ABSTRACT
From the opening hours of the 1999 war in Kosovo, an overriding tactic was evident in Serb military strategy: the gender-selective detention and mass killing of ethnic-Albanian men, especially those of “battle age.”1 Although the Milosevic regime’s genocidal assault on Kosovar society swept up all other sectors of the population, killing many and expelling hundreds of thousands to neighboring countries, the most systematic and severe atrocities and abuses were inflicted disproportionately or overwhelmingly upon non-combatant men. The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) was emphatic in its report, the most comprehensive available:
Young men were the group that was by far the most targeted in the conflict in Kosovo . . . Clearly, there were many young men involved in the UCK [Kosovo Liberation Army] . . . but every young Kosovo Albanian man was suspected of being a terrorist. If apprehended by Serbian forces – VJ [Yugoslav army], police or paramilitary – the young men were at risk, more than any other group of Kosovo society, of grave human rights violations. Many were executed on the spot, on occasion after horrendous torture. Sometimes they would be arrested and taken to prisons or other detention centres, where, as described afterwards by men released from such detention, they would be tortured and ill-treated, while others would simply not be seen again. Others were taken for use as human shields or as forced labour. Many young men “disappeared” following abduction.2
