By Xhabir Deralla
I arrived in Prishtina on the afternoon of Wednesday, June 10, to attend a reception ahead of the Human Rights Defenders Forum. For years, I’ve wanted to write about how this city captures my heart with its vigor, its urban charm, and its relentless youth. I rarely find the time to write a dedicated piece, but I try to weave fragments of its spirit into my reporting on Europe’s youngest democracy. That evening, walking the streets of Kosovo’s capital, I breathed in the energy of a growing political and cultural center in the Western Balkans.
These days hold a special weight here. June 12 is Dita e Çlirimit—Kosovo Liberation Day. It marks the epoch-making event in 1999 when NATO peacekeeping troops (KFOR) entered the territory and Serbian military forces withdrew, ending the brutal 1998–1999 war. It is a day of deep commemoration, matched only in significance by Independence Day. Many citizens and state officials visit memorials to honor the heroes of Kosovo’s struggle for freedom, paying quiet respect to those who perished.
But on this evening, the city was anything but quiet. Prishtina was festive and vibrating with life. The blue and gold of the Kosovo state flag mingled heavily with the striking red and black of the Albanian flag above the streets. Young people crowded the sidewalks, and the coffee bars hummed with animated conversations and the pulse of music.
A conversation on the road
By Liberation Day itself, I was traveling back to Skopje. I was leaving behind a city that, just a day prior, had hosted human rights defenders, officials, and international representatives from across the region to discuss the future of human rights.
As our driver navigated the highway, the landscape rolling past the windows revealed a country developing at a breakneck pace, stubbornly pushing past its historical burdens. My Croatian colleague was catching a flight out of Skopje, giving us the perfect pocket of time to reflect on the forum and on the phenomenal, hard-won growth of Kosovo.
“It’s admirable,” she said, looking out at the passing towns. “Kosovo has grown into a beautiful country out of destruction. Like a phoenix, it grew from the ashes.”
Her words struck a chord. As we drove, keeping Liberation Day in mind, I walked her through the timeline of that suffering, tracing the agonizing road to freedom.
The exodus
The unraveling began in 1989, when the authoritarian leader Slobodan Milošević stripped Kosovo of its autonomy within Yugoslavia. Ethnic Albanians were systematically purged from state institutions, schools, and hospitals, forcing a whole society to build a parallel, underground existence.
Fast forward through a decade of brutal, occupation-style control, punctuated by mass human rights abuses. When peaceful resistance proved inevitably ineffective against the ironfisted police and military oppression dictated by Belgrade, an armed insurgency led by the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) took shape in 1998. The response from Yugoslav and Serbian state security forces was disproportionate and merciless. From day one, it far surpassed the definition of war—it was engineered ethnic cleansing. State forces and paramilitary groups systematically looted and razed towns, tortured, raped, and killed civilians, waging a campaign of terror against an entire population. This deliberately manufactured one of the most severe humanitarian catastrophes in modern European history.
The turning point came on March 24, 1999. Following the collapse of the Rambouillet peace talks, NATO launched a 78-day aerial bombing campaign against Yugoslavia to halt the atrocities, operating without a UN mandate due to the certainty of Russian and Chinese vetoes.
On the ground, the immediate retaliation was a staggering, accelerated exodus. Neighborhoods were emptied in minutes; families were forced out before their homes were set ablaze. Arbitrary executions were commonplace in the chaos, and thousands who vanished in the process remain missing to this day. Trains and buses were commandeered for mass deportations. At checkpoints, fleeing citizens were stripped of their identification documents and license plates—a sinister bureaucratic tactic to erase their legal existence and prevent their eventual return.
By June 1999, up to 900,000 Kosovo Albanians had been forced across the borders. Neighboring North Macedonia and Albania bore the immediate brunt. In northern Albania, the impoverished town of Kukës saw vast tent cities spring up overnight to absorb the traumatized arrivals. In the car, my colleague and I discussed the darker political maneuvers of the time—including cynical proposals by then-Macedonian President Kiro Gligorov to create transit “corridors” designed to push refugees straight out of Macedonia. Yet, beneath the political posturing, the undeniable reality was the sheer scale of human suffering. The UNHCR and NATO logistics scrambled to prevent the complete destabilization of the host nations, and ultimately succeeded.
Still, an equally dire crisis remained largely hidden from international cameras. Inside Kosovo, over half a million internally displaced persons (IDPs) were trapped. Driven into dense forests and remote valleys, they spent the spring of 1999 hiding in makeshift shelters of branches and plastic, ravaged by malnutrition, disease, and the constant threat of advancing paramilitaries and marauders.
Out of the ashes
Finally, on June 9, 1999, Milošević’s war machine capitulated. The Military Technical Agreement, signed in Kumanovo, North Macedonia, dictated the verifiable withdrawal of all Yugoslav forces.
Then came June 12. As Serbian forces retreated north, the first of 50,000 NATO-led KFOR peacekeepers crossed into Kosovo. Simultaneously, the UN Security Council passed Resolution 1244, establishing an interim administration.
For the people who survived, this date represents the definitive fracture from Belgrade’s control. It was the exact moment the immediate terror ceased, and the monumental task of rebuilding a devastated society began.
Today, exactly twenty-seven years later, looking at the vibrant cafes of Prishtina and the rapid development along its highways, the truth of my colleague’s words is undeniable. Out of the ashes, Kosovo lives. Free.