What I Learned When NATO Bombed Belgrade (20 years since NATO bombing of Serbia)

[TomSea]

What I Learned When NATO Bombed Belgrade | Balkan Insight
Jasmina Tesanovic

Author Jasmina Tesanovic started the first internet war diary while living in Belgrade when the NATO bombing of the Serbian capital began 20 years ago - a personal document of life-changing moments, extreme emotions, human kindness, survival and death.

Twenty years in peace are like 20 days of war. During the bombings of Serbia and Kosovo, I wrote from the point of view of any anonymous woman living her daily life in Belgrade, with children, friends… fishing for food, water, electricity, cigarettes… Necessity was the mother of invention, so I invented the first internet war diary, before bloggers or blogs existed. My war diary was spread through mailing lists virally, 20 years ago. ‘The Diary of a Political Idiot’ got me many friends and foes, and it changed my life.

The war diary began when the first planes flew over Belgrade, with these words:

“I hope we all survive this war, the bombs: the Serbs, the Albanians, the bad and the good guys, those who took up the arms, those who deserted, refugees going around the Kosovo woods and Belgrade’s refugees going around the streets with their children in arms, looking for nonexisting shelters, when the alarm for bombing sets off.”

Read more at: https://balkaninsight.com/2019/03/23/what-i-learned-when-nato-bombed-belgrade/

A few articles on Kosovo/Serbia this weekend. Apparently it was 20 years ago, we bombed Serbia... I remember, something like 2 months straight, read up for details.

She's a Serb, I dont't think she is there now....

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jasmina_Te%C5%A1anovi%C4%87

https://jasminatesanovic.wordpress.com/

Her blog:

https://jasminatesanovic.wordpress.com/

It does sound like she is an activist and a feminist now.

[TomSea]

In photos: Scars of NATO bombing campaign
by Valerie Plesch23/03/2019

Prishtina Insight’s new photo essay examines the footprints left across Kosovo by NATO’s bombing campaign, two decades after its initiation.

On March 24, 1999, Kosovo’s landscape was altered as the first bombs fell from warplanes overhead, and missiles were launched by warships in the Adriatic Sea. Forty Serbian military targets in the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, FRY, were hit in the first 24 hours, mainly in Serbia and Kosovo.

It was the beginning of NATO’s air campaign known as ‘Operation Allied Force,’ which would last for 78 days. Its aim was to end the escalating conflict and humanitarian crisis that was unfolding in this part of the Balkans by wiping out Slobodan Milosevic’s regime and associated Serbian artillery and mortar positions, convoys, weapons factories, airfields, ammunition depots, bridges, radio towers, petroleum facilities, and other prized military installations.

Read more at: https://prishtinainsight.com/in-photos-scars-of-the-nato-bombing-campaign-20-years-on-mag/

[TomSea]

Operation Allied Force: The NATO Bombing Of Yugoslavia
Text And Present-Day Photos By Amos Chapple

Twenty years on from the launch of NATO air strikes to stop bloodshed between Serbs and ethnic Albanians in Kosovo, then-and-now images trace the physical and political scars.

Kosovo is a Jamaica-sized country in the heart of the Balkans that has long been riven by ethnic, religious, and linguistic rivalries.

By the mid-20th century, Kosovo was an autonomous region of mostly Albanian-speaking Muslims, a minority in the rest of Yugoslavia. But tensions rose between ethnic Albanians calling for more political representation within Yugoslavia and Kosovo's ethnic Serbs, who feared increasing marginalization on what they saw as sacred Serbian land.

Read more at: https://www.rferl.org/a/operation-allied-force-before-after/29831978.html

[TomSea]

I think we will have 3 topics merged here on the same topic. Perhaps other ones too. Fascinating period of time.

[mountaineer]

NATO bombed Christian churches on Easter Sunday. That is reprehensible.

[SZonian]

"Its aim was to end the escalating conflict... support the mudslimes and give them the edge."  Fixed it.

[Fishrrman]

We bombed the wrong side in that struggle.

[dfwgator]

Kosovo is Serbia.

[TomSea]

That first essay is really pretty good, something like one would read out of a book. I read a number of books about over there. She says something like sanctions were even worse than the bombing... something like that. At times, I look at sanctions that way. Sanctions seem to a necessary evil, say in dealing with people like Kim or Saddam Hussein....but at the same time, if one is denying medicines to people... one might want to reflect on it some. One of our Presidents I know did a lot of sanctions and he became very disliked over it. That's all I will say.

[TomSea]

Kosovo Fires Deputy Minister for ‘NATO Genocide’ Comment
Blerta Begisholli   Pristina   BIRN
March 25, 2019
Deputy Justice Minister Vesna Mikic was sacked after describing the 1999 NATO bombing of Yugoslavia, a military intervention to help Kosovo Albanians, as “genocide against a sovereign state”.

Kosovo Prime Minister Ramush Haradinaj fired Deputy Justice Minister Vesna Mikic on Monday for her comment accusing NATO of ‘genocide’ on the 20th anniversary of the start of the military alliance’s bombing campaign against Yugoslavia on March 24.

“The NATO alliance committed a deliberate, planned genocide against a sovereign country that fought Albanian terrorism within its own borders,” Mikic wrote on Facebook on Sunday.

Haradinaj said the statement went against Kosovo’s core values.

Read more at: https://balkaninsight.com/2019/03/25/kosovo-fires-deputy-minister-for-nato-genocide-comment/

Just posting on-topic here. I don't agree with her. I don't know if someone should be fired over this.   And believe me, I can post plenty of opposing opinions and articles.

B92 (whom I was told his funded by Western interests) ran this article today, more I am not familiar with.  I haven't read this, let's see what Trump said back in '99.  Source is Tanjug anyway, so, that's kind of like quoting Pravda I think in this case. But if the interview uses his words, one can not find real fault.

Trump's comments in wake of NATO bombing: Havoc, terror
US President Donald Trump was a guest on Larry King's CNN show in October 1999, and spoke, among other things, about NATO's bombing of Serbia earlier that year.
Source: Tanjug Monday, March 25, 2019 | 15:21

He said at the time that the military operation had brought havoc and terror to Kosovo.

During the interview - during which he also mentioned he was considering running from (for) president, Trump replied, when asked whether he would have done the same in Kosovo as then US President Bill Clinton:

"I would have done it a little bit differently and I know this would sound terrible, but, look at the havoc that they've wreaked in Kosovo. We can say we lost very few people - of course, we had airplanes 75,000 feet (23 kilometers) up in the air dropping bombs. But look at what we've done to that land, to those people, and the deaths that we've caused. Now, they haven't been caused with us and the allies, because we were way up in the air in planes."

Read more at: https://www.b92.net/eng/news/world.php?yyyy=2019&mm=03&dd=25&nav_id=106480

Also, 2 weeks ago, some articles were posted that they are studying "radioactive levels" and cancer rates on where the bombs fell. That should be in the first few pages of the forum for those interested.

In fact, Radio Free Europe just posted an article on these reported health woes, has to be over the same thing.

https://www.rferl.org/a/serbian-accusation-lingers-of-link-between-nato-bombing-health-woes/29841402.html