An
explosion followed by a huge fire rages
in the south-west part of Pristina in
the early hours March 25, 1999 after
NATO forces launched a missile attack
against Yugoslavia (Reuters / Yannis
Behrakis)
Exactly 15 years ago, on March 24, NATO began
its 78-day bombing of Yugoslavia. The alliance
bypassed the UN under a “humanitarian”
pretext, launching aggression that claimed
hundreds of civilian lives and caused a much
larger catastrophe than it averted.
NATO bombings of Yugoslavia
in 15 dramatic photos
Years on, Serbia still bears deep scars of
the NATO bombings which, as the alliance put it, were aimed at
“preventing instability spreading” in Kosovo.
Questions remain on the very legality of the
offense, which caused casualties and mass
destruction in the Balkan republic.
The
Yugoslav Army Headquarters building
hasn't been rebuilt after being damaged
by cruises missiles in April 1999 during
NATO's bombing of Serbia over Kosovo.
Belgrade (AFP Photo)
Codenamed 'Operation Allied Force,' it was
the largest attack ever undertaken by the
alliance. It was also the first time that NATO
used military force without the approval of
the UN Security Council and against a
sovereign nation that did not pose a real
threat to any member of the alliance.
NATO demonstrated in 1999 that it can do
whatever it wants under the guise of “humanitarian
intervention,” “war on terror,”
or “preventive war” – something that
everyone has witnessed in subsequent years in
different parts of the globe.
Nineteen NATO member states participated to
some degree in the military campaign against
the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (Serbia and
Montenegro), which lasted for 11 weeks until
June 10, 1999.
More rubble, less trouble
In the course of the campaign, NATO launched
2,300 missiles at 990 targets and dropped
14,000 bombs, including depleted uranium bombs
and cluster munitions (unexploded cluster
bombs continued to pose a threat to people
long after the campaign was over.) Over 2,000
civilians were killed, including 88 children,
and thousands more were injured. Over 200,000
ethnic Serbs were forced to leave their
homeland in Kosovo.
In what the alliance described as
“collateral damage,” its airstrikes destroyed
more than 300 schools, libraries, and over 20
hospitals. At least 40,000 homes were either
completely eliminated or damaged and about 90
historic and architectural monuments were
ruined. That is not to mention the long-term
harm caused to the region’s ecology and,
therefore, people’s health, as well as the
billion-dollar economic damage.
A woman
passes a destroyed car March 28,1999 after
a NATO missile hit downtown of Kosovo's
capital of Pristina in Saturday night's
NATO attack (Reuters)
News correspondents Anissa Naouai and Jelena
Milincic, the authors of RT's documentary
'Zashto?' – which means “Why?” in English
–traveled through former Yugoslavia to
Belgrade, Kosovo, and Montenegro and spoke to
people who endured the atrocities and horrors
of the war and lost their friends and
relatives.
“There is a bridge near the city of Nis,
which was bombed at the time when a
passenger train was passing through it,”
Milincic recalls.The tragedy on April 12, 1999
killed 15 people and wounded 44 others, while
many passengers were never accounted for.
“We felt the blast and saw flames under
the locomotive. The train was blown so
powerfully, half a meter from the ground. I
don’t know how we stayed on the rails,”
recalled witness Boban Kostic.
“Our colleague got off the train when I
did,” he said. “He was really
scared. But another rocket hit and blew him
to pieces,” added another witness,
Goran Mikic.
“Why? Why civilians? Why a train?”
said Dragan Ciric. “It still torments me,
if the first rocket was a mistake, what were
the next three for?” he told RT.
The Chinese embassy in the Yugoslav capital
of Belgrade was also hit and set on fire by
NATO airstrikes on May 7, 1999. Three citizens
of the country were killed. The alliance
called the attack “a mistake.” China
is a permanent member of the UN Security
Council and, along with Russia, did not
support a military solution for the Kosovo
crisis.
A
worker walks in front of the remains of
the former Chinese embassy during its
demolition in Belgrade November 10,
2010. During the NATO offensive against
Yugoslavia, U.S. warplanes bombed the
Chinese embassy in Belgrade on May 7,
1999, killing three Chinese nationals,
and consequently igniting protests
outside the U.S. embassy in Beijing
(Reuters)
Prior to the military assault, the Milosevic
regime was accused of “excessive and
disproportionate use of force in Kosovo.”
But was the force that NATO used when bombing
the sovereign state’s territory proportionate
and restrained? Rights organization Amnesty
International accused the allied forces of
committing war crimes.
“Indications are that NATO did not
always meet its legal obligations in
selecting targets and in choosing means and
methods of attack, On the basis of available
evidence, including NATO's own statements
and accounts of specific incidents, Amnesty
International believes that - whatever their
intentions - NATO forces did commit serious
violations of the laws of war leading in a
number of cases to the unlawful killings of
civilians,” the rights watchdog said in
a report published in June
2000.
The alliance dismissed the accusations,
saying that cases involving civilian deaths
were due to technological failure or were
simply “accidents of conflict.” NATO failed to
say that they were due to the alliance's own
failure to take all necessary precautions.
“We never said we would avoid
casualties. It would be foolhardy to say
that, as no military operation in history
has been perfect,” said Jamie Shea,
NATO’s chief spokesman, the Guardian reported
at the time.
Bombing background
Former NATO Secretary General Javier Solana
ordered military action against Yugoslavia
following a failure in negotiations on the
Kosovo crisis in France’s Rambouillet and
Paris in February and March 1999.
NATO's decision was officially announced
after talks between international mediators –
known as the Contact Group – the Yugoslav
government, and the delegation of Kosovo
Albanians ended in a deadlock. Belgrade
refused to allow foreign military presence on
its territory while Albanians accepted the
proposal.
A US
F-15C Eagle flies a mission over
Yugoslavia 08 April 1999 (AFP Photo)
Back then, Slobodan Milosevic's forces were
engaged in armed conflict with an Albanian
rebel group, the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA),
which sought the province’s separation from
Yugoslavia. Former US President Bill Clinton's
special envoy to the Balkans, Robert Gelbard,
had earlier described the KLA as “without
any questions, a terrorist group.” (The
KLA was later repeatedly accused of being
involved in the organ trafficking of Serbs in
the late 1990s.)
However, despite not announcing the link
officially, NATO entered the conflict on the
side of the KLA, accusing Serbian security
forces of atrocities and “ethnic cleansing”
against ethnic Albanians in Kosovo. The main
objective of the campaign was to make
Milosevic's forces pull out of the province.
The fact that there was violence on both sides
of the confrontation was ignored both by
allied governments and Western media – which
stirred up public anger by focusing only on
Serbs’ atrocities and being far less vocal
regarding abuses by Albanians.
“All efforts to achieve a negotiated
political solution to the Kosovo crisis
having failed, no alternative is open but to
take military action,” Solana said on
March 23, 1999. “We must halt the violence
and bring an end to the humanitarian
catastrophe now unfolding in Kosovo.”
A
police training centre in Novi Sad, in
the north of Yugoslavia burns 25 March
1999 after it was destroyed during NATO
air strikes, according to the official
Yugoslav news agency, Tanjug (AFP Photo)
Racak massacre controversy
An incident involving the “mass killing”
of Albanians in central Kosovo’s village of
Racak – a KLA stronghold – became a major
excuse and justification for NATO’s decision
to start its operation. Serbs were blamed for
the deaths of dozens of Albanian “civilians”
on January 15, 1999. However, it was alleged
that the accusations could have been false and
the bodies actually belonged to KLA insurgents
whose clothes had been changed.
Kosovar
families enter Racak mosque where the
coffins of ethnic Albanians killed on
January 15 were brought in,10 February,
in southern Kosovo (AFP Photo)
A central role in labeling the events in
Racak “a massacre” belonged to
William Walker, who headed the OSCE Kosovo
Verification Mission. He visited the site
shortly after the incident and made his
judgment.
“[Walker] arrived there having no
powers to make conclusions regarding what
had happened,” Russian Foreign Minister
Sergey Lavrov said in an interview with
Rossiyskaya Gazenta paper in November last
year.
Yugoslav authorities accused Walker of going
beyond his mission and proclaimed him persona
non grata, while Western leaders were
infuriated over the Racak incident.
Smoke
rises over the local red cross office
destroyed in last night's NATO air
strike on centre of Kosovo's capital
Pristina March 29, 1999 (Reuters)
“And some time later the bombing started,”
Lavrov recalled, adding that the situation in
Racak became the “trigger point.”
Moscow insisted that an investigation should
be carried out. The EU commissioned a group of
Finnish forensic experts to prepare a report
on the incident. Later, the European Union
handed it over to the International Criminal
Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, Lavrov
said. The full version of the document has
never been made public, said the minister, who
was Moscow’s permanent representative to the
UN between 1994 and 2004.
“But parts of the report leaked and were
quoted in the media saying that [the
victims] were not civilians and that all the
bodies found in Racak were in disguise and
that bullet holes on clothes and bodies did
not match. There was also no one who was
killed at short range,” Lavrov said. “Even though
I’ve repeatedly raised this issue, the
report itself still has not been shown.”
An
Ethnic Albanian refugee from Kosovo
looks at her destroyed kitchen after she
returned to her house, 22 June 1999 on a
road near Orahovac (AFP Photo)
NATO halted its air campaign with the
signing of the Military Technical Agreement in
Kumanovo on June 9, 1999, with the Yugoslav
government agreeing to withdraw its forces
from Kosovo. On June 10, 1999, the UN Security
Council adopted resolution 1244 to establish
the UN Interim Administration Mission in
Kosovo (UNMIK).
In August 2013, Amnesty International accused the UNMIK of
failing to properly investigate the abductions
and murders of Kosovo Serbs in the aftermath
of the 1998-1999 war.
“Years have passed and the fate of the
majority of the missing on both sides of the
conflict is still unresolved, with their
families still waiting for justice,”
the organization said.
Moscow’s former envoy to NATO (1997-2002),
Viktor Zavarzin, believes the military
alliance’s aggression was “a crime against
humanity” and a “violation of
international laws and norms.” The
event that unfolded 15 years ago laid ground
to a new era of the development of
international relations – the era of “chaosization
of international law and its arbitrary
manipulation,” Zavarzin, an MP for the
United Russia party said at the State Duma
plenary session on Friday.
Photo
released 11 May 1999 by the official
Yugoslav news agency, Tanjug shows a
view of a bridge on the Belgrade-Nis
highway, 90 km south of Belgrade which
was reportedly damaged during NATO air
strikes the night before (AFP Photo)
Michael McFaul, who recently quit the post
of the US Ambassador to Russia, tweeted his
reaction to RT’s NATO bombing anniversary
coverage, pointing to dramatic growth in
Serbia after Milosevic was ousted.
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