Adem Jashari

Who is Adem Jashari?

Adem Jashari was a co-founder and commander of the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA/UÇK), the armed group that fought against Serbian security forces in the late 1990s Kosovo War. He was born in the village of Prekaz in the Drenica region, an area that became a center of early KLA organizing during his lifetime. Jashari and his family had a long history of resisting Yugoslav and Serbian authority, and he helped build the KLA's early armed structure in Drenica through the mid-1990s. In March 1998, Serbian police and Yugoslav military forces besieged the Jashari family compound in Prekaz in an operation that killed Adem Jashari along with dozens of members of his extended family, including women and children. The Prekaz assault, widely referred to as the Prekaz massacre, drew international condemnation and is widely regarded as a pivotal event that escalated the Kosovo conflict and galvanized both local recruitment to the KLA and international attention toward the crisis. Jashari is commemorated across Kosovo as a national hero and martyr of the independence struggle, and the Jashari family compound in Prekaz has been preserved as a memorial site.

Sources: Judah, Tim, Kosovo: War and Revenge (Yale University Press, 2000) · Human Rights Watch, "Humanitarian Law Violations in Kosovo" (1998) · BBC News coverage of the Prekaz operation (March 1998)