched. In nearby
Vucitrn/Vushtrii, the ethnic Albanian crowd attacked the Ashkali community, burning
sixty-nine Ashkali homes. In Kosovo Polje/Fushe Kosove, one Serb was beaten to
death, and over one hundred Serb and Roma homes were burned, as well as the post
office, the Serbian school, and the Serbian hospital. Even the tiniest Serb presences were
a target for the hostile crowds:  ethnic Albanian crowds attacked the Serbian Orthodox
Church in Djakovica for hours, ultimately driving out five elderly Serb women who were
the last remaining Serbs in Djakovica, from a pre-war population of more than 3,000. 
 
The March violence forced out the entire Serb population from dozens of locations—
including the capital Pristina—and equally affected Roma and Ashkali communities.
After two days of rioting, at least 550 homes and twenty-seven Orthodox churches and
monasteries were burned, leaving approximately 4,100 Serbs, Roma, Ashkali, and other
non-Albanian minorities displaced. Some 2,000 persons still remain displaced months
later, living in crowded and unsanitary conditions—including in unheated and unfinished
apartments, crowded schools, tent camps on KFOR military bases, and even metal
trucking containers. The future of minorities in Kosovo has never looked bleaker.
 
The security organizations in Kosovo—KFOR, UNMIK international police, and the
KPS—failed catastrophically in their mandate to protect minority communities during
the March 2004 violence. In numerous cases, minorities under attack were left entirely
unprotected and at the mercy of the rioters. In Svinjare, French KFOR troops failed to
come to the assistance of the besieged Serbs, even though their main base was just a few
hundred meters away—in fact, the ethnic Albanian crowd had walked right past the base
on its way to burning down the village. French KFOR troops similarly failed to respond
to the rioting in Vucitrn, which is located in between two major French bases. In
Prizren, German KFOR troops failed to deploy to protect the Serb population and the
many historic Serbian Orthodox churches, despite calls for assistance from their
UNMIK international police counterparts, who later accused German KFOR
commanders of cowardice. In Kosovo Polje, UNMIK and KFOR were nowhere to be
seen as Albanian crowds methodically burned Serb homes. The village of Belo Polje,
rebuilt on the outskirts of Pec to house returning Serbs, was burned to the ground even
though it was almost adjacent to the main Italian KFOR base. Italian KFOR soldiers
refused to approach the besieged Serbs, forcing the Serbs to run for several hundred
meters through a hostile Albanian crowd, before KFOR evacuated them. Several Serbs
were wounded in the process. Even in the capital Pristina, Serbs were forced to
barricade themselves into their apartments, while Albanian rioters shot at them and
looted and burned the apartments below and around them, for up to six hours before
KFOR and UNMIK came to their assistance.

The failure of UNMIK international police and KFOR to effectively respond to the
violence left much of the security in the hands of the Kosovo Police Service (KPS). The
locally recruited KPS, many of them only recently trained, were poorly equipped to deal
with the violence. Some KPS officers acted professionally and courageously, risking their
own lives to rescue besieged Serbs and other minorities in many towns and villages.
However, many other KPS officers stood by passively as the ethnic Albanian crowds
burned homes and attacked Serbs and other minorities, even when those attacks took
place just meters away. Some KPS officers showed a clear bias by arresting only Serbs
and other minorities who were defending their homes, while ignoring the criminal
behavior of ethnic Albanians occurring in front of their eyes. In a few cases, KPS
officers were accused of taking an active part in the burning of minority homes.
 
The international community appears to be in absolute denial about its own failures in
Kosovo. While international actors have been universally—and accurately—critical of
the failures of the Kosovo Albanian leadership during and after the crisis, the dismal
performance of the international community has escaped similar critical scrutiny.
Instead, the leadership of KFOR and UNMIK seem happy to continue with “business
as usual,” rather than putting in place the reforms needed to prevent a recurrence of
mass violence—and a renewed collapse of the security institutions in the future.
 
An exhaustive and transparent review of Kosovo’s security institutions, resulting in a
drastic overhaul of its inefficient structures, is urgently needed. Kosovo’s security
institutions need to be adequately staffed with personnel who are well trained and
adequately equipped to respond to riot situations. A coordinated security system must be
developed between KFOR, UNMIK, and the KPS, putting an end to inter-institutional
tensions and rivalries. KFOR in particular must develop a unified command structure
and a common response system to violence in Kosovo, abandoning the decentralized
structures and widely disparate national doctrines that contributed to the chaos of March
17 and 18. Ultimately the security of minority communities will rest in the hands of
locally created institutions such as the KPS—just as it did in many locations during
March. It is essential to the future of minorities in Kosovo therefore that the KPS is
developed into a truly professional, impartial, well-trained police service that sees
protection of minorities as one of its core mandates.
 
The international community has lost tremendous ground in Kosovo as a result of the
March violence: ethnic Albanian extremists now know that they can effectively challenge
the international security structures, having demolished the notion of KFOR and
UNMIK invincibility; and ethnic minorities have lost almost all of the remaining trust
they had left in the international community. Time is running out for both the
international community and minorities in Kosovo, and now is the time for resolute and
transparent action to rectify the all-too obvious shortcomings of the international
community’s security structures in Kosovo.
 
 
 RECOMMENDATIONS
 
To the Contact Group governments: 
 
The Contact Group countries (France, Germany, Italy, Russia, U.S. and U.K), along with
NATO, and the U.N. Security Council, should increase their engagement with Kosovo
to improve the security of minorities.  A thorough review and reform of the NATO-led
Kosovo Force (KFOR) and the United Nations Interim Administration in Kosovo
(UNMIK) structures is urgently needed, and will require attention and support at the
highest levels to be effective. The overlapping, and at times competing, roles of various
international institutions are hampering Kosovo’s recovery, and it is important that the
Contact Group acts in unity to carry out the necessary reforms in Kosovo. Therefore,
Human Rights Watch is making recommendations to the Contact Group as a whole,
rather than the individual institutions in charge of component elements of Kosovo’s
governance and security. 
 
 •  Carry out a thorough, independent, and impartial review of the response of
KFOR, international UNMIK police, and the Kosovo Police Service (KPS)
to the March violence, focusing particularly on the failure of Kosovo’s
security organizations to protect minorities from ethnically motivated
violence and the shortcomings of coordination between the various security
organizations in Kosovo.
 
 •  Review the command structure and make-up of KFOR, with a view to
creating a KFOR with a unified command structure able to respond quickly
and uniformly to Kosovo-wide violence, by ensuring uniformity of response
to security incidents, and being free of restrictions by national contingents of
their “rules of engagement—commonly referred to as “caveats”—on troop
deployment that hampered the KFOR response to the March 2004 violence.
 
 •  Expand the size of KFOR and international UNMIK police to ensure an
adequate number of security officers to address the security situation in
Kosovo.

•  Ensure that KFOR troops and UNMIK civilian police deployed to Kosovo
are experienced in riot-control situations, including graduated use-of-force
response to riot situations, and have the necessary equipment to respond to
riot situations and other mass disturbances.
 
 •  Together with Kosovo’s Provisional Institutions of Self-Government
(PISG), take immediate steps to improve the living conditions of those still
displaced from the March 2004 violence. Address the continuing security
concerns of the minorities displaced by the March 2004 violence in full
conformity with the U.N. Guiding Principles on the Internally Displaced;
ensure adequate consultation with the displaced and provide them with
options, including reconstruction of their homes or relocation if the security
situation so requires.
 
 •  Take the lead in initiating and institutionalizing a dialogue between the
PISG, Kosovo Serb leaders, and the government of Serbia to improve the
security of minorities in Kosovo, end discrimination in the provision of
public services, and resolve the issue of parallel institutions.
 
 •  Seek accountability for ethnically motivated crimes in Kosovo, by
prioritizing the strengthening of impartial investigative and judicial
mechanisms in Kosovo.
 
 •  As requested by UNMIK, increase the number of UNMIK investigators,
prosecutors, and judges to give UNMIK adequate capacity to investigate and
prosecute criminal acts committed during the March violence, in accordance
with international standards.
 
 •  Continue to make clear and forceful public statements that a multiethnic
Kosovo in which the rights of all inhabitants are respected is one of the
principal objectives of the international community.
 
 •  Provide international protection to ethnic minorities forced to flee Kosovo
for fear of persecution. Ensure that those fleeing to neighboring countries or
elsewhere in Western Europe have access to full and fair asylum
determination procedures and are treated humanely with full respect for
their human rights. Asylum seekers from Kosovo who had their applications
rejected prior to the March violence, or those who sought to voluntarily
return to Kosovo, should have their applications reconsidered in light of the
March 2004 violence and the changed security conditions in Kosovo.
 
 •  Prioritize the strengthening of a credible, professional, and impartial Kosovo
Police Service by improving training programs and ensuring adequate
equipment for KPS officers (including riot-control equipment). Salary
packages for KPS officers should be increased to professional levels to
ensure the recruitment and retention of quality personnel.
 
To Kosovo’s Provisional Institutions of Self-Government:
 
 •  Commit Kosovo to a multiethnic future, and make clear that attacks against
minorities will be vigorously prosecuted.
 
•  Take responsibility for the security of minorities in Kosovo, and make the
security of minorities in Kosovo a strategic priority for the PISG. Carry out
the necessary reforms within the PISG and KPS to ensure security for
minorities in Kosovo.
 
•  Acknowledge that Kosovo’s institutions—political leaders, the media, and
the PISG—were partly to blame for the outbreak of violence in March 2004
by initially making inflammatory statements, and institute reforms to prevent
future anti-minority violence in Kosovo.
 
•  Seek dialogue with Kosovo’s Serb leadership and the government of Serbia
and Montenegro to improve the security of minorities in Kosovo, end
discrimination in the provision of public services, and resolve the issue of
parallel institutions.
 
•  Seek to increase the multiethnic nature of institutions of governance in
Kosovo, and act determinedly against discrimination in the provision of
public services.
 
To the Government of Serbia and Montenegro:

•  Seek dialogue with both the PISG and the international institutions in
Kosovo to improve the security of minorities in Kosovo, end discrimination
in the provision of public services, and resolve the issue of parallel
institutions.

INTRODUCTION
 
On March 17, 2004, violent rioting by ethnic Albanian crowds broke out in Kosovo, a
day after ethnic Albanian news agencies in Kosovo reported sensational and ultimately
inaccurate reports that three young children had drowned after being chased into the
river by Serbs.2  With lighting speed, the crowd violence spread all over Kosovo, with
the Kosovo authorities counting thirty-three major riots involving an estimated 51,000
participants over the next two days.3  Large ethnic Albanian crowds targeted Serb4 and
other non-Albanian communities, burning at least 550 homes and twenty-seven Serbian
Orthodox churches and monasteries, and leaving approximately 4,100 Serbs, Roma,
Ashkali (Albanian-speaking Roma), and other non-Albanian minorities5 displaced.6 
Nineteen people—eight Kosovo Serbs and eleven Kosovo Albanians—were  killed, and
over a thousand wounded—including more than 120 KFOR soldiers and UNMIK
police officers, and fifty-eight Kosovo Police Service (KPS) officers.
 
The violence of March 2004 was not the first time non-Albanians came under attack in
Kosovo. During the 1999 conflict between NATO and Yugoslavia over Kosovo,
Kosovar Albanians were subjected to a systematic campaign of mass murder, rape,
forced expulsions, and other war crimes committed by Serb and Yugoslav forces.7 
When ethnic Albanians returned to Kosovo with the entry of NATO, Kosovo’s Serb,
Roma, and other minorities were immediately subjected to violence, causing a massive
outflow of non-Albanians from Kosovo.8 High levels of violence against non-Albanian
communities—much of it politically-motivated and organized—continued for months,
with the international troop presence and U.N. administration largely ineffective in
stopping the violence. 
 
While the intensity of the violence in the immediate post-war period subsided, Serbs and
other minorities continued to be regularly attacked in Kosovo. For example, on August
31, 2003, a grenade was thrown at a group of Serbs in the mixed village of
Cernica/Cernice, near Gnjilane/Gjilan, killing a thirty-five-year-old schoolteacher,
Miomar Savic, and wounding four other Serbs. On August 13, 2003, two Serb youth
aged eleven and twenty were killed with automatic weapons while swimming in a river
near the Serbian enclave of Gorazdevac/Gorazhdec.9 On June 3, 2003, eighty-year-old
Slobodan Stolic, his seventy-eight-year-old wife Radmila, and their fifty-three-year-old
son Ljubinko were axed to death in their Obilic/Obiliq home, which was then set
alight.10 In April 2003, Amnesty International released a detailed report on attacks
against minorities in Kosovo, concluding that
 
 [a]lmost four years after the end of the war in Kosovo, minority
communities are still at risk of killings and assaults, mostly at the hands
of the majority community in their area. On a daily basis, they are denied
effective redress for acts of violence and other threats to their physical
and mental integrity.11 
 
The insecure environment in which Serbs found themselves in Kosovo led to the flight
of almost the entire Serb population in many urban centers. For example, the Serb
population of the town of Djakovica dropped from an estimated 3,000 in 1999, to just
five elderly Serb women prior to the March events.12 The remaining elderly Serb women,
living under constant KFOR protection in and around a church, were the focus of
protests in the town in March 2004. Similarly, the Serb population of Prizren—once one
of the most culturally and ethnically diverse cities in Kosovo—dropped from nearly
9,000 before the 1999 war to just thirty-six in 2003.13 All of the remaining thirty-six
Serbs in downtown Prizren were burned out of their homes during the March 2004
violence. Serbs in rural villages were less likely to flee, particularly impoverished elderly
who had no remaining family support networks outside Kosovo.
 
Roma, Ashkali, and Egyptians (Roma who claim descent from ancient Egypt)—referred
to collectively as RAE communities—also faced violence, intimidation, and forcible
expulsion in the aftermath of the 1999 conflict. Some ethnic Albanians suspected that
some RAE had collaborated with the Serb and Yugoslav forces during the 1999 conflict,
and ethnic Albanians were not above the widespread anti-RAE sentiments that prevail in
Europe, where RAE communities are derisively known as “Gypsies.”  In the immediate
aftermath of the 1999 conflict, RAE homes were burned alongside Serb homes, and
RAE communities also faced deadly attacks, kidnappings, and other forms of violence. 
 
The Belgrade-sponsored Coordination Center for Kosovo and Metohija, which has been
intimately involved in the setting up of parallel structures for the Serb population of
Kosovo, estimated in 2003 that almost 130,000 Serbs remained in Kosovo, a figure that
correlates with independent estimates made by the Brussels-based European Stability
Initiative.14 Although population figures for Kosovo are notoriously unreliable, these
figures suggest that as much as two-thirds of Kosovo’s pre-1999 Serb population
remains in Kosovo. It is important to note, however, that many remaining Serbs are
internally displaced to Serb-dominated areas of Kosovo.
 
This report attempts to reconstruct the March 2004 violence that shattered the illusion
of a stable and multi-ethnic Kosovo. During a two-week mission to Kosovo in April
2004, Human Rights Watch  located and interviewed dozens of eyewitnesses and victims
from the majority of the worst-affected areas in Kosovo, including Pristina,
Mitrovica/Mitrovice, Obilic, Kosovo Polje, Vucitrn, Svinjare, Djakovica, Prizren, Belo
Polje, Decani/Deçan) and Lipljan/Lipjan, among others. The report describes the
abuses committed by Kosovar Albanians, and the impact of their actions on non-
Albanian communities throughout Kosovo. The report also analyzes the role of local
and international actors during the crisis, including the Kosovar Albanian leadership, the
local press, the local security structures, and in particular the U.N. interim administration
in Kosovo (UNMIK) and the KFOR.
 
 
BACKGROUND: KOSOVO’S UNRESOLVED STATUS AND THE ROLE
OF THE INTERNATIONAL COMMUNITY IN KOSOVO
 
Under the agreement that brought the 1999 war to an end, Kosovo came under the
interim administration of the United Nations, with a system of governance and security
that, in addition to the United Nations Interim Administration Mission in Kosovo
(UNMIK), involved the NATO-led peacekeeping Kosovo Force (KFOR), the
Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE), and the European
Union. Although Kosovo’s final status—the level of autonomy or independence it will
be granted, and its relationship to the Union of Serbia and Montenegro—will not be
resolved until at least 2005. UNMIK is also involved in creating Provisional Institutions
of Self-Government (PISG) for Kosovo, including the creation of a “credible,
professional and impartial Kosovo Police Service (KPS).”15  
 
As yet unresolved is the future status of the Kosovo Protection Corps (KPC), a structure
created in 1999 to absorb demobilized members of the former Kosovo Liberation Army
(KLA).16 The Kosovo Protection Corps aspires to be Kosovo’s future army, but at
present is designated by the international community as “a civilian emergency
organization which carries out rapid disaster response tasks for public safety in times of
emergency and humanitarian assistance.”17 Some members of the KPC have been
implicated in human rights abuses against minority communities in Kosovo, and
involvement in organized crime.  The KPC itself played a minimal role during the March
2004 violence in Kosovo, largely confining itself to its barracks. In some areas of
Kosovo, particularly the U.S. KFOR-led eastern sector, KPC was allowed to play a role
in calming crowds and mounting joint patrols. In the Scandinavian-KFOR-led central
area of Kosovo, offers from KPC to help defend Caglavica (Çagllavice) were steadfastly
refused because Scandinavian KFOR elements did not want to cede any of their security
responsibilities to the KPC.
 
The overlapping security organizations in Kosovo—namely the NATO-led KFOR, the
UNMIK international police, the locally-recruited KPS, and the controversial KPC—
enjoy an uneasy co-existence and frequently fail to adequately coordinate their activities.
A general trend of security responsibility away from KFOR, first towards UNMIK
police and ultimately towards KPS, has left responsibility for various security functions
unclear. For example, a well-placed diplomatic source argued that the confused security
response by KFOR and UNMIK to the initial violence in Mitrovica on March 17 was
due partly to the hand-over process from KFOR to the UNMIK police that had been
underway for months:
 
 For the past months, the French KFOR were obliged to have a low
profile in Mitrovica, as they were in the process of a slow withdrawal
from Mitrovica and a hand-over of their responsibilities to UNMIK
police. So they lost contact [with intelligence sources] on the ground.18
 
In the aftermath of the March riots, there appears to have been an increased recognition
by KFOR and UNMIK on the need to coordinate their functions. In mid-April 2004,
the KFOR Commander for the Central Region and the UNMIK Pristina police
commander issued a joint statement committing themselves to “conduct training and
mutual operations and to create an effective command and control system, so together
we can fight any situation we’ll be faced with.”19
 
The Establishment and Role of KFOR

The 1999 Kosovo war ended with the departure of Serb and Yugoslav troops from the
province, and the establishment of a NATO-led Kosovo Force (KFOR) to take over
security in the province. The entry of KFOR into Kosovo, and the simultaneous
departure of the Serb and Yugoslav forces, was governed by a June 9, 1999, Military
Technical Agreement between KFOR and the respective governments of the then-
Federal Republic of Yugoslavia and the Republic of Serbia.20 U.N. Security Council
Resolution 1244, adopted on June 10, 1999, mandated KFOR with establishing and
maintaining a secure environment in Kosovo, including responsibility for public safety
and order.21
 
KFOR continues to play a prominent role in Kosovo, although its troop levels have
been significantly reduced since the mission was first established, from 50,000 troops in
June 1999 to 18,500 troops by late 2003. KFOR is organized into a headquarters based
in Pristina, currently commanded by Lieutenant-General Holger Kammerhoff of the
German Army (COM-KFOR). General Kammerhoff reports to the NATO
Commander-in-Chief, Allied Forces Southern Europe (CINCSOUTH), based in Naples,
Italy. U.S. Admiral Gregory Johnson is the current Commander-in-Chief of
CINCSOUTH. 
 
The KFOR troops are divided regionally into four Multinational Brigades. Multinational
Brigade North, under French command, is responsible for the areas around the divided
city of Mitrovica, together with Zvecan/Zveçan, and Vucitrn.22 Multinational Brigade
East, under U.S. command, is responsible for the areas around Kamenica,
Gnjilane/Gjilan, Pasjane, Urosevac/Ferizaj, Strpce/Shterpce, and Kacanik/Kaçanik.23 
Multinational Brigade Center, under Swedish command, is responsible for the areas
around the capital Pristina, Podujevo/Podujeve, Obilic, Kosovo Polje,
Gracanica/Graçanice, and Lipljan.24 The multinational Brigade Southwest, under Italian
command, is responsible for the areas around Pec/Pejë, Djakovica, Prizren, Decani,
Orahovac/Rahovec, Malisevo/Malisheve, Suva Reka/Suhareke, Klina/Kline, and
Dragas/Dragash.25  In addition, KFOR has a Pristina-based Multinational Specialized
Unit, a military police force that focuses on fighting organized crime and terrorism.26 
 
The reduction in KFOR troop levels to the 18,500 at the time of the March 2004
violence significantly affected KFOR’s ability to respond effectively to the violence.
Approximately one-third of the total KFOR troops, or roughly 6,000 troops at the time,
were deployed in direct combat-related functions, while the other two-thirds provided
various forms of logistical support. KFOR’s ability to respond effectively to the violence
was also severely hampered by the rules of engagement—often referred to as
“caveats”—that various nations put on the deployment of their troops. Almost every
nation which deploys troops in Kosovo places specific caveats on their deployment—
such as limiting their use of deadly force, limiting their deployment to a certain sector of
Kosovo, or requiring their troops to seek approval from national authorities rather than
the KFOR command structure for certain activities. The Multinational Brigade
Commanders also enjoy a high degree of autonomy over their area of control, limiting
the ability of overall KFOR commander (COM-KFOR) to ensure a consistent Kosovo-
wide response during times of crises and to shift troops between commands.
 
The Establishment and Role of UNMIK

With the same resolution that established KFOR, the United Nations Security Council
also created the United Nations Interim Administration in Kosovo (UNMIK). As its
name suggests, UNMIK was established to serve as an interim civilian administration for
Kosovo, and to promote the establishment of substantial autonomy and self-
government in Kosovo by fostering the establishment of accountable civilian institutions
in Kosovo.27  Under the direction of the Special Representative of the U.N. Secretary-
General, UNMIK works, at the operation level, in four “pillars”:  Pillar I, responsible for
police and the administration of justice, and Pillar II, responsible for civil administration,
are both implemented by the United Nations; Pillar III, democratization and institution
building, is implemented by the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe
(OSCE); and Pillar IV, Reconstruction and Economic Development, is implemented by
the European Union (E.U.).

As part of its policing responsibilities, UNMIK has created the international UNMIK
civilian police, which is responsible for interim law enforcement functions until the
creation of a “credible, professional, and impartial” Kosovo Police Service (KPS).28  As
of December 2003, UNMIK had 3,752 international police officers in Kosovo, including
2,422 civilian police (CIVPOL), 975 members of Special Police Units (SPUs) and 355
border police.29 The SPUs differ from other CIVPOL units in that they “represent a
large, paramilitary, mobile and self-sufficient force of officers capable of rapid
deployment to high-risk situations.”30 UNMIK police officers come from some 49
contributing nations, from Argentina to Zimbabwe, and can range widely in terms of
their policing experience and human rights awareness—as some come from nations with
their own domestic record of severe police abuse.
 
The Kosovo Police Service

UNMIK is also tasked with the establishment of the Kosovo’s Provisional Institutions
of Self-Government, including the creation of a “credible, professional and impartial
Kosovo Police Service (KPS).” UNMIK and the OSCE work together to train police
officers for the new KPS, a process that was initiated with the training of the first group
of 176 aspiring police officers in September 1999 at the newly established Kosovo Police
Service School in Vucitrn. By March 2004, 5,700 KPS officers had been trained and
deployed throughout Kosovo. UNMIK ultimately aims to train and deploy some 6,500
KPS officers in Kosovo.31
 
In most police stations, KPS officers work under the supervision of, and in cooperation
with, international UNMIK police officers. Ensuring a balanced ethnic composition
among the force has been a key challenge in creating a viable KPS. As is the case with
many other institutions in Kosovo, the ethnic composition of the KPS tends to reflect
the ethnic make-up of the area: in predominantly ethnic Albanian areas, there are little or
no Serbs and other non-Albanians participation in the KPS structures. In predominantly
Serb areas such as northern Mitrovica, the KPS tends to be entirely Serb.

Morale among KPS officers remains a primary challenge, because of the distrust they
face from other security organizations, particularly KFOR, and because of the low
remuneration they receive for their challenging work. Mutual distrust runs deep between
the ethnic-Albanian dominated KPS and the French KFOR troops in command of
Multinational Brigade-North: during the March 2004 violence, French KFOR attempted
to disband KPS in southern Mitrovica, refused to allow ethnic Albanian KPS officers to
carry out their duties and blocked them at checkpoints, and reportedly even considered
burning down the KPS police station in southern Mitrovica.32
 
KPS officers also are poorly equipped to carry out their duties. KPS officers have almost
no riot control equipment such as tear gas, water cannons, riot shields, or rubber bullets.
Most KPS officers have only been issued a single uniform.  Their pay is minimal. Two
leading KPS officers interviewed by Human Rights Watch in Prizren and Kosovo Polje,
respectively, earned a salary between 240 and 250 Euros a month, in an economy where
prices for consumer goods rival those of Western Europe. When Human Rights Watch
asked an UNMIK police commander in Prizren what the international community could
do to ensure a more effective security response to violence in Kosovo in the future, his
immediate response was: “Put some money in the KPS budget and give them proper
basic equipment that any police officer should have—we don’t need anything more.”33 
 
 
THE SPARKS THAT CAUSED A FIRE
 
While the March violence in Kosovo took almost everyone—local and international—by
surprise, it did not suddenly appear out of nowhere. Deep dissatisfaction within Kosovo
society about the lack of progress in resolving the final status of the province, continuing
economic stagnation, and deepening concerns about Belgrade’s attempts to consolidate
political control in some parts of Kosovo left the province ripe for unrest. The socio-
economic and political conditions in Kosovo that contributed to the March violence
have been detailed in a report by the International Crisis Group.34  The fate of the 3,430
persons missing since the end of 1999 war also remains an open wound in Kosovo. The
issue of the missing is also a symbol of wider grievances, particularly among ethnic
Albanians, who blame the lack of resolution on intransigence by Belgrade and inaction
by UNMIK.35
 
Lack of progress toward accountability for post-war attacks on minorities—evidenced
by the limited number of successful prosecutions of ethnic Albanians for violence
against minorities—helped ensure a climate of impunity for political violence in
Kosovo.36 At the same time, UNMIK arrests of former KLA commanders implicated in
violence against other ethnic Albanians have frequently provoked large protests.
Tensions rose further when a grenade exploded at the home of Kosovo’s President
Ibrahim Rugova on March 12, causing damage to the home but no injuries.37 Against
this simmering backdrop, several events converged in mid-March, greatly raising
tensions in Kosovo, and ultimately exploding into open violence. 
 
The Shooting of Jovica Ivic in Caglavica 

At about 8 p.m. on March 15, unknown attackers fired from a car at an eighteen-year-
old Serb, Jovica Ivic, at the Serb village of Caglavica on the outskirts of Pristina. Ivic was
seriously wounded, with gunshot wounds to the stomach and arm. Ivic claimed that he
knew the attackers were ethnic Albanian, because they had shouted at him in Albanian-
accented Serbian prior to the shooting.38 In response to the shooting, Serb villagers
blocked the main Pristina-Skopje road that passes through Caglavica, as well as the
Pristina-Gnjilane road that passes through the Serb enclave of Gracanica. Some
Albanian drivers passing through the area were reportedly attacked and beaten by Serbs,
as was an Irish KFOR contingent that tried to dismantle the Caglavica roadblock.39
 
The blocking of the main Pristina-Skopje highway, an economic lifeline for Kosovo,
enraged the Albanian public, as evident from the statements by Albanian political leaders
who criticized the inability (or unwillingness) of the international community to deal
with the blockade. When the violence erupted in Kosovo, many ethnic Albanian leaders
focused on the blockade—defined as interference in the “freedom of movement” of
ethnic Albanians—as a key cause of the violence. For example, Arsim Bajrami, the
Democratic Party of Kosovo (PDK) caucus leader in Parliament, stated during the
parliamentary debate on the violence on March 17: “We are dissatisfied with how
UNMIK operates, especially with the inability to establish full freedom of movement in
Kosovo.”40  The blockade at Caglavica proved to be one of the first focal points for the
ethnic Albanian demonstrators on March 17 and 18, and the site of some of the heaviest
clashes between KFOR and ethnic Albanians (see below).
 
Why did the blockade provoke such strong sentiments?  The issue of the blockade in
Caglavica and Gracanica cannot be separated from growing concerns among the ethnic
Albanian community about the rise of Belgrade-sponsored “parallel” institutions in Serb
enclaves. Over the past few years, the Serbian authorities in Belgrade have effectively
maintained control over most of the majority Serb enclaves in Kosovo, establishing
“parallel” courts, schools, education, security structures, and medical facilities that
operate outside the control of UNMIK.41 Even though the creation the parallel
institutions is a direct challenge to UNMIK’s mandate in Kosovo, the response of
UNMIK to this fundamental undermining of its mandate institutions in Mitrovica,
Gracanica, and other Serb enclaves has been weak. The failure of UNMIK to effectively
challenge the creation of “parallel” institutions seriously worries the ethnic Albanian
leadership, who fear that Belgrade is trying to create facts on the ground that would
make its aim of cantonizing Kosovo an inevitable result. However, the Albanian
viewpoint ignores the reality of life for many Serbs in Kosovo, who find access to
Albanian-dominated essential services almost impossible because of discriminatory
practices.42
 
The Role of the “War Associations” 

On March 16, 2004, the so-called “war associations”—three interconnected
organizations representing the KLA’s war veterans, KLA invalids, and the families of the
missing—organized widespread demonstrations in almost every ethnic Albanian city and
town in Kosovo to protest the arrest and detention of former KLA leaders on domestic
and international war crime charges. The demonstrations gained a particular vigor
because of the February 2004 arrests by UNMIK police of four former KLA
General Selim Krasniqi, on charges relating to the murder of fellow Albanians during the
1998-9 Kosovo conflict.44  
 
During many of the rallies, speakers came close to inciting the crowds to rise up against
UNMIK in protest against the detention of KLA leaders. The head of the disabled war
veterans association of Mitrovica, Faik Fazliu, told demonstrators in the town on March
16 that “the continuation of the discriminatory policy of UNMIK towards the members
of the former KLA will destabilize this region and that situation might get out of control
as a result of citizens’ revolt and indignation.”45 Faton Klinaku, the head of the three war
associations, told a crowd in Pristina on the same date that with the arrests of the KLA
members, “the neo-colonialists called UNMIK are supporting organized crime and are
continuing the same politics applied by Serbia.”46 Nexhmi Lajci, the president of the
association of war veterans in Pec/Peja, came close to calling for a new war, telling the
audience, “Kosovo has been occupied [by UNMIK] as it used to be once [by Serbia] and
there is a fear that it is moving towards a new war.”47 The ugly mood of the pro-KLA
protests, which were attended by some 18,000 protesters Kosovo-wide, was perhaps
well-summed up by a headline in the nationalist newspaper Epoka e Re, which splashed a
slogan heard at the rally on its front page: “UNMIK beware, KLA will burn you
down.”48 During the protests in Prizren, demonstrators stoned the UNMIK
headquarters, wounding one UNMIK civilian police officer.49
 
While the pro-KLA protests of March 16 did not directly lead to the March 17-18
violence, they did help lay the foundation for the protests that followed the next day,
after the sensational reports of the drowning of the three Albanian children reached the
public—reports which appeared in the same issues of the newspapers that reported on
the pro-KLA protests. With their vast organizing structures throughout Kosovo, and the
fact that they had organized Kosovo-wide protests throughout Kosovo, the war
associations were uniquely positioned to direct and capitalize on the violence that
followed.
 
The Drowning of Three Boys in the Ibar River

The March 15 shooting of Jovica Ivic in Caglavica and the Serb road blockade that
followed, combined with the pro-KLA protests on March 16, significantly raised
tensions in Kosovo. As the pro-KLA protests were winding down, the ethnic Albanian
media began broadcasting inflammatory reports that three young Albanian children had
been chased into the Ibar River by Serbs on the afternoon of March 16, and had
drowned. As a detailed report by the OSCE’s Representative on Freedom of the Media
later showed, the ethnic Albanian media played an irresponsible, inflammatory role,
broadcasting information that was still unconfirmed: the surviving ethnic Albanian boy
never publicly stated that the group were chased into the river by Serbs, only that the
young Albanian boys had been sworn at by Serbs from a distant house. The
interpretation that the boys were chased in the river by Serbs came from other sources,
such as Halit Berani, a Mitrovica-based ethnic Albanian human rights activist (see
below). Such subtleties didn’t matter to the private and public state-funded media, who
began broadcasting and printing unequivocal reports that the ethnic Albanian boys had
been chased into the river by Serbs.50
 
Moderating voices, such as the UNMIK spokesperson Tracy Becker, who warned that
an ethnic motivation for the incident had not been established, received almost no
airtime, while “experts” who denounced the Serb “bandits” were given unfettered and
unchallenged access. For example, Halit Berani, the chairman of the Council for the
Defense of Human Rights and Freedoms in Mitrovica—an ethnic Albanian human
rights group with a strongly nationalist agenda—was given more than 4 minutes of the
RTK news broadcast, compared to the 12 seconds given to the moderate UNMIK
spokesperson (see above). Berani, who had not witnessed the incident, told the audience: 
 
 Today around 16:00 in the village of Cabr. (Cabra in Serbian), Zubin
Potok municipality, while six children from the above mentioned village
were playing, a group of Serb bandits attacked these children, the Serb
bandits also had a dog, and [were] swearing at their Albanian mothers,
they forced the Albanian children to run away. Two of them managed to
hide in the roots of the willow trees by the river Lumebardh (Ibar river
in Serbian), whereas the other four fell into the river. It is known that
the Lumebardh river, apart from being very deep, has very cold water
and is fast-moving. Most probably, the children couldn’t swim well.
There is no information about the fate of three of them, whereas one
survived after making it to the other side of the river…
 
We are used to these Serb bandits….We think that it is in revenge for
what happened in Caglavica [i.e. shooting of Serb], the case that showed
what the Serbs are willing to do when the situation is getting calm in
Kosova.51
 
The sensational reporting on the Serb “bandits” drowning young Albanian children set
off a firestorm of protests and violence across Kosovo. However, while the drowning of
the three children was a tragedy, a thorough investigation by the United Nations and a
respected ethnic Albanian judge from Kosovo casts serious doubt on the allegations of
Serb complicity in the drownings, citing inconsistencies in the accounts given by the
surviving boy, and a lack of corroboration of the boy’s account by the two other
surviving children and an elderly Serb who was working in the area. The U.N.
investigative team did a thorough search of the area where the drownings took place,
and could not find any Serbs who fitted the description given by the surviving boy.52  
 
 
FAILURE TO PROTECT: UNMIK AND KFOR’S INABILITY TO
PROTECT SERBS AND OTHER MINORITIES 
 
The widespread attacks by ethnic Albanians on Serbs, Roma, Ashkali (Albanian-speaking
Roma) and other non-Albanian minorities, documented below in this report, are a cause
for grievous concern. Of equal concern, however, are the near-collapse of the
international security organizations in Kosovo when confronted by the violence and
unrest of March 2004, and the inability of KFOR, UNMIK international police, and the
local KPS to provide effective protection to Kosovo’s minority communities during the
two days of violence. 
 
In community after community, Serbs and other minorities—a disproportionate number
of them elderly and infirm—were left for hours at the mercy of hostile ethnic Albanians
rioters, waiting for KFOR and UNMIK to rescue them. A summary of the protection
failures shows just how severely the international community failed Kosovo’s minorities
in its time of greatest need:  
 
 •  French KFOR troops refused to come to the assistance of the Serb
residents of Svinjare, even though their main base is located just a few
hundred meters from that village. The entire village of Svinjare—all 137
homes—were burned to the ground within viewing distance of the main
French KFOR base. 
 
 •  In nearby Vucitrn, located in between two main French KFOR camps,
Albanian crowds burned sixty-nine Ashkali homes without a response from
either French KFOR or international UNMIK police. 
 
 •  In the southern city of Prizren, German KFOR commanders refused to
honor requests to come to the assistance of their international UNMIK
police counterparts, and Albanian crowds destroyed all remaining vestiges of
the centuries-old Serb presence in the city, including several religious
buildings dating back to the fourteenth century, burning one Serb man to
death in his home and leaving all remaining Serbs in Prizren homeless. 
 
 •  In the large town of Kosovo Polje, only a few UNMIK police and no
KFOR personnel came to the assistance of the besieged Serbs, leaving a
handful of local KPS officers to protect more than one hundred Serb
families scattered around the city. One Serb was beaten to death, and at least
one hundred Serb homes were burned, as was the main post office, the
Serbian school, and the Serbian hospital. 
 
 •  In the capital Pristina, Serb residents of the YU Program apartment
buildings—an apartment complex originally built to house Serb refugees
from Bosnia and Croatia—were besieged for hours by ethnic Albanian
crowds who set their apartments on fire and shot at them before they were
rescued by KFOR and UNMIK international police. 

Even where UNMIK and KFOR were present, they often proved ineffective and
outnumbered:  
 
 •  In Djakovica, a few dozen Italian KFOR troops attempted to protect the
last remaining Serbian Orthodox Church until they were overwhelmed and
had to evacuate the five remaining Serb residents of Djakovica, all elderly
women. 
 
 •  In Belo Polje, Italian KFOR and international UNMIK police were unable
to hold back a massive crowd of Albanians marching from Pec, who burned
down the thirty-two homes that had been built to house returning Serbs
who were once again displaced. 
 
 •  On the outskirts of Prizren, German KFOR troops abandoned the
fourteenth-century Monastery of the Archangels almost as soon as the
Albanian crowd attacked it, evacuating the monks and allowing the
Monastery to be burned down.
 
In the absence of KFOR and UNMIK, the dire security situation was often left in the
hands of the recently trained and under-equipped Kosovo Police Service (KPS), whose
performance was mixed. Some KPS officers performed with great courage and
professionalism during the crisis, working tirelessly to protect or evacuate Serbs from
their homes and doubtlessly saving lives. Many other KPS officers stood by passively,
refusing to take steps to protect ethnic Serbs and other minorities, or participate in their
evacuation. In a number of cases, KPS officers showed a bias against minorities,
arresting Serbs or Ashkalis who tried to defend their homes while ignoring the criminal
actions of Albanian rioters. Some KPS officers took an active part in the violence,
allegedly participating in the burning of homes in Vucitrn, Obilic, and Kosovo Polje.
 
The failure—almost collapse—of the security institutions in Kosovo during the March
2004 violence is beyond dispute. What is more difficult to analyze is why the security
institutions in Kosovo failed so miserably during the March violence. It is crucial that
such an analysis takes place, in order to reform the institutional set-up of the security
institutions in Kosovo and to prevent a similar collapse in the future. However, it
appears that both UNMIK and KFOR are resistant to such a comprehensive review of
its failures. Most of the UNMIK and KFOR officials with whom Human Rights Watch
met painted an inaccurately rosy picture of their response to the March 2004 violence,53
or blamed each other for the failures. 
 
Although international officials have been outspoken in their criticism of the Kosovar
leadership for its failings during the crisis, they have not shown a similarly critical
attitude in evaluating the failures of their own organizations and institutions. For
example, when Jean-Marie Guéhenno, the U.N. Under-Secretary-General for Peace-
Keeping Operations, briefed to U.N. Security Council on April 13, he criticized the
Kosovar leadership for their “ambivalent” role during the crisis, but did not offer any
critique of UNMIK and KFOR’s performance, arguing that “what was required now
was concrete action by Kosovo’s leaders and its people to address the causes of the
ethnically motivated violence [and] to implement measures to ensure the violence would
not be repeated.” Adam Thomson, the U.K. representative at the U.N. Security Council,
responded by congratulating UNMIK and KFOR for “restoring calm” in Kosovo.54 
Such uncritical, self-congratulatory rhetoric ignores the reality of UNMIK and KFOR’s
failures, and the urgency with which these shortcomings need to be addressed in order
to prevent a repeat of the March 2004 events. U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan’s own
April 30 Kosovo report to the U.N. Security Council similarly fails to give a critical
analysis of UNMIK and KFOR performance during the March violence, although it
does analyze the response of Kosovar politicians and the KPS.55  
 
NATO has instituted a “Lessons Learned” review of KFOR actions during the March
2004 violence, but it is unlikely that its findings will be made public.56 UNMIK police
officials also carried out a review of their response to the crisis, according to a senior
UNMIK spokesperson, but the results of that review have also not been made public,
and UNMIK is not expected to institute major changes as a result of the review. On
June 11, 2004, U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan appointed Norwegian Ambassador
Kai Eide to investigate the March violence,57 but it appears Eide’s mandate is to probe
“the political implications of violence between ethnic Albanians and Serbs and
recommending ways in which the province’s residents can live together again
peacefully,” rather than focusing on UNMIK and KFOR security failures during the
crisis. German officials conducted their own internal review of the actions of their
troops, reportedly concluding that KFOR was unable to fulfill its mandated security
tasks or effectively protect minority communities in Kosovo, and raising serious
concerns about the failure of German KFOR troops to effectively respond to the anti-
Serb violence in Prizren.58
 
While this report addresses the failures of Kosovo’s security institutions, understanding
why those failures occurred requires a level of access to UNMIK, KFOR, and KPS
commanders and documents that Human Rights Watch was not able to obtain.
Commanders and soldiers must be interviewed at all levels of responsibility, and
documentation such as intelligence information, orders issued, deployment requests, and
post-deployment assessments must be reviewed. However, even the limited access
available to Human Rights Watch points to several conclusions about the reasons for the
failure of Kosovo’s security institutions:
 
 1)  The violence in Kosovo took the security institutions by surprise: There is no
doubt that the violence took KFOR, UNMIK, and KPS by surprise, and that
Kosovo’s security institutions were unprepared to deal with such massive
violence. While no one predicted the violence in Kosovo, KFOR and UNMIK
should have been able to better predict how the violence would develop: most
international journalists, for example, were anticipating violence in Mitrovica on
March 17, but French KFOR had not deployed at the obvious flashpoint, the
bridge between the two communities. The lack of preparedness by UNMIK and
KFOR points towards a lack of capacity in intelligence and analysis capacities.
 
2)  UNMIK and KFOR had insufficient capacity to respond effectively to the
violence:  Almost every UNMIK and KFOR official interviewed by Human
Rights Watch stated that their troop levels were inadequate to deal with the
widespread attacks that were taking place all over Kosovo, and called for an
increase in troop and officer levels.
 
 3)  KFOR and UNMIK troops were inadequately trained and equipped to deal with
riot situations:  A major problem particularly with KFOR troops in Kosovo is
that the troops tend to have limited or no riot control experience, and thus do
not know how to effectively respond to riot situations. The lack of capacity of
KFOR to respond to riot situations was sharply criticized by a senior UNMIK
official in an interview with Human Rights Watch:
 
 We always knew that Kosovo would not be invaded. KFOR is
in Kosovo to protect against civil violence, disturbances, and
ethnic violence. They don’t need tanks but riot gear and shields,
and soldiers trained in dealing with public disorder. If KFOR
was not prepared for such civil disorder, then why the heck not? 
What did they think they were in Kosovo for?59
 
As shown by the effectiveness of a specialized British riot control unit deployed
to Kosovo Polje on March 18, a small number of properly trained troops can
have a greater impact than large numbers of ordinary soldiers without proper
riot control training and equipment. KFOR, UNMIK, and KPS also should have
the necessary riot control equipment—riot shields, protective clothing, tear gas,
rubber bullets, water cannons—to enable an effective and non-lethal response.
 
 4)  The lack of a coordinated response from KFOR, UNMIK, and KPS hampered
its efforts. It is well known that tensions exist between the various security
organizations in Kosovo, and that coordination between KFOR, UNMIK, and
KPS is minimal. Even within KFOR, coordination between the various
multinational brigades is minimal, and the command structure between the
multinational brigades and COM-KFOR is not unified. A senior UNMIK
official succinctly described the lack of a unified KFOR command to Human
Rights Watch:
 
 KFOR lacks command and control structures. Lt-Gen. Kammerhoff is
the commander in theory, but this is ceremonial. Practically speaking,
daily decisions are made by the national contingents that take
instructions from their capitals, and Kammerhoff’s instructions are
secondary.60

Distrust and lack of cooperation between Kosovo’s security institutions must be
addressed and rectified. NATO itself had recognized the structural command
and control problems faced by KFOR, vowing at its December 2003 Defense
Minister’s meeting that KFOR “will be restructured but will not be reduced
below 17,500 troops for the time being.”61 However, little progress had been
made towards the restructuring process by the time the violence broke out in
March 2004.
 
 5)  Kosovo’s international institutions—including UNMIK and KFOR—were
themselves under attack and needed protection, drawing resources away from
protection of minorities. While this report focuses on the failure of UNMIK and
KFOR to protect minorities during the March violence, it is important to
recognize that UNMIK and KFOR also had to divert resources towards
protecting themselves. UNMIK offices throughout Kosovo were themselves
targeted for attack. More than one hundred UNMIK vehicles were burned or
seriously damaged during the violence. Among the wounded were a significant
number of security officers: sixty-five UNMIK international police, fifty-eight
KPS police officers, and sixty-one KFOR soldiers suffered injuries.
 
 6)  KPS training, equipping, and proper provisioning must be prioritized: KPS
officers will play an increasingly important role in Kosovo as it moves towards
resolving its final status. Many KPS officers served with courage during the riots,
under extremely difficult circumstances. While KPS officers who participated or
remained passive during the violence must be brought to account, it is equally
important to recognize those who served with distinction and courage. The
training and equipping of KPS officers must be upgraded, and KPS officers
should earn salaries that are appropriate and competitive with the private sector. 
 
 
THE VIOLENCE: ETHNIC ALBANIAN ATTACKS ON SERBS AND ROMA
 
Was the Violence Spontaneous or Organized?

The March violence in Kosovo involved more than 50,000 rioters, and international
officials quickly described the violence as organized by ethnic extremists. UNMIK
spokesperson Derek Chappell described the acts of violence as having “a degree of
organization behind them.” On March 23, during a visit to the violence-affected city of
Obilic, UNMIK head Harri Holkeri stated that Albanian extremists “had a ready-made
plan” for the violence.62 During his March 22 visit to Kosovo, NATO Secretary-General
Jaap de Hoop Scheffer described the “unacceptable” violence as “orchestrated and
organized by extremist factions in the Albanian community.”63 Visiting Kosovo just days
after the March violence, the European Union’s foreign policy representative Javier
Solana also described the violence as organized: “It may have been a moment of
spontaneity, but ... a lot of people (were) organized to take advantage of that moment of
spontaneity.”64 Admiral Gregory Johnson, the commander of NATO forces for
Southern Europe, a command which includes the NATO-led KFOR troops in Kosovo,
stated that there was a “modicum of organization” behind the violence and described
the violence as “essentially amount[ing] to ethnic cleansing.”65 In his report to the U.N.
Security Council, Secretary-General Kofi Annan stated that “the onslaught led by
Kosovo Albanian extremists against the Serb, Roma and Ashkali communities of
Kosovo was an organized, widespread, and targeted campaign.”66
 
In fact, the March violence in Kosovo was both spontaneous and organized. A major
reason why the demonstrations grew so quickly and became so violent is that many
Kosovar Albanians, especially young people, were frustrated and, in the words of one
Pristina-based diplomat, “in the mood to demonstrate.”67 The main component of most
of the crowds were young ethnic Albanians, many of whom came of age after the 1999
conflict, and who feel deeply marginalized and frustrated by the lack of opportunities
provided by Kosovo’s stagnating economy. The fact that many ordinary ethnic
Albanians rapidly went out in the streets and joined in spontaneous violence against their
ethnic Serb and Roma neighbors presents an even greater challenge to the possibility of
a multi-ethnic Kosovo than the alternative scenario of ethnic violence organized by a
minority of ethnic Albanian extremists. Disturbingly, the 1999 conflict has left behind a
large number of individuals deeply familiar with ethnic violence, both as victims and
perpetrators. In other words, all too many individuals in Kosovo know well how to burn
down their neighbor’s house—with or without organization behind such violence.
 
Yet while the majority of the ethnic Albanian rioters probably came to join the protests
spontaneously, there is little doubt that some ethnic Albanian extremist elements worked
to organize and accelerate the violence. As with the 1998-99 actions against Serb and
Yugoslav forces by KLA, most of these extremist elements organized on the local rather
than the regional level, and their affiliations varied from town to town. Some were
radical members of ethnic Albanian political parties, others had belonged to the KLA,
and some were members of fringe groups such as the shadowy “Albanian National
Army” whose initials (AKSh, Armata Kombetare Shqiptare) were often found spray-
painted at the sites of rioting.
 
Both the spontaneous and organized elements behind the violence acted with a common
purpose: to get rid of remaining ethnic Serb and other minority communities in Kosovo.
Once the violence began, it swept throughout Kosovo with almost clinical precision: 
after two days of rioting, every single Serb, Roma, or Askaeli home had been burned in
most of the communities affected by the violence, but neighboring ethnic Albanian
homes were left untouched.
 
The Mitrovica and Caglavica Clashes

The violence in Kosovo started, as it had many times before, at the Mitrovica bridge
which divides the ethnic Serb north of the town from the ethnic Albanian south.
Although violence was a predictable outcome of the preceding events, KFOR and
UNMIK appear to have been caught unprepared on the morning of the 17th.
 
An international newsphotographer explained to Human Rights Watch that when he
arrived in Mitrovica at about 10:45 a.m., a demonstration of ethnic Albanian school
children was marching up and down the road leading to the bridge.68 A symbol of the
town’s division, the bridge has been a flashpoint in past violence. The march was
organized by Albanian teachers to protest the alleged drowning of the three children the
day before.69 KPS officers and a few UNMIK police were manning a small crowd
control barrier blocking the road to the bridge. Suddenly, a large crowd of Albanian men
came from behind the children, shouting “To the bridge!  To the bridge!” and ran
towards the bridge, immediately overwhelming the KPS/UNMIK barrier. The KPS and
UNMIK officers attempted to regroup on the bridge, using their truncheons to beat
back the crowd, and were joined by a group of fifteen or so Jordanian UNMIK riot
control police. The international news photographer explained what happened next:
 
 I began to run with the crowd, and as we approached the bridge I could
see an incomplete barricade of crowd control barriers, and a handful of
police, KPS and UNMIK. As the crowd came onto the bridge these
police tried to stop them from crossing but were totally outnumbered, I
then noticed that there was nothing behind this handful of police to
stop the crowd. It would be usual in these situations in Mitrovica to
have KFOR troops blocking the bridge, but on that day there was not a
single soldier on the bridge. The Albanian demonstrators seemed as
surprised as I was and many of them faltered halfway across and seemed
pretty unsure what to do, but the ringleaders were shouting them
forward, so they went on to the Serb side.70 
 
Once across the bridge, the Albanians began to attack the Dolce Vita restaurant adjacent
to the bridge on the north side, and nearby cars. The restaurant was a popular hang-out
for the Serb nationalist “bridge-watchers” in the immediate post-war period.  Serb
residents of Mitrovica quickly came to fight the Albanians, and UNMIK also regrouped
to push the Albanians back across the bridge about fifteen minutes later. KFOR did not
arrive in the area until after the Albanians had been pushed back across the bridge.
 
At the same time, a group of several hundred Albanians had gone onto a second bridge
and begun throwing stones at Serb homes. They were unable to cross the bridge
completely because of the presence of permanently stationed KFOR troops on the
bridge, reinforced with UNMIK police. At least one grenade was thrown from the Serb
side, wounding at least seven Albanians and some French KFOR troops. Almost
immediately, two armed Albanian men ran towards the bridge with AK-47s assault rifles
and started shooting at the Serb side.71 Intense exchanges of gunfire followed, leaving
four Albanians dead and many more wounded, and further inflaming Albanian
sentiment across Kosovo.72 UNMIK police sources later claimed that the French
soldiers had refused to use their stun grenades to stop the crowd, and had no
ammunition to return fire when the two Albanian gunmen approached the bridge and
began firing.73 
 
The Serb blockade of the Caglavica road was the next flashpoint, as Albanians from the
central region of Kosovo reacted to the news of the fighting and deaths in Mitrovica.
Students from the University of Pristina received flyers encouraging them to join the
protests in Caglavica. Some of the heaviest clashes between Albanian crowds and
international KFOR and UNMIK troops took place at Caglavica, as KFOR and
UNMIK tried to keep thousands of ethnic Albanians from entering the village and the
large Serb enclave around it. On the main highway, a battle continued from early
afternoon until late evening, and the international troops took significant fire from the
Albanian side. Swedish KFOR troops were reinforced by U.S. Marines towards nightfall,
and the international troops were able to prevent the ethnic Albanian crowd from
reaching Caglavica—barely. 
 
The heavy fighting at Caglavica continued the next day. Albanian militants continued to
clash throughout the day with the reinforced KFOR troops—who had now barred the
road with razor wire. KFOR troops were regularly fired upon, and four Albanians were
shot dead by the KFOR troops.74 In the evening, Prime Minister Rexhepi and several of
his cabinet ministers went to meet with the crowd, appealing on them to stop, and the
crowd dispersed just minutes later.75
 
Attacks against Serbs and Roma, and the Failure to Protect

The fighting in Mitrovica and Caglavica received significant media attention, creating the
impression that most of the fighting in Kosovo was between ethnic Albanians and
international UNMIK and KFOR troops and that the international community had
responded robustly to the violence. However, at the same time, a massive wave of
violence was sweeping across Kosovo, targeting Serb and other non-Albanian
communities. Unlike in Caglavica where the international troops mounted a sustained
defense, non-Albanian minorities throughout Kosovo were often left at the mercy of the
attacks by ethnic Albanians, without significant protection from KFOR or UNMIK
troops.
 
Pristina/Prishtine

Almost no Serbs continued to live in the capital Pristina after the 1999 war, except for a
few isolated elderly Serbs who chose to continue living in their homes, and several dozen
Serb families who lived in the so-called YU Program apartments in the Ulpiana district
of Pristina. The families living in the YU Program apartments included Serb refugees
from Croatia and Bosnia, for whom the apartments were originally built in the mid-
1990s, as well as Serbs displaced after the 1999 conflict in Kosovo, and some Serbs who
were working for various international organizations in Kosovo.
 
Ethnic Albanian protests from Pristina appeared to have been well organized on March
17, although they initially focused on exhorting ethnic Albanians to join the protests at
Caglavica rather than on Pristina itself. At the University of Pristina, students found
leaflets in their dormitories urging them to join the protests, signed on behalf of the
“organizing council.”  At the municipality buildings in Pristina, university officials
including the President of the Independent Union of Students of the University of
Pristina (UPSUP) Gani Morina and University of Pristina Rector Zejnel Kelmendi
addressed thousands of students, “alterna[ting] between exhorting and placating the
crowd’s emotion.”76 Throughout the day, the momentum of the protests continued to
grow.
 
When the crowds began to return to Pristina in the evening from the pitched battles at
Caglavica with KFOR and UNMIK troops, they focused their attention on the YU
Program apartment buildings that housed most of Pristina’s remaining Serbs. Shortly
after 7 p.m., Milanka Stefanovic was preparing to put her eight-year-old daughter to bed
when she heard a crowd of several hundred Albanians gather outside, yelling “UCK,
UCK (Ushtria Clirimtare e Kosoves; the Albanian name of the Kosovo Liberation
Army),” telling the residents to “Go to Serbia,” and threatening to kill them.77 The
apartments came under sustained attack from the crowd, until the last Serbs were
evacuated sometime around 1 a.m. The crowd shot at the building, set apartments on
fire, and beat and stabbed some of the Serb residents.
 
Trapped in a few apartments, some with reinforced doors, the Serbs living in the YU
Program apartment building could smell the smoke from the burning apartments below
them. One of the residents, Dragan Smiljanic, was caught by a group of ethnic Albanians
while fleeing his apartment, and stabbed in the face.78 Outside in the hallways, Serb
residents heard ethnic Albanian crowds rampage through the building, looting the
apartments and setting them on fire. Zivka Savic, a forty-seven-year-old woman,
recalled:
 
Albanians were coming from everywhere, arriving even in taxis. We
heard pistol and rifle shots. Meanwhile, we kept calling for help, but no
one would come. My grandchild was lying down and a bullet came into
the room, hitting the ceiling and then his mattress. The crowd was
destroying everything, and we didn’t know what would happen to us.79
 
It took KFOR and UNMIK until at least 10 p.m. to respond to the calls for help from
the trapped Serbs. Many of the YU building residents were not evacuated until around 1
a.m., six hours after they had first come under attack.
 
All of the Serbs interviewed by Human Rights Watch explained that they repeatedly
telephoned UNMIK and KFOR, as soon as the attack began, and made further calls
during the evening, begging UNMIK and KFOR to come rescue them. Two Irish
KFOR vehicles managed to make their way through the hostile crowd and reach the
besieged YU Program apartment building, sometime after 10 p.m., three hours after the
attack started. Irish KFOR temporarily dispersed the crowd by firing in the air.80 The
KFOR troops managed to evacuate the children and other vulnerable persons, but could
not evacuate all of the residents.81 A combined KFOR and UNMIK police evacuation
team was subsequently beaten back several times by the ethnic Albanian crowd,82 and
only managed to return to the building after 1 a.m., six hours after the attack began. The
ethnic Albanian crowd attacked the vehicles that were evacuating the Serbs, stoning the
vehicles and attempting to block their path with overturned garbage containers.83
 
Violence against Serbs and Serb buildings in Pristina continued on March 18. On the
evening of March 18, a crowd of ethnic Albanians, most of them young people, attacked
the St. Nicolas Orthodox Church in the old part of town. KPS and Italian UNMIK
troops mounted an ineffective and uncoordinated defense of the Church, with Italian
UNMIK accidentally firing tear gas at the KPS officers and also shooting a KPS officer
three times.84  At about 8 p.m., the Italian UNMIK was able to disperse the two hundred
or so ethnic Albanians surrounding the church by firing in the air, but then immediately
began to evacuate the priest of the church as well the five Serb homes on the street
nearby.85  Almost immediately after the Italian UNMIK departed, the ethnic Albanian
rioters returned and burned the church. In the following days, the evacuated Serb homes
were progressively looted. When sixty-eight-year-old Stefanka Tisma returned to check
on his evacuated home two weeks later, he found that his home had been completely
looted, that all the electrify wires had been cut, and that the looters had flooded the
house by turning on the water taps.86
 
Lipljan/Lipjan 

Protests began in Lipljan around 4 or 5 p.m. on March 17, as large crowds of ethnic
Albanians began to gather at a downtown high school. The crowd initially tried to enter
the Serb village of Suvi Do but were stopped by KFOR, then turning their attention to
the Serb neighborhoods of Lipljan.
 
Most Serbs in the Lipljan area live in nine exclusively Serb villages around the town, but
the town itself has two significantly Serb areas, the exclusively Serb neighborhood of
Kisa located around the Serb Orthodox Church and the mixed Serb-Albanian
neighborhood of Bestin. Like Pristina and Obilic, Lipjan also has a YU Program
apartment building located in Bestin, originally built in the mid-1990s to house Serb
refugees from Croatia and Bosnia, but now inhabited mostly by displaced Serbs from
Kosovo.
 
Although there were Finnish KFOR troops and KPS police officers present in the Kisa
on March 17, the ethnic Albanian crowd overwhelmed them and began attacking Serb
homes and the Orthodox Church, throwing stones through the windows of the homes.
KPS officers remained passive until two hand grenades exploded, one in the churchyard
and another in the yard of a neighboring home. Almost immediately, the KPS officers
moved to arrest the Orthodox priest and his neighbor, accusing them of throwing the
hand grenades, even though both were bleeding from wounds received from the
grenades and told the KPS the hand grenades had been thrown by the Albanian crowd.87 
However, the Finnish KFOR managed to regain some control over Kisa, assisted by the
fact that the area was permanently sealed off by razor wire, and managed to prevent the
whole-sale burning of Serb homes in Kisa.

Worse violence took place in the mixed Bestin neighborhood in the town. Joka Vesic, a
seventy-year-old Serb living on the fourth floor of the YU Program building, could see
clearly what the crowd was doing:
 
 Three KPS officers were walking behind the crowd, with their hands
behind their backs. The KPS officers didn’t take an active part, but they
also didn’t stop them. There was no KFOR or UNMIK presence.
….The crowd passed through the main road towards where our building
is located and the Serb houses are. They immediately started burning the
Serb homes while the Albanian homes were marked with red paint
saying “UCK”  I clearly saw them light the bottle [gasoline bomb], then
they broke the window, and threw it in through the window.88
 
Rioters killed one Serb, fifty-four-year-old Nenad Vesic, as he was trying to flee his
home with his family. According to his cousin Joka Vesic, who watched the killing from
his fourth-floor apartment, Nenad Vesic was shot as he exited from his home, in front
of his sister and mother.89 KPS officers were nearby at the time of the shooting,
according to Joka Vesic, but did not arrest any suspects.
 
After attacking the Serb homes in Bestin, the ethnic Albanian crowd began attacking the
YU Program apartment building. Unable to enter because of the armored doors in the
building, the Albanians then went into an adjacent apartment building inhabited by
ethnic Albanians, and were able to gain access to the YU Program building via the roof.
At that moment, KFOR troops arrived to evacuate the trapped Serbs at the YU Program
building, taking them to the now secured Kisa neighborhood.90  Finnish KFOR also
evacuated the Serbs from their homes in the Bestin neighborhood, moving them to the
yard of the Kisa church compound.91
 
The next day, Albanian arsonists burned all the remaining Serb homes in the Bestin
neighborhood, apparently unimpeded by KFOR, UNMIK, or KPS. Twenty-eight family
homes were burned in Lipljan.92
 
Svinjare/Frasher

The village of Svinjare was among the worst affected by the March violence. Svinjare is
an ethnic Serb village located just south of Mitrovica. According to a count by French
military officials, all 137 Serb homes in Svinjare were destroyed by ethnic Albanian
rioters. The destruction of Svinjare is particularly shocking in light of the fact that the
main French KFOR logistics base, Camp Belvedere, is located only some five hundred
meters from the village. French KFOR failed to make a serious effort to protect
Svinjare, even though the ethnic Albanian crowd that destroyed the village walked right
past the base.
 
Trouble began in Svinjare around 3 p.m. on March 18, when several hundred ethnic
Albanians began walking towards Svinjare after burning a Serbian Orthodox Church in
South Mitrovica. Milos Antic, a forty-eight-year-old Serb farmer, recalled watching the
ethnic Albanian crowd approach the village: “We saw that the huge mass was
approaching from the [road past] the barracks, the French military base. I’m not sure
what the soldiers were doing, but [the ethnic Albanian crowd] passed right by the
base.”93
 
When the ethnic Albanian crowd reached Svinjare, only two KFOR vehicles— manned
by some fifteen Moroccan soldiers—were present in the village. The KFOR troops
received orders to intercept and stop the protesters, and moved to the edge of the village
nearest to the approaching Albanian crowd. Just before the Albanian protesters reached
Svinjare, the Moroccan troops were joined by several UNMIK police vehicles that had
raced ahead of the crowd in an attempt to prevent it from entering Svinjare.94  Despite
the reinforcements, the protesters simply ran around the combined KFOR and UNMIK
position and began setting Serb homes on fire: “The Albanian mass couldn’t use the
main road, so they went off the road and started burning the homes with molotovs
[gasoline bombs]. I saw how they were lighting the molotovs and throwing them at the
houses.”95
 
At this early stage of the attack on Svinjare, the number of rioters was still relatively
small, around 400 to 500 people. When a Polish UNMIK Special Police Unit arrived to
reinforce the embattled KFOR and UNMIK troops, they were able to temporarily
disperse the Albanian crowd and extinguish the flames in the six or seven Serb homes
already set on fire.96 Still, the French KFOR soldiers at the nearby Belvedere Base did
not assist in the defense of the village.
 
After the ethnic Albanian group was temporarily forced to disperse, the Serb villagers
from Svinjare were shocked when the Polish UNMIK SPU commander and an
American UNMIK police commander told them they would have to immediately
evacuate Svinjare. The Polish UNMIK SPU commander told the Serb village leaders that
there were problems all over Kosovo, and that his unit had only half an hour in Svinjare
before they would have to leave to respond to other crises.97 According to Dragan
Bjelica, who was a participant in the meeting, the Serb leaders requested to meet with the
KFOR commanders at the nearby Belvedere Base to beg for protection. At the base they
met a Belgian KFOR colonel who threw up his hands when they explained their homes
were being set on fire and asked for security assistance. The Belgian colonel then
suggested he could send fifty troops to Svinjare, but insisted the troops would have to
stay together at the center and at the school in Svinjare, rather than spread out and
protect the Serb homes.98
 
By the time the village leaders returned to Svinjare, unable to secure the KFOR
assistance they needed to protect their homes, the ethnic Serb women and children had
already been evacuated. As darkness began to fall, the Moroccan KFOR troops insisted
that the men also had to leave the village, and evacuated them to the French base.
Almost all of the Serbs of Svinjare left without having time to collect even the most
basic of possessions.
 
When the last Serbs left Svinjare on March 18, most of their homes were still intact.
During the night and the following day, the Albanian crowd was allowed to loot and
burn the Serb homes of Svinjare without interference from the nearby KFOR base. In
the end, every single Serb home in Svinjare was looted and burned, and their livestock
killed. One Serb leader in the village bitterly described how the international community
had failed him in a time of need:
 
For the last five years, so many internationals have come to study our problems that I
can’t even count them anymore, and they have produced tons of reports and
recommendations. In the end, the result was that I lost everything I have built for forty
years, while the international community watched from a few hundred meters away. I
don’t even have a single photograph left from my life. And now they tell me to go back
and rebuild my life—how can I trust them?99
 
Slatina/Sllatine

In many areas of Kosovo, ethnic Albanian crowds attacked Serb residents for hours
before international KFOR or UNMIK troops came to their assistance. Slatina, a small
village located just southeast of Mitrovica with only thirteen remaining Serb homes at
the time of the violence, is a case in point.
 
Vladimir Savic, a sixty-nine-year-old resident of Slatina, described how a small group of
ethnic Albanians—many of them he recognized as fellow residents of Slatina and knew
by name—began to gather around the Serb homes on the morning of March 18. Soon, a
group of seven young Albanians from Slatina—including several sons of a local former
KLA commander—began to throw stones at the Serb homes, almost all of them
inhabited by elderly, retired Serbs. One of the sons of the former KLA commander
from Slatina came to Savic’s home and told him: “Go to Serbia!  Kosovo is mine!  We
cannot live together.” Savic tried to reason with him, explaining that he too had been
born in the village, but was ordered to go inside his home. The homes came under
increasingly fierce attack at about 2:30 p.m., and several of the elderly Serbs were beaten
severely. Eighty-year-old Govoljub Savic lost an eye to a stone, and a second elderly Serb
was badly wounded when he was hit on the head with a spade.100
 
KFOR failed to come to the assistance of the embattled elderly Serbs in Slatina. When
the crowd first began to throw stones at the homes, a convoy of four French KFOR
vehicles passed through the village, and the Serbs attempted to flag it down. The last
KFOR vehicle briefly slowed down, and told the Serbs that they could not stop because
they were on their way “to more serious trouble.”101 Shortly before 5 p.m., the Serbs
were finally able to contact UNMIK police, which immediately responded by sending
three cars. 
 
The arrival of the UNMIK police had a dramatic effect on the behavior of the ethnic
Albanian crowd: “The Albanians stopped putting houses on fire as soon as the police
came.”102  After evacuating the wounded Serbs, the UNMIK police said they would stay
the night, and were joined by KFOR troops shortly before nightfall. No further attacks
occurred while UNMIK and KFOR were in Slatina. 
 
The next morning, at about 10 a.m., the Serbs were told they would have to evacuate
their homes. The remaining nine Serbs were evacuated in a single UNMIK police
vehicle, effectively preventing them from taking any possessions because of space
restrictions. The UNMIK officers reassured the Serbs that the evacuation was only
temporary, and that KFOR troops would protect their homes. That promise proved
empty. Only three homes had been burned by the time of the evacuation, but over the
next days all thirteen of the Serb homes in the village were looted and burned to the
ground.  
 

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