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The battle for Kosovo

For 78 consecutive days in the spring and early summer of 1999, U.S. and NATO forces bombarded Yugoslavia from the air, seeking to halt the Yugoslav Army's campaign of ethnic cleansing in the Kosovo province.

  On March 24, 1999 the United States and its NATO allies launched an air attack against Yugoslavia in an effort to compel Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic to accept peace terms for the province of Kosovo.
   President Clinton said the air attack -- dubbed Operation Allied Force -- was necessary to deter Milosevic from continuing the repression of ethnic Albanians in Kosovo, and to prevent the conflict from spreading
  During much of the 78-day air campaign NATO seemed unable to hinder the systematic "ethnic cleansing" being conducted by Yugoslav Army and police against the Muslim majority. The repression only intensified in the first weeks of the war as hundreds of thousands of refugees poured into neighboring countries with stories of mass murder, rape and the burning of entire villages.

Ethnic Albanians fleeing western Kosovo March 30. (AP)

The Serb offensive

Those who expected Milosevic to back down easily were soon disillusioned. In the first days of the air campaign the situation in Kosovo only became worse. Hundreds of thousands of Kosovars piled up along the borders with Macedonia and Albania and NATO had to quickly mobilize humanitarian aid. Meanwhile NATO bombs and cruise missiles seemed to have little impact and poor weather hampered allied efforts.

A stealth fighter goes down

March 27: A U.S. F-117A Nighthawk stealth fighter went down in Yugoslavia. The pilot was ejected and was picked up by a special rescue helicopter after he spent several hours hiding in enemy territory.
Losing a stealth fighter was a stunning blow to the west. The aircraft, virtually invisible to radar, had never been shot down before.

Refugees bring stories of atrocities

March 30: Ethnic Albanians reaching Macedonia and Albania brought tales of a "scortched earth" campaign by Yugoslav forces. Refugees said young men disappeared while women and children were forced to flee as their villages were systematically burned.

Three U.S. soldiers captured

On March 31: Three U.S. soldiers on a reconnaissance mission in Macedonia disappeared near the boarder after radioing for help, saying they were under hostile fire. Hours later the men showed up on Serbian television, prisoners of war.

U.S. POWs Steven Gonzales, Andrew Ramirez and Christopher Stone.

Websites on Kosovo

CNN - Strike on Yugoslavia
Human Rights Watch
NATO press briefings
NPR - Crisis in Kosovo
Operation Allied Force (U.S. Defense Dept. site)
U.N. High Commission for Refugees
Yahoo's Full Coverage on Kosovo

Historical backgrounders:

ABC News - A Beginner's Guide to the Balkans
Time: A Kosovo Primer

Kosovo history

   To the Serbs, Kosovo is more than a battleground. It is literally theSerb Jerusalem, the center of the medieval Serb state and the seat of thefirst Serbian Orthodox patriarchate.
   Serbia finally regained Kosovo from the Turks during the Balkan Wars of1912-13, which finished off the Ottoman Empire. But when the Serbs returned,they found a very different Kosovo. Ethnic Albanians, converted to Islam bythe Turks, dominated. Serbs began to move back and established a harsh rule.The Albanian population continued to grow; Albanians are now 85 to 90 percentof the province.
   In 1974, President Tito, the Communist ruler of Yugoslavia, granted theKosovars' wish for autonomous status within Yugoslavia. To Serbs, Tito (aCroat) had done nothing less than insulted their history. Serbs moved out,taking with them stories of Albanian atrocities.
   In 1987, Slobodan Milosevic delivered a nationalistic speech in Kosovo,telling Serbs that ``you must stay here because of your ancestors and yourdescendants.'' Serbs cheered and Milosevic, sensing the decline of Communism,jumped on the nationalist bandwagon.
   Two years later, he revoked Kosovo's autonomy and delivered his triumphantaddress at Kosovo Polje. More than 20 people died in the Serb-Albanianfighting that followed, and the stage was set for the events that led to the NATO bombing.

NATO attacks Belgrade

April 3: NATO cruise missiles struck two government buildings in Belgrade, taking the bombing campaign to the Yugoslav capital for the first time. International relief began arriving in Albania, and U.S. spokesman Kenneth Bacon said the U.S. would send 24 tank-killing Apache helicopters to join the battle. However, the apaches would require extensive on-the-ground support teams, which would take weeks to establish in the remote hills of Albania.

April 8: NATO bombed Yugoslav tanks and troops, and aid agencies rushed in food to sustain up to half a million refugees.

April 11: NATO released aerial photos showing what appeared to be dozens of freshly dug graves in Kosovo.

Rev. Jesse Jackson holds hands with Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic during a prayer led by Jackson in Belgrade May 1, 1999. (AP)

Jackson wins release

April 30: The Rev. Jesse Jackson visited the three U.S. servicemen held in Yugoslavia. Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic vowed he would "never surrender" to NATO and U.S. forces.
May 1: Milosevic agreed to release the three U.S. servicemen to Jesse Jackson.
May 2: A U.S. fighter jet went down in hostile Serb territory, but the pilot was plucked to safety by NATO search-and-rescue forces. President Clinton agreed to meet with Russian envoy Victor Chernomyrdin.
May 5: The first Kosovar refugees arrived at Ft. Dix. Two U.S. servicemen were killed when an Apache helicopter crashed during a training exercise in Albania.

Ohio connections

Torn Loyalties: Serbian-Americans in the Cleveland suburb of Parma have mixed reactions to the NATO action.

Airborne gas station:
The Ohio Air National Guard's 121st Air Refueling Wing, based near Columbus, help keep Stealth warplanes flying.

Local pilot: Northmont High grad Tim Slentz, an E-2C pilot, guides combat aircraft over Yugoslavia.

China outraged as embassy hit

May 7: NATO bombers inadvertantly struck the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade, killing three people and injuring at least 20. The incidents sparks stone-throwing protests outside the U.S. embassy in Beijing.
May 14: NATO bombs were blamed for striking a convoy of ethnic Albanian refugees in Kosovo. NATO says the Serbs intentionally put civilians in harms way as "human shields."
May 22: NATO acknoledged it mistakenly bombed a well-known Kosovar rebel stronghold.
May 27: Milosovic was indicted for war crimes by the International Criminal Tribunal in the Hague.

Yugoslavia accepts NATO peace terms

June 3: In apparent capitulation, Yugoslavia agreed to withdraw its troops from Kosovo and permit international peacekeepers.
June 5: In a meeting with NATO military leaders Serbian generals balked at some of the terms in a withdrawal agreement they were expected to sign. NATO continued its bombing as it appeared the peace plan might fall apart.
June 9: After a delay of several days, Yugoslavia surrendered and Serbian troops prepared to withdraw.
June 10: NATO troops began moving into Kosovo, but Russian troops arrived first, leading to a standoff between NATO and Russian troops at the airport in Pristina.

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