when people think of the Balkans stability and harmonious ethnic relations aren't the first things that come to mind a typical example of this was the conflict between the serbs of Yugoslavia and the ethnically Albanian population of Kosovo which ignited into war in the late 1990s this war would be different though when NATO forces stepped in to wield its aerial superiority against the accused war crimes of Slobodan mosovich Yugoslav regime today on a day in history we're going to look at the NATO bombings in Yugoslavia how those bombs ended up falling on trains apartments and embassies
and the questions it raised about the moral position of NATO in a post cold war world but before we do that be sure to leave a like if you enjoy and subscribe to our channel for more videos like this [Music] one you Yugoslavia was a postor War II communist state in the Balkans its original Incarnation broke up in 1992 leaving Serbia Kosovo Montenegro and V Vina to form the new Federal Republic of Yugoslavia this new nation was dominated by Serbia and led by a Serbian communist Slobodan mosovich this being the Balkans ethnic tensions were high
the previous century and a half half had been filled with reciprocal violence in massacres between serbs and albanians that made victims and perpetrators out of both sides serbs considered Kosovo to be an ancestral piece of their Homeland while the kovar albanians favored Independence mosovich is government enacted discriminatory and repressive policies against albanians in Kosovo hoping to undermine any independence movement and drive them out of the region in response a kovar separatist militia called the Kosovo Liberation Army emerged in the mid90s and by 1998 was an open conflict with Yugoslav government forces this fighting escalated to
include massacres mass deportations and burning of entire Villages by the Yugoslav government the rest of the world watched on in horror especially NATO who were seeing an ethnic cleansing unfolding before their eyes on the very doorstep of some of its member states political and popular pressure for them to intervene was mounting NATO spearheaded talks in late 1998 and early 1999 to try to get mosovich to P back but mosovich merely used the talks as a delaying tactic as his forces continued their brutal campaign by late March though it was obvious that diplomacy had failed on
March 23rd NATO forces in Europe were given the go-ahead to begin military operations to stop mosovich attacks and halt the ethnic cleansing of Kosovo operation Allied force was launched on March 24th using NATO forces based mostly out of Italy a wave of cruise missiles opened the attack targeting major airfields and knocking out the power grid for kosovo's capital of Ina planes began their attacks the following day hitting a number of specific military targets across Serbia and Kosovo Serbian defenses struggled to eliminate any NATO attackers while NATO aircraft successfully shot down several Serbian fighters who attempted
to engage them NATO was confident in its own technological superiority the Serbian Air Force and surface to air defenses were decades out of date and badly outnumbered an estimated 238 Serbian combat aircraft were up against over 1,000 NATO aircraft involved over the operation which included the formidable f117 Nighthawk stealth bombers and the new B2 Spirit bombers which would see their first combat use in the Skies over Serbia initially The Rules of Engagement were strict NATO was adamant that it was fighting a moral war with minimal to no collateral damage targets were carefully reviewed and NATO
forces were instructed to use less powerful bombs to minimize collateral damage Pilots were ordered to positively identify targets Beyond a reasonable doubt before striking or returning to base as a result many missions were called off because Pilots could not properly identify targets poor weather conditions also hampered operations and as a result the number and effectiveness of NATO airri stes in the opening days of the war were limited this was compounded with an early embarrassment for NATO on March 27th when one of their F-117 Nighthawk stealth bombers was taken down by a technologically inferior Serbian surfac
to a missile battery the pilot survived and was rescued but it was a huge propaganda victory for mosovich and a humbling moment for NATO who had thought itself almost Invincible with it technological superiority this initial wave of bombing did little to slow the Yugoslav forces down and if anything hardened their attitudes and urged them to move faster NATO had begun its campaign expecting mosovich to give in quickly but as days passed with no real progress NATO realized it had miscalculated this would be a far longer operation than they'd planned however NATO leaders were reluctant to
be more aggressive and every day they delayed was another where kovo would suffer combat operations and Target selection continued to be hamstrung by poor weather and gridlock among the leaders for example the Dutch blocked plans to bomb mosovich is private Villa because they didn't want to damage a painting by the Dutch artist rron that mosovich had in his collection there some of the caution was warranted it did not take long for NATO's Promises of a completely clean War to be proven Hollow on April 6th a laser guided bomb's targeting system was disrupted by a cloud
sending it right into an apartment building in the town of aluts killing a half dozen civilians and wounding dozens more by mid April NATO expanded its targets to include critical infrastructure such as Bridges to further harm the Serbian war effort but even this was seen as too little by many military experts and analysts NATO's goals had hardened towards a total Destruction of Serbian military capacity hundreds more aircraft were deployed and the carrier USS Enterprise was rerouted to support the efforts this escalation would produce results but not all of those results were positive on April 12th
NATO bombers hit multiple targets across Yugoslavia some were strategic all of yugoslavia's oil refineries were destroyed for example crippling its war effort and economy meanwhile an American f-15e launched two missiles at a bridge running over the jna mava river in the G delita Gorge unbeknownst to the pilot a train carrying Albanian refugees was heading for the bridge at exactly the same time both missiles struck the train killing at least 20 people with Serbian sources maintaining it was as high as 55 investigations into the galita train bombing have proven controversial NATO insisted that it was a
tragic accident and the pilot had no time to respond properly to the train arriving on the bridge critics argued that the pilot was Reckless and should have had time to call off the second attack after spotting the train and that attacking a bridge in the first place was not Justified a un criminal tribunal after the war refused to press charges against anyone involved nor was anyone charged for another Attack 2 days later when us f-16s killed an estimated 70 Albanian civilians in a convoy near jakov vitza in Kosovo Serbian forces were moving through the area
at that time and burning villages to force the civilians out the pilots assumed that the string of vehicles they saw on the road were military targets and launched several strikes over the space of about an hour and a quarter only to discover later that what they' assumed were trucks and armored vehicles were actually tractors and civilian buses by late April it was obvious that NATO needed to increase the pressure if it wanted to break milosevic's will at NATO's 50th anniversary Summit in Washington NATO leaders agreed to intensify the campaign to strike the four pillars of
the Yugoslav regime the political machine the media the security forces and the economy NATO was quick to act on those goals between April 21st and 23rd NATO air strikes hit and destroyed almost all of the media and broadcast infrastructure in Belgrade strikes which killed a number of journalists and other employees they also hit the party headquarters and offices of mosovich and his wife most of Serbia's oil reserves were destroyed and by the end of the month almost every major bridge that mosovich forces might use to support their operations in kovo had been toppled one of
NATO's biggest blunders came on May 7th when an American B2 stealth bomber attacked a military Target in Belgrade except the maps the US were using were several years out of date in the building they thought was a military Target was actually the Chinese Embassy four Chinese Embassy staff were killed and 26 more were injured Beijing understandably was Furious an anti-us demonstration swept China in the following days the us later agreed to compensate the families of the victims and launched an investigation into the bombing some critics argue it was deliberate but there's no real evidence to
sustain that the Intel for the bombing had been provided by the CIA the only such CIA directed bombing of the war and they were blamed for providing bad Intel to the Air Force but again no one was held accountable NATO continued to expand to new Targets in May on May 3rd us bombers equipped with special carbon graphite thread carrying bombs targeted belgrade's power grid these threads would land on the Transformers and shortcircuit them without permanently destroying them it was hoped that the temporary disruption would put pressure on the serbians to surrender and hinder their military
operations temporarily but it had little strategic effect by the end of the month NATO cast aside its reservations and simply destroyed the power grids outright between May 24th and 27th NATO bombers decimated power stations Transformers and other infrastructure and sent 80% of Serbia Into Darkness almost every system in the nation went down banking water infrastructure Medical Systems and of course military ones the entire nation was effectively crippled while civilian casualties were not as high as in many other Wars the non-fatal consequences of NATO's bombing was still destructive yugoslavia's economic output was cut in half and
hundreds of thousands of people lost their jobs as their workplaces were destroyed or couldn't operate with roads Bridges and power taken out luckily there was no severe food crisis but scenes of Serbian standing in the rubble of their bombed out country or of Albanian refugees fleeing the rampaging Serbian forces were things Europe had not seen on such a scale since the end of the second world war NATO faced numerous allegations of illegal conduct for this phase of the war for example NATO's strategy of repeatedly bombing the same place after short breaks meant that rescue workers
attending to the first bombing could easily be caught in the next Serbian sources reported dozens of Public Service workers and police officers who had been killed by repeat attacks when trying to help survivors of earlier attacks [Music] by June NATO's bombing was having a serious effect and mosovich was forced to consider terms rumors of a NATO ground attack were also deeply concerning General Wesley Clark supreme commander of the NATO forces was open to the idea and it was especially popular with British Prime Minister Tony Blair and the RAF who were advocating for it behind closed
doors time was running out to stop things getting much worse on June 2nd Russian and Finnish Representatives visited mosovich with a proposed peace plan that called for Serbian withdrawal from Kosovo the return of refugees self-rule for Kosovo and a NATO security Force to protect it after some deliberation mosovich agreed and NATO paused its attacks as terms were worked out negotiation was tough and NATO resumed air attacks for a time when the Serbian appeared to be playing for time but eventually a un draft resolution on June 8th persuaded both sides to come to terms Serbia began
withdrawing its troops and on June 20th the war was declared over initial estimates for the destruction caused by operation Allied Force were high NATO estimated thousands of dead Serbian Soldiers with hundreds of vehicles and countless targets destroyed while the bombing was devast devastating later assessments were much Tamer investigators could confirm only a few dozen destroyed military vehicles and Yugoslavian authorities put the number of military Kia at 524 still alarm but far less than NATO initially believed as for civilian deaths estimates hover around 500 if NATO had hoped for a war without collateral damage they were
bitterly disappointed it has been said that mosovich lost strategically but won in the media and memory after the war much attention was paid to Collateral Damage by NATO forces at least 30 instances of civilians being killed by NATO bombs prompted numerous investigations but no convictions or punishments for anyone involved for critics it was a sign of NATO's hypocrisy and is still cited as proof of NATO's aggression and irresponsibility the experience of Serbian civilians who found themselves living in a nation besieged and forced to pay the price for the actions of their government were harrowing and
showed the dire consequences of NATO's involvement in some ways NATO's actions have overshadowed the very crimes they were attempting to stop the ethnic cleansing of Kosovo was undeniably brutal and eclipsed the operation Allied force in the amount of Civilian casualties an estimated 10,000 th people were killed as a result with whole Villages destroyed and tens of thousands more wounded raped or forced into Exile but NATO's actions still strained if not violated international law targeting Bridges power plants media stations and other key infrastructure is illegal by almost any International standard but NATO did it with impunity
as critics have noted it was NATO country countries like the USA UK and France who were the driving force behind postor War II International laws on conflict yet it was these same countries who were now violating them in the end mosovich himself was charged with war crimes he was ousted by the Yugoslav people in 2000 before being arrested in 2001 for corruption charges he was then handed over to un custody and put on trial for war crimes but died in 2006 before the trial could wrap up no one on the NATO side was ever charged
that same year the former Federal Republic of Yugoslavia since renamed to Serbia and Montenegro broke up with montenegrin Independence Kosovo declared its own independence in 2008 which has not been recognized by Serbia in relations between the two nations are still difficult NATO's operations in Yugoslavia have prompted to debates about the existence and role of NATO itself for some examples like Yugoslavia show NATO to be hypocrits hiding behind morally Superior rhetoric while unleashing death and destruction with impunity for others the collateral damage was an unfortunate consequence that must be weighed against the higher death tolls of
the ethnic cleansing NATO ultimately stopped but it also forces us to ask questions about the nature of war and modern war in particular how firmly should we draw the line between civilian and Military targets and can such a line even be drawn in the first place how much collateral damage is acceptable for a military goal who should decide those margins and how do we enforce them does the inherently destructive power of aerial bombing automatically undermine its perpetrators moral position can the laws of war ever be trusted when it is the Nations who wrote those rules
who are accused of breaking them those aren't easy questions to answer and you only need to take a look at current conflicts in Ukraine and Palestine to see how much opinion is still split on them meanwhile if you want to learn more about topics such as this consider checking out our other videos and subscribing to our Channel we regularly have videos on conflicts and atrocities that get swept under the rug that you might appreciate if you en enjoyed this video
