Kosovo War: NATO Bombing of Yugoslavia

The term Kosovo War or Kosovo Conflict is used to describe two sequential, and at
times parallel, armed conflicts in Kosovo. From early 1998[1] to 1999, the war was
between the army and police of FR Yugoslavia, and the Kosovo Liberation Army. From
March 24, 1999 to June 10, 1999,[21] NATO attacked Yugoslavia, and ethnic Albanian
militants continued battles with Yugoslav forces, amidst a massive displacement of
population in Kosovo estimated to be close to 1 million people.
The war in Kosovo was believed to be the first humanitarian war.[22] It was the centre of
news headlines for months, and gained a massive amount of coverage and attention from
the international community and media. Kosovo and the bombing of Yugoslavia was also
a very controversial war and still remains a controversial issue.[23]
Contents
[hide]
• 1 Pre-NATO intervention
o 1.1 Kosovo in Tito's Yugoslavia (1945–1986)
o 1.2 Riots
o 1.3 Kosovo and the rise of Slobodan Milošević (1986–1990)
o 1.4 Abolition of autonomy (1990–1996)
o 1.5 The slide to war (1996–1998)
o 1.6 Račak Massacre
o 1.7 The Rambouillet Conference (January–March 1999)
• 2 The NATO bombing campaign
• 3 Yugoslav withdrawal and entry of KFOR
• 4 Reaction to the war
o 4.1 Targets of the NATO bombing campaign
• 5 Criticism of the case for war
• 6 Casualties
o 6.1 Civilian losses
 6.1.1 Civilians killed by NATO airstrikes
 6.1.2 Civilians killed by Yugoslav ground forces
o 6.2 NATO losses
o 6.3 Yugoslav military losses
o 6.4 KLA losses
o 6.5 Aftermath
• 7 War crimes
o 7.1 Serbian war crimes
o 7.2 KLA war crimes
o 7.3 NATO war crimes
• 8 Military and political consequences
• 9 Military decorations
• 10 Weaponry used on all sides
o 10.1 Literature
• 11 See also
• 12 Gallery
• 13 References
• 14 External links
o 14.1 Reports
o 14.2 Media
o 14.3 Maps
Pre-NATO intervention
Kosovo in Tito's Yugoslavia (1945–1986)
This section may contain original research. Please improve it by verifying the
claims made and adding references. Statements consisting only of original research
may be removed. More details may be available on the talk page. (September 2009)
Tensions between the Serbian and Kosovo communities simmered throughout the 20th
century and occasionally erupted into major violence, particularly during the First Balkan
War, World War I, and World War II. The Socialist government of Josip Broz Tito
systematically repressed nationalist manifestations throughout Yugoslavia, seeking to
ensure that no Yugoslav republic or nationality gained dominance over the others. In
particular, the power of Serbia—the largest and most populous republic—was diluted by
the establishment of autonomous governments in the province of Vojvodina in the north
of Serbia and Kosovo in the south. Kosovo's borders did not precisely match the areas of
ethnic Albanian settlement in Yugoslavia (significant numbers of Albanians were left in
the Republic of Macedonia, Montenegro, and Serbia though the majority of its
inhabitants were Albanian. Kosovo's formal autonomy, established under the 1945
Yugoslav constitution, initially meant relatively little in practice. Tito's secret police
cracked down hard on nationalists. In 1956, a number of Albanians were put on trial in
Kosovo on charges of espionage and subversion. The threat of separatism was in fact
minimal, as the few underground groups aiming for union with Albania were politically
insignificant. Their long-term impact was substantial, though, as some—particularly the
Revolutionary Movement for Albanian Unity, founded by Adem Demaci—were to form
the political core of the Kosovo Liberation Army. Demaci himself was imprisoned in
1964 along with many of his followers. Yugoslavia underwent a period of economic and
political crisis in 1969, as a massive government program of economic reform widened
the gap between the rich north and poor south of the country.
Student demonstrations and riots in Belgrade in June 1968 spread to Kosovo in

November the same year, but were quelled by the Yugoslav security forces. However,
some of the students' demands—in particular, representative powers for Albanians in
both the Serbian and Yugoslav state bodies, and better recognition of the Albanian
language—were conceded by Tito. The University of Priština was established as an
independent institution in 1970, ending a long period when the institution had been run as
an outpost of Belgrade University. The Albanianisation of education in Kosovo was
hampered by the lack of Albanian-language educational materials in Yugoslavia, so an
agreement was struck with Albania itself to supply textbooks. In 1974, Kosovo's political
status was improved further when a new Yugoslav constitution granted an expanded set
of political rights. Along with Vojvodina, Kosovo was declared a province and gained
many of the powers of a fully-fledged republic: a seat on the federal presidency and its
own assembly, police force, and national bank.
Power was still exercised by the Communist Party, but it was now devolved mainly to
ethnic Albanian communists. Tito's death on May 4, 1980 ushered in a long period of
political instability, worsened by growing economic crisis and nationalist unrest. The first
major outbreak occurred in Kosovo's main city, Pristina, in March 1981, when Albanian
students rioted over long queues in their university canteen. This seemingly trivial
dispute rapidly spread throughout Kosovo and took on the character of a national revolt,
with massive popular demonstrations in many Kosovo towns.[citation needed] The protesters
demanded that Kosovo should become the seventh republic of Yugoslavia.
However, this was politically unacceptable to Serbia and the Socialist Republic of
Macedonia. Some Serbs (and possibly some Albanian nationalists as well) saw the
demands as being a prelude to a "Greater Albania" which could encompass parts of
Montenegro, the Republic of Macedonia and Kosovo itself. The Communist Yugoslav
presidency quelled the disturbances by sending in riot police and the army, and
proclaiming a state of emergency, although it did not repeal the province's autonomy as
some Serbian Communists demanded. The Yugoslav press reported that about 11 people
had been killed (although others claimed a death toll as high as 1,000) and another 4,200
were imprisoned. Kosovo's Communist Party also suffered purges, with several key
figures (including its president) expelled.
Hardliners instituted a fierce crackdown on nationalism of all kinds, Albanian and

Serbian alike. Kosovo endured a heavy secret police presence throughout most of the
1980s that ruthlessly suppressed any unauthorized nationalist manifestations, both
Albanian and Serbian. According to a report quoted by Mark Thompson, as many as
580,000 inhabitants of Kosovo were arrested, interrogated, interned, or reprimanded.
Thousands of these lost their jobs or were expelled from their educational establishments.
During this time, tension between the Albanian and Serbian communities continued to
escalate.
In 1969, the Serbian Orthodox Church had ordered its clergy to compile data on the
ongoing problems of Serbs in Kosovo, seeking to pressure the government in Belgrade to
do more to protect the Serbian faithful. In February 1982, a group of priests from Serbia
proper petitioned their bishops to ask "why the Serbian Church is silent" and why it did
not campaign against "the destruction, arson and sacrilege of the holy shrines of
Kosovo". Such concerns did attract interest in Belgrade. Stories appeared from time to
time in the Belgrade media claiming that Serbs and Montenegrins were being persecuted.
There was a perception among Serbian nationalists that Serbs were being driven out of
Kosovo. A significant fact contributing to fear and instability was large-scale drug
trafficking by mafias of Kosovo Albanians.
In addition to all this, the worsening state of Kosovo's economy made the province a poor
choice for Serbs seeking work. Albanians, as well as Serbs, tended to favor their
compatriots when employing new recruits, but the number of jobs was too few for the
population. To that end, it is believed that a large number of those declaring Albanian
ethnicity are in fact from the Roma community who happen to be of Islamic faith.
Kosovo was the poorest part of Yugoslavia: the average per capita income was $795,
compared with the national average of $2,635 (and $5,315 in Slovenia).
Riots
In 1981 it was reported that some 4,000 Serbs moved from Kosovo to Central Serbia after
the Kosovo Albanian riots in March that resulted in several deaths of Serbs and
desecration of Serbian Orthodox architecture and graveyards.[24] In 1982 It was concluded
that the Serbs were victims of major prejudice and harassment, several murders had been
committed by ethnic Albanians, and forming of serious nationalist groups was reality. 33
nationalist formations were dismantled by the Yugoslav Police who sentenced some 280
people (800 fined, 100 under investigation) and seized arms caches and propaganda
material.[25] An estimated 20,000+ Serbs had moved from Kosovo since the riots until the
end of 1982.[citation needed] In the summer of 1986, 40 attacks on Serbs in only 2 months were
documented.[citation needed]
In 1987 David Binder wrote a report on The New York Times about rising nationalism
among Albanians in Kosovo. In his report he tells about Paracin massacre, where an
Albanian soldier killed 4 soldiers and wounded 5 in a JNA barracks.[26]
The report quoting Federal Secretary for National Defense, Fleet Adm. Branko Mamula,
shows that from 1981–1987, 216 illegal Albanian organizations with 1,435 members
were discovered in the JNA. They had prepared the mass killings of officers and soldiers,
poisoning food and water, sabotage, breaking in and stealing weapons and ammunition.
[26]
Kosovo and the rise of Slobodan Milošević (1986–1990)
In Kosovo, growing Albanian nationalism and separatism led to tensions between Serbs
and Albanians. An increasingly poisonous atmosphere led to wild rumors being spread
around and otherwise trivial incidents being blown out of proportion.
It was against this tense background that the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts
(SANU, from its Serbian initials, САНУ) conducted a survey of Serbs who had left
Kosovo in 1985 and 1986.[27] The report concluded that a considerable part of those who
had left had been under pressure by Albanians to do so.
Sixteen prominent members of the SANU began work in June 1985 on a draft document
that was leaked to the public in September 1986. The SANU Memorandum, as it has
become known, was hugely controversial. It focused on the political difficulties facing
Serbs in Yugoslavia, pointing to Tito's deliberate hobbling of Serbia's power and the
difficulties faced by Serbs outside Serbia proper.
The Memorandum paid special attention to Kosovo, arguing that the province's Serbs
were being subjected to "physical, political, legal and cultural genocide" in an "open and
total war" that had been ongoing since the spring of 1981. It claimed that Kosovo's status
in 1986 was a worse historical defeat for the Serbs than any event since liberation from
the Ottomans in 1804, thus ranking it above such catastrophes as the Nazi occupation or
the First World War occupation of Serbia by the Austro-Hungarians. The Memorandum's
authors claimed that 200,000 Serbs had moved out of the province over the previous
twenty years and warned that there would soon be none left "unless things change
radically." The remedy, according to the Memorandum, was for "genuine security and
unambiguous equality for all peoples living in Kosovo and Metohija [to be] established"
and "objective and permanent conditions for the return of the expelled [Serbian] nation
[to be] created." It concluded that "Serbia must not be passive and wait and see what the
others will say, as it has done so often in the past."
The SANU Memorandum met with many different reactions. The Albanians saw it as a
call for Serbian supremacy at a local level. They claimed that all Serb emigrants had left
Kosovo for economic reasons. Other Yugoslav nationalities, notably the Slovenes and
Croats, saw a threat in the call for a more assertive Serbia. Serbs themselves were
divided: many welcomed it, while the Communist old guard strongly attacked its
message. One of those who denounced it was Serbian Communist Party official Slobodan
Milošević.
In November 1988, Kosovo's head of the provincial committee was arrested. In March
1989, Milošević announced an "anti-bureaucratic revolution" in Kosovo and Vojvodina,
curtailing their autonomy as well as imposing a curfew and a state of emergency in
Kosovo due to violent demonstrations, resulting in 24 deaths (including two policemen).
Milošević and his government claimed that the constitutional changes were necessary to
protect Kosovo's remaining Serbs against harassment from the Albanian majority.
Abolition of autonomy (1990–1996)
It has been suggested that this article or section be merged with
Ibrahim_Rugova#Political career. (Discuss)
Further information: Ibrahim_Rugova#Political career
Wesley Clark served as the Supreme Allied Commander Europe.
Slobodan Milošević took the process of retrenchment a stage further in 1990 when he
revoked the autonomy of Kosovo and Vojvodina and replaced locally chosen leaders with
his sympathizers. Crucially, as both provinces had a vote in the eight member Yugoslav
Presidency, this gave Milosevic an automatic four votes when combined with Serbia and
Montenegro (which was closely allied to Serbia). Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia and
Macedonia thus had to maintain an uneasy alliance to prevent Milošević from driving
through constitutional changes. Serbia's political changes were ratified in a July 5, 1990
referendum across the entire republic of Serbia, including Kosovo. As a result of these
measures more than 80,000 Kosovo Albanians were expelled from their state jobs in
Kosovo. A new Serb curriculum was imposed in all higher education in Kosovo, a move
which was rejected by Albanians who responded by creating their parallel education
system.
The impact on Kosovo was drastic. The reduction of its autonomy was accompanied by
the abolition of its political institutions (including the League of Communists of Kosovo);
its assembly and government were formally disbanded. As most of Kosovo's industry was
state-owned, the changes brought a wholesale change of corporate cadres. Technically,
few were sacked outright: their companies required them to sign loyalty pledges, which
most Albanians would not sign, although a few did and remained employed in Serbian
state companies right up to 1999.
Albanian cultural autonomy was also drastically reduced. The only Albanian-language
newspaper, Rilindja, was banned, and TV and radio broadcasts in Albanian ceased.
Albanian was no longer an official language of the province. The University of Pristina,
seen as a hotbed of Albanian nationalism, was purged: 800 lecturers at Pristina University
were sacked and 22,500 of the 23,000 students expelled. Some 40,000 Yugoslav troops
and police replaced the original Albanian-run security forces. A punitive regime was
imposed that was harshly condemned as a "police state". Poverty and unemployment
reached catastrophic levels, with about 80% of Kosovo's population becoming
unemployed. As many as a third of adult male Albanians chose to go abroad (particularly
to Germany and Switzerland) to find work.[citation needed]
With Kosovo's Communist Party effectively broken up by Milošević's crackdown, the

dominant Albanian political party position passed to the Democratic League of Kosovo,
led by the writer Ibrahim Rugova. It responded to the abolition of Kosovo's autonomy by
pursuing a policy of peaceful resistance. Rugova took the very practical line that armed
resistance would be futile given Serbia's military strength and would lead only to a
bloodbath in the province. He called on the Albanian populace to boycott the Yugoslav
and Serbian states by not participating in any elections, by ignoring the military draft
(compulsory in Yugoslavia), and most important, by not paying any taxes or duties to the
State. He also called for the creation of parallel Albanian schools, clinics, and hospitals.
In September 1991, the shadow Kosovo Assembly organized a referendum on
independence for Kosovo. Despite widespread harassment and violence by Serbian
security forces, the referendum achieved a reported 90% turnout among the province's
Albanians, and a 98% vote—nearly a million votes in all—which approved the creation
of an independent "Republic of Kosovo". In May 1992, a second referendum elected
Rugova as President of Kosovo. The Serbian government declared that both referendums
were illegal, and their results null and void.
The slide to war (1996–1998)
The Kosovo War
Before March 1999
Kosovo Liberation Army

Battle of Belacevac Mine
Battle of Lodja
Battle of Glodjane
Battle of Junik
Attack on Prekaz
Llapushnik prison camp
Gornje Obrinje massacre
Massacre at Velika Kruša
Račak incident
NATO intervention
Civilian casualties
Izbica massacre
Podujevo massacre
Suva Reka massacre
Cuska massacre
Battle of Košare
Other articles
Legitimacy
Humanitarian bombing
War crimes in the Kosovo War
Images on Commons
This box: view · talk · edit

Rugova's policy of passive resistance succeeded in keeping Kosovo quiet during the war
with Slovenia, and the wars in Croatia and Bosnia during the early 1990s. However, as
evidenced by the emergence of the KLA, this came at the cost of increasing frustration
among Kosovo's Albanian population. In the mid-1990s, Rugova pleaded for a United
Nations peacekeeping force for Kosovo. In 1997, Milošević was promoted to the
presidency of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (comprising Serbia and Montenegro
since its inception in April 1992).
Continuing Serbian repression had radicalized many Albanians, some of whom decided
that only armed resistance would change the situation. On April 22, 1996, four attacks on
Serbian security personnel were carried out almost simultaneously in several parts of
Kosovo. A hitherto-unknown organization calling itself the "Kosovo Liberation Army"
(KLA) subsequently claimed responsibility. The nature of the KLA was at first highly
mysterious.
It is widely believed that the KLA received financial and material support from the
Kosovo Albanian diaspora.[28][29] In early 1997, Albania collapsed into chaos following
the fall of President Sali Berisha. Military stockpiles were looted with impunity by
criminal gangs, with much of the hardware ending up in western Kosovo and boosting
the growing KLA arsenal. Bujar Bukoshi, shadow Prime Minister in exile (in Zürich,
Switzerland), created a group called FARK (Armed Forces of the Republic of Kosova)
which was reported to have been disbanded and absorbed by the KLA in 1998.[citation needed]
The Yugoslav government considered the KLA "terrorists" and "insurgents", attacking
police and civilians, while most Albanians saw the KLA as "freedom fighters".
In 1998, the U.S. State Department listed the KLA as a terrorist organization,[29] and in
1999 the Republican Policy Committee of the U.S. Senate expressed its troubles with the
"effective alliance" of the Clinton administration with the KLA due to "numerous reports
from reputable unofficial sources ".[30]
In 2000, a BBC article stated that Nato at War shows how the United States, which had
described the KLA as "terrorist", now sought to form a relationship with it.[31]
U.S. envoy Robert Gelbard referred to the KLA as terrorists.[32] Responding to criticism,
he later clarified to the House Committee on International Relations that "while it has
committed 'terrorist acts,' it has 'not been classified legally by the U.S. Government as a
terrorist organization.'" [30] On June 1998, he held talks with two men who claimed they
were political leaders.[32]
Meanwhile, the U.S. held an "outer wall of sanctions" on Yugoslavia which had been tied
to a series of issues, Kosovo being one of them. These were maintained despite the
agreement at Dayton to end all sanctions. The Clinton administration claimed that Dayton
bound Yugoslavia to hold discussions with Rugova over Kosovo.
The crisis escalated in December 1997 at the Peace Implementation Council meeting in
Bonn, where the International Community (as defined in the Dayton Agreement) agreed
to give the High Representative in Bosnia sweeping powers, including the right to
dismiss elected leaders. At the same time, Western diplomats insisted that Kosovo be
discussed, and that Serbia and Yugoslavia be responsive to Albanian demands there. The
delegation from Serbia stormed out of the meetings in protest.[citation needed]
This was followed by the return of the Contact Group that oversaw the last phases of the
Bosnian conflict and declarations from European powers demanding that Serbia solve the
problem in Kosovo.
KLA attacks suddenly intensified, centered on the Drenica valley area, with the
compound of one Adem Jashari being a particular focal point. Days after Robert Gelbard
described the KLA as a terrorist group, Serbian police responded to the KLA attacks in
the Likosane area, and pursued some of the KLA to Cirez, resulting in the deaths of 30
Albanian civilians and four Serbian policemen.[33] The first serious action of the war had
begun.
Despite some accusations of summary executions and killings of civilians,

condemnations from Western capitals were not as voluble as they would become later.
Serb police began to pursue Jashari and his followers in the village of Donje Prekaz. A
massive firefight at the Jashari compound led to the massacre of 60 Albanians, of which
eighteen were women and ten were under the age of sixteen.[34] This March 5 event
provoked massive condemnation from the western capitals. Madeleine Albright stated
that "this crisis is not an internal affair of the FRY".
On March 24, Serbian forces surrounded the village of Glodjane, in the Dukagjin
operational zone, and attacked a rebel compound there.[35] Despite their superior
firepower, the Serbian forces failed to destroy the KLA unit which had been their
objective. Although there were deaths and severe injuries on the Albanian side, the
insurgency in Glodjane was far from stamped out. It was in fact to become one of the
strongest centers of resistance in the upcoming war.
Northern Albania served as another center of KLA activity, centered in the town of
Tropojë. Following the 1997 Albanian civil conflict, parts of Albania ended up beyond
the reach of national authorities. Moreover, the Albanian army's armories were looted.
Many of these looted weapons ended up in the hands of the KLA whilst the KLA took
over the border area. This was a staging ground for attacks and for shipping weapons to
the Drenica stronghold. The path between these areas crossed Đakovica, the plains of
Metohija, and to the Klina opstina, and were those areas hardest hit by KLA activity in
the beginning.[citation needed]
The KLA's first goal was thus to merge its Drenica stronghold with their stronghold in
Albania proper, and this would shape the first few months of the fighting.
The Serbs also continued their efforts at diplomacy, attempting to arrange talks with
Ibrahim Rugova's staff (talks which Rugova and his staff refused to attend). After several
failed meetings, Ratko Marković, chairman of the Serbian delegation to the meetings,
invited representatives of Kosovo minority groups to attend while maintaining his
invitation to the Albanians. Serbian President Milan Milutinović attended one of the
meetings, though Rugova did not. He and his staff insisted on talking to Yugoslav
officials, not Serbian ones, and only to discuss the modalities of Kosovo independence.
[citation needed]
A new Serbian government was also formed at this time, led by the Socialist Party of
Serbia and the Serbian Radical Party. Ultra-nationalist Radical Party chairman Vojislav
Šešelj became a deputy prime minister. This increased the dissatisfaction with Serbia's
position among Western diplomats and spokespersons.
In early April, Serbia arranged for a referendum on the issue of foreign interference in
Kosovo. Serbian voters decisively rejected foreign interference in this crisis. Meanwhile,
the KLA claimed much of the area in and around Dečani and ran a territory based in the
village of Glođane, encompassing its surroundings. So, on May 31, 1998, the Yugoslav
army and the Serb Ministry of the Interior police began an operation to clear the border of
the KLA. NATO's response to this offensive was mid-June's Operation Determined
Falcon, an air show over the Yugoslav borders.[36]
During this time, the Yugoslav President Milošević reached an arrangement with Boris
Yeltsin of Russia to stop offensive operations and prepare for talks with the Albanians,
who, through this whole crisis, refused to talk to the Serbian side, but not the Yugoslav.
In fact, the only meeting between Milošević and Ibrahim Rugova took place on May 15
in Belgrade, two days after Richard Holbrooke announced that it would take place. One
month later, Holbrooke, after a trip to Belgrade where he threatened Milošević that if he
did not obey, "what's left of your country will implode", he visited the border areas
affected by the fighting in early June; there he was famously photographed with the
KLA. The publication of these images sent a signal to the KLA, its supporters and
sympathizers, and to observers in general, that the U.S. was decisively backing the KLA
and the Albanian population in Kosovo.
The Yeltsin agreement included Milošević's allowing international representatives to set

up a mission in Kosovo-Metohija to monitor the situation there. This was the Kosovo
Diplomatic Observer Mission (KDOM) that began operations in early July. The
American government welcomed this part of the agreement, but denounced the initiative's
call for a mutual cease fire. Rather, the Americans demanded that the Serbian-
Yugoslavian side should cease fire "without linkage...to a cessation in terrorist activities".
All through June and into mid-July, the KLA maintained its advance. KLA surrounded
Peć, Đakovica, and had set up an interim capital in the town of Mališevo (north of
Orahovac). The KLA troops infiltrated Suva Reka, and the northwest of Priština. They
moved on to the Belacevec coal pits and captured them in late June, threatening energy
supplies in the region. Their tactics as usual focused mainly on guerrilla and mountain
warfare, and harassing and ambushing Serb forces and police patrols.
The tide turned in mid-July when the KLA captured Orahovac. On July 17, 1998, two
close-by villages to Orahovac, Retimlije and Opteruša, were also captured. Similar, even
if less systematic events took place in the town of Orahovac and the larger Serb village of
Velika hoċa. The Orthodox monastery of Zociste 3 miles (5 km) from Orehovac—
famous for the relics of the Saints Kosmas and Damianos and revered also by local
Albanians—was robbed, its monks deported to a KLA prison camp, and, while empty,
the monastery church and all its buildings were leveled to the ground by mining. This led
to a series of Serb and Yugoslav offensives which would continue into the beginning of
August.
A new set of KLA attacks in mid-August triggered Yugoslavian operations in south-

central Kosovo south of the Priština-Peć road. This wound down with the capture of
Klecka on August 23 and the discovery of a KLA-run crematorium in which some of
their victims were found. The KLA began an offensive on September 1 around Prizren,
causing Yugoslavian military activity there. In Metohija, around Peć, another offensive
caused condemnation as international officials expressed fear that a large column of
displaced people would be attacked.
In early mid-September, for the first time, some KLA activity was reported in northern
Kosovo around Podujevo. Finally, in late September, a determined effort was made to
clear the KLA out of the northern and central parts of Kosovo and out of the Drenica
valley itself. During this time many threats were made from Western capitals but these
were tempered somewhat by the elections in Bosnia, as they did not want Serbian
Democrats and Radicals to win. Following the elections, however, the threats intensified
once again but a galvanizing event was needed. They got it on September 28, when the
mutilated corpses of a family were discovered by KDOM outside the village of Gornje
Obrinje; the bloody doll from there became the rallying image for the ensuing war.
The other major issue for those who saw no option but to resort to the use of force was
the estimated 250,000 displaced Albanians, 30,000 of whom were out in the woods,
without warm clothing or shelter, with winter fast approaching.
Meanwhile, the U.S. Ambassador to the Republic of Macedonia, Christopher Hill, was
leading shuttle diplomacy between an Albanian delegation, led by Rugova, and the
Yugoslav and Serbian authorities. It was these meetings which were shaping what was to
be the peace plan to be discussed during a period of planned NATO occupation of
Kosovo.
During a period of two weeks, threats intensified, culminating in NATO's Activation

Order being given. All was ready for the bombs to fly; Richard Holbrooke went to
Belgrade in the hope of reaching an agreement with Milošević with regards to deploying
a NATO presence in Kosovo. He was accompanied by General Michael Short, who
threatened to destroy Belgrade. Long and painful discussions led to the Kosovo
Verification Agreement on October 12, 1998.
Yugoslav T-55A tank next to an OSCE vehicle
Officially, the international community demanded an end to fighting. It specifically

demanded that the Serbs end its offensives against the KLA whilst attempting to
convince the KLA to drop its bid for independence. Moreover, attempts were made to
persuade Milošević to permit NATO peacekeeping troops to enter Kosovo. This, they
argued, would allow for the Christopher Hill peace process to proceed and yield a peace
agreement. A ceasefire was brokered, commencing on October 25, 1998. It featured the
Kosovo Verification Mission (KVM), which was a large contingent of unarmed OSCE
peace monitors (officially known as verifiers) that moved into Kosovo. Their inadequacy
was evident from the start. They were nicknamed the "clockwork oranges" in reference to
their brightly coloured vehicles (in English, a "clockwork orange" signifies a useless
object.[citation needed]) The ceasefire broke down within a matter of weeks and fighting
resumed in December 1998 after the KLA occupied bunkers overlooking the strategic
Priština-Podujevo highway, not long after the Panda Bar Massacre, when the KLA shot
up a cafe in Peć. The KLA also allegedly assassinated the mayor of Kosovo Polje.
The January to March 1999 phase of the war brought increasing insecurity in urban areas,
including bombings and murders. Such attacks took place during the Rambouillet talks in
February and as the Kosovo Verification Agreement unraveled in March. Killings on the
roads continued and increased. There were military confrontations in, among other
places, the Vučitrn area in February and the heretofore unaffected Kačanik area in early
March.
British defense secretary George Robertson during parliamentary testimony: "Up until
(January 1999) the KLA were responsible for more deaths in Kosovo than the Yugoslav
authorities had been"[37]
Račak Massacre
Main article: Račak Massacre

The Račak incident, which involved the killing of 45 Albanians by Serbian troops on
January 15, 1999, was the culmination of the KLA attacks and Serbian reprisals that had
continued throughout the winter of 1998–1999. The incident was immediately (before the
investigation) condemned as a massacre by the Western countries and the United Nations
Security Council, and later became the basis of one of the charges of war crimes leveled
against Milošević and his top officials. The details of what happened at Račak were
revealed shortly after Serb paramilitaries left the scene of the massacre. Rolling TV
cameras featured United States Ambassador William Walker walking through mutilated
bodies of Albanians. Shortly after that he held a press conference where he stated that he
had just witnessed Serbian crimes against civilians.[38] The massacre was the turning point
of the war. NATO decided that the conflict could only be settled by introducing a military
peacekeeping force under the auspices of NATO, to forcibly restrain the two sides. A
carefully coordinated set of diplomatic initiatives was announced simultaneously on
January 30, 1999:
• NATO issued a statement announcing that it was prepared to launch air strikes
against Yugoslav targets "to compel compliance with the demands of the
international community and [to achieve] a political settlement". While this was
most obviously a threat to the Milošević government, it also included a coded
threat to the Albanians: any decision would depend on the "position and actions of
the Kosovo Albanian leadership and all Kosovo Albanian armed elements in and
around Kosovo."
• The Contact Group issued a set of "non-negotiable principles" which made up a
package known as "Status Quo Plus"—effectively the restoration of Kosovo's pre-
1990 autonomy within Serbia, plus the introduction of democracy and supervision
by international organizations. It also called for a peace conference to be held in
February 1999 at the Château de Rambouillet, outside Paris.
The Rambouillet Conference (January–March 1999)
The Rambouillet talks began on February 6, 1999, with NATO Secretary General Javier
Solana negotiating with both sides. They were intended to conclude by February 19. The
Serbian delegation was led by then president of Serbia Milan Milutinović, while
Milošević himself remained in Belgrade. This was in contrast to the 1995 Dayton
conference that ended war in Bosnia, where Milošević negotiated in person. The absence
of Milošević was interpreted as a sign that the real decisions were being made back in
Belgrade, a move that aroused criticism in Serbia as well as abroad; Kosovo's Serbian
Orthodox bishop Artemije traveled all the way to Rambouillet to protest that the
delegation was wholly unrepresentative. At this time speculation about an indictment for
Milošević for war crimes was rife, so his absence may have been motivated by fear for
arrest.
Equipment of 72nd Special Brigade Yugoslav Army in Kosovo War 1999 year.
The first phase of negotiations was successful. In particular, a statement was issued by
the Contact Group co-chairmen on February 23, 1999 that the negotiations "have led to a
consensus on substantial autonomy for Kosovo, including on mechanisms for free and
fair elections to democratic institutions, for the governance of Kosovo, for the protection
of human rights and the rights of members of national communities; and for the
establishment of a fair judicial system". They went on to say that "a political framework
is now in place", leaving the further work of finalizing "the implementation Chapters of
the Agreement, including the modalities of the invited international civilian and military
presence in Kosovo". During the next month, however, NATO, under the influence of US
diplomats Rubin and Albright, sought to impose a forced, as opposed to invited, military
presence. The tilting of NATO towards the KLA organization is chronicled in the BBC
Television "Moral Combat: NATO at War" program.[39] This happened despite the fact,
quoting General Klaus Naumann (Chairman of NATO Military Committee), that
"Ambassador Walker stated in the NAC (North Atlantic Council) that the majority of
[ceasefire] violations was caused by the KLA".
In the end, on March 18, 1999, the Albanian, American, and British delegations signed
what became known as the Rambouillet Accords while the Serbian and Russian
delegations refused. The accords called for NATO administration of Kosovo as an
autonomous province within Yugoslavia, a force of 30,000 NATO troops to maintain
order in Kosovo, an unhindered right of passage for NATO troops on Yugoslav territory,
including Kosovo, and immunity for NATO and its agents to Yugoslav law. These latter
provisions were much the same as had been applied to Bosnia for the SFOR
(Stabilization Force) mission there.
While the accords did not fully satisfy the Albanians, they were much too radical for the
Serbs, who responded by substituting a drastically revised text that even the Russians
(traditional allies of the Serbs) found unacceptable. It sought to reopen the painstakingly
negotiated political status of Kosovo and deleted all of the proposed implementation
measures. Among many other changes in the proposed new version, it eliminated the
entire chapter on humanitarian assistance and reconstruction, removed virtually all
international oversight and dropped any mention of invoking "the will of the people [of
Kosovo]" in determining the final status of the province.
This article needs additional citations for verification.

Please help improve this article by adding reliable references. Unsourced material may be
challenged and removed. (September 2009)
Events proceeded rapidly after the failure at Rambouillet.
In the week before the start of NATO bombing, Arkan appeared at the Hyatt hotel in
Belgrade where most of Western journalists were staying and ordered all of them to leave
Serbia.[40]
The international monitors from the OSCE withdrew on March 22, for fear of the
monitors' safety ahead of the anticipated NATO bombing campaign. On March 23, the
Serbian assembly accepted the principle of autonomy for Kosovo[41] and non-military part
of the agreement. But the Serbian side had objections to the military part of the
Rambouillet agreement, particularly appendix B that foresees free access to all of Serbia
for NATO troops,[42] which it characterized as "NATO occupation". The full document
was described as "fraudulent" because the military part of the agreement was offered only
at the very end of the talks without much possibility for negotiation, and because the
other side, condemned in harshest terms as a "separatist–terrorist delegation", completely
refused to meet delegation of FRY and negotiate directly during the Rambouillet talks at
all. The following day, March 24, NATO bombing began.
The NATO bombing campaign

[show]v · d · e
1999 NATO bombing
of Yugoslavia
Main article: 1999 NATO bombing of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia

A Tomahawk cruise missile launches from the aft missile deck of the USS Gonzalez on
March 31, 1999
A U.S. F-117 Nighthawk taxis to the runway before taking off from Aviano Air Base,
Italy, on March 24, 1999
CK building in the moments after bombing.

Post-strike bomb damage assessment photograph of the Sremska Mitrovica Ordnance
Storage Depot, Serbia
NATO's bombing campaign lasted from March 22 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. All of the NATO members were involved to some degree—with the
exception of Greece. 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.
The proclaimed goal of the NATO operation was summed up by its spokesman as "Serbs
out, peacekeepers in, refugees back". That is, Yugoslav troops would have to leave
Kosovo and be replaced by international peacekeepers to ensure that the Albanian
refugees could return to their homes. The campaign was initially designed to destroy
Yugoslav air defenses 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. 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 the
Republic of Macedonia, with many thousands more displaced within Kosovo. By April,
the United Nations was reporting that 850,000 people, mostly Albanians, had fled their
homes.
NATO military operations switched increasingly to attacking Yugoslav 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 member
states. Montenegro was bombed on several occasions but NATO eventually desisted 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, including bridges
across the Danube, factories, power stations, schools, houses, nurseries, hospitals,
telecommunications facilities and ,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 Yugoslav military and that their bombing was therefore justified.
At the start of May, a NATO aircraft attacked an Albanian refugee convoy, believing it
was a Yugoslav military convoy, killing around fifty people. NATO admitted its mistake
five 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[43] 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.
In another major incident at the Dubrava prison in Kosovo, the Yugoslav government
attributed 85 civilian deaths to NATO bombing. Human Rights Watch research in
Kosovo determined that an estimated eighteen prisoners were killed by NATO bombs on
May 21 (three prisoners and a guard were killed in an earlier attack on May 19).
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 organized very quickly, as there was little time before winter would 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 northeastern Albania. U.S.
President Bill Clinton was, however, extremely reluctant to commit American forces for
a ground offensive. Instead, Clinton authorized a CIA operation to look into methods to
destabilize the Serbian government without training KLA troops.[44] 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.
The Norwegian special forces Hærens Jegerkommando and Forsvarets Spesialkommando

cooperated with the KLA in gathering intelligence information. Preparing for the
invasion on June 12, the Norwegian special forces sat together with the KLA on the
Ramno mountain on the border between Macedonia and Kosovo and had an excellent
scouting point for what was happening inside Kosovo. Together with British special
forces, Norwegian special forces were the first to cross over the border into Kosovo.
According to Keith Graves with the television network Sky News, the Norwegians were
already inside Kosovo two days prior to the marching in of other forces and were among
the first to enter into Pristina.[45] The Hærens Jegerkommando's and Forsvarets
Spesialkommando's job was to clean the way between the striding parties and to make
local deals to implement the peace deal between the Serbians and the Kosovo Albanians.
[46][47]
Yugoslav withdrawal and entry of KFOR
Yugoslav army withdrawing from Kosovo, handing the total control of the province to
the Kosovo Force. Pictured, US Army M1 Abrams.
On June 3, 1999 Milošević capitulated and accepted peace conditions.[48][49]
On June 12, after Milošević accepted the conditions, KFOR began entering Kosovo.
KFOR, a NATO force, had been preparing to conduct combat operations, but in the end,
its mission was only peacekeeping. 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 Armored 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 U.S. contribution, known as the Initial Entry Force, was led by the
1st Armored Division which was spearheaded by a platoon from the 2nd Battalion, 505th
Parachute Infantry Regiment attached to the British Forces. Subordinate units included
TF 1-35 Armor from Baumholder, Germany, the 2nd Battalion, 505th Parachute Infantry
Regiment from Fort Bragg, North Carolina, 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 U.S. 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
southeast sector of Kosovo.
During the initial incursion, the U.S. soldiers were greeted by Albanians cheering and
throwing flowers as U.S. soldiers and KFOR rolled through their villages. Although no
resistance was met, three U.S. soldiers from the Initial Entry Force lost their lives in
accidents.[50]
Following the military campaign, the involvement of Russian peacekeepers proved to be
tense and challenging to the NATO Kosovo force. The Russians expected to have an
independent sector of Kosovo, only to be unhappily surprised with the prospect of
operating under NATO command. Without prior communication or coordination with
NATO, Russian peacekeeping forces entered Kosovo from Bosnia and seized the Pristina
International Airport.
In 2010 James Blunt in an interview described how his unit was given the assignment of
securing the Pristina in advance of the 30,000-strong peacekeeping force and the Russian
army had moved in and taken control of the airport before his unit's arrival. As the first
officer on the scene, Blunt shared a part in the difficult task of addressing the potentially
violent international incident. According to Blunt's account, verified by General Sir Mike
Jackson, there was a stand-off with the Russians, and the NATO Supreme Commander,
US General Wesley Clark, gave orders to over-power them. Whilst these were questioned
by Blunt, they were rejected by General Sir Mike Jackson with the now famous line, "I'm
not having my soldiers responsible for starting World War III".[51]
Furthermore, in June 2000, arms trading relations between Russia and Serbia were
exposed which lead to the retaliation and bombings of Russian Checkpoints and area
Police Stations. Outpost Gunner was established on a high point in the Preševo Valley by
Echo Battery 1/161 Field Artillery in an attempt to monitor and assist with peacekeeping
efforts in the Russian Sector. Operating under the support of 2/3 Field Artillery, 1st
Armored Division, the Battery was able to successfully deploy and continuously operate
a Firefinder Radar which allowed the NATO forces to keep a closer watch on activities in
the Sector and the Preševo Valley. Eventually a deal was struck whereby Russian forces
operated as a unit of KFOR but not under the NATO command structure.[52]
Reaction to the war

The legitimacy of NATO's bombing campaign in Kosovo has been the subject of much
debate. One immediate cause of this criticism was the timing of the NATO intervention,
coming as it did on the heels of the Monica Lewinski scandal which led many critics to
suspect that the intervention was an opportunistic attempt to distract the American public
from the same (references to the film Wag the Dog were a polite way to refer to this
suspicion). Some support for this hypothesis may be found in the fact that coverage of the
bombing directly replaced coverage of the Monica Lewinsky scandal in American news
cycles.[53] Still others point out that before the bombing, rather than being an unusually
bloody conflict, the war between the KLA and the Yugoslav security forces had in fact
been one of the cleanest civil wars in modern history whereas the humanitarian toll
skyrocketed among all concerned (including ethnic Albanians) after the NATO
intervention.[53] Perhaps more importantly NATO did not have the backing of the United
Nations Security Council. NATO argued that their defiance of the Security Council was
justified based on the claims of an "international humanitarian emergency". Criticism was
also drawn by the fact that the NATO charter specifies that NATO is an organization
created for defense of its members, but in this case it was used to attack a non-NATO
country which was not directly threatening any NATO member. NATO claimed that
instability in the Balkans was a direct threat to the security interests of NATO members,
and military action was therefore justified by the NATO charter; however, the only
NATO member country to which the instability was a direct threat was Greece, which
opposed the bombing.
Many on the left of Western politics saw the NATO campaign as U.S. aggression and
imperialism, while critics on the right considered it irrelevant to their countries' national
security interests. Noam Chomsky,[54] Edward Said, Justin Raimondo, and Tariq Ali were
prominent in opposing the campaign. However, in comparison with the anti-war protests
against the 2003 invasion of Iraq, the campaign against the war in Kosovo aroused much
less public support.
The personalities were also very different—the NATO nations were mostly led by centre-
left and moderately liberal leaders, most prominently U.S. President Bill Clinton, British
Prime Minister Tony Blair, Canadian Prime Minister Jean Chrétien, German Chancellor
Gerhard Schröder and the Italian Prime Minister Massimo D'Alema. Anti-war protests
were generally from the libertarian right, the left, far-left and Serbian émigrés, with many
other left-wingers supporting the campaign on humanitarian grounds. The German
participation in the operation was one of the reasons for Oskar Lafontaine's resignation
from the post of Federal Minister of Finance and the chairman of the SPD.
There was, however, criticism from all parts of the political spectrum for the way that
NATO conducted the campaign. NATO officials sought to portray it as a "clean war"
using precision weapons. The U.S. Department of Defense claimed that, up to June 2,
99.6% of the 20,000 bombs and missiles used had hit their targets. However, the use of
technologies such as depleted uranium ammunition and cluster bombs was highly
controversial, as was the bombing of oil refineries and chemical plants, which led to
accusations of "environmental warfare". The slow pace of progress during the war was
also heavily criticised. Many believed that NATO should have mounted an all-out
campaign from the start, rather than starting with a relatively small number of strikes and
combat aircraft.
Targets of the NATO bombing campaign

Post-strike bomb damage assessment photograph of the Kragujevac Armor and Motor
Vehicle Plant Crvena Zastava, Serbia
The choice of targets was highly controversial. The destruction of bridges over the
Danube greatly disrupted shipping on the river for months afterwards, causing serious
economic damage to countries along the length of the river. Industrial facilities were also
attacked, damaging the economies of many towns. In fact, as the Serbian opposition later
complained, the Yugoslav military was using civilian factories as weapons plants: the
Sloboda vacuum cleaner factory in the town of Čačak also housed a tank repair facility,
while the Zastava car plant was wrongly bombed, because the weapons factory of the
same name exists in the same city, but in a completely different location. There were
more similar mistakes that showed a lack of intelligence services.
Only state-owned factories were targeted, leading critics to suspect that the bombing
campaign was partly designed to prepare the way for a free market-based reconstruction
by wealthy foreign powers.[55] No private or foreign-owned industrial sites were bombed.
Perhaps the most controversial deliberate attack of the war was that made against the
headquarters of Serbian television on April 23, which killed at least fourteen people.
NATO justified the attack on the grounds that the Serbian television headquarters was
part of the Milošević regime's "propaganda machine". Opponents of Milošević inside
Serbia charged that the managers of the state TV station had been forewarned of the
attack but ordered staff to remain inside the building despite an air raid alert.
Within Yugoslavia, opinion on the war was (unsurprisingly) split between highly critical
among Serbs and highly supportive among Albanians, although not all Albanians felt that
way; some appear to have blamed NATO for not acting quickly enough. Although
Milošević was increasingly unpopular, the NATO campaign created a mood of national
unity. Milošević did not leave matters entirely to chance, however. Many opposition
supporters feared for their lives, particularly after the murder of the dissident journalist
Slavko Curuvija on April 11, an act widely blamed on Milošević's secret police. In
Montenegro, President Milo Đukanović, who opposed both the NATO bombardment and
Serbian actions in Kosovo, publicly expressed fear of a "creeping coup" by Milošević
supporters.
Opinion in Yugoslavia's neighbours was much more mixed. Macedonia was the only
Yugoslav republic apart from Montenegro not to have fought a war with Serbia and had
tense relations between the Macedonian majority and a large Albanian minority. Its
government did not approve of Milošević's actions, but it was also not very sympathetic
towards the Albanian refugees. Albania was wholly supportive of NATO's actions, as
might be expected given the ethnic ties between Albanians on both sides of the border.
Croatia, Romania, and Bulgaria granted fly-over rights to NATO aircraft. Hungary was a
new member of NATO and supported the campaign. Across the Adriatic, Italian public
and political opinion was against the war, but the Italian government nonetheless allowed
NATO full use of Italian air bases. In Greece, popular opposition to the NATO bombing
reached 96%.[56]
Criticism of the case for war
History of Kosovo
This article is part of a series

Early History
Prehistoric Balkans
Roman Empire
Byzantine Empire
Middle Ages
Bulgarian Empire
Medieval Serbia
Battle of Kosovo
Ottoman Kosovo
Eyalet of Rumelia
Vilayet of Kosovo
Albanian nationalism
20th century
First Balkan War
Kingdom of Serbia
Kingdom of Yugoslavia
Albanian Kingdom
AP Kosovo and Metohija
SAP Kosovo
AP Kosovo and Metohija
Recent history
Kosovo War
UN administration
2008 Kosovo declaration of
independence
Contemporary Kosovo
See also Timeline of Kosovo history
Kosovo Portal
v·d·e
A number of critics have emerged since the end of the war. They have accused the
coalition of leading a war in Kosovo under the false pretense of genocide.[57] U.S.
President Clinton and his administration were accused of inflating the number of Kosovo
Albanians killed by Serbians.[58] 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."[59] On CBS' Face the Nation Cohen claimed, "We've now seen about
100,000 military-aged men missing... they may have been murdered."[60] Clinton, citing
the same figure, spoke of "at least 100,000 (Kosovo Albanians) missing".[61] Later, talking
about Yugoslav 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...". Clinton also claimed, in the same press conference, that "NATO stopped
deliberate, systematic efforts at ethnic cleansing and genocide."[62] 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...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."[63] Clinton's State Department also claimed Yugoslav troops had
committed genocide. The New York Times reported, "the Administration said evidence of
'genocide' by Yugoslav 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."[64] 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 Kosovo Albanians were missing and feared dead."[65]
After the bombing of the Chinese embassy in Belgrade, Chinese Premier Jiang Zemin
said that the US was using its economic and military superiority to aggressively expand
its influence and interfere in the internal affairs of other countries. Chinese leaders called
the NATO campaign a dangerous precedent of naked aggression, a new form of
colonialism, and an aggressive war groundless in morality or law. It was seen as part of a
plot by the US to destroy Yugoslavia, expand eastward and control all of Europe.[66]
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.[67]
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 Yugoslavia was not a member of the UN during the
war.
In Western European countries, opposition to NATO's intervention was mainly from the
libertarian right, and from 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. In the U.S.
criticism was largely limited to the conservative Republican Party, many of whom voted
to approve congressional funding for the war under the premise of "supporting the troops,
not the policy" of Democratic President Bill Clinton. The war was opposed primarily by
prominent conservative figures in the U.S., including (then Texas Governor) George W.
Bush, House Majority Leader Dick Armey, House Majority Whip Tom Delay and Senate
Majority Leader Trent Lott. The more liberal Democratic Party largely supported the
policy of the Democratic president, with the exception of some elements of the far-left,
led by liberal activists, like Ralph Nader.
The war inflicted many casualties. Already by March 1999, the combination of fighting
and the targeting of civilians had left an estimated 1,500-2,000 civilians and combatants
dead.[68] Final estimates of the casualties are still unavailable for either side.
Casualties
Civilian losses
In June 2000, the Red Cross reported that 3,368 civilians (2,500 Albanians, 400 Serbs,
and 100 Roma) were still missing, nearly one year after the conflict.[69][clarification needed]
A study by researchers from the Center for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta,
Georgia published in 2000 in medical journal the Lancet estimated that "12,000 deaths in
the total population" could be attributed to war.[70] This number was achieved by
surveying 1,197 households from February 1998 through June 1999. 67 out of the 105
deaths reported in the sample population were attributed to war-related trauma, which
extrapolates to be 12,000 deaths if the same war-related mortality rate is applied to
Kosovo's total population. The highest mortality rates were in men between 15 and 49
(5,421 victims of war) as well as for men over 50 (5,176 victims). For persons younger
than 15, the estimates were 160 victims for males and 200 for females.[citation needed] For
women between 15-49 the estimate is that there were 510 victims; older than 50 years the
estimate is 541 victims. The authors stated that it is not "possible to differentiate
completely between civilian and military casualties".
In the 2008 joint study by the Humanitarian Law Center (an NGO from Serbia and
Kosovo), The International Commission on Missing Person, and the Missing Person
Commission of Serbia made a name-by-name list of 13,472 war and post-war victims in
Kosovo killed in the period from January 1998 to December 2000.[71][72][73] The list
contained the name, date of birth, military or civilian status of victim, type of
injury/missing, time and place of death. There are 9,260 Albanians and 2,488 Serbs, as
well as 1,254 victims that can not be identified by ethnic origin[74]
Civilians killed by NATO airstrikes
Main article: Targeting of civilian areas during Operation Allied Force

Yugoslavia claimed that NATO attacks caused between 1,200 and 5,700 civilian
casualties. NATO acknowledged killing at most 1,500 civilians. Human Rights Watch
counted a minimum of 488 civilian deaths (90 to 150 of them killed from cluster bomb
use) in 90 separate incidents. Attacks in Kosovo overall were more deadly—a third of the
incidents account for more than half of the deaths.[75]
Civilians killed by Yugoslav ground forces
Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) officers investigate an alleged mass grave,
alongside US Marines
Various estimates of the number of killings attributed to Yugoslav ground forces have
been announced through the years.
The estimate of 10,000 deaths is used by the U.S. State Department, which cited human
rights abuses as its main justification for attacking Yugoslavia.[76]
Statistical experts working on behalf of the ICTY prosecution estimate that the total
number of dead is about 10,000.[77]
In August 2000, the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY)
announced that it had exhumed 2,788 bodies in Kosovo, but declined to say how many
were thought to be victims of war crimes.[78] Earlier however, KFOR sources told Agence
France Presse that of the 2,150 bodies that had been discovered up until July 1999, about
850 were thought to be victims of war crimes.[79][page needed][dead link]
Known mass graves:[80]
• In 2001, the bodies of more than 800 Kosovo Albanians were found in pits on a
police training ground as outside Belgrade and in eastern Serbia.
• 700 bodies were uncovered in a mass grave located in the Belgrade suburb of
Batajnica.
• 77 bodies were found in the eastern Serbian town of Petrovo Selo.
• 50 bodies were uncovered nearby the western Serbian town of Peručac.
• In 2010, 250 bodies in a pond at a quarry in the country's southwestern region of
Raška.
NATO losses
A downed F-16 pilot's flight equipment and part of the F-117 shot down over Serbia in
1999 on show at a Belgrade museum.
Military casualties on the NATO side were light. According to official reports, the
alliance suffered no fatalities as a result of combat operations. However, in the early
hours of May 5, an American military AH-64 Apache helicopter crashed not far from the
border between Serbia and Albania.[81]
An American AH-64 helicopter crashed about 40 miles (64 km) northeast of Tirana,
Albania's capital, very close to the Albanian/Kosovo border.[82] According to CNN, the
crash happened 45 miles (72 km) northeast of Tirana.[83] The two American pilots of the
helicopter, Army Chief Warrant Officers David Gibbs and Kevin L. Reichert, died in that
crash. They were the only NATO casualties during the war, according to NATO official
statements.
There were other casualties after the war, mostly due to land mines. After the war, the
alliance reported the loss of the first U.S. stealth plane (a F-117 stealth fighter) ever shot
down by enemy fire.[84] Furthermore an F-16 fighter was lost near Šabac and whose
remains are on display in Museum of Aviation in Belgrade, 32 unmanned aerial vehicles
(UAVs) from different nations were lost.[85] The wreckages of downed UAVs were shown
on Serbian television during the war. Some claim a second F-117A was also heavily
damaged, and although it made it back to its base, it never flew again.[86]
Yugoslav military losses

Wreckage of the Yugoslav MiG-29 jet fighter shot down on March 27, 1999, outside the
town of Ugljevik, Bosnia and Herzegovina
Abandoned Tank near Prizren
NATO did not release any official casualty estimates. The Yugoslav authorities claimed
462 soldiers were killed and 299 wounded by NATO airstrikes.[12] The names of
Yugoslav casualties were recorded in a "book of remembrance".
Of military equipment, NATO destroyed around 50 Yugoslav aircraft, of which many

were old and unflyable, and were intentionally placed as decoys[87] to draw attention away
from valuable targets. Two notable exceptions were the 11 destroyed MiG-29s, and 6 G-4
Super Galebs which were destroyed right in their hardened aircraft shelter when someone
forgot to close the shelter doors. At the end of war, NATO officially claimed they
destroyed 93 Yugoslav tanks. Yugoslavia admitted a total of 13 destroyed tanks. The
latter figure was verified by European inspectors when Yugoslavia rejoined the Dayton
accords, by noting the difference between the number of tanks then and at the last
inspection in 1995. The NATO officers claimed that Yugoslav army lost 94 tanks (M-
84's and T-55's), 132 APCs, and 52 artillery pieces.[88] Yugoslav officers claimed the real
numbers were "14 tanks, not 120; 18 armored personnel carriers, not 220; 20 artillery
pieces, not 450".[88][89] Most of the targets hit in Kosovo were decoys, such as tanks made
out of plastic sheets with telegraph poles for gun barrels, or old World War II–era tanks
which were not functional. Anti-aircraft defences were preserved by the simple expedient
of not turning them on, preventing NATO aircraft from detecting them, but forcing them
to keep above a ceiling of 15,000 feet (5,000 m), making accurate bombing much more
difficult. Civilian microwave ovens were used as E-band radar decoys against NATO
loiter munitions, which were also unable to detect obsolete soviet UHF radar stations in
use by Yugoslav forces. Towards the end of the war, it was claimed that carpet bombing
by B-52 aircraft had caused huge casualties among Yugoslav troops stationed along the
Kosovo–Albania border. Careful searching by NATO investigators found no evidence of
any such large-scale casualties.
However, the most significant loss for the Yugoslav Army was the damaged and
destroyed infrastructure. Almost all military air bases and airfields (Batajnica, Lađevci,
Slatina, Golubovci, Kovin, and Đakovica) and other military buildings and facilities were
badly damaged or destroyed. Unlike the units and their equipment, military buildings
couldn't be camouflaged. thus, defence industry and military technical overhaul facilities
were also seriously damaged (Utva, Zastava Arms factory, Moma Stanojlović air force
overhaul center, technical overhaul centers in Čačak and Kragujevac). Moreover, in an
effort to weaken the Yugoslav Army, NATO targeted several important civilian facilities
(Pančevo oil refinery,[90] bridges, TV antennas, railroads, etc.).
KLA losses
Kosovo Liberation Army losses are difficult to analyze. According to some reports there
were around 1,000[91] casualties on KLA side. Difficulties arise in calculating an accurate
figure. Things are complicated by the difficulty of determining who was a KLA member.
For example, the Yugoslavs considered any armed Albanian to be a member of the KLA,
regardless of whether he was officially a card-carrying member, so someone who is
counted as a civilian by the Albanian side might be counted as a KLA combatant by the
Serbs. Also, many members of the KLA were not wearing uniforms.[citation needed]
Aftermath
Within three weeks, over 500,000 Albanian refugees had returned home. By November
1999, according to the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, 848,100 out of 1,108,913
had returned.
During the war, 90,000 Serbs fled from Kosovo.[92] The Yugoslav Red Cross had also
registered 247,391 mostly Serbian refugees by November. The persistent anti-Serb
attacks and riots, including against other non-Albanians, had remained in the anarchic
stage until some form of order was established in 2001. This order disintegrated during
the 2004 progrom against non Albanians.
War crimes
Main article: War crimes in Kosovo
Serbian war crimes
Main article: Serbian war crimes in the Yugoslav Wars

The International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia charged Milošević with
crimes against humanity, violating the laws or customs of war, grave breaches of the
Geneva Conventions and genocide for his role during the wars in Croatia, Bosnia, and
Kosovo.
Before the end of the bombing, Yugoslav President Slobodan Milošević, along with
Milan Milutinović, Nikola Šainović, Dragoljub Ojdanić and Vlajko Stojiljković were
charged by the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) with
crimes against humanity including murder, forcible transfer, deportation, and
"persecution on political, racial or religious grounds".
Further indictments were leveled in October 2003 against former armed forces chief of
staff Nebojša Pavković, former army corps commander Vladimir Lazarević, former
police official Vlastimir Đorđević, and the current head of Serbia's public security, Sreten
Lukić. All were indicted for crimes against humanity and violations of the laws or
customs of war.
War crimes prosecutions have also been carried out in Yugoslavia. Yugoslav soldier Ivan
Nikolić was found guilty in 2002 of war crimes in the deaths of two civilians in Kosovo.
A significant number of Yugoslav soldiers were tried by Yugoslav military tribunals
during the war.
KLA war crimes
The ICTY also leveled indictments against KLA members Fatmir Limaj, Haradin Bala,
Isak Musliu, and Agim Murtezi for crimes against humanity. They were arrested on
February 17 and 18, 2003. Charges were soon dropped against Agim Murtezi as a case of
mistaken identity, whereas Fatmir Limaj was acquitted of all charges on November 30,
2005 and released. The charges were in relation to the prison camp run by the defendants
at Lapusnik between May and July 1998.
In 2008, Carla Del Ponte published a book in which she alleged that, after the end of the
war in 1999, Kosovo Albanians were smuggling organs of between 100 and 300 Serbs
and other minorities from the province to Albania.[93] The ICTY and the Serbian War
Crimes Tribunal are currently investigating these allegations, as numerous witnesses and
new materials have recently emerged.[94]
On March 2005, a U.N. tribunal indicted Kosovo Prime Minister Ramush Haradinaj for
war crimes against the Serbs. On March 8, he tendered his resignation. Haradinaj, an
ethnic Albanian, was a former commander who led units of the Kosovo Liberation Army
and was appointed Prime Minister after winning an election of 72 votes to three in the
Kosovo's Parliament in December 2004. Haradinaj was acquitted on all counts. The
Office of the Prosecutor has appealed his acquittal, and as of July 2008, the matter
remains unresolved.
NATO war crimes

Sites in Kosovo and southern Central Serbia where NATO aviation used munitions with
depleted uranium during 1999 bombing.
The Serbian government and a number of international pressure groups (e.g. Amnesty
International) claimed that NATO had carried out war crimes during the conflict, notably
the bombing of the Serbian TV headquarters in Belgrade on April 23, 1999, where 16
people were killed and 16 more were injured. Sian Jones of Amnesty stated, "The
bombing of the headquarters of Serbian state radio and television was a deliberate attack
on a civilian object and as such constitutes a war crime".[95] The ICTY conducted an
inquiry into these charges,[96] but did not press charges, citing a lack of mandate.
Military and political consequences
Yugoslav Army M-84 tanks withdrawing from Kosovo

Members of the Kosovo Liberation Army turn over their weapons to U.S. Marines
Main articles: Kosovo status process and Constitutional status of Kosovo
The Kosovo war had a number of important consequences in terms of the military and
political outcome. The status of Kosovo remains unresolved; international negotiations
began in 2006 to determine the level of autonomy Kosovo would have, as envisaged
under UN Security Council Resolution 1244, but failed. The province is administered by
the United Nations despite its unilateral declaration of independence on February 17,
2008.
Seized uniform and equipment of U.S. soldiers 1999 in Kosovo War
The UN-backed talks, led by UN Special Envoy Martti Ahtisaari, had begun in February
2006. Whilst progress was made on technical matters, both parties remained
diametrically opposed on the question of status itself.[97] In February 2007, Ahtisaari
delivered a draft status settlement proposal to leaders in Belgrade and Pristina, the basis
for a draft UN Security Council Resolution which proposes "supervised independence"
for the province, which is in contrary to UN Security Council Resolution 1244. By July
2007, the draft resolution, which was backed by the United States, United Kingdom, and
other European members of the Security Council, had been rewritten four times to try to
accommodate Russian concerns that such a resolution would undermine the principle of
state sovereignty.[98] Russia, which holds a veto in the Security Council as one of five
permanent members, stated that it would not support any resolution which is not
acceptable to both Belgrade and Priština.[99]
The campaign exposed significant weaknesses in the U.S. arsenal, which were later
addressed for the Afghanistan and Iraq campaigns. Apache attack helicopters and AC-
130 Spectre gunships were brought up to the front lines but were never actually used after
two Apaches crashed during training in the Albanian mountains. Stocks of many
precision missiles were run down to critically low levels; had the campaign lasted much
longer, NATO would have had to revert back to using "dumb" bombs for lack of
anything better. The situation was not any better with the combat aircraft; continuous
operations meant skipped maintenance schedules and many aircraft were withdrawn from
service awaiting spare parts and service.[100] Also, many of the precision-guided weapons
proved unable to cope with Balkan weather, as the clouds blocked the laser guidance
beams. This was resolved by retrofitting bombs with Global Positioning System satellite
guidance devices that are immune to bad weather. Also, although pilotless surveillance
aircraft were extensively used, it often proved the case that attack aircraft could not be
brought to the scene quickly enough to hit targets of opportunity. This led to the fitting of
missiles to Predator drones in Afghanistan, reducing the "sensor to shooter" time to
virtually nothing.
Kosovo also demonstrated that even a high-tech force such as NATO could be thwarted
by simple tactics, according to Wesley Clark and other NATO generals who analyzed
these tactics a few years after the conflict.[101] The Yugoslav army had long expected to
need to resist a much stronger enemy, either Soviet or NATO, during the Cold War and
had developed effective tactics of deception and concealment in response. These would
have been unlikely to have resisted a full-scale invasion for long, but were probably
effective in misleading overflying aircraft and satellites. Among the tactics used were:
• U.S. stealth aircraft were tracked with radars operating on long wavelengths. If
stealth jets got wet or opened their bomb bay doors they would become visible on
the radar screens. An F-117 Nighthawk was spotted in this way and downed with
a missile.[citation needed]
• Precision-guided missiles were often confused and unable to pinpoint radars,
because radar beams were reflected off heavy farm machinery like old tractors
and plows.[citation needed]
• Many low-tech approaches were used to confuse heat-seeking missiles and
infrared sensors. Decoys such as small gas furnaces were used to simulate
nonexistent positions on mountainsides.
• Dummy targets were used very extensively. Fake bridges, airfields and decoy
planes and tanks were used. Tanks were made using old tires, plastic sheeting and
logs, and sand cans and fuel set alight to mimic heat emissions. They fooled
NATO pilots into bombing hundreds of such decoys, though General Clark's
survey found that in Operation: Allied Force, NATO airmen hit just 25 decoys—
an insignificant percentage of the 974 validated hits.[102] However, NATO sources
claim that this was due to operating procedures, which oblige troops, in this case
aircraft, to engage any and all targets, however unlikely they may be. The targets
needed only to look real to be shot at, if detected, of course. NATO claimed that
Yugoslav air force had been decimated. "Official data show that the Yugoslav
army in Kosovo lost 26 percent of its tanks, 34 percent of its APCs, and 47
percent of the artillery to the air campaign."[102]
• Old electronic jammers were used to block U.S. bombs equipped with satellite
guidance.
• Hispano-Suiza anti-aircraft cannon from the World War II era was used once
effectively against slow-flying drone aircraft.
Military decorations
As a result of the Kosovo War, the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation created a second
NATO medal, the NATO Medal for Kosovo Service, an international military decoration.
Shortly thereafter, NATO created the Non-Article 5 Medal for Balkans service to
combine both Yugoslavian and Kosovo operations into one service medal.
Due to the involvement of the United States armed forces, a separate U.S. military
decoration, known as the Kosovo Campaign Medal, was established by President Bill
Clinton in 2000.

Kosovo War: NATO Bombing of Yugoslavia

Uploaded by

Document Information

Original Description:

Original Title

Copyright

Available Formats

Share this document

Share or Embed Document

Sharing Options

Did you find this document useful?

Is this content inappropriate?

Copyright:

Available Formats

Kosovo War: NATO Bombing of Yugoslavia

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

The term Kosovo War or Kosovo Conflict is used to describe two sequential, and at

Student demonstrations and riots in Belgrade in June 1968 spread to Kosovo in

Hardliners instituted a fierce crackdown on nationalism of all kinds, Albanian and

Kosovo and the rise of Slobodan Milošević (1986–1990)

Abolition of autonomy (1990–1996)

With Kosovo's Communist Party effectively broken up by Milošević's crackdown, the

The slide to war (1996–1998)

The Kosovo War

Before March 1999

Kosovo Liberation Army

This box: view · talk · edit

Despite some accusations of summary executions and killings of civilians,

The Yeltsin agreement included Milošević's allowing international representatives to set

A new set of KLA attacks in mid-August triggered Yugoslavian operations in south-

During a period of two weeks, threats intensified, culminating in NATO's Activation

Yugoslav T-55A tank next to an OSCE vehicle

Officially, the international community demanded an end to fighting. It specifically

Main article: Račak Massacre

The Rambouillet Conference (January–March 1999)

This article needs additional citations for verification.

Events proceeded rapidly after the failure at Rambouillet.

The NATO bombing campaign

Main article: 1999 NATO bombing of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia

CK building in the moments after bombing.

NATO military operations switched increasingly to attacking Yugoslav units on the

The Norwegian special forces Hærens Jegerkommando and Forsvarets Spesialkommando

Yugoslav withdrawal and entry of KFOR

On June 3, 1999 Milošević capitulated and accepted peace conditions.[48][49]

Reaction to the war

Targets of the NATO bombing campaign

This article is part of a series

Civilians killed by NATO airstrikes

Main article: Targeting of civilian areas during Operation Allied Force

Civilians killed by Yugoslav ground forces

Known mass graves:[80]

Yugoslav military losses

Abandoned Tank near Prizren

Of military equipment, NATO destroyed around 50 Yugoslav aircraft, of which many

Serbian war crimes

Main article: Serbian war crimes in the Yugoslav Wars

KLA war crimes

NATO war crimes

Military and political consequences

Yugoslav Army M-84 tanks withdrawing from Kosovo

Seized uniform and equipment of U.S. soldiers 1999 in Kosovo War

You might also like