[2] In the winter of 1915–1916, during World War I, Serbia was occupied by the Bulgaria and Austria-Hungary after the Central Powers won a victory in Kosovo in late November 1915 - Azem Galica began an armed resistance against the new invaders.

After making empty and false promises to the Albanians on behalf of King Petar, Kosta Pećanac and his men soon left for Serbia and no agreements were made.

[14] On 6 May 1919, an appeal by the Kosovo Defence Committee for a general uprising resulted in a large-scale rebellion, known as the Kachak Movement, led by Azem Galica.

[14][15] Azem and the other Kachak leaders presented a set of demands to Serbian officials: they asked the Kingdom of Yugoslavia to stop killing Albanians, to recognise the Kosovo Albanians' right to self-government, and to stop both the Yugoslav colonization program of Kosovo and the military actions of Yugoslav forces on the pretext of disarmament.

[17][18] By November of 1920, Yugoslav forces succeeded in suppressing a rebellion in the Drenica region, and Azem and Shote Galica fled to Shkodra.

[15] As a calculated act of provocation, the Yugoslav government had been interned the families of suspected Kachaks to camps in central Serbia during the spring of 1921, which intensified the resistance.

In July 1921, the Kosova Committee submitted a document to the League of Nations in which they reported Serbian atrocities against Albanians and identified the victims.

In 1922, Zog - who was at this time Minister of the Interior in Albania and a known opponent of the Kosova Committee, began to disarm Albanian Highlander tribes in the north of the country as well as those within the Neutral Zone of Junik.

[7] Zogu also gave orders to the relevant administrative bodies of the state to attack the Neutral Zone and to liquidate the Kachaks wherever they found them, but particularly in Junik.

[22] In March of 1922, Bajram Curri, Hasan Prishtina and Elez Isufi led an unsuccessful attempt at overthrowing Zog, who eventually became the Prime Minister of Albania on 2 December 1922.

[13] The death of Galica dealt a mortal blow to the armed resistance against Yugoslav military presence in Kosovo, which Azem had led for the past eight years.

However, with the help of the Yugoslavs, Zog managed to once again ascend to power on 24 December 1924 and proceeded to suppress the Kosova Committee and either assassinate or force its leaders into exile.

She fought alongside Bajram Curri in Has and Luma against Serbian troops who had supported Zog during his return to power in December of 1924, and she continued to lead the fighting in Kosovo until 1926, when she was severely wounded and decided to move to Albania.