General Blagoje Grahovac: Why the causes of the NATO intervention are still being hushed up in Serbia

(Patria) –  A series of commemorative events will mark two decades since the start of the NATO attack on the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, i.e. Serbia, on March 24, 1999. The day of remembrance for those killed in the attacks will be marked in Niš in the presence of Serbian President Aleksandar Vučić and Prime Minister Ana Brnabić, representatives of the military, the church, the diplomatic corps, as well as representatives of the BiH entity of the Republika Srpska.

The reason for the NATO bombing of Serbia were the war crimes committed by the Serbian police and army against Albanians in Kosovo during that period, while the then President of Serbia, Slobodan Milošević, refused to stop the hostilities even after being asked to do so by the international community.

NATO planes began bombing the then Federal Republic of Yugoslavia on March 24, 1999, and the airstrikes lasted for the next 78 days.

The NATO military intervention officially ended on June 11, 1999.

The number of victims in those NATO attacks, which is mentioned in the media today, ranges from several hundred to several thousand. During the bombing, planes targeted military positions, government buildings, and infrastructure.

Retired Air Force General Blagoje Grahovac told the Patria agency that today in Serbia there is often talk about the NATO bombing, but at the same time the causes that led to that military intervention are being hushed up, and the causes of that intervention, Grahovac says, certainly lie in the „schizophrenic policy of Milošević.“

„Had it not been for the NATO intervention, who knows how much longer Milošević would have ruled Serbia, and how many more wars he would have waged,“ said Grahovac, adding that the goal of the NATO intervention was to stop the aggressive policy of Milošević. 

This general and geopolitical analyst warns that the problem with Serbia is that the current policy of that country is also no different from the policy of Milošević, which, he points out, creates a problem not only for the citizens of that country but also for neighboring countries.

The specific reason for the start of the bombing of Serbia in 1999 was the murder of 45 Kosovo Albanians, residents of the village of Račak, on January 15, 1999. NATO began airstrikes on March 24, 1999, at 7:45 p.m. by order of the then NATO Secretary General Javier Solana.

NATO also bombed Serbian positions several years earlier in Bosnia and Herzegovina, under the code name Operation Deliberate Force.  It was an air campaign by the NATO alliance aimed at disabling the military arsenal of the Bosnian Serbs during the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina.

The operation, which lasted from August 30 to September 14, 1995, involved eight allied countries. The causes of the NATO bombing of Serbian positions in BiH were the crimes committed by the Army of Republika Srpska during the war in BiH.

Although planned and officially approved by the NATO Council as early as July 1995, the operation was launched as a direct response to the second massacre at the Sarajevo Markale market in August 1995, when a shell from Serbian positions killed nearly 50 and wounded 90 civilians who had come to the market for food.