NATO Bombing of Yugoslavia Begins (1999)
Wed Mar 24, 1999
Image: A man leads his daughter away from destroyed buildings after NATO air strikes hammered the center of Pristina, the Kosovo capital. Photo credit to Goran Tomasevic/Reuters. [rferl.org]
On this day in 1999, the first NATO airstrikes of Yugoslavia began, initiating a wave of violence that killed 1,500 people, damaging hospitals, schools, cultural monuments, and private businesses alongside military targets. The bombings lasted until June 10th of that year.
The North Atlantic Treaty Organization's (NATO) bombing campaign was its first military action taken without the endorsement of the U.N. Security Council. James Byron Bissett, former Canadian ambassador to Yugoslavia, called the campaign a "war crime", and Noam Chomsky referred to it as an act of "terrorism".
Supporters for the campaign claimed the bombing was necessary to stop a genocide of ethnic Albanians in Kosovo and to remove Slobodan Milošević from power, although claims made by the Clinton administration along these lines were later found to be highly exaggerated.
Approximately 500 of the people killed were civilians, and the bombs damaged many civilian structures alongside legitimate military targets. Chomsky has argued that the main objective of the NATO intervention was to integrate Yugoslavia into the Western neoliberal social and economic system.
In 2000, Michael Parenti authored "To Kill a Nation: The Attack on Yugoslavia", which argues that the bombing was predicated on capitalist rather than humanitarian interests.
- Date: 1999-03-24
- Learn More: en.wikipedia.org, chomsky.info.
- Tags: #Terrorism.
- Source: www.apeoplescalendar.org
You mean when Yugoslavia was committing ethnic cleansing of Kosovar Albanians and nato started bombing them to end the genocide?
If by NATO you mean the anti-communist, criminal, and terrorist organization founded by a coalition of bourgeois democracies and fascist states (Portugal), you can be sure that their intentions were not to end genocide.