(Newswire.net — April 12, 2016) — Serbian media marked 17 years from the battle in which ground troops from the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA), supported by NATO aviation and intelligence, tried to penetrate from Albania to the Serbian southern province Kosovo. Some 6000 ground troops attacked the Serbian border defended by no more than 1200 soldiers.
The main idea behind the attack was to force Serbian troops to reveal hidden positions, therefore becoming easy targets for NATO warplanes. Dead bodies on the battlefield, however, revealed the true scale of the battle, which was a true multinational battle.
It was revealed to public years after the war ended, that the artillery and mortar support from Albania was guided by ground troops speaking Italian and French. Also, alongside the KLA stood British, Turkish and Bosnian Muslim fighters.
On the Serbian side, beside Russian-Cossacks paratroopers, the Serbian media reported the existance of an so called “The International Company” with fighters from western countries as well. Fighting alongside the Serbian Special Forces, the members of the International Company were fighters from Western Ukraine, Finland, Sweden, Denmark and the Netherlands. There was also a fighter from Scottland and one from Ireland.
The Serbian forces reported 108 soldiers killed in action while they counted more than 200 dead bodies on the KLA side. Greatly outnumbered, the Serbian forces lost one military post at border, however, managed to keep the forein ground troops out of the Serbian territory.
Seventeen years after the Kosare battle, Serbian media revealed one of the reasons that the coordination of Serbian troops was so successful was that they used Gypsies the same way US troops used Navajo Indians in Word War II.
Reports say NATO forces were unable to “crack down the coded language” that the Serbian military used to communicate, completely unaware of the role of Serbian Gypsies.
The battle ended with the Kumanovo Peace Treaty, named after the city it was signed in in the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia. Although the treaty was celebrated in Serbia as a victory due to the UN Resolution 1244 that considered Kosovo a Serbian territory, the following year, the US recognized Kosovo as an independent state and other NATO countries followed suit.
What they managed to keep in the war, Serbians lost in peace. Serbian media, however, reminds that during the historic battle of Kosare, ‘David’ wouldn’t have defeated ‘Goliath’ without the help of the Gypsies.