FACTBOX - Operation Allied Force: 1999 NATO Airstrikes Against Yugoslavia

MOSCOW (UrduPoint News / Sputnik - 24th March, 2019) Operation Allied Force is the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) air operation, which was conducted in violation of the United Nations Charter from March 24 to June 10, 1999, against the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (FRY).

Noble Anvil was the code name for the US campaign in the operation, while in some sources it goes under the name Merciful Angel.

The Federal Republic of Yugoslavia was created after Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina and Macedonia withdrew from the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (SFRY) in 1991-1992. Serbia and Montenegro maintained federal relations and on April 27, 1992, declared formation of a joint state, the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia.

The SFRY's collapse was accompanied by ethnic conflicts and civil wars. The ongoing armed conflict in Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina complicated the FRY's international position. The conditions in the FRY itself were difficult because of the situation in Kosovo.

In September 1991, amid the SFRY's collapse, the Kosovar Albanians proclaimed an independent Republic of Kosovo and elected Ibrahim Rugova as president of a self-declared republic. The attempts of the Serbian authorities in 1995 to reach a compromise with the Albanians were unsuccessful. The Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) was illegally created there. It unleashed a campaign of terror against the authorities and the local Serbian population.

In the spring of 1998, violence in Kosovo continued to escalate. Serbian security forces launched an offensive against KLA militia bases. The FRY leadership started negotiations with Rugova on the normalization of the situation in the republic. At the same time, Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic repeatedly stressed the willingness to grant Kosovo the status of autonomous region within Serbia and guarantee the equal status of all national communities in the province.

While the situation in the province continued to deteriorate, an unsuccessful attempt to establish negotiations between the FRY delegation and Kosovar Albanian leaders with the participation of international mediators was made at the Castle of Rambouillet near Paris in February 1999. The West blamed Belgrade for the disruption of the negotiations, although it was ready to continue the dialogue.

On March 24, 1999, without the UN Security Council's approval, the NATO alliance launched illegal under the rules of international law military actions on the FRY territory. The decision to start the operation was taken by the then NATO Secretary-General Javier Solana.

The presence of Serbian troops on the territory of Kosovo and Metohija was announced as the official reason for the hostilities. The FRY authorities were also accused of ethnic cleansing: the incident of mass killing of civilians occurred in the village of Racak in January 1999, Albanian separatists accused the Yugoslav military of carrying out massacres of civilians. Belgrade declared that there had been a battle, as a result of which about 40 Albanian militants were killed. The incident was investigated by experts from Belarus, Finland and Serbia in the presence the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) representatives. They confirmed that all those killed were militants.

The NATO operation against the FRY lasted for 78 days and involved 19 NATO member states. The NATO striking forces on the day, when the operation was launched, involved 277 aircraft, including 192 bombers, 63 planes of logistical support, 19 reconnaissance planes and three helicopters.

The military campaign was headed by NATO Supreme Allied Commander in Europe, Gen. Wesley Clark.

The first airstrikes were carried out on March 24, 1999, at about 8 p.m. local time (19:00 GMT) and hit radars of the FRY army, deployed on the shore of the Adriatic Sea. At the same time, the missile attacks targeted a military airfield, located several miles from Belgrade, as well as large industrial facilities in the city of Pancevo, located less than 13 miles from the country's capital. Most cities of the FRY introduced a martial law, for the first time since World War II.

During the first month of the Allied Force operation, the NATO aviation carried out averagely 350 combat missions per day with 130 of them for conducting airstrikes.

On April 23, 1999, NATO held a summit in Washington, with leaders of the alliance's member states having decided to intensify the air operation. During the whole operation, NATO carried out from 37,500 to 38,400 military combat missions, having attacked more than 900 targets in the FRY. More than 21,000 tonnes of explosives were used by NATO during the airstrikes.

During the first stage of the operation (March 24-27), the NATO aviation ensured control over the FRY airspace by destroying the country's means of air defense and fighters. The second stage (March 27 - April 24) envisaged destruction of the Yugoslavian military infrastructure, including personnel, equipment, command posts and defense industry plants. However, the airstrikes also hit civilian facilities, such as airports, bridges, residential houses, schools and preschools.

Russian and Serbian experts are sure that the real goal of the NATO operation was to destroy social and economic potential of Yugoslavia. During the airstrikes, NATO used prohibited types of munitions with radioactive impurities, mainly depleted uranium (U238), as well as cluster bombs and graphite-electromagnetic shells, which were dropped on local heat and power plants, and other energy facilities. The strikes on oil refineries and petrochemical plants caused black acid rain, and oil, oil products and toxic substances poisoned the water system of Yugoslavia and other countries of the Balkan Peninsula.

The NATO military operation triggered the idea in Yugoslavia to join the Union of Russia and Belarus, which emerged in late 1998. During the NATO military operation, the relevant decisions of the FRY parliament, its appeals to the State Duma and then Russian President Boris Yeltsin, as well as positive resolutions of the State Duma of the Russian Federation were made. The FRY parliament's decision to join the Union was also supported by the House of Representatives of the National Assembly of Belarus. However, neither Yeltsin nor Russian senators supported the Yugoslavian, Belarusian, and Russian lawmakers, since such a decision could have created a number of international difficulties.

The bombing stopped on June 9, 1999, after representatives of the FRY army and NATO signed a military technical agreement in the Macedonian city of Kumanovo on the withdrawal of the FRY troops and police from the territory of Kosovo and on the deployment of international forces in the region.

The number of both military and civilian victims of the operation still remains unknown. According to the Serbian authorities, the bombing operation left some 2,500 people killed, including 89 children, and 12,500 more injured.

The Human Rights Watch group, financed by funds linked to the US government, confirmed 90 incidents that resulted in civilian losses during the NATO bombing operation. According to the organization, from 489 to 528 civilians were killed during the Allied Force operation.

More than 60 percent of civilian losses were registered during 12 incidents, including bombing of the Djakovica convoy of Albanian refugees on April 14 (70-75 people killed, over 100 injured), airstrikes on the cities of Surdulica (April 27) and Nis (May 7) that killed 24 people and injured over 160, the airstrike on the Albanian village of Korisa (May 13) that left 48-87 civilians killed.

According to official NATO data, the alliance lost two servicemen, who died as a result of a crash of a McDonnell Douglas AH-64 Apache helicopter during a training flight in Albania. One of the most famous episodes of the operation is crash of a US F-117 Nighthawk stealth attack aircraft, which was downed by a Soviet-made S-125 Neva (NATO reporting name: SA-3 Goa) near the village of Budanovci, some 40 miles from Belgrade, on March 27, 1999. Until this incident such planes were thought to be invulnerable for air defense systems. US pilot Dale Zelko ejected himself and spent over seven hours in a shelter before being evacuated by US special forces.

About 860,000 people became refugees during the NATO campaign. The damage inflicted to FRY industry, transport system and civilian facilities has not been calculated. According to various estimations, it amounted to $30-100 billion.

The airstrikes devastated more than 1,500 settlements, destroyed about 60 bridges, 30 percent of all schools in the country, destroyed, or damaged at least 100 historic and cultural monuments, protected by the state and/or UNESCO. The bombing destroyed 30 percent of the Serbian electrical network, transformer substations and high-voltage power transmission lines. Oil refineries were in fact destroyed, 40 percent of military oil storages and more than 50 percent of dual-use oil storages were destroyed, or seriously damaged.

On April 23, 1999, a Tomahawk missile hit a television center in Belgrade, having killed 16 journalists. On May 7, a missile hit the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade, having killed three people and injured many others. The building was significantly damaged by the incident.

On June 10, 1999, the UN Security Council adopted the Resolution 1244, in which it decided to create international civil and military presence in Kosovo. The document also envisaged withdrawal of military, police and paramilitary FRY forces from the region, free return of refugees and internally displaced persons as well as unhindered access for humanitarian organizations to the conflict zone and expansion of the self-governance system in Kosovo.

On the night of June 11 to June 12, 1999, a battalion of Russian paratroopers, which was a part of the international peacekeeping contingent in Bosnia and Herzegovina, became the first foreign unit that entered Kosovo, and seized the strategically important airfield of Slatina, hours before NATO tank units approached the site. After that, in line with the UN Security Council's resolution 1244, decree of the Russian president and the Russian-US defense ministries' agreement, parties to the conflict decided to send Russian troops to Kosovo.

On June 12, 1999, first units of the NATO-led international forces (Kosovo Force, KFOR) entered Kosovo. Initially, the number of KFOR staff amounted to some 50,000; in early 2002 it was decreased up to 39,000, and by 2004 up to 17,500. Kosovo was divided into five zones of influence: US, UK, Italian, German and French ones. The Russian troops were deployed in all the zones, except the Italian one, while the Russian representatives were also included in the KFOR headquarters.

In summer 2003, the Russian peacekeepers left Kosovo. Currently, the number of KFOR staff amounts to some 4,000.

In 1999, Kosovo was placed under the interim governance of the UN Security Council's special representative and the UN Interim Administration Mission in Kosovo (UNMIK), headed by him. In October 2004, the UNMIK-headed Kosovo held parliamentary election, which was won by the Democratic League of Kosovo. The Serbian population of Kosovo decided to boycott the election.

In 2006, UN Security Council's Special Representative, former Finnish President Martti Ahtisaari held negotiations with parties to the conflict on the future status of Kosovo but the region government, which mostly consisted of ethnic Albanians, and Serbia failed to reach any compromises. The special representative's initiative on providing Kosovo with independence under observation of international organizations was rejected by Serbia and caused serious differences in the UN Security Council.

In August 2007, then UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon welcomed an agreement on creation a group that included the European Union, Russia and the United States in order to hold further talks on the future status of Kosovo but the parties failed to reach any deal.

On February 17, 2008, the Kosovar parliament unilaterally declared its independence. According to the self-proclaimed country's Foreign Ministry, 116 countries have recognized the sovereignty of Kosovo. Serbia, Russia, China, Israel, Iran, Spain, Greece and many other countries refused to recognize Kosovo as an independent state. Moscow's position is based on the UN Security Council's resolution 1244, which supports the territorial integrity of the FRY and, consequently, Serbia as its legal successor.

The Independent International Commission on Kosovo, created on August 6, 1999, at the initiative of former Swedish Prime Minister Hans Goran Persson, concluded that the 1999 NATO military intervention in the FRY was illegal as it was not sanctioned by the UN Security Council. However, the coalition's activities were justified by the fact that all diplomatic means had been allegedly used, with no result having been achieved.

The commission criticized the use of cluster bombs by NATO as well as airstrikes against chemical and oil plants in Yugoslavia, which resulted in significant ecological damages. In March 2002, the United Nations confirmed radioactive contamination in Kosovo as a result of NATO airstrikes.