NATO Kosovo Intervention
NATO bombed Yugoslavia for seventy-eight days from 24 March 1999 without authorisation from the UN Security Council. Kosovo was a province of Serbia with a population around ninety per cent Albanian, whose autonomy Slobodan Milošević had revoked in 1989 — the act on which he built his career. A decade of parallel institutions and passive resistance under Ibrahim Rugova gave way from 1996 to the Kosovo Liberation Army, and to a counter-insurgency of village clearances and massacres. The Rambouillet talks failed in March 1999 over terms including NATO's freedom of movement throughout Yugoslavia, which Belgrade would not accept. The campaign was flown almost entirely above 15,000 feet, which kept alliance casualties at zero — one aircraft was lost and its pilot recovered — and made target discrimination harder. Around 500 civilians were killed, including in strikes on a passenger train, a refugee column and the Chinese embassy in Belgrade. Serbian forces meanwhile accelerated the expulsions: something over 800,000 Albanians were driven out during the bombing, which critics cite as evidence the campaign made things worse and supporters as evidence of what it was answering. Milošević accepted terms in June, and Russian pressure and an indictment from the Hague tribunal both contributed. Some 200,000 Serbs and Roma left the province afterwards. Kosovo was administered by the UN, declared independence in 2008, and is recognised by about half the world's states. The intervention was called illegal but legitimate by an independent commission, and Russia has cited it ever since. Milošević was handed to the tribunal in 2001 and died in custody in 2006 before his trial concluded.
- Year: 1999 CE
- Category: Military
