yugoslavias implosion

judged to be disloyal to the Albanian cause became increasingly frequent
and the kla assumed responsibility for some of these attacks.
In February 1997, the Serbian Interior Ministry arrested members of
the kla and other Albanian groups such as the National Movement
for the Liberation of Kosovo and the National Movement of Kosovo,
whose program envisaged armed resistance to the regime. Albanians
charged with membership in the National Movement for the Liberation
of Kosovo were sentenced by the District Court in Pristina for
“association with a view to hostile activity, terrorism and endangerment
of the territorial integrity” of the country. 374
BELGRADE’S APPROACH TO THE CRISIS
The Serbian regime sought not just to abolish all aspects of
Kosovo’s autonomy but also to change its ethnic structure. As Serbian
Assembly Vice-President Pavić Obradović told Television
Pristina in 1991, “The goal of Serbia’s policy in Kosovo is the full integration
of Kosovo into Serbia and the Serbianization of Kosovo.” 375
The Serbian regime claimed that Kosovo was Serbian land and that
Serbs were therefore entitled to use all means necessary to reestablish
the Serbian majority. One of those “means” was the mass settlement
of Serbs—and Belgrade hoped that an influx of Serbian refugees
from Croatia and Bosnia in 1995 (as well as the return of Kosovar
Serbs who had left the province for economic reasons and because of
increasing ethnic tensions) would help tip the ethnic balance. However,
such hopes were frustrated because most Serbs from Bosnia and
Croatia refused to settle in Kosovo. Only 15,000–25,000 Serbian refugees
relocated there (many under pressure from Belgrade); many
left Kosovo the moment they saw an opportunity to do so; and after
the nato intervention in 1999, most of the remaining Serbs departed
permanently. (Hundreds of thousands of Albanians also left the
374 From the indictment raised by the Serbian court
375 Petrit Imami, Srbi i Albanci kroz vekove, Samizdat FreeB92, Beograd, 1999
225
ChApter 3