Domesticating NATO's War in Kosovo/a: (In)Visible Bodies and the Dilemma of Photojournalism

Abstract

In April 1999, American news media extensively reported on the NATO bombings in Serbia and Kosovo/a,1 a 78-day military effort led by the United States to force the regime of Slobodan Milosevic to end the persecution of the Albanians in the formerly autonomous region of Kosovo/a. Throughout the 1990s, news media reported on genocide and ethnic cleansing in the former Yugoslavia, including stories of rape, torture, concentration camps, and mass killings by Serbian forces primarily against Bosnian and Kosovar Muslims, but also against Croatians, Slovenians, and others. In Kosovo/a, a campaign by Serbian and Yugoslav military, paramilitary, and government forces against ethnic Albanians (who made up 90 percent of the population in the province) began in 1998 and intensified through 1999. Human Rights Watch (2001) estimates as many as 850,000 were expelled during this period while several hundred thousand more were internally displaced. After the war, estimates ranged from two thousand to four thousand deaths. While reported rapes were low compared to Bosnia, most observers presume the actual number to be much higher. Statistics, even today, are hard to establish, in part because of exaggerated claims by NATO and NATO governments during the war, and in part because of Serbian and Yugoslav efforts to hide these crimes (Human Rights Watch 2001). [End Page 1]