Agim Çeku (, born 29 October 1960) is a Kosovan politician, the former minister of Security Forces in Kosovo and formerly the prime minister. Of military background, he was a commander of the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) that fought against Serbian rule in 1998–1999, earlier being a commander in the Croatian War of Independence in the Croatian Army. Çeku is an ethnic Albanian who served as an officer in the Croatian Army during the Croatian War of Independence and was military commander of the KLA during the 1998–1999 Kosovo War, and then commanded the Kosovo Protection Corps under the United Nations Interim Administration Mission in Kosovo. Early life Çeku was born in Ćuška (Qyshk in Albanian), a village near Peja, at the time part of the Kosovo-Metohija Province of PR Serbia, FPR Yugoslavia. Military career Çeku completed the secondary military school in Belgrade, and then attended the Zadar Military Academy. Shortly afterwards, he joined the Yugoslav People's Army (JNA) as an artillery captain. In 1991 the Yugoslav wars broke out and he deserted from the JNA and joined the Croatian National Guard (which transformed into the Croatian Army), when the Republic of Croatia fought a war in breaking away from Yugoslavia. The Croatian Army fought the Serb breakaway Republic of Serbian Krajina. He participated in several military operations, first in Operation Maslenica when he was the head of Velebit's artillery section, Operation Medak Pocket near Gospić, in which he was wounded, and Operation Storm in August 1995 that captured most of the Krajina territory. Subsequently, he continued the advance as head of Croatian forces into the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina fighting in western Bosnia against the forces of the Serb Republic in Operation Maestral. After the war the Croatian Army was reformed and President Franjo Tuđman named Çeku commanding officer of the Fifth District Region in Rijeka. In 1998 he filed a request for retirement in order to go to Kosovo to join the ethnic Albanian Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) that fought Serbian rule, which was officially fulfilled in February 1999 with his resignation. Kosovo War Çeku had developed contacts with the KLA in the mid-1990s. When war broke out in Kosovo, the KLA initially did very badly against the Yugoslav forces, due in part to poor leadership under senior commander Sylejman Selimi, a militarily inexperienced individual who had been given the post largely because of his influence in