Kosovo War - NATO Bombing Timeline

NATO Bombing Timeline

On 23 March 1999 at 21:30 UTC Richard Holbrooke returned to Brussels and announced that peace talks had failed and formally handed the matter to NATO for military action. Hours before the announcement, Yugoslavia announced on national television it had declared a state of emergency citing an imminent threat of war and began a huge mobilization of troops and resources.

On 23 March 1999 at 22:17 UTC the Secretary General of NATO, Javier Solana, announced he had directed the Supreme Allied Commander Europe (SACEUR), US Army General Wesley Clark, to "initiate air operations in the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia." On 24 March at 19:00 UTC NATO started its bombing campaign against Yugoslavia.

NATO's bombing campaign lasted from March 24 to June 11, 1999, involving up to 1,000 aircraft operating mainly from bases in Italy and aircraft carriers stationed in the Adriatic. Tomahawk cruise missiles were also extensively used, fired from aircraft, ships, and submarines. All of the NATO members were involved to some degree—with the exception of Greece. Over the ten weeks of the conflict, NATO aircraft flew over 38,000 combat missions. For the German Air Force (Luftwaffe), it was the second time it had participated in a conflict since World War II after the Bosnian War.

The proclaimed goal of the NATO operation was summed up by its spokesman as "Serbs out, peacekeepers in, refugees back". That is, Yugoslav troops would have to leave Kosovo and be replaced by international peacekeepers to ensure that the Albanian refugees could return to their homes. The campaign was initially designed to destroy Yugoslav air defenses and high-value military targets. It did not go very well at first, with bad weather hindering many sorties early on. NATO had seriously underestimated Milošević's will to resist: few in Brussels thought that the campaign would last more than a few days, and although the initial bombardment was more than just a pin-prick, it was nowhere near the concentrated bombardments seen in Baghdad in 1991. On the ground, the ethnic cleansing campaign by the Serbians was stepped up. In actions unparalleled since World War Two, Serbian forces expelled hundreds of thousands of Kosovo Albanians from Kosovo, in miserable conditions. UNHCR representatives reported on 3 April that, "During 2 April, an estimated 45,000 Kosovars arrived at the Macedonian border with Kosovo, of whom around 25,000 in six trains carrying people who report that they were expelled from Pristina. The new arrivals were exhausted and traumatized.". On 6 April, UNHCR representatives were reporting that "at least 25,000 Kosovars arrived at the main Albanian border point at Morini between Monday and Tuesday mornings and a further 15,000 at the mountain frontier of Qafa Prushit, bringing the estimated total to 262,000 ... Virtually every Kosovar arriving at Qafa Prushit came on foot in very, very bad physical condition ... refugees interviewed said men were both being tortured and even executed in front of their families ... Serbian police stationed just opposite the Albanian border post warned journalists they would shoot if the correspondents approached. Aid officials were told to withdraw 500 metres from the crossing.". A report written for the UNHCR after the crisis concluded that 'half a million people arrived in neighbouring areas in the course of about two weeks, and a few weeks later the total was over 850,000'. The Serbian authorities have never acknowledged these UNHCR figures. On 25 March Arkan appeared at the Hyatt hotel in Belgrade where most of Western journalists were staying and warned all of them to leave Serbia.

NATO military operations switched increasingly to attacking Yugoslav units on the ground, hitting targets as small as individual tanks and artillery pieces, as well as continuing with the strategic bombardment. This activity was, however, heavily constrained by politics, as each target needed to be approved by all nineteen member states. Montenegro was bombed on several occasions but NATO eventually desisted to prop up the precarious position of its anti-Milošević leader, Đukanović. So-called "dual-use" targets, of use to both civilians and the military, were attacked, including bridges across the Danube, factories, power stations, schools, houses, nurseries, hospitals, telecommunications facilities and, controversially, the headquarters of Yugoslavian Leftists, a political party led by Milošević's wife, and the Serbian state television broadcasting tower. Some saw these actions as violations of international law and the Geneva Conventions in particular. NATO, however, argued that these facilities were potentially useful to the Yugoslav military and that their bombing was therefore justified.

At the start of May, a NATO aircraft attacked an Albanian refugee convoy, believing it was a Yugoslav military convoy, killing around fifty people. NATO admitted its mistake five days later, but the Serbs accused NATO of deliberately attacking the refugees; however, a later report conducted by the ICTY entitled Final Report to the Prosecutor by the Committee Established to Review the NATO Bombing Campaign Against the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia opined that "civilians were not deliberately attacked in this incident" and that "neither the aircrew nor their commanders displayed the degree of recklessness in failing to take precautionary measures which would sustain criminal charges." On May 7, NATO bombs hit the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade, killing three Chinese journalists and outraging Chinese public opinion. The United States and NATO later apologized for the bombing, saying that it occurred because of an outdated map provided by the CIA although this was challenged by a joint report from The Observer (UK) and Politiken (Denmark) newspapers which claimed that NATO intentionally bombed the embassy because it was being used as a relay station for Yugoslav army radio signals. However the report by the newspaper contradicts findings in the same report by the ICTY which stated that the root of the failures in target location "appears to stem from the land navigation techniques employed by an intelligence officer." In another major incident at the Dubrava prison in Kosovo, the Yugoslav government attributed 85 civilian deaths to NATO bombing of the facility after NATO cited Serbian and Yugoslav military activity in the area although a Human Rights Watch reported only at least nineteen ethnic Albanian prisoners killed.

By the start of April, the conflict seemed little closer to a resolution and NATO countries began to think seriously about a ground operation—an invasion of Kosovo. This would have to be organized very quickly, as there was little time before winter would set in and much work would have to be done to improve the roads from the Greek and Albanian ports to the envisaged invasion routes through Macedonia and northeastern Albania. British Prime Minister Tony Blair was a strong advocate of ground forces, pressing for this from the United States; his strong stance caused some alarm in Washington as American forces would be making the largest contribution to any offensive. U.S. President Bill Clinton was extremely reluctant to commit American forces for a ground offensive. Instead, Clinton authorized a CIA operation to look into methods to destabilize the Serbian government without training KLA troops. At the same time, Finnish and Russian diplomatic negotiators continued to try to persuade Milošević to back down. Tony Blair would order 50,000 British soldiers to be made ready for a ground offensive: most of the available British Army.

Milošević finally recognised that NATO was serious in its resolve to end the conflict one way or another and that Russia would not intervene to defend Serbia despite Moscow's strong anti-NATO rhetoric. Faced with little alternative, Milošević accepted the conditions offered by a Finnish–Russian mediation team and agreed to a military presence within Kosovo headed by the UN, but incorporating NATO troops.

The Norwegian special forces Hærens Jegerkommando and Forsvarets Spesialkommando cooperated with the KLA in gathering intelligence information. Preparing for the invasion on June 12, the Norwegian special forces sat together with the KLA on the Ramno mountain on the border between Macedonia and Kosovo and had an excellent scouting point for what was happening inside Kosovo. Together with British special forces, Norwegian special forces were the first to cross over the border into Kosovo. According to Keith Graves with the television network Sky News, the Norwegians were already inside Kosovo two days prior to the marching in of other forces and were among the first to enter into Pristina. The Hærens Jegerkommando's and Forsvarets Spesialkommando's job was to clear the way between the striding parties and to make local deals to implement the peace deal between the Serbians and the Kosovo Albanians.