Today marks twenty-three years since March 24, 1999, when NATO began air strikes against Yugoslavia, after the latter refused to sign the agreement on the future of Kosovo.
The official code name of the NATO operation was Operation Allied Force.
The bombing lasted almost 3 months and was followed by a ground invasion. It was the first attack in the history of the Alliance against a sovereign state, after the erroneous assessments of Madeleine Albright who passed away a few hours ago. It is characteristic that in the midst of bombings, the Washington Post in its front page report that Mrs. Albright misjudged Slobodan Milosevic's intentions.
The newspaper called the bombings "Mrs. Albright's war" and argued that both the secretary of state and her top advisers had misjudged the Yugoslav president to back down. This belief of Albright pushed America and NATO to go ahead with the military attack against Yugoslavia, without having previously made preparations for possible resistance from the Serbian side.
During the bombing, according to the international human rights organization Human Rights Watch, approximately 500 civilians lost their lives in 90 different incidents, while NATO was accused of violations of international law.
Belgrade, for its part, spoke of 5,000 dead civilians during the 78-day air operations. 30% of the victims were children, while 40% of the injured were children. NATO bombs destroyed 480 educational institutions, while UNICEF estimated that 50% of schools in Kosovo were destroyed.
NATO itself has never officially released figures on civilian casualties.
The US Pentagon, however, admitted that there were "20 to 30 cases of errors" caused as a result of the bombings.
In a 2005 interview on the website of Radio and Television Serbia (RTS), whose building was bombed on April 23, 1999, killing 16 workers, intellectual Noam Chomsky noted that the real purpose of the war was in no way to do with US concern about the Kosovar Albanians.
"The intervention took place because Serbia was not following through with the required social and economic reforms, meaning that it was the last corner of Europe that had not submitted itself to US-led neoliberal programs, so it had to be eliminated."
The bombing continued until an agreement was reached, which led to the withdrawal of Yugoslav armed forces from Kosovo and the creation of the United Nations Interim Administration in Kosovo (UNMIK), a UN peacekeeping mission in the region.
The material damage suffered by Yugoslavia was estimated at 29.6 billion dollars. The NATO bombing of Yugoslavia was the largest military operation in Europe since World War II. All NATO countries participated in the bombings, except Greece, Iceland and Luxembourg. Also, all neighboring countries of Yugoslavia, which were not yet members of NATO, ceded their territory and airspace to the forces of the North Atlantic Alliance.
Kosovo, in February 2008, declared its independence and to date has been recognized as an independent state by 108 UN member countries.
It is noted that in the last few days, demonstrations against NATO and in favor of Russian President Vladimir Putin took place in Serbia. A Putin who, of course, proceeded to invade Ukraine under the pretext of the security of the eastern regions and the Russian-speaking populations there, in a repetition of history that also led to the leveling of Yugoslavia by the NATO forces.
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