Kosovo 2000-02
During the late 1980s when, in common with other parts of communist Eastern Europe, it began to break up, the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia was made up of six socialist republics: Bosnia and Herzegovina, Macedonia, Montenegro, Croatia, Slovenia and Serbia. Within Serbia were two largely autonomous provinces, one of which, about the size of Yorkshire, was Kosovo (the other being Voivodina) which had a common border with Albania, a country which in the early 1990s was itself beginning to overthrow its communist government.
At the beginning of the twentieth century, Kosovo’s demographic make-up was almost equally divided between ethnic Serbs and Albanians, but by 1990 the Serb proportion had declined to less than 10 per cent, and the overwhelmingly Albanian population, resenting Serb dominance, was in a state of revolt.
During the next decade a group calling itself the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA), equipped with arms smuggled from Albania and large quantities captured from police and army barracks, became a major force, triggering a reaction that saw paramilitaries and regular forces begin a campaign of retribution, targeting KLA activists and sympathisers and killing around 2,000.
By the year 2000 KFOR had deployed in Kosovo five brigade-sized formations from, respectively, the United Kingdom, the United States, France, Germany and Italy under command of the NATO Allied Rapid Reaction Force.
‘B’ Squadron, part of a 1st Battalion Princess of Wales’s Royal Regiment (1PWRR) battlegroup under command of 3 Commando Brigade Royal Marines, travelled by sea to Greece and then by rail and road to set up their base in Podujevo a town 20 miles north of the capital Pristina and the scene of a notorious massacre of fourteen Albanian women and children by the Serb military in 1999.
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The squadron’s mission was to help maintain the peace and security of their operational area by the manning of observation posts on the border with Serbia and frequent patrols by tank, foot and Land Rover and, in the case of the specially formed Alamein Platoon, within a PWRR company, occasionally mounted on horses. Weapons were confiscated, blood feuds defused and visitors escorted and protected.
The final two months of the tour, January and February 2001, were by far the most eventful. In January a group of Kosovo-Albanian terrorists crossed into Serbia to try and claim disputed land, and dismounted troops of the squadron were dispatched to cut off their supply routes, young troop leaders being surprised to find themselves poised for a platoon attack – a military manoeuvre they thought they had left behind at Sandhurst.
In February 2001 they all returned, without casualties to Athlone Barracks in Germany.
The remainder of the Regiment then deployed to Kosovo as a Battlegroup from October 2001-April 2002 in a dismounted role. RHQ and ‘D’ Squadron and the administrative elements of the battlegroup were based at Waterloo Lines, a former airfield about 3 miles south of Podujevo, while ‘C’ Squadron was located in the town’s police station.
To begin with, the area of operations within Kosovo was much the same as that of 1PWRR previously, but the New Year saw ‘C’ Squadron had over large parts of its area to the Czech/Slovak battlegroup. By the middle of April, the battlegroup had returned to Germany.
‘B’ Squadron deployed again to Kosovo in April 2002 with The Queen’s Royal Lancers Battlegroup.
