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Español1999 NATO BOMBING OF THE FEDERAL REPUBLIC OF YUGOSLAVIA
(Redirected from NATO bombing of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia)
The 'NATO bombing of Yugoslavia' (code-named 'Operation ''Allied Force''' by NATO) was NATO's military operation against the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia that lasted from 24 March to 10 June 1999 and is considered a major part of the Kosovo War. It was only the second major combat operation in NATO's history, following the September 1995 Operation Deliberate Force in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
NATO's proclaimed goal was to force the Serbian government to end the civil war in Kosovo between the military of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia and Serbian paramilitary police forces on the one hand and the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA or UCK) on the other. The Yugoslav Government claimed that it was protecting the minority Serbian population of Kosovo against attacks by the Kosovo Liberation Army. The US State Department previously had classified the KLA as a terrorist organization.[6][7]
Operation Allied Force relied almost exclusively on the use of a large-scale air campaign to destroy Yugoslav civilian and military infrastructure from high altitudes. Ground units were not used, although their use was threatened near the end of the conflict. This approach was adopted to minimize the risk to the NATO forces and attracted considerable public criticism due to its relative ineffectiveness against mobile ground targets such as tanks and troop formations. Strategic targets such as bridges and factories were also bombed, particularly in the later stages of the conflict. Long-range cruise missiles were used to hit a number of heavily defended targets such as strategic installations in Belgrade and Priština. Civilian installations such as power plants, even water processing plants and the state-owned broadcaster were also intentionally targeted.
NATO's bombing campaign lasted from March 24 to June 11, 1999, involving up to 1,000 aircraft operating mainly from bases in Italy and aircraft carriers stationed in the Adriatic. Tomahawk cruise missiles were also extensively used, fired from aircraft, ships and submarines. The United States was, inevitably, the dominant member of the coalition against Serbia, although all of the NATO members were involved to some degree — even Greece, despite publicly opposing the war. Over the ten weeks of the conflict, NATO aircraft flew over 38,000 combat missions. For the German Air Force (Luftwaffe) it was the first time it had participated in a conflict since World War II. In addition to airpower, one battalion from the US Army's 82nd Airborne Division was deployed to help combat missions. The battalion secured Apache attack helicopter refueling sites and a small team forward deployed to the Albania/Kosovo border to identify targets for Allied/NATO airstrikes.
The proclaimed goal of the NATO operation was summed up by its spokesman as "Serbs out, peacekeepers in, refugees back". That is, Serbian troops would have to leave Kosovo and be replaced by international peacekeepers in order to ensure that the Albanian refugees could return to their homes. However, the summary had an unfortunate double meaning which caused NATO considerable embarrassment after the war, when over 200,000 Serbs and other non-Albanian minorities fled or were expelled from the province. It was also suggested that a small victorious war would help give NATO a new role. Propaganda terms "''humanitarian bombing''" and "''humanitarian war''" were employed by the politicians.
The campaign was initially designed to destroy Serbian air defences and high-value military targets. It did not go very well at first, with bad weather hindering many sorties early on. NATO had seriously underestimated Milošević's will to resist: few in Brussels thought that the campaign would last more than a few days, and although the initial bombardment was more than just a pin-prick, it was nowhere near the concentrated bombardments seen in Baghdad in 1991 and 2003. On the ground, the ethnic cleansing campaign by the Serbians was stepped up and within a week of the war starting, over 300,000 Kosovo Albanians had fled into neighboring Albania and Macedonia, with many thousands more displaced within Kosovo. By April, the United Nations was reporting that 850,000 people — the vast majority of them Albanians — had fled their homes.
The cause of the refugee exodus has been the subject of considerable controversy, not least because it formed the basis of United Nations war crimes charges against Slobodan Milošević and other officials responsible for directing the Kosovo conflict. The Serbian side and its Western supporters claimed that the refugee outflows were caused by mass panic in the Kosovo Albanian population, and that the exodus was generated principally by fear of NATO bombs. It was also alleged that the exodus was encouraged by KLA guerrillas, and that in some cases the KLA issued direct orders to Albanians to flee. Many eyewitness accounts from both Serbs and Albanians identified Serbian security forces and paramilitaries as the culprits, responsible for systematically emptying towns and villages of their Albanian inhabitants either by forcing them to flee or executions. [9] There were certainly some well-documented instances of mass expulsions, as happened in Priština at the end of March when tens of thousands of people were rounded up at gunpoint and loaded onto trains, before being dumped at the Macedonian border. Other towns, such as Peć, were systematically burned and their inhabitants killed.
German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer claimed that the refugee crisis had been produced by a Serbian plan codenamed "Operation Horseshoe". While the existence of a plan of that name remains controversial, the United Nations and international human rights organisations were convinced that the refugee crisis was the result of a deliberate policy of ethnic cleansing. A postwar statistical analysis of the patterns of displacement, conducted by Patrick Ball of the American Association for the Advancement of Science [10], found that there was a direct correlation between Serbian security force operations and refugee outflows, with NATO operations having very little effect on the displacements. There was other evidence of the refugee crisis having been deliberately manufactured: many refugees reported that their identity cards had been confiscated by security forces, making it much harder for them to prove that they were ''bona fide'' Yugoslav citizens. Indeed, since the conflict ended Serbian sources have claimed that many of those who joined the refugee return were in fact Albanians from outside Kosovo.
It is unclear what Milošević may have hoped to achieve by expelling Kosovo's Albanian inhabitants. One possibility is that he wished to replace the Albanian population with refugee Serbs from Bosnia and Croatia, thereby achieving the "Serbianization" of the province. It is quite clear that NATO achieved a considerable moral advantage by the flight, whether desired or not. If so, if desired it was a great success, as it convinced NATO's member states populations that they had to win the conflict. Europe was already finding it hard to cope with previous waves of refugees and asylum seekers from the Balkans, and a further wave of refugees could have dangerously destabilised south-eastern Europe. It is arguable that the war in Kosovo was not initially in the direct interests of the NATO states, but the refugee crisis made it so. The television pictures of thousands of refugees streaming across the border were an invaluable morale boost for NATO, making it much easier for the alliance to argue that Serbian ethnic cleansing was a greater evil than NATO bombardment.
NATO military operations switched increasingly to attacking Serbian units on the ground — hitting targets as small as individual tanks and artillery pieces — as well as continuing with the strategic bombardment. This activity was, however, heavily constrained by politics, as each target needed to be approved by all nineteen members states. Montenegro was bombed on several occasions but NATO eventually desisted in order to prop up the precarious position of its anti-Milošević leader, Đukanović. So-called "dual-use" targets, of use to both civilians and the military, were attacked: this included bridges across the Danube, factories, power stations, telecommunications facilities and — particularly controversially — the headquarters of Yugoslavian Leftists, a political party led by Milošević's wife, and the Serbian state television broadcasting tower. Some saw these actions as violations of international law and the Geneva Conventions in particular. NATO however argued that these facilities were potentially useful to the Serbian military and that their bombing was therefore justified. The alliance also maintained that it tried very hard to avoid civilian casualties during its bombing campaign.
At the start of May, a NATO aircraft attacked an Albanian refugee convoy, believing it was a Serbian military convoy, killing around 50 people. NATO admitted its mistake 5 days later, but the Serbs accused NATO of deliberately attacking the refugees. On May 7, NATO bombs hit the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade, killing three Chinese journalists and outraging Chinese public opinion. NATO claimed they were firing at Yugoslav positions. The United States and NATO later apologized for the bombing, saying that it occurred because of an outdated map provided by the CIA. This was challenged by a joint report from ''The Observer'' (UK) and ''Politiken'' (Denmark) newspapers [11] which claimed that NATO intentionally bombed the embassy because it was being used as a relay station for Yugoslav army radio signals. The bombing strained relations between China and NATO countries and provoked angry demonstrations outside Western embassies in Beijing. According to one news source, unnamed high ranking NATO sources confirmed in 2005 that the attack was in fact deliberate: ''"The NATO sources told Defense & Foreign Affairs that the attack was based on intelligence that then Serbian leader Slobodan Milošević was to have been in the Embassy at the time of the attack. The attack, then, was deliberately planned as a "decapitation" attack, intended to kill Milošević."'' [12]
By the start of April, the conflict seemed little closer to a resolution and NATO countries began to think seriously about a ground operation — an invasion of Kosovo. This would have to be organised very quickly, as there was little time before winter set in and much work would have to be done to improve the roads from the Greek and Albanian ports to the envisaged invasion routes through Macedonia and north-eastern Albania. US President Bill Clinton was however extremely reluctant to commit American forces for a ground offensive. At the same time, Finnish and Russian negotiators continued to try to persuade Milošević to back down. He finally recognised that NATO was serious in its resolve to end the conflict one way or another and that Russia would not intervene to defend Serbia despite Moscow's strong anti-NATO rhetoric. Faced with little alternative, Milošević accepted the conditions offered by a Finnish–Russian mediation team and agreed to a military presence within Kosovo headed by the UN, but incorporating NATO troops.
On 12 June, after Milošević accepted the conditions, KFOR began entering the war-torn land of Kosovo. KFOR, a NATO force, had been preparing to conduct combat operations but in the end its mission was only peacekeeping.[8] It was based upon the Allied Rapid Reaction Corps headquarters commanded by then Lieutenant General Mike Jackson of the British Army. It consisted of British forces (a brigade built from 4th Armoured and 5th Airborne Brigades), a French Army Brigade, a German Army brigade, which entered from the west while all the other forces advanced from the south, and Italian Army and United States Army brigades. The US contribution, the Initial Entry Force consisted of forces from the 2nd Battalion, 505th Parachute Infantry Regiment from Fort Bragg, N.C; the 26th Marine Expeditionary Unit from Camp Lejeune, North Carolina; the 1st Battalion, 26th Infantry Regiment from Schweinfurt Germany, and Echo Troop, 4th Cavalry Regiment, also from Schweinfurt, Germany. Also attached to the U.S. force was the Greek Army's 501st Mechanized Infantry Battalion. The initial US forces established their area of operation around the towns of Uroševac, the future Camp Bondsteel, and Gnjilane, at Camp Monteith, and spent four months - the start of a stay which continues to date - establishing order in the south east sector of Kosovo. Even though greetings were temporary, during initial incursion the NATO soldiers were greeted by Albanians young and old cheering and throwing flowers as KFOR rolled through their villages. At least three U.S. soldiers from the Initial Entry Force lost their lives.[9]
An important portion of the war involved combat between the Yugoslav Air Force and the opposing air forces. U.S. Air Force F-15s and F-16s flying mainly from Italian air force bases attacked the defending Yugoslav fighters, mainly MiG-29s. Royal Netherlands Air Force and other NATO forces also contributed to the air war.
Dogfights/incidents of the 1999 Kosovo War:
★ March 24, 1999: Yugoslav MiG-29 pilot Nejbojsa Nikolić took off from Batajnica Air Force Base. He encountered 24 NATO fighter jets. The NATO fighters immediately reacted to his presence. The MiG-29 evaded two enemy missiles before an American F-15 shot him down. Nikolić ejected at around 2,000 meters altitude and survived. According to U.S. reports, two MiG-29s were shot down in the encounter, one by Captain Mike Shower and one by Lieutenant Colonel Cesar Rodriguez.[13]
★ March 25, 1999: A J-22 Orao piloted by Lt. Colonel Zivota Ðurić took off from Ladjevci and was shot down by NATO fighter aircraft. The exact circumstances of how the aircraft was shot down are not known.
★ March 26, 1999: Three dogfights happened on this date:
:The first one was in the morning when Yugoslav MiG-29 pilot Zoran Radosavljević took off from Batajnica Air Force Base. He encountered 3 NATO F-16s and, was very quickly shot down by a Royal Netherlands Air Force F-16. Radosavljević did not eject and was killed.
:In the afternoon, two more Yugoslav MiG-29s took off from Batajnica and challenged a group of three U.S. F-15s. Both MiGs were shot down by U.S. Captain Jeff Hwang.[14] One of the pilots of the MiGs was Lt. Colonel Slobodan Perić, and it is believed that Perić ejected and lived.
★ On March 27, 1999, the 3rd Battalion of the 250th Missile Brigade under the command of Colonel Zoltán Dani, equipped with the Isayev S-125 'Neva-M' (NATO designation SA-3 'Goa'), downed an American F-117 Nighthawk with a Neva-M missile.[10] According to Wesley Clark and other NATO generals, Yugoslav air defenses found that they could detect F-117s with their "obsolete" Soviet radars operating on long wavelengths. This, combined with the loss of stealth when the jets got wet or opened their bomb bays, made them visible on radar screens. The pilot successfully ejected and was rescued by CSAR forces near Belgrade. The incident was the first and so far only time a stealth bomber was ever shot down in history.
★ On May 2, 1999, an American F-16 crashed near Sabac, in a rural area of Serbia, and the pilot ejected and was rescued. Yugoslavia claimed the aircraft to be shot down by a SAM. NATO said the crash was caused by engine failure.[15]
The main element of the operation was the air forces of NATO, principally drawn from the United States Air Force and the Royal Air Force as well as other NATO air forces. The British Royal Air Force operated the Harrier GR7 and Tornado fighter jets as-well as an array of support aircraft. Belgian, Danish, Dutch and Turkish Air Forces operated F-16s. The Canadian Air force deployed CF-18s which were responsible for 10% of all bombs dropped. The fighters were armed with guided missiles, including the Paveway series, and were also armed with unguided 'dumb' bombs. The war saw the first time that the German Luftwaffe actively participated in combat operations since the end of the Second World War and the American B-2 Spirit stealth bomber also saw its first combat. Spanish F-18 fighter jets and Italian Tornado and AMX aircraft were also used in the operation.
Operation Allied Freedom saw the first use of satellites as a direct method of missile guidance. It saw the first combat use of the Joint Direct Attack Munition JDAM kit which used an inertial-guidance and GPS-guided tailfin to increase the accuracy of conventional gravity munitions up to 95%. Outfitted on the B-2s.
NATO naval forces operated in the Adriatic. The British Royal Navy sent a substantial task force including the aircraft carrier HMS ''Invincible'', operating Sea Harrier FA2 fighter jets. The RN also deployed a number of destroyers and frigates and the Royal Fleet Auxiliary (RFA) provided support vessels, including the aviation training/primary casualty receiving ship RFA ''Argus''. It was the first time that the RN used cruise missiles in combat, operated from the nuclear fleet submarine HMS ''Splendid''.
The United States Navy provided a substantial naval task force that included the aircraft carrier USS ''Theodore Roosevelt'' and the amphibious assault ship USS ''Kearsarge''. The French Navy provided the aircraft carrier ''Foch and a number of escorts.
US ground forces included a battalion from the 82nd Airborne Division, 505th Parachute Infantry Regiment. The unit was deployed in March 1999 to Albania in support of the bombing campaign where the Battalion secured the Tirana, Albania airfield; secured Apache attack helicopter refuelling sites; established a forward operating base to prepare for MLRS (Multiple Launch Rocket System) strikes and offensive ground operations; and a small team deployed forward with a Q-36 radar system to the Albania/Kosovo border where they acquired targets for allied/NATO air strikes. Immediately after the bombing campaign the battalion was refitted back at Tirana airfield and issued orders to move into Kosovo as the Initial Entry Force in support of Operation Joint Guardian.
Main articles: Targeting of civilian areas during Operation Allied Force
Human Rights Watch reports that as few as 489 and as many as 528 civilians were killed in the ninety separate incidents in Operation Allied Force. Albanian refugees are among the victims. Between 62 and 66 percent of the total registered civilian deaths occurred in just twelve incidents. These twelve incidents accounted for from 303 to 352 civilian deaths. These were the only incidents among the ninety documented in which ten or more civilian deaths were confirmed. Almost half of the incidents resulted from attacks during daylight hours, when civilians could have been expected to be on the roads and bridges or in public buildings which may have been targeted. [11]
Military casualties on the NATO side were remarkably light; according to official reports the alliance suffered no fatalities as a result of combat operations. However, on May 5, an American military AH-64 Apache helicopter crashed and exploded during a night-time mission outside Tirana. The Yugoslavs claimed they shot it down, but NATO claimed it crashed due to a technical malfunction. It crashed close to the Albanian-Kosovo border, 40 miles (75km) from Tirana, Albania's capital,[16], and the two American pilots of the helicopter Army Chief Warrant Officers David Gibbs and Kevin Reichert died in that crash. According to newspaper reports at the time, KLA insurgents claimed that an SAS soldier operating with them was killed by Serbian fire, which NATO and the Ministry of Defence denied. A few days later, an SAS soldier was listed as killed in a road accident during 'routine peacekeeping operations' in Bosnia, not normally the preserve of the SAS. There were other casualties after the war, mostly due to land mines. After the war, the alliance reported the loss of three helicopters, 32 unmanned air vehicles (UAVs) and five aircraft — all of them American, including the first stealth plane (a F-117 Nighthawk) shot down by enemy fire; most of them from accidents in the 38,004 sorties flown. The Yugoslav armed forces claimed to have shot down seven helicopters, 30 UAVs, 61 planes and 238 cruise missiles; however, these figures were not verified independently.
Operation Allied Force inflicted less damage on the Yugoslav military than originally thought, due to the use of ingenious camouflage, vehicles and war technics repainting and numerous easy-made decoys and other misdirection techniques to disguise military targets. While NATO believed it had destroyed about 120 Serbian tanks during the conflict, only 14 were subsequently confirmed destroyed. It was only in the later stages of the campaign that strategic targets such as bridges and buildings were attacked in any systematic way, causing significant disruption and economic damage. This stage of the campaign led to a number of controversial incidents, such as the bombing of the People's Republic of China embassy in Belgrade where three Chinese reporters were killed and twenty others injured, NATO claimed this was in error due to the use of old maps of Belgrade. Then there was an attack on Serbia's main TV station, Zastava car factory and the bombing of chemical factories which resulted in major pollution incidents and loss of jobs.
When NATO agreed that Kosovo would be supervised politically by the United Nations, that there would be no independence referendum for three years (the main objective of NATO was to have a vote on independence) and through strong diplomatic initiative from Russia, the Yugoslav government agreed to withdraw its forces from Kosovo and the bombing was suspended on 10 June. The war was declared over on June 11, and Russian paratroopers seized Slatina airport to become the first peacekeeping force in the war zone.[17]
As British troops were still massed on the Macedonian border, planning to enter Kosovo at 5am that day, the Serbs were hailing the Russian arrival as proof that this was a UN and not a NATO operation.
After hostilities were over, on 12 June the US Army's elite 82nd Airborne, 2-505th Parachute Infantry Regiment entered war-torn Kosovo as part of Operation Joint Guardian.
Yugoslav President Slobodan Milošević survived the conflict and declared its outcome a major victory for Yugoslavia and Serbia. He was, however, indicted for war crimes by the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia along with a number of other senior Serbian and Yugoslav political and military figures. This led to Yugoslavia as a whole being treated as a pariah by much of the international community, as he was subject to arrest if he left Yugoslavia. The country's economy was badly affected by the conflict and a year later, popular disillusionment with the Milošević regime led to his overthrow in October 2000.
Thousands were killed during the conflict and hundreds of thousands more fled from the province to other parts of the country and to the surrounding countries. Most of the Albanian refugees returned home within a few weeks or months. However, most of the non-Albanian population again fled to other parts of Serbia or to protected enclaves within Kosovo. Albanian guerrilla activity spread into other parts of Serbia and to neighbouring Macedonia, but subsided in 2001. The non-Albanian population has since diminished further following fresh outbreaks of inter communal conflict and harassment, and veterans of the officially disbanded KLA are threatening with renewed violence if their demand for secession is not fulfilled.
In December 2002 HM Queen Elizabeth II approved the awarding of the Battle Honour "Kosovo" to squadrons of the RAF that participated in the conflict. These were: Nos '1', 7, 8, '9', '14', 23, '31', 51, 101, and 216 squadrons. Squadrons that are emboldened are authorized to have the battle honour emblazoned on their Colours.
Main articles: Legitimacy of NATO bombing of Yugoslavia
Some critics have accused the coalition of leading a war in Kosovo under the false pretense of genocide.[12] President Clinton of the United States, and his administration, were accused of inflating the number of Kosovar Albanians killed by Serbians.[13] Clinton's Secretary of Defense William Cohen, giving a speech, said, "The appalling accounts of mass killing in Kosovo and the pictures of refugees fleeing Serb oppression for their lives makes it clear that this is a fight for justice over genocide."[14] On CBS' ''Face the Nation'' Cohen claimed, "We've now seen about 100,000 military-aged men missing...They may have been murdered."[15] Clinton, citing the same figure, spoke of "at least 100,000 (Kosovar Albanians) missing".[16] Later, talking about Serbian elections, Clinton said, "they're going to have to come to grips with what Mr. Milošević ordered in Kosovo...They're going to have to decide whether they support his leadership or not; whether they think it's OK that all those tens of thousands of people were killed...".[17] Clinton also claimed, in the same press conference, that "NATO stopped deliberate, systematic efforts at ethnic cleansing and genocide."[18] Clinton compared the events of Kosovo to the Holocaust. CNN reported, "Accusing Serbia of 'ethnic cleansing' in Kosovo similar to the genocide of Jews in World War II, an impassioned President Clinton sought Tuesday to rally public support for his decision to send U.S. forces into combat against Yugoslavia, a prospect that seemed increasingly likely with the breakdown of a diplomatic peace effort."[19] Clinton's State Department also claimed Serbian troops had committed genocide. ''The New York Times'' reported, "the Administration said evidence of 'genocide' by Serbian forces was growing to include 'abhorrent and criminal action' on a vast scale. The language was the State Department's strongest yet in denouncing Yugoslav President Slobodan Milošević."[20] The State Department also gave the highest estimate of dead Albanians. ''The New York Times'' reported, "On April 19, the State Department said that up to 500,000 Kosovar Albanians were missing and feared dead."[21]
The United Nations Charter does not allow military interventions in other sovereign countries with few exceptions which in general need to be decided upon by the United Nations Security Council. The issue was brought before the UN Security Council by Russia, in a draft resolution which - inter alia - would affirm "that such unilateral use of force constitutes a flagrant violation of the United Nations Charter". China, Namibia and Russia voted for the resolution, the other members against, thus it failed to pass [18][19] (PDF). The absence of a legal basis for the intervention thus led observers to argue that the intervention undermined international law.
On April 29 1999 Yugoslavia filed a complaint at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) at The Hague against ten NATO member countries (Belgium, Germany, France, Great Britain, Italy, Canada, the Netherlands, Portugal, Spain, and the USA). The Court did not decide upon the case because it ruled that Yugoslavia was not a member of the UN during the war.
In Western countries, opposition to NATO's intervention was mainly from conservatives and libertarians on the right, and from most of the far left. In Britain, the war was opposed by many prominent conservative figures including former UK Foreign Secretary Sir Malcolm Rifkind, former Chancellor of the Exchequer Norman Lamont, and journalists Peter Hitchens and Simon Heffer, whereas opposition on the left was confined to ''The Morning Star'' newspaper and left wing MPs like Tony Benn and Alan Simpson. However, the Communist Party of Great Britain (Provisional Central Committee), a Leninist splinter-group, backed the Kosovo Liberation Army (while opposing NATO's intervention, seeing it as American-led imperialist opportunism) and support the complete secession of Kosovo from Serbia.
★ Bombing of Belgrade in World War II
★ Headquarters Allied Command Europe Rapid Reaction Corps
★ NATO bombing of Novi Sad in 1999
★ Grdelica train bombing
★ Air Force of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia / Serbia and Montenegro
1. A historical overview of Operation Allied Force
2. NATO hits Montenegro, says Milosevic faces dissent, ''CNN'', 29 April 1999
3. NATO's role in relation to the conflict in Kosovo, from NATO’s website, 15 July 1999
4. Nato warns Milosevic off Montenegro, ''BBC News'',
5. Press Statement by Dr. Javier Solana, Secretary General of NATO from NATO’s website, 23 March 1999
6. KLA rebels train in terrorist camps by Jerry Seper, ''The Washington Times'', May 4, 1999
7. State Department once called new allies 'terrorists': Cohen: For KLA victory, but not for KLA by Scott Park, ''Human Events'' April 30, 1999
8. http://www.arrc.nato.int/brochure/operations.htm
9. Sergeant William Wright - B Company 9th Engineers (17 July 1999); Specialist Sherwood Brim - B Company 9th Engineers (17 July 1999); Private First Class Benjamin McGill - C Company 1st Battalion 26th Infantry (9 August 1999).
10. Serb discusses 1999 downing of stealth
11. http://www.hrw.org/reports/2000/nato/Natbm200-01.htm
12. Farah, Joseph (1999). "The Real War Crimes".
13. Schlafly, Phyllis (November 19, 1999). "Numbers Game in Kosovo". ''Washington Times''.
14. Cohen, William (April 7, 1999). "Secretary Cohen's Press Conference at NATO Headquarters".
15. Doggett, Tom (May 16, 1999). "Cohen Fears 100,000 Kosovo Men Killed by Serbs". ''The Washington Post''.
16. Clinton, Bill (May 13, 1999). "Speech by President to Veterans Organizations on Kosovo".
17. Clinton, Bill (June 25, 1999). "Press Conference by the President".
18. ibid
19. "Clinton: Serbs must be stopped now". (March 23, 1999). CNN.
20. Clines, Francis X (March 30, 1999). "NATO Hunting for Serb Forces; U.S. Reports Signs of 'Genocide'". ''The New York Times'', p. A1.
21. Erlanger, Steven (November 11, 1999). "Early Count Hints at Fewer Kosovo Deaths". ''The New York Times'', p. A6.
★ Operation Allied Force NATO
★ CIVILIAN DEATHS IN THE NATO AIR CAMPAIGN Human Rights Watch
★ frontline: war in europe PBS Frontline
★ NATO losses according to the Press Service of the Yugoslavian army
★ Officially confirmed/documented NATO helicopter losses
★ Operation Allied Force: Golden Nuggets for Future Campaigns Lt. Col. Michael W. Lamb Sr
★ Link to English language literature list on Operationa Allied Force
The 'NATO bombing of Yugoslavia' (code-named 'Operation ''Allied Force''' by NATO) was NATO's military operation against the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia that lasted from 24 March to 10 June 1999 and is considered a major part of the Kosovo War. It was only the second major combat operation in NATO's history, following the September 1995 Operation Deliberate Force in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
Goals
NATO's proclaimed goal was to force the Serbian government to end the civil war in Kosovo between the military of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia and Serbian paramilitary police forces on the one hand and the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA or UCK) on the other. The Yugoslav Government claimed that it was protecting the minority Serbian population of Kosovo against attacks by the Kosovo Liberation Army. The US State Department previously had classified the KLA as a terrorist organization.[6][7]
Strategy
Operation Allied Force relied almost exclusively on the use of a large-scale air campaign to destroy Yugoslav civilian and military infrastructure from high altitudes. Ground units were not used, although their use was threatened near the end of the conflict. This approach was adopted to minimize the risk to the NATO forces and attracted considerable public criticism due to its relative ineffectiveness against mobile ground targets such as tanks and troop formations. Strategic targets such as bridges and factories were also bombed, particularly in the later stages of the conflict. Long-range cruise missiles were used to hit a number of heavily defended targets such as strategic installations in Belgrade and Priština. Civilian installations such as power plants, even water processing plants and the state-owned broadcaster were also intentionally targeted.
The operation
NATO's bombing campaign lasted from March 24 to June 11, 1999, involving up to 1,000 aircraft operating mainly from bases in Italy and aircraft carriers stationed in the Adriatic. Tomahawk cruise missiles were also extensively used, fired from aircraft, ships and submarines. The United States was, inevitably, the dominant member of the coalition against Serbia, although all of the NATO members were involved to some degree — even Greece, despite publicly opposing the war. Over the ten weeks of the conflict, NATO aircraft flew over 38,000 combat missions. For the German Air Force (Luftwaffe) it was the first time it had participated in a conflict since World War II. In addition to airpower, one battalion from the US Army's 82nd Airborne Division was deployed to help combat missions. The battalion secured Apache attack helicopter refueling sites and a small team forward deployed to the Albania/Kosovo border to identify targets for Allied/NATO airstrikes.
The proclaimed goal of the NATO operation was summed up by its spokesman as "Serbs out, peacekeepers in, refugees back". That is, Serbian troops would have to leave Kosovo and be replaced by international peacekeepers in order to ensure that the Albanian refugees could return to their homes. However, the summary had an unfortunate double meaning which caused NATO considerable embarrassment after the war, when over 200,000 Serbs and other non-Albanian minorities fled or were expelled from the province. It was also suggested that a small victorious war would help give NATO a new role. Propaganda terms "''humanitarian bombing''" and "''humanitarian war''" were employed by the politicians.
Yugoslavian Army General Headquarters building damaged during NATO bombing.
The campaign was initially designed to destroy Serbian air defences and high-value military targets. It did not go very well at first, with bad weather hindering many sorties early on. NATO had seriously underestimated Milošević's will to resist: few in Brussels thought that the campaign would last more than a few days, and although the initial bombardment was more than just a pin-prick, it was nowhere near the concentrated bombardments seen in Baghdad in 1991 and 2003. On the ground, the ethnic cleansing campaign by the Serbians was stepped up and within a week of the war starting, over 300,000 Kosovo Albanians had fled into neighboring Albania and Macedonia, with many thousands more displaced within Kosovo. By April, the United Nations was reporting that 850,000 people — the vast majority of them Albanians — had fled their homes.
The cause of the refugee exodus has been the subject of considerable controversy, not least because it formed the basis of United Nations war crimes charges against Slobodan Milošević and other officials responsible for directing the Kosovo conflict. The Serbian side and its Western supporters claimed that the refugee outflows were caused by mass panic in the Kosovo Albanian population, and that the exodus was generated principally by fear of NATO bombs. It was also alleged that the exodus was encouraged by KLA guerrillas, and that in some cases the KLA issued direct orders to Albanians to flee. Many eyewitness accounts from both Serbs and Albanians identified Serbian security forces and paramilitaries as the culprits, responsible for systematically emptying towns and villages of their Albanian inhabitants either by forcing them to flee or executions. [9] There were certainly some well-documented instances of mass expulsions, as happened in Priština at the end of March when tens of thousands of people were rounded up at gunpoint and loaded onto trains, before being dumped at the Macedonian border. Other towns, such as Peć, were systematically burned and their inhabitants killed.
German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer claimed that the refugee crisis had been produced by a Serbian plan codenamed "Operation Horseshoe". While the existence of a plan of that name remains controversial, the United Nations and international human rights organisations were convinced that the refugee crisis was the result of a deliberate policy of ethnic cleansing. A postwar statistical analysis of the patterns of displacement, conducted by Patrick Ball of the American Association for the Advancement of Science [10], found that there was a direct correlation between Serbian security force operations and refugee outflows, with NATO operations having very little effect on the displacements. There was other evidence of the refugee crisis having been deliberately manufactured: many refugees reported that their identity cards had been confiscated by security forces, making it much harder for them to prove that they were ''bona fide'' Yugoslav citizens. Indeed, since the conflict ended Serbian sources have claimed that many of those who joined the refugee return were in fact Albanians from outside Kosovo.
It is unclear what Milošević may have hoped to achieve by expelling Kosovo's Albanian inhabitants. One possibility is that he wished to replace the Albanian population with refugee Serbs from Bosnia and Croatia, thereby achieving the "Serbianization" of the province. It is quite clear that NATO achieved a considerable moral advantage by the flight, whether desired or not. If so, if desired it was a great success, as it convinced NATO's member states populations that they had to win the conflict. Europe was already finding it hard to cope with previous waves of refugees and asylum seekers from the Balkans, and a further wave of refugees could have dangerously destabilised south-eastern Europe. It is arguable that the war in Kosovo was not initially in the direct interests of the NATO states, but the refugee crisis made it so. The television pictures of thousands of refugees streaming across the border were an invaluable morale boost for NATO, making it much easier for the alliance to argue that Serbian ethnic cleansing was a greater evil than NATO bombardment.
Ostruznica highway bridge hit during Operation Allied Force.
NATO military operations switched increasingly to attacking Serbian units on the ground — hitting targets as small as individual tanks and artillery pieces — as well as continuing with the strategic bombardment. This activity was, however, heavily constrained by politics, as each target needed to be approved by all nineteen members states. Montenegro was bombed on several occasions but NATO eventually desisted in order to prop up the precarious position of its anti-Milošević leader, Đukanović. So-called "dual-use" targets, of use to both civilians and the military, were attacked: this included bridges across the Danube, factories, power stations, telecommunications facilities and — particularly controversially — the headquarters of Yugoslavian Leftists, a political party led by Milošević's wife, and the Serbian state television broadcasting tower. Some saw these actions as violations of international law and the Geneva Conventions in particular. NATO however argued that these facilities were potentially useful to the Serbian military and that their bombing was therefore justified. The alliance also maintained that it tried very hard to avoid civilian casualties during its bombing campaign.
At the start of May, a NATO aircraft attacked an Albanian refugee convoy, believing it was a Serbian military convoy, killing around 50 people. NATO admitted its mistake 5 days later, but the Serbs accused NATO of deliberately attacking the refugees. On May 7, NATO bombs hit the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade, killing three Chinese journalists and outraging Chinese public opinion. NATO claimed they were firing at Yugoslav positions. The United States and NATO later apologized for the bombing, saying that it occurred because of an outdated map provided by the CIA. This was challenged by a joint report from ''The Observer'' (UK) and ''Politiken'' (Denmark) newspapers [11] which claimed that NATO intentionally bombed the embassy because it was being used as a relay station for Yugoslav army radio signals. The bombing strained relations between China and NATO countries and provoked angry demonstrations outside Western embassies in Beijing. According to one news source, unnamed high ranking NATO sources confirmed in 2005 that the attack was in fact deliberate: ''"The NATO sources told Defense & Foreign Affairs that the attack was based on intelligence that then Serbian leader Slobodan Milošević was to have been in the Embassy at the time of the attack. The attack, then, was deliberately planned as a "decapitation" attack, intended to kill Milošević."'' [12]
By the start of April, the conflict seemed little closer to a resolution and NATO countries began to think seriously about a ground operation — an invasion of Kosovo. This would have to be organised very quickly, as there was little time before winter set in and much work would have to be done to improve the roads from the Greek and Albanian ports to the envisaged invasion routes through Macedonia and north-eastern Albania. US President Bill Clinton was however extremely reluctant to commit American forces for a ground offensive. At the same time, Finnish and Russian negotiators continued to try to persuade Milošević to back down. He finally recognised that NATO was serious in its resolve to end the conflict one way or another and that Russia would not intervene to defend Serbia despite Moscow's strong anti-NATO rhetoric. Faced with little alternative, Milošević accepted the conditions offered by a Finnish–Russian mediation team and agreed to a military presence within Kosovo headed by the UN, but incorporating NATO troops.
On 12 June, after Milošević accepted the conditions, KFOR began entering the war-torn land of Kosovo. KFOR, a NATO force, had been preparing to conduct combat operations but in the end its mission was only peacekeeping.[8] It was based upon the Allied Rapid Reaction Corps headquarters commanded by then Lieutenant General Mike Jackson of the British Army. It consisted of British forces (a brigade built from 4th Armoured and 5th Airborne Brigades), a French Army Brigade, a German Army brigade, which entered from the west while all the other forces advanced from the south, and Italian Army and United States Army brigades. The US contribution, the Initial Entry Force consisted of forces from the 2nd Battalion, 505th Parachute Infantry Regiment from Fort Bragg, N.C; the 26th Marine Expeditionary Unit from Camp Lejeune, North Carolina; the 1st Battalion, 26th Infantry Regiment from Schweinfurt Germany, and Echo Troop, 4th Cavalry Regiment, also from Schweinfurt, Germany. Also attached to the U.S. force was the Greek Army's 501st Mechanized Infantry Battalion. The initial US forces established their area of operation around the towns of Uroševac, the future Camp Bondsteel, and Gnjilane, at Camp Monteith, and spent four months - the start of a stay which continues to date - establishing order in the south east sector of Kosovo. Even though greetings were temporary, during initial incursion the NATO soldiers were greeted by Albanians young and old cheering and throwing flowers as KFOR rolled through their villages. At least three U.S. soldiers from the Initial Entry Force lost their lives.[9]
Air war
An important portion of the war involved combat between the Yugoslav Air Force and the opposing air forces. U.S. Air Force F-15s and F-16s flying mainly from Italian air force bases attacked the defending Yugoslav fighters, mainly MiG-29s. Royal Netherlands Air Force and other NATO forces also contributed to the air war.
Dogfights/incidents of the 1999 Kosovo War:
★ March 24, 1999: Yugoslav MiG-29 pilot Nejbojsa Nikolić took off from Batajnica Air Force Base. He encountered 24 NATO fighter jets. The NATO fighters immediately reacted to his presence. The MiG-29 evaded two enemy missiles before an American F-15 shot him down. Nikolić ejected at around 2,000 meters altitude and survived. According to U.S. reports, two MiG-29s were shot down in the encounter, one by Captain Mike Shower and one by Lieutenant Colonel Cesar Rodriguez.[13]
★ March 25, 1999: A J-22 Orao piloted by Lt. Colonel Zivota Ðurić took off from Ladjevci and was shot down by NATO fighter aircraft. The exact circumstances of how the aircraft was shot down are not known.
★ March 26, 1999: Three dogfights happened on this date:
:The first one was in the morning when Yugoslav MiG-29 pilot Zoran Radosavljević took off from Batajnica Air Force Base. He encountered 3 NATO F-16s and, was very quickly shot down by a Royal Netherlands Air Force F-16. Radosavljević did not eject and was killed.
:In the afternoon, two more Yugoslav MiG-29s took off from Batajnica and challenged a group of three U.S. F-15s. Both MiGs were shot down by U.S. Captain Jeff Hwang.[14] One of the pilots of the MiGs was Lt. Colonel Slobodan Perić, and it is believed that Perić ejected and lived.
★ On March 27, 1999, the 3rd Battalion of the 250th Missile Brigade under the command of Colonel Zoltán Dani, equipped with the Isayev S-125 'Neva-M' (NATO designation SA-3 'Goa'), downed an American F-117 Nighthawk with a Neva-M missile.[10] According to Wesley Clark and other NATO generals, Yugoslav air defenses found that they could detect F-117s with their "obsolete" Soviet radars operating on long wavelengths. This, combined with the loss of stealth when the jets got wet or opened their bomb bays, made them visible on radar screens. The pilot successfully ejected and was rescued by CSAR forces near Belgrade. The incident was the first and so far only time a stealth bomber was ever shot down in history.
★ On May 2, 1999, an American F-16 crashed near Sabac, in a rural area of Serbia, and the pilot ejected and was rescued. Yugoslavia claimed the aircraft to be shot down by a SAM. NATO said the crash was caused by engine failure.[15]
Forces employed by NATO
Aviation
The main element of the operation was the air forces of NATO, principally drawn from the United States Air Force and the Royal Air Force as well as other NATO air forces. The British Royal Air Force operated the Harrier GR7 and Tornado fighter jets as-well as an array of support aircraft. Belgian, Danish, Dutch and Turkish Air Forces operated F-16s. The Canadian Air force deployed CF-18s which were responsible for 10% of all bombs dropped. The fighters were armed with guided missiles, including the Paveway series, and were also armed with unguided 'dumb' bombs. The war saw the first time that the German Luftwaffe actively participated in combat operations since the end of the Second World War and the American B-2 Spirit stealth bomber also saw its first combat. Spanish F-18 fighter jets and Italian Tornado and AMX aircraft were also used in the operation.
Space
Operation Allied Freedom saw the first use of satellites as a direct method of missile guidance. It saw the first combat use of the Joint Direct Attack Munition JDAM kit which used an inertial-guidance and GPS-guided tailfin to increase the accuracy of conventional gravity munitions up to 95%. Outfitted on the B-2s.
Naval
NATO naval forces operated in the Adriatic. The British Royal Navy sent a substantial task force including the aircraft carrier HMS ''Invincible'', operating Sea Harrier FA2 fighter jets. The RN also deployed a number of destroyers and frigates and the Royal Fleet Auxiliary (RFA) provided support vessels, including the aviation training/primary casualty receiving ship RFA ''Argus''. It was the first time that the RN used cruise missiles in combat, operated from the nuclear fleet submarine HMS ''Splendid''.
The United States Navy provided a substantial naval task force that included the aircraft carrier USS ''Theodore Roosevelt'' and the amphibious assault ship USS ''Kearsarge''. The French Navy provided the aircraft carrier ''Foch and a number of escorts.
Army
US ground forces included a battalion from the 82nd Airborne Division, 505th Parachute Infantry Regiment. The unit was deployed in March 1999 to Albania in support of the bombing campaign where the Battalion secured the Tirana, Albania airfield; secured Apache attack helicopter refuelling sites; established a forward operating base to prepare for MLRS (Multiple Launch Rocket System) strikes and offensive ground operations; and a small team deployed forward with a Q-36 radar system to the Albania/Kosovo border where they acquired targets for allied/NATO air strikes. Immediately after the bombing campaign the battalion was refitted back at Tirana airfield and issued orders to move into Kosovo as the Initial Entry Force in support of Operation Joint Guardian.
Aftermath
Civilian casualties
Main articles: Targeting of civilian areas during Operation Allied Force
Human Rights Watch reports that as few as 489 and as many as 528 civilians were killed in the ninety separate incidents in Operation Allied Force. Albanian refugees are among the victims. Between 62 and 66 percent of the total registered civilian deaths occurred in just twelve incidents. These twelve incidents accounted for from 303 to 352 civilian deaths. These were the only incidents among the ninety documented in which ten or more civilian deaths were confirmed. Almost half of the incidents resulted from attacks during daylight hours, when civilians could have been expected to be on the roads and bridges or in public buildings which may have been targeted. [11]
Military casualties
Military casualties on the NATO side were remarkably light; according to official reports the alliance suffered no fatalities as a result of combat operations. However, on May 5, an American military AH-64 Apache helicopter crashed and exploded during a night-time mission outside Tirana. The Yugoslavs claimed they shot it down, but NATO claimed it crashed due to a technical malfunction. It crashed close to the Albanian-Kosovo border, 40 miles (75km) from Tirana, Albania's capital,[16], and the two American pilots of the helicopter Army Chief Warrant Officers David Gibbs and Kevin Reichert died in that crash. According to newspaper reports at the time, KLA insurgents claimed that an SAS soldier operating with them was killed by Serbian fire, which NATO and the Ministry of Defence denied. A few days later, an SAS soldier was listed as killed in a road accident during 'routine peacekeeping operations' in Bosnia, not normally the preserve of the SAS. There were other casualties after the war, mostly due to land mines. After the war, the alliance reported the loss of three helicopters, 32 unmanned air vehicles (UAVs) and five aircraft — all of them American, including the first stealth plane (a F-117 Nighthawk) shot down by enemy fire; most of them from accidents in the 38,004 sorties flown. The Yugoslav armed forces claimed to have shot down seven helicopters, 30 UAVs, 61 planes and 238 cruise missiles; however, these figures were not verified independently.
Post-strike bomb damage assessment photo of Zastava car plant.
Operation Allied Force inflicted less damage on the Yugoslav military than originally thought, due to the use of ingenious camouflage, vehicles and war technics repainting and numerous easy-made decoys and other misdirection techniques to disguise military targets. While NATO believed it had destroyed about 120 Serbian tanks during the conflict, only 14 were subsequently confirmed destroyed. It was only in the later stages of the campaign that strategic targets such as bridges and buildings were attacked in any systematic way, causing significant disruption and economic damage. This stage of the campaign led to a number of controversial incidents, such as the bombing of the People's Republic of China embassy in Belgrade where three Chinese reporters were killed and twenty others injured, NATO claimed this was in error due to the use of old maps of Belgrade. Then there was an attack on Serbia's main TV station, Zastava car factory and the bombing of chemical factories which resulted in major pollution incidents and loss of jobs.
Political outcome
When NATO agreed that Kosovo would be supervised politically by the United Nations, that there would be no independence referendum for three years (the main objective of NATO was to have a vote on independence) and through strong diplomatic initiative from Russia, the Yugoslav government agreed to withdraw its forces from Kosovo and the bombing was suspended on 10 June. The war was declared over on June 11, and Russian paratroopers seized Slatina airport to become the first peacekeeping force in the war zone.[17]
As British troops were still massed on the Macedonian border, planning to enter Kosovo at 5am that day, the Serbs were hailing the Russian arrival as proof that this was a UN and not a NATO operation.
After hostilities were over, on 12 June the US Army's elite 82nd Airborne, 2-505th Parachute Infantry Regiment entered war-torn Kosovo as part of Operation Joint Guardian.
Yugoslav President Slobodan Milošević survived the conflict and declared its outcome a major victory for Yugoslavia and Serbia. He was, however, indicted for war crimes by the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia along with a number of other senior Serbian and Yugoslav political and military figures. This led to Yugoslavia as a whole being treated as a pariah by much of the international community, as he was subject to arrest if he left Yugoslavia. The country's economy was badly affected by the conflict and a year later, popular disillusionment with the Milošević regime led to his overthrow in October 2000.
Thousands were killed during the conflict and hundreds of thousands more fled from the province to other parts of the country and to the surrounding countries. Most of the Albanian refugees returned home within a few weeks or months. However, most of the non-Albanian population again fled to other parts of Serbia or to protected enclaves within Kosovo. Albanian guerrilla activity spread into other parts of Serbia and to neighbouring Macedonia, but subsided in 2001. The non-Albanian population has since diminished further following fresh outbreaks of inter communal conflict and harassment, and veterans of the officially disbanded KLA are threatening with renewed violence if their demand for secession is not fulfilled.
In December 2002 HM Queen Elizabeth II approved the awarding of the Battle Honour "Kosovo" to squadrons of the RAF that participated in the conflict. These were: Nos '1', 7, 8, '9', '14', 23, '31', 51, 101, and 216 squadrons. Squadrons that are emboldened are authorized to have the battle honour emblazoned on their Colours.
Criticism of the case for war
Main articles: Legitimacy of NATO bombing of Yugoslavia
Some critics have accused the coalition of leading a war in Kosovo under the false pretense of genocide.[12] President Clinton of the United States, and his administration, were accused of inflating the number of Kosovar Albanians killed by Serbians.[13] Clinton's Secretary of Defense William Cohen, giving a speech, said, "The appalling accounts of mass killing in Kosovo and the pictures of refugees fleeing Serb oppression for their lives makes it clear that this is a fight for justice over genocide."[14] On CBS' ''Face the Nation'' Cohen claimed, "We've now seen about 100,000 military-aged men missing...They may have been murdered."[15] Clinton, citing the same figure, spoke of "at least 100,000 (Kosovar Albanians) missing".[16] Later, talking about Serbian elections, Clinton said, "they're going to have to come to grips with what Mr. Milošević ordered in Kosovo...They're going to have to decide whether they support his leadership or not; whether they think it's OK that all those tens of thousands of people were killed...".[17] Clinton also claimed, in the same press conference, that "NATO stopped deliberate, systematic efforts at ethnic cleansing and genocide."[18] Clinton compared the events of Kosovo to the Holocaust. CNN reported, "Accusing Serbia of 'ethnic cleansing' in Kosovo similar to the genocide of Jews in World War II, an impassioned President Clinton sought Tuesday to rally public support for his decision to send U.S. forces into combat against Yugoslavia, a prospect that seemed increasingly likely with the breakdown of a diplomatic peace effort."[19] Clinton's State Department also claimed Serbian troops had committed genocide. ''The New York Times'' reported, "the Administration said evidence of 'genocide' by Serbian forces was growing to include 'abhorrent and criminal action' on a vast scale. The language was the State Department's strongest yet in denouncing Yugoslav President Slobodan Milošević."[20] The State Department also gave the highest estimate of dead Albanians. ''The New York Times'' reported, "On April 19, the State Department said that up to 500,000 Kosovar Albanians were missing and feared dead."[21]
The United Nations Charter does not allow military interventions in other sovereign countries with few exceptions which in general need to be decided upon by the United Nations Security Council. The issue was brought before the UN Security Council by Russia, in a draft resolution which - inter alia - would affirm "that such unilateral use of force constitutes a flagrant violation of the United Nations Charter". China, Namibia and Russia voted for the resolution, the other members against, thus it failed to pass [18][19] (PDF). The absence of a legal basis for the intervention thus led observers to argue that the intervention undermined international law.
On April 29 1999 Yugoslavia filed a complaint at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) at The Hague against ten NATO member countries (Belgium, Germany, France, Great Britain, Italy, Canada, the Netherlands, Portugal, Spain, and the USA). The Court did not decide upon the case because it ruled that Yugoslavia was not a member of the UN during the war.
In Western countries, opposition to NATO's intervention was mainly from conservatives and libertarians on the right, and from most of the far left. In Britain, the war was opposed by many prominent conservative figures including former UK Foreign Secretary Sir Malcolm Rifkind, former Chancellor of the Exchequer Norman Lamont, and journalists Peter Hitchens and Simon Heffer, whereas opposition on the left was confined to ''The Morning Star'' newspaper and left wing MPs like Tony Benn and Alan Simpson. However, the Communist Party of Great Britain (Provisional Central Committee), a Leninist splinter-group, backed the Kosovo Liberation Army (while opposing NATO's intervention, seeing it as American-led imperialist opportunism) and support the complete secession of Kosovo from Serbia.
See also
★ Bombing of Belgrade in World War II
★ Headquarters Allied Command Europe Rapid Reaction Corps
★ NATO bombing of Novi Sad in 1999
★ Grdelica train bombing
★ Air Force of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia / Serbia and Montenegro
References
1. A historical overview of Operation Allied Force
2. NATO hits Montenegro, says Milosevic faces dissent, ''CNN'', 29 April 1999
3. NATO's role in relation to the conflict in Kosovo, from NATO’s website, 15 July 1999
4. Nato warns Milosevic off Montenegro, ''BBC News'',
5. Press Statement by Dr. Javier Solana, Secretary General of NATO from NATO’s website, 23 March 1999
6. KLA rebels train in terrorist camps by Jerry Seper, ''The Washington Times'', May 4, 1999
7. State Department once called new allies 'terrorists': Cohen: For KLA victory, but not for KLA by Scott Park, ''Human Events'' April 30, 1999
8. http://www.arrc.nato.int/brochure/operations.htm
9. Sergeant William Wright - B Company 9th Engineers (17 July 1999); Specialist Sherwood Brim - B Company 9th Engineers (17 July 1999); Private First Class Benjamin McGill - C Company 1st Battalion 26th Infantry (9 August 1999).
10. Serb discusses 1999 downing of stealth
11. http://www.hrw.org/reports/2000/nato/Natbm200-01.htm
12. Farah, Joseph (1999). "The Real War Crimes".
13. Schlafly, Phyllis (November 19, 1999). "Numbers Game in Kosovo". ''Washington Times''.
14. Cohen, William (April 7, 1999). "Secretary Cohen's Press Conference at NATO Headquarters".
15. Doggett, Tom (May 16, 1999). "Cohen Fears 100,000 Kosovo Men Killed by Serbs". ''The Washington Post''.
16. Clinton, Bill (May 13, 1999). "Speech by President to Veterans Organizations on Kosovo".
17. Clinton, Bill (June 25, 1999). "Press Conference by the President".
18. ibid
19. "Clinton: Serbs must be stopped now". (March 23, 1999). CNN.
20. Clines, Francis X (March 30, 1999). "NATO Hunting for Serb Forces; U.S. Reports Signs of 'Genocide'". ''The New York Times'', p. A1.
21. Erlanger, Steven (November 11, 1999). "Early Count Hints at Fewer Kosovo Deaths". ''The New York Times'', p. A6.
External links
★ Operation Allied Force NATO
★ CIVILIAN DEATHS IN THE NATO AIR CAMPAIGN Human Rights Watch
★ frontline: war in europe PBS Frontline
★ NATO losses according to the Press Service of the Yugoslavian army
★ Officially confirmed/documented NATO helicopter losses
★ Operation Allied Force: Golden Nuggets for Future Campaigns Lt. Col. Michael W. Lamb Sr
★ Link to English language literature list on Operationa Allied Force
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