A Canadian success story
WE SHOULD BE PROUD OF OUR MILITARY SUCCESSES IN KOSOVO
This year marks the 25th anniversary of NATO’S intervention in Kosovo. Canadian troops were at the forefront of the peacemaking effort and their contributions led to the successes that the southern European nation is now experiencing. As Kosovo thrives, Canadians should reflect on the important role we played a quarter century ago.
The conflict in the Kosovo province of Serbia began in the early 1990s, due to apartheid-like policies imposed by President Slobodan Milosevic. He was determined to suppress and systemically disenfranchise the influence of the country’s burgeoning Kosovar Albanian population that was threatening the balance of power, forcing them to fight back to protect their families and their livelihoods.
The counter-insurgency that erupted in the mid-’90s resulted in severe clampdowns on freedoms that turned into the full-blown ethnic cleansing of Kosovar Albanians over the winter of 1998-99, resulting in a refugee crisis.
Following many attempts by the international community to de-escalate the situation, NATO initiated a bombing campaign that lasted 78 days. During that period, the Serbs forced hundreds of thousands of Kosovar Albanians to exit the country, and Milosevic was indicted on war-crimes charges by the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia.
Following the bombing campaign, the United Nations created a mission in Kosovo, which included a NATO-LED international military presence. Its role was to deter new hostilities, monitor the withdrawal of the Serb army and police, demilitarize the Kosovo Liberation Army and ensure a safe environment into which refugees could return.
Canada was a full player in the UN and NATO missions in the former Yugoslavia and fully supported plans to resolve the conflict in Kosovo. It started with the allocation of our CF-18 fighter jets to the 78-day bombing campaign. Then we designed a plan to augment a British brigade with key capabilities that were in high demand, which involved around 1,500 Canadian troops.
When the Serbs finally indicated they were prepared to negotiate with NATO, we scrambled at National Defence Headquarters to get our troops there in time. Over the next two weeks, we flew the troops to Macedonia, landed our vehicles and equipment in Greece and married up with the British in Skopje, Macedonia. This herculean effort enabled us to launch with the vanguard of NATO forces into Kosovo on June 11, 1999, thus securing Canada’s reputation in the mission.
Kosovo was an austere environment made all the more challenging after NATO bombs had destroyed critical infrastructure and the economy had collapsed.
Nothing went smoothly, but it was a testament to the skill, professionalism and unfailing good humour of our Canadian servicemen and women that we adapted quickly and surmounted every obstacle in front of us.
A case in point: At the time, we were completely reliant on rented Antonov planes for strategic airlift capacity. They broke down frequently and caused serious disruption to our deployment plan. Fortunately, the bulk of our resources were deployed by sea on a former Soviet tank transporter vessel, which arrived in Greece just in time. It was from this experience that we learned that Canada needed its own dedicated strategic lift capability.
Once our NATO forces arrived in Kosovo, we were met with chaos. As Serb civilians, police and military personnel were exiting rapidly, humanitarian aid, contractors and NGOS were streaming in. Most consequentially, almost a million Kosovar Albanians were surging from their displacement camps to their former homes, despite many having nothing to return to. They were determined to rebuild their lives, secure in the knowledge that they could do so safely, because we were there.
With no public order, utilities or means to support life, the security situation we needed to manage was dire. With no police or courts, vigilantes ran rampant, and our troops were tasked with establishing security and policing curfews. It was catand-mouse work and our troops showed true grit.
Large areas of what became Kosovo had also been mined and booby trapped, and unexploded ordnance from the bombing campaign still littered the countryside. We were mostly restricted to operating on hard pavement and we scrambled to find suitable places to base our troops.
Our engineers were kept busy from Day 1, setting up our camps. In a stroke of genius, a Canadian engineering unit was seconded to NATO’S Kosovo Force HQ to get its plumbing and waste facilities going. It sounds like a small thing, but it was vital, and much appreciated by our allies.
We continued to de-escalate tensions through a disarmament, demobilization and reintegration campaign and helped lead civil-military co-operation, which was key to aiding the returning refugees. The UN struggled early on to deploy its field administrators and that gap was partly filled by Canadians, who set up a weekly coffee meeting for governments and NGOS to come together, identify gaps in support and negotiate how to redistribute aid so all could benefit.
This collaboration became especially critical to ensuring damaged homes were appropriately winterized as the cold approached. Canadian troops worked as honest brokers to ensure everyone got the aid they needed. It was relationships like these, and the ones our troops built with Kosovo’s citizens in our “after-hours” projects, that really made a difference.
Teaching mine awareness, opening a derelict schoolhouse to enable children to restart their education, building a playground on land that we had cleared of unexploded ordnance, and even setting up a Boy Scout troop of local children to provide them some recreation and diversion, earned huge dividends and set Canada’s contributions apart.
Canada withdrew from Kosovo in the summer of 2000, but the positive impact of our work carried on. I’m proud of the resilience and resourcefulness that our troops demonstrated. Our credo was to help those who needed us, and to leave Kosovo better than we found it. That’s exactly what we did.
As I reflect on the past 25 years, it is clear that we helped end the humanitarian crisis, enable the return of almost a million displaced civilians and establish a sovereign nation that is today building an exciting economy.
In the past decade, Kosovo has experienced steady economic progress, with a nearly 50 per cent increase in per-capita income and a 35 per cent reduction in its poverty rate. It is no longer highly dependent on foreign aid and is investing in infrastructure to enable further growth. As a potential candidate for accession to the European Union, it is attracting more foreign investment.
The Canadian military’s efforts played an important role in securing Kosovo during its darkest hour, enabling its incredibly resilient people to rebuild their homes, their lives and, ultimately, their new country. Twenty-five years later, Canadians should be incredibly proud of the work our troops did to help the people of Kosovo. Today, they are thriving.
CANADIAN MILITARY’S EFFORTS PLAYED AN IMPORTANT ROLE.