Operation Steel Serpent

Mission Statement

In late 1998, Yugoslavia, under the leadership of Slobadan Milosevic, sponsored an incursion into its Kosovo province for the purpose of cracking down on Kosovar-Albanian militants which had been fighting with ethnic Serbs in that region since January. This Serbian sponsored crackdown ultimately lead to a spree of ethnic cleaning against native Kosovar-Albanians which ultimately created a refugee crisis in neighboring Albania and Macedonia, thereby threatening to further destabilize the Balkan region.

In response to this crisis, NATO responded with Operation Allied Forge from March to June 1999. Allied Forge was an intense aerial bombing campaign with the intention of enforcing UN Resolution 1199, which included the elimination of the Serbian threat to peace and to ultimately force Serbian adoption of the Rambouillet Accords for peace in Kosovo.

During Allied Forge, another NATO sponsored operation was created to support peacekeeping efforts in the surrounding regions. Operation Allied Harbor established in April of 1999 had about 8,000 NATO ground troops deploy to neighboring Albania and Macedonia to help alleviate the growing refugee crisis. The US portion of Operation Allied Harbor was known as Joint Task Force Shining Hope.

For Macedonia, this situation was particularly unnerving since ethnic Macedonian Serbians already ran most Police and Army units, and the influx of additional Kosovar Albanians refugees into Macedonia had the potential to further destabilize the region.

Once Allied Forge concluded in June 1999, the NATO multinational Kosovo Force (KFOR) was established to perform peacekeeping duties throughout Kosovo. Many refugees of the Kosovo crisis remain displaced, and sporadically, tensions have been known to flare up as arms and fighters continue to spread from Kosovo into Macedonia. Joint Task Force Shining Hope still maintained its humanitarian mission in Albania, but portions of the unit were also to join the multi-national KFOR in Kosovo.

Tanusevci is town in Macedonia that teeters right on its Northern border with Kosovo, about 42 miles north of the Macedonia capital of Skopje. Prior to the crisis, Tanusevci normally has a population of roughly 800, and is completely ethnic Albanian. Macedonian Police and Army units, mostly made up of ethnic Serbians, have had a history of confrontation with the Albanian population in this town, which some Macedonian Serbs believed would be the starting location of a potential mass Albanian uprising.

KFOR's peacekeeping duties put it into a sensitive predicament, it is suppose to protect the peace between Albanians and Serbians and prevent the spread of conflict into neighboring areas.