Jacob S. Feinstein
On November 28, 1997, in a small village in Kosovo, three armed men interrupted the funeral of a schoolteacher to proclaim the revolution of the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) against Serbian authority. Roaring applause conveyed the crowd’s understanding that the age of nonviolent reform was over, while international press outlets reported cautiously on the fiery development in Yugoslavia. Years of shadowy planning by Albanian nationalists was bursting into action.
The KLA’s revolutionary proclamation was a combination of theatrical flair and strategic timing. KLA insurgents had struggled for years to gain popularity over their pacifist counterpart, the League for a Democratic Kosovo (LDK), whom the KLA believed were ineffective for securing meaningful Albanian rights under oppressive Serbian authority. By 1997, after years of fruitless LDK reform efforts, the KLA capitalized on mounting public frustration, using the funeral as a boiling point to stage a dramatic challenge to the LDK’s pacifist approach, draw global media attention, and rally Albanians under its banner.
This account of the KLA’s dramatic emergence illustrates how propagandists can exploit psychological advantage at pivotal moments to craft enduring narratives with lasting political impact. The following article uses the Kosovo conflict as a case study to demonstrate how media, martyrdom, and war can be manipulated to shape perception and power alike.
Historical Background
The 1998-1999 Kosovo conflict was part of the larger 1991-2001 Yugoslav wars, which were sparked by ethnic conflict and exacerbated by economic and political instability. Croatia, Slovenia, North Macedonia, and Bosnia’s secessions from Yugoslavia throughout 1991-1992 sparked several multi-front civil wars between the Yugoslav States, wherein most nations fought to retain their historic borders and sometimes to annex “foreign-held” lands inhabited by same-kin. Kosovo primarily avoided the 1991-1995 fray because, as a province of Serbia rather than an independent state, it lacked conventional forces, political autonomy, and historical precedent for nation-state independence.
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