Ugo Barbara / AGI
The effects of the NATO bombing of Belgrade
AGI In Europe, the date of March 24 coincides with the tragic memory ofBeginning of the 1999 bombings in the cities of Belgrade in Serbia and Pristina in Kosovo by NATO aircraft taking off from Italian airports. A “jubilee” that falls 23 years later in the middle of a new war that has fallen on the old continent: it is exactly one month that Russia started the invasion of Ukraine, which began last February 24th.
The conflict in Yugoslavia was the first real war after 1945, that fateful March 24, 1999 it marked the beginning of one of the darkest pages of recent European history. At around 4 p.m. that day, NATO’s Allied Forces consisting of the United States, the United Kingdom, Germany, France, Italy, Canada, Spain, Portugal, Denmark, Norway, Turkey, the Netherlands and Belgium began their operation against Slobodan Milosevic’s Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, which consisted of an intense campaign of airstrikes with a strategic purpose lasting over two months until June 10th, scrupulously avoiding the option of a land attack.
Operation Allied Force is the second military action in the history of NATO, after the 1995 Operation Deliberate Force in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Operation Allied Force is also the first time NATO has used military force without the approval of the United Nations Security Councilwhich sparked debates about the legitimacy of the intervention.
On paper, the intervention decided by NATO was aimed at bringing back the Serbian delegation to the table of political negotiations, which it had left after the adoption of its conclusions (Treaty of Rambouillet) and to oppose the expulsion of the population of Kosovo, to fight them is preparing its partition between Serbia and Albania.
Even if the existence of a plan drawn up for this purpose has never been proven with sufficient certaintyThe fact remains that as soon as NATO airstrikes began, the Serbian army conducted operations aimed at obtaining a massive exodus, and in some cases actual massacres.
In Kosovo, then part of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, Serb forces attacked Kosovar Albanian civilians, massacre them and force them into a dramatic exodus to neighboring Albania and Macedonia. But as early as 1995, the UCK guerrillas also infiltrated by Muslim and Croatian veterans committed violence against ethnic Serbs with the goal of full independence for Kosovo. Since March 1998, the escalation of the crisis marked by the intensification of KLA activities and a progressive military occupation of Kosovo by the Serb military and paramilitary forces caused various European countries, the United States and the United Nations Security Council to take an interest in rapprochement the scenario.
The NATO operation developed in three phases. The first aimed to deprive Serbia of all offensive and air defense capabilities through the systematic bombing of military airports, antiaircraft missiles and radar. In the second phase, Allied airstrikes target generic military targets special attention to the Serb forces present in Kosovo. The third phase had as its main objective to hit civilian and military targets to paralyze the country, the main targets being the bridges with some serious accidents and the power plants, but also the telecommunications to engage the Serbian government for a while supported by Russia and China to capitulate and urge the Serbian people to put pressure on their own executive.
Among the standout episodes was the first night of bombings, including cruise missile attacks, on military posts and airports in Kosovo and around Belgrade. The influx of the first Kosovar refugees at the Albanian and Macedonian borders was immediate. On April 5, 1999, a bomb dropped on a populated area killed 17 people, while a week later the bombing of a bridge over which a train was traveling killed 50 people. On April 13, the Serbian army attacked an Albanian border village with artillerymen and the next day 75 Kosovar civilians were accidentally killed by NATO planes.
end of April the Serbian capital was bombed with firebombs against the headquarters of the Yugoslav Socialist Party and the Serbian public TV tower, killing 16 people. In the small town of Murino, Montenegro, six people, including three children, died in a bomb attack on a bridge. On May 1, 47 civilians were killed after their bus was hit while crossing a bridge. On May 8, the Chinese embassy in Belgrade was hit over a probable intelligence blunder, causing three deaths and a serious international incident.
On May 13th after an apparent Serb withdrawal from Kosovo, and Serbia’s appeal against NATO for genocide at the International Criminal Court in The Hague rejected on June 2 resulted in 60 dead and 80 wounded by NATO against the Kosovar village of Korisa. NATO accused the Serbs of using civilians as human shields.
On May 21, about 100 prisoners died in a bomb attack on a prison in Pristina. On May 27, the Hague International Tribunal began investigating Milosevic and highranking officers for war crimes. Between May 30th and 31st, in different NATO bombings, which however denied any responsibility, three massacres of civilians were carried out, such as in the hospital of Surdulica (south) with 20 dead and in the village of Novi Pazar with 23 dead.
On June 1, President Milosevic accepted the G8 resolutions and began planning a peacekeeping mission in Kosovo. On June 9, the Serbian General Staff signed with NATO the Kumanovo Agreement on withdrawal from Kosovo and the following day After 78 days of bombing, attack missions were suspended.
According to official figures, a total of 2,300 Allied air raids were carried out, destroying 148 buildings and 62 bridges, damaging 300 schools, hospitals and government institutions and 176 monuments of cultural and artistic interest. The aircraft involved, a thousand in all, took off from Italy, plus 30 warships and submarines set sail in the Adriatic Sea, and later part of the operations began in Hungary.
The budgets for the human losses in Kosovo are very different, also because they concern the victims of the NATO bombing on the one hand and, on the other hand, those of the massacres carried out by both the Serbian armed forces and the Albanian KLA guerrillas, leading to another leads was. , that of numbers, that has also become that of the media.
The bombs dropped by the Allies would have done it caused the deaths of 2,500 civilians, including 89 children, 12,500 injured and a number of refugees ranging from 700,000 to a million. Human Rights Watch calculated the casualties of Yugoslav civilians caused by the bombing between 489 and 528. These figures do not include leukemia and cancer deaths caused by the radiation effects of depleted uranium bullets.
On the side of genocide which also put at stake the legitimacy of NATO’s military intervention the concept of “humanitarian warfare More than 13,000 civilians were killed in Kosovo, including around 10,000 Albanians, 2,000 Serbs and 500 Roma, Bosnians and citizens of other ethnic groups. Thousands of people were missing, more than 250,000 refugees.
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