Operation Horseshoe

Operation Horseshoe was the name given by the Bulgarian government to an alleged plan of ethnic cleansing of Kosovo Albanians to be carried out by Serbian Police and the Yugoslav Army. Allegations of the plan served as the pretext for NATO bombing of Yugoslavia during the Kosovo War.

The NGO, Human Rights Watch said that in early 1999, the Yugoslav Army and the Serbian Police "in an organized manner, with significant use of state resources" conducted a broad campaign of violence against Albanian civilians to expel them from Kosovo and thus maintain political control of Belgrade over the province. The Serbian campaign of ethnic cleansing was cited in support of the NATO intervention. However, in 2011, former Bulgarian Foreign Minister Nadezhda Neynski revealed in a TV documentary that the Bulgarian government turned over to Germany an unverified report compiled by its military agency which "made clear" the existence of the plan, even though the military intelligence warned that the information could not be verified. According to a book by Heinz Loquai, a retired German brigadier general, published in April 2000, the Bulgarian analysis concluded that the goal of the Serbian military was to destroy the Kosovo Liberation Army, and not to expel the entire Albanian population.

Horseshoe plan (German: Hufeisenplan) was the name given by the Bulgarian government to a Yugoslavian plan to expel the Albanian population of Kosovo. The operation's title suggest that the Yugoslav Army and police would squeeze the KLA and civilians in an attack launched from three sides, driving out the population as refugees fled through the open southwestern end of the horseshoe into Macedonia and Albania.

...
Wikipedia