{"id":13517,"date":"2014-03-24T09:06:46","date_gmt":"2014-03-24T09:06:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/praag.org\/?p=13517"},"modified":"2014-03-24T09:06:46","modified_gmt":"2014-03-24T09:06:46","slug":"natos-humanitarian-destruction-of-yugoslavia","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/praag.org\/?p=13517","title":{"rendered":"NATO’s ‘humanitarian’ destruction of Yugoslavia"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"The<\/a>
The work of Serbs?<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Exactly 15 years ago, on March 24, NATO began its 78-day bombing of Yugoslavia. The alliance bypassed the UN under a \u201chumanitarian\u201d pretext, launching aggression that claimed hundreds of civilian lives and caused a much larger catastrophe than it averted.<\/p>\n

Years on, Serbia still bears deep scars of the NATO bombings which, as the alliance put it, were aimed at \u201cpreventing instability spreading\u201d in Kosovo. Questions remain on the very legality of the offense, which caused casualties and mass destruction in the Balkan republic.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

NATO demonstrated in 1999 that it can do whatever it wants under the guise of \u201chumanitarian intervention,\u201d \u201cwar on terror,\u201d or \u201cpreventive war\u201d \u2013 something that everyone has witnessed in subsequent years in different parts of the globe.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

In what the alliance described as \u201ccollateral damage,\u201d 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\u2019s ecology and, therefore, people\u2019s health. Economic damage is estimated at over US$120 billion, according to Serbian media.<\/p>\n

News correspondents Anissa Naouai and Jelena Milincic, the authors of RT’s documentary ‘Zashto?’ \u2013 which means \u201cWhy?\u201d in English \u2013traveled 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.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere is a bridge near the city of Nis, which was bombed at the time when a passenger train was passing through it,\u201d Milincic recalls.The tragedy on April 12, 1999 killed 15 people and wounded 44 others, while many passengers were never accounted for.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe felt the blast and saw flames under the locomotive. The train was blown so powerfully, half a meter from the ground. I don\u2019t know how we stayed on the rails,\u201d recalled witness Boban Kostic.<\/p>\n

\u201cOur colleague got off the train when I did,\u201d he said. \u201cHe was really scared. But another rocket hit and blew him to pieces,\u201d added another witness, Goran Mikic.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhy? Why civilians? Why a train?\u201d said Dragan Ciric. \u201cIt still torments me, if the first rocket was a mistake, what were the next three for?\u201d he told RT.<\/p>\n

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 \u201ca mistake.\u201d China is a permanent member of the UN Security Council and, along with Russia, did not support a military solution for the Kosovo crisis.<\/p>\n

Prior to the military assault, the Milosevic regime was accused of \u201cexcessive and disproportionate use of force in Kosovo.\u201d But was the force that NATO used when bombing the sovereign state\u2019s territory proportionate and restrained? Rights organization Amnesty International accused the allied forces of committing war crimes.<\/p>\n

\u201cIndications 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,\u201d the rights watchdog said in a report published in June 2000.<\/p>\n

The alliance dismissed the accusations, saying that cases involving civilian deaths were due to technological failure or were simply \u201caccidents of conflict.\u201d NATO failed to say that they were due to the alliance’s own failure to take all necessary precautions.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe never said we would avoid casualties. It would be foolhardy to say that, as no military operation in history has been perfect,\u201d said Jamie Shea, NATO\u2019s chief spokesman, the Guardian reported at the time.<\/p>\n

Former NATO Secretary General Javier Solana ordered military action against Yugoslavia following a failure in negotiations on the Kosovo crisis in France\u2019s Rambouillet and Paris in February and March 1999.<\/p>\n

NATO’s decision was officially announced after talks between international mediators \u2013 known as the Contact Group \u2013 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.<\/p>\n

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\u2019s separation from Yugoslavia. Former US President Bill Clinton’s special envoy to the Balkans, Robert Gelbard, had earlier described the KLA as \u201cwithout any questions, a terrorist group.\u201d (The KLA was later repeatedly accused of being involved in the organ trafficking of Serbs in the late 1990s.)<\/p>\n

However, despite not announcing the link officially, NATO entered the conflict on the side of the KLA, accusing Serbian security forces of atrocities and \u201cethnic cleansing\u201d 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 \u2013 which stirred up public anger by focusing only on Serbs\u2019 atrocities and being far less vocal regarding abuses by Albanians.<\/p>\n

\u201cAll efforts to achieve a negotiated political solution to the Kosovo crisis having failed, no alternative is open but to take military action,\u201d Solana said on March 23, 1999. \u201cWe must halt the violence and bring an end to the humanitarian catastrophe now unfolding in Kosovo.\u201d<\/p>\n

An incident involving the \u201cmass killing\u201d of Albanians in central Kosovo\u2019s village of Racak \u2013 a KLA stronghold \u2013 became a major excuse and justification for NATO\u2019s decision to start its operation. Serbs were blamed for the deaths of dozens of Albanian \u201ccivilians\u201d 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.<\/p>\n

A central role in labeling the events in Racak \u201ca massacre\u201d belonged to William Walker, who headed the OSCE Kosovo Verification Mission. He visited the site shortly after the incident and made his judgment.<\/p>\n

\u201c[Walker] arrived there having no powers to make conclusions regarding what had happened,\u201d Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said in an interview with Rossiyskaya Gazenta paper in November last year.<\/p>\n

Yugoslav authorities accused Walker of going beyond his mission and proclaimed him persona non grata, while Western leaders were infuriated over the Racak incident.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd some time later the bombing started,\u201d Lavrov recalled, adding that the situation in Racak became the \u201ctrigger point.\u201d 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\u2019s permanent representative to the UN between 1994 and 2004.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut 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,\u201d Lavrov said. \u201cEven though I\u2019ve repeatedly raised this issue, the report itself still has not been shown.\u201d<\/p>\n

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).<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

\u201cYears 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,\u201d the organization said.<\/p>\n

Moscow\u2019s former envoy to NATO (1997-2002), Viktor Zavarzin, believes the military alliance\u2019s aggression was \u201ca crime against humanity\u201d and a \u201cviolation of international laws and norms.\u201d The event that unfolded 15 years ago laid ground to a new era of the development of international relations \u2013 the era of \u201cchaosization of international law and its arbitrary manipulation,\u201d Zavarzin, an MP for the United Russia party said at the State Duma plenary session on Friday.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Exactly 15 years ago, on March 24, NATO began its 78-day bombing of Yugoslavia. The alliance bypassed the UN under a \u201chumanitarian\u201d pretext, launching aggression that claimed hundreds of civilian lives and caused a much larger catastrophe than it averted. Years on, Serbia still bears deep scars of the NATO bombings which, as the alliance … Continue reading “NATO’s ‘humanitarian’ destruction of Yugoslavia”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":13518,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[49,3],"tags":[8700,8616,8697,6058,2376,8698,8597,8699,4463,4624,8696],"class_list":["post-13517","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-europe","category-news","tag-humanitarian-intervention","tag-balkans","tag-bombing-campaign","tag-kosovo","tag-nato","tag-operation-allied-force","tag-serbia","tag-sovereign-nation","tag-un-security-council","tag-war-on-terror","tag-yugoslavia"],"cc_featured_image_caption":{"caption_text":false,"source_text":false,"source_url":false},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/praag.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/03\/refugee.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13517","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=13517"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13517\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13519,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13517\/revisions\/13519"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/13518"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=13517"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=13517"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=13517"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}