Talk:Kosovo War/Archive 3

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No genocide in Kosovo? NPOV!

This article claims, several times throughout the article, that there was no genocide in Kosovo. This is a radical minority opinion, not the general concensus among most scholars. The Hague is an international organization and I find it bizarre that they would claim that the genocide was baseless when such a large organization had Milosevic on trial for so long, and right as he was about to be convicted in a court of law, he died of a heart attack. The Hague's review of the case has pretty much confirmed Milosevic's guilt and this non-NPOV does not reflect that. On the contrary, with much hubris it argues the contrary. Take this text, for instance:

Stories appeared from time to time in the Belgrade media claiming that Serbs and Montenegrins were being persecuted, although few appear to have been reliably substantiated. Nonetheless, there was a genuine perception among Serbian nationalists in particular that Serbs were being driven out of Kosovo, with some claiming that Serbs were being subjected to "genocide" by Albanians. All of these perceptions were unsubstantiated and catagorically untrue.

The fact that it's called called the "Kosovo war," when it lasted merely a few weeks further reflects its bias. I've added an NPOV label to the front and I've removed the editorial label (a grade of B) from this discussion page, because I doubt that this article today is what they reviewed and, if it was, then they need to review it again. 71.246.245.115 08:39, 29 May 2006 (UTC)

I find it horribly sad that after the real war there is now a far more important war over who's version of history to believe. There is one indisputable fact: NATO had no real reason to intervene in Kosovo if there were NOT human rights violations which threatened to destabilize the region. Kosovo has no oil. If you want to ignore the theory of genocide, then if NATO was after an incredibly poor region in order to collect rock samples I suppose their intervention made sense. There were human rights violations. To deny that Milosevic deserved his title of "Butcher of the Balkans" is to be incredibly naive. Prior to committing genocide in truth he was committing cultural genocide in not allowing the people of Kosovo to teach their children in the Albanian language and supressing their culture with violence and fear. He and his cronies fabricated alleged attacks on churches in order to stir up religious hatred in Serbians. In reality, the Serbs and Albanians in the region were neighbors and friends prior to Milosevitc's hate campaign. Albanians affiliate themselves more with their ethnicity than with their religion. Afterall, with so many muslims, christians, orthodox christians and roman catholics forming the mix of Albanians, how can they afford to hate other religions? After Milosevic, some Serbs turned on their former friends.

This article addresses the KLA and makes it seem as if the whole organization was a shadowy operation led by drug dealers and prostitution bigwigs. How sad that the truth can be so distorted. I would like it explained to me how poor dirt farmers, shepherds, and the unemployed family men have been so transformed in public opinion as to be called criminals instead of recognized for what they truly were and are: people at the end of their rope, persecuted and poor, who finally rose up against their oppressors? Were our founding fathers also terrorists? Paul Revere, Ben Franklin and the like were fighting against taxation without representation. The ethnic Albanians were fighting against being dragged from their homes and beaten or killed for no other reason than their ethnicity. Representation is a luxury when you compare it to fighting for your life. Many point to some examples in the KLA and dismiss the whole as criminals. I am positive there is a criminal element in even the best of organizations (i.e. our own government officials taking bribes, the U.N. food scandal, etc.) The fact that there are criminals does not negate the whole and it does not reflect on the whole organization. Because Tom deLay is crooked does that mean the U.S. government is a criminal organization? I don't believe so. So write what you will. Keep skewing the facts. History will prevail no matter what means you employ to try and twist it. Years from now history will show the naysayers to be what we now consider Holocaust deniers to be. The worst humanity has to offer.

WHO EVER WROTE THIS HAS PROBABLY NEVER BEEN IN THE MILITARY OR FURTHER MORE DOES NOT I REPEAT DOES NOT KNOW WHAT THEY ARE TALKING ABOUT,SCAN YOUR LANE AND MAKE SURE TO THANK THE MEN AND WOMEN WHO VOLUNTEER TO GO TO WAR AND PUT THEIR LIVES ON THE LINE EVERYDAY WHILE YOU SIT AT HOME AND TWIDDLE YOUR THUMBS AND PLAY ON THE COMPUTER!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 168.105.164.3 (talk • contribs) 06:05, 15 April 2006 (UTC)

"I want you for the US Army to trample Iraq" Hahaha!
Real bombs exploded closer to me, even though I`m a civillian, than they ever will to your sorry ass! And that happened pretty much because of the likes of you. The real people who took the risk were the ones armed with 20-30 years old missiles and radars trying to defend their country and preserve it`s honor against the world`s greatest, most well-armed bully and those misslead to follow him!

Old

It deeply shocks me that any reference to civilian casualties in Serbia is almost hidden and the arthicle mostly focuses on NATOs legitimacy to bomb Serbia. My dear God, just browse the internet and you'll see over a thousand pictures of civilian deaths! And what about a reference to the killing of serbian JOURNALISTS in Belgrade's tv building????? As a journalist, serb, i feel insulted!


People were greedy and wanted the oil but the Americans won at last.


Something needs to be done to divide the overflowing external links.

- Pointless.

It seems to me that the debacle of Kosovo trails itself wherever the name itself is mentioned. I read the article and it seems pretty neutral and unbiassed to me. I dont think it necessary to taint 'everything' with inferiority issues, and trying to find truths molded according to national beliefs and myths. Leave the article as is -its pretty good

-lotsofissues 3/19/05


This page seems to have been quiet for a month or so, but the neutrality tag remains - I have read the discussion archives, but it is not clear to me from them what content remains disputed, if any. I would like to suggest that we either remove the tag, or generate a list of specific issues that we could potentially resolve in order to remove it.2toise 12:35, 10 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Where to start -just about every sentence is disputed. Rmhermen 23:13, Nov 10, 2003 (UTC)

I just don't think that it's very helpful to claim that the topic in general is disputed - start at the beginning if necessary.2toise 23:14, 10 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Is this article still disputed? The neutrality tag was added to the previous version of the article (before I rewrote it) so it doesn't seem appropriate to keep it in the new version unless someone still disagrees with it. If nobody has any objection, I'd like to remove the tag. -- ChrisO 23:45, 6 Jan 2004 (UTC)
I don't have time to read everything, unfortunately. The few parts I did read seem OK to me, but the pictures are quite inapropriate: the article is about Kosovo war, while the photos show mostly civil targets hit by NATO missiles - the message is far from neutral.--Messlo 12:58, 10 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Russian veto?

It is not true that Russia vetoed a resolution or that there was any resolution to justify the NATO bombing. See http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/2828985.stm where all the vetoes of Russia are discussed

Try reading this. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/201007.stm, I think this verifies what I was saying.User:G-Man

I dont think that it does. It is a resolution adopted before the negotiations between the Serbs and Albanians, and no other resolution was considered after that. It does not say anywhere that the majority of Security concil were for a stronger resolution authorising the use of force (that is what you claim). Also, China, as well as Russia abstained from even this resolution. The issue in resolution was not signing the agreement (a reason for the start of bombing in late March) but retreating of the Serbian forces, which subsequently happened.

Unity with Albania?

Regarding the most recent edit: I don't know and don't think it's possible to find out how all Kosovar Albanians felt re: autonomy, independence, and Greater Albania. But it's definitely wrong to say that no Kosovar Albanians wanted unity with Albania, or that this desire by some Kosovar Albanians did not reflect itself in significant political movements. What did the KLA have to say about Greater Albania? What about Rugova? DanKeshet

I agree that some people in Kosovo were for greater Albania. However, it is wrong to say that Albanians always considered Kosovo as an integral part of Albania, the way Serbs did consider it integral part of Serbia. Albania didn't exist as a state until 1912. Serbia did and at the time after the Balkan wars it had conquered Kosovo, Sanjak and FRY Macedonia teritories - Kosovo was teritory of middle age Serbian kingdom, and thus Serbs did view it as a part of their state. Albanians however have their historical ties to Kosovo - rising of their nationalist movement in XIX century started in southern Kosovo under the Ottoman Empire. During the Balkan wars many Albanians were expelled by the Serbs. In WWI, Albanians took revenge when Serbian army was retreating over Albanian mountains. The origin of the conflict can be traced at least that far. During the WWII Greater Albania did exist and included most of Kosovo under faschist puppet regime. After the WWII Tito had promised Albanian communists that part of Kosovo will be allowed to join Albania. However, this did not happen, and Kosovo was set up as autonomous part of Serbia. The Albanian separatists had a goal of greater Albania, but more recently they are for Kosovo separate from Albania. Kosovo is much more developed than Albania (even today, and certainly during regime of Enver Hoxa), and Kosovo Albanians look down on Albanians from Albania proper. So, it is not entirely accurate to say that Albanians want Kosovo inside Albania - certainly, there is a dream of "Greater Albania" as it existed during WWII, and Serbs want to portray Albanian pretensions in this way, but it is not accurate description of the situation.

As for Rugova, he was always for independent Kosovo, as a separate state. KLA is mostly of this view too, although some KLA members certainly want all the Albanians inside one state. But even parts of Macedonia and Serbia proper are more likely to be seen as included in Kosovo, than in Albania as one state (there was some speculation about the exchange of teritories between Kosovo northern areas, even now populated by Serbs, and Presevo valley in Serbia proper).

Thanks for the long discussion. Could we get some of this up at History of Kosovo, History of Albania, and history of Yugoslavia? DanKeshet

Just a short notice:

- Yes, Albanians on Kossovo don`t think of coming in unity with Albanian, neither 

 Albania wants it (altough Albania was biggesr supporter of their rebellions,
 with KLA camps etc.). However, at Kossovo they wave Albanian flag. GREATER
 ALBANIA was a facist creation and never existed beside fascist ocuupation
 of 1941-5. I never heard that Tito had such a promise - he could always
 give it to Albania, but yes he had a wise policies including many
 Kossovo Albanians in gouverment and giving them strong half-independence
 status. Serbs don`t try to portray it like this it became obvious
 that Kossovo Albanians want indepedent state, but it is intresting
 to see what will they you do with such a small country, economicaly undeveloped
 if it happens.


- Who looks down on who. Altough Kossovo was better developed than Albania 

 during communist period, people living in Albiania Albania have better
 cultural standards and are more looking up to Italy and Western culture etc.
 so I think it is other way aroumd.

Yugoslav tactics that worked against NATO

  • Yugoslav air defences tracked U.S. stealth aircraft by using old Russian radars operating on long wavelengths. This, combined with the loss of stealth characteristics when the jets got wet or opened their bomb bays, made them shine on radar screens.
  • Radars confused precision-guided HARM and ALARM missiles by reflecting their electromagnetic beams off heavy farm machinery, such as plows or old tractors placed around the sites. This cluttered the U.S. missiles' guidance systems, which were unable to pinpoint the emitters.
  • Scout helicopters would land on flatbed trucks and rev their engines before being towed to camouflaged sites several hundred metres away. Heat-seeking missiles from NATO jets would then locate and go after the residual heat on the trucks.
  • Yugoslav troops used cheap heat-emitting decoys such as small gas furnaces to simulate nonexistent positions on Kosovo mountainsides. B-52 bombers, employing advanced infrared sensors, repeatedly blasted the empty hills.
  • The army drew up plans for covert placement of heat and microwave emitters on territory that NATO troops were expected to occupy in a ground war. This was intended to trick the B-52s into carpet-bombing their own forces.
  • Dozens of dummy objectives, including fake bridges and airfields were constructed. Many of the decoy planes were so good that NATO claimed that the Yugoslav air force had been decimated. After the war, it turned out most of its planes had survived unscathed.
  • Fake tanks were built using plastic sheeting, old tires, and logs. To mimic heat emissions, cans were filled with sand and fuel and set alight. Hundreds of these makeshift decoys were bombed, leading to wildly inflated destruction claims.
  • Bridges and other strategic targets were defended from missiles with laser-guidance systems by bonfires made of old tires and wet hay, which emit dense smoke filled with laser-reflecting particles.
  • U.S. bombs equipped with GPS guidance proved vulnerable to old electronic jammers that blocked their links with satellites.
  • Despite NATO's total air supremacy, Yugoslav jets flew combat missions over Kosovo at extremely low altitudes, using terrain to remain undetected by AWACS flying radars.
  • Weapons that performed well in Afghanistan — Predator drones, Apache attack choppers and C-130 Hercules gunships — proved ineffective in Kosovo. Drones were easy targets for 1940s-era Hispano-Suisa anti-aircraft cannons, and C-130s and Apaches were considered too vulnerable to be deployed.

This only looks like Serbian propoganda and doesn't improve this already very POV article one bit. Also given the very low numbers of NATO losses the above is rather surprising. --mav

Most of these strategies would serve to reduce Serbian military losses and waste NATO money, rather than killing NATO troops. Certainly these kinds of tactics have been used by other armies - bonfires to block laser-guided bombs compare with the oil trenches used by Iraq in the Gulf War, and I'm pretty sure that fake targets were used as early as WW2. Stealth bombers are known to be vulnerable to old-fashioned radar designs, being designed to be invisible to more modern systems, and are indeed more visible when their bomb bays are open. Plus, the Serbians did manage to shoot one down. Martin
AP news, from which this was taken, is hardly a Serbian propaganda - see

http://www.globeandmail.com/servlet/ArticleNews/front/RTGAM/20021120/wless1120/Front/homeBN/breakingnews

Oh so besides being POV (sic there is no NATO response to the claims) it is also a copyright violation. That is another reason to remove the text. --mav 00:19 Apr 9, 2003 (UTC)
copying from AP news IS NOT copyright violation. Even parts of artistic work can be used for educational purposes, and copying from parts of news is widely done in Wikipedia, and does NOT copyright violation. Also, it is precisely NATO who was MAKING the claims - Wes. Clark is analyzing Serbian tactics in the article. You are just censoring the article to fit your POV and use copyright as an excuse, which btw is misplaced.
From the "fair use" section of the copyright law:

Notwithstanding the provisions of sections 106 and 106A, the fair use of a copyrighted work, including such use by reproduction in copies or phonorecords or by any other means specified by that section, for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching (including multiple copies for classroom use), scholarship, or research, is not an infringement of copyright. In determining whether the use made of a work in any particular case is a fair use the factors to be considered shall include-

(1) the purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of a commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes;

(2) the nature of the copyrighted work;


(3) the amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole; and

(4) the effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work.

The fact that a work is unpublished shall not itself bar a finding of fair use if such finding is made upon consideration of all the above factors.

We are not talking about copyright law here. We are talking about the rules of Wikipedia. Are you a lawyer? If so, are you prepared to act in official capacity as counselor for Wikipedia if they are sued? Unless the answer is "Yes" to both questions, then I say the stolen text should be removed from the article. Chadloder 01:45 Apr 9, 2003 (UTC)

at the very least it should be attributed to its source.
what do you want, list to be rephrased a bit so that the text is not the same? it does not make sense, and it is certainly not a copyright violation as it stands - it is a very small portion of an article, in which journalist sumarizes points which various NATO generals have made to him. If you want it attributed for NPOV purposes, that would make some sense, but it is quite clear from the article that there is nothing controversial there - this is based on what years after the war some US generals said in connection with Iraq and lessons they have learned from the Kosovo war, so it is not something contested by NATO, and neither it is by the Yugoslav side. It is pretty much a list of undisputed facts about the tactics used by the Yugoslav army to minimize military losses from the bombardment.

I think it romances a bit, but the general thrust of it is somewhere within cooee of an article I read a little while ago about the NATO air campaign, which as written by a distinguished defence analysist. I'll try to remember to dig it out at some stage. Tannin 11:56 Apr 9, 2003 (UTC)

Well, regardless of the NPOV discussion, there are two serious problems with the list of tactics:

  1. Copyrighted material should not be used on Wikipedia. If you want this information to stay, you need to write your own version. Even just paraphrasing the list would be better than a straight copy. If you can't be bothered to do that, then just put in the link to the Globe and Mail story.
  2. The list looks completely out of place where it is in the article. This should be in a separate article instead, and linked from this one.

-- Ansible

The list is now reworked so noone can say it is a copyright violation. Although I still think it was not copyright violation in the first place - unlike photos, text is something much more easily produced, and a thiny portion of some article easily reworded, so it does not make sense to worry about copyright. The whole article or a substantial portion would be different, but anyway, now it is rephrased. I have provided a link so it does justice to the military analyst who se text was used.
As for your second point, I believe military tactics used by some party in some war should be discussed in article about the war. This aspect is also important, and while it is good for the article to discuss politics, historical context, civilian victims, war crimes etc. in this war, it is also should have a section dealing with the defense against bombing. Especially because Yugoslav army had this doctrine of defense against invador for like 50 years, and a long tradition of partisan warfare from the WWII on which it was based. Low tech approach, using independent units etc. was cornerstone of Yugoslav peoples army, and the teritorial defenses were used many times during the Balkan wars in the 90s by all the sides in ex-Yugoslavia. Officers on all sides were educated in this same military school, and while it was not particilary well suited for the civil war, it was perfect for defense against invasion. Ground invasion never happened, but

the goal of preservation of the Army was achieved, and Yugoslav forces were preserved in Kosovo despite the heavy bombing - it was loss of civilian infrastucture which mattered and forced Serbian withdrawal. So, it is important to deal with this aspect of the war.


The list goes. The AP are very aggressive about making sure people don't screw with their copyrighted material. I've heard of them going after people who rewrite parts of their text just enough to pass the Google test. They also say as much: "Copyright 2003 Associated Press. All right reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed." Also our license (the GNU FDL) and the fact that we are a world-editable wiki puts serious constraints on our use of fair use text (read Wikipedia:Copyrights; look for "Fair use" headings). Basically we are limited to short, annotated and attributed quotes that help to illustrate the article and are clearly demarked as quotes so that other wikipedia editors know not to edit that text. And even if we could use the list under fair use we would have to attribute the source. Not doing so is a grave act of plagiarism. --mav

I bet they are not as aggressive as you are to protect them. Now the list is rephrased, so even you cannot use this cheap excuse to remove material that does not fit your POV, but with wich US generals, military analysts, not to mention Yugoslav side, agree. Your claims of "plagiarisam" are laughable - noone takes credit here for their work, which consists merely of reporting, and is not original research.
The new intro to "Yugoslav tactics that worked against NATO" makes all the difference as far as NPOV is concerned. Now the opinions expressed have been attributed to their adherents. It was not at all "laughable" for me to protect the legal and professional integrity of Wikipedia from a user intent on presenting the work of others as his own and not even attempt to attribute the ideas or the text to their original sources. This was both plagiarism (read that article and learn something) and a copyright violation (read Wikipedia:Copyrights and also learn something). Most of the text now at least passes the Google test. Hopefully in time it will become truly unique. --mav
Yeah, right. Plagiarisam means to steal and pass off someone's work as one's own - and noone was doing that. Wikipedia articles by definition have no author, and noone was trying to falsely present text as their own anyway. Your worrying for protecting Wikipedia makes more sense, had it been the real motive - but then you would have to take care of every part of every article which was copied from some other site - and you know well how many articles started by copy-pasting and merging (combining small parts of different articles as a basis for an article which is anyway going to evolve is hardly a copyright infrigement - or you could as well extend it to include using parts of sentences, words, or even letters to be copyright protected). I agree that fair use is not clear-cut and so one can reword text just in case - "Note that copyright law governs the creative expression of ideas, not the ideas or information themselves. Therefore, it is perfectly legal to read an encyclopedia article or other work, reformulate it in your own words, and submit it to Wikipedia." < from the link you provided yourself. So, if that is a general policy here to avoid any possible although unlikely problems, fine. But the real worry it seems to me here is about the use of photos, media files, or substantial portions of some other articles, not about few listed facts, which, as you can see, can be reworded without much trouble and which happens anyway.
Your premise is incorrect - Wikipedia articles are not anonymous works. The page history documents every edit and who made those edits. And I do check for copyright violations (which are also plagiarism if the source is not noted) on numerous new articles. It is also true that information cannot be copyrighted but the issue here was the verbatim copying of text without even noting the source. Oh and some media outlets have been trying to extend copyright to greatly limit fair use by using scare tactics which result in expensive legal fees for defendants - there is nothing wrong with trying to limit this type of liability by respecting notices such as the one Reuters. It is better, IMO, to limit our use of such resources and to extensively rewrite and reorganize any information obtained from them when no other sources are available. This makes it very difficult for them to make any case against us without looking like fools. --mav 01:38 Apr 21, 2003 (UTC)

Map of Greater Albania

Has the map of great Albania ut's place here ? Ericd 11:45 Apr 20, 2003 (UTC)

Can we move the map of Greater Albania to a ga page? I think the concept deserves treatment, but not on the Kosovo war page.
Also, the caption states that it is claimed by Albanian Nationalists - can we be more specific?

2toise 05:49, 4 Oct 2003 (UTC)

I moved the map of Greater Albania to a new page of that name. Hope this is ok, it just doesn't seem to be really central to the Kosovo War page. I have no particular interest in writing the ga page, but think it needs some work. 2toise 06:04, 4 Oct 2003 (UTC)

Pictures of civilian casualties

Does anyone else think there may be a NPOV problem with 3 pictures of unintended civilian casualities vs. one picture of an apparently intended target? -- stewacide 07:13 29 Jun 2003 (UTC)

Firstly, two of four pictures show intended targets as admitted by NATO (TV and electricity). Secondly, most probably all four of them were intended. Nikola 08:19 30 Jun 2003 (UTC)
The TV one also says "residential areas", which is why I got 3/4 - I guess 3+3=4 in this case :)
Also says. Let's conclude that 2.5 of 4 :) pictures show unadmitted to be intended civilian casaulties. Nikola 04:53 7 Jul 2003 (UTC)
Still, it would nice if someone could dig up a picture of destroyed Serbian military equipment. File:Natotrain.jpg seems even more biased towards showing civilian casualities only. -- stewacide
Such images are very hard to find... Nikola 04:53 7 Jul 2003 (UTC)
See discussion at User talk:Nikola Smolenski, Serb atrocities on Albanian civilians are not hard at all to find. --Dori 18:40, 23 Sep 2003 (UTC)
I also agree that 4 pictures in the row about the serbian casualties makes an impression that serbia was the big victim and the Albanians actually planned to occupy serbia or something. I suggest couple pictures to be replaced with pictures from the ethnic clensing. Robert 15:43, 19 October 2005 (UTC)

This is the first time I have looked at this article, and it reads like Serb propaganda from beginning to end. I hate to think it was like before people started trying to NPOV it. I would suggest that someone knowledgeable and unbiased write a completely new article and then a vote be taken at Village Pump or somewhere on substituting it for this one, which is probably beyond redemption. Adam 07:35, 26 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Me personally have no problem with that. However, if new article omits to mention something important that was mentioned in the old article, I will move that from the old article to the new article. Nikola 19:28, 26 Nov 2003 (UTC)

I've been saying this for a long time, most of it is the work of User:Nikola Smolenski and User:Igor

Lie. The article was started at July 31st 2001, and my first edit was on May 18th 2003, almost TWO YEARS after that! Since then I've made 16 edits of 84 edits total. And all of my edits were quite small ones. Similarly, Igor's first edit was in April 8th 2003 and since then he made 12 edits, even less then me. So, we together have 28 of 84 edits, or about 1/3. Nikola 19:28, 26 Nov 2003 (UTC)

who seem to see the wikipedia as a dispensary for Serb propaganda, numerous people have complained about them.

For example? Nikola 19:28, 26 Nov 2003 (UTC)

You should see the other articles they have worked on - like Kosovo and Prishtina which I have attempted to NPOV. In fact just about every article they have worked on reads like Serb propaganda.

Of my last 50 edits, articles I worked on are: Kosovo War, Serbo-Croatian language, Wikipedia:WikiProject Space Missions, Republika Srpska, Non-native pronunciations of English, Differences in official languages in Serbia, Croatia and Bosnia, Mathematical beauty, Orthodox Celts, Franjo Tudjman, Sony Ericsson, Saint Sava, ISO 639, Petar Petrovic Njegos, Utva, Vuk Stefanovic Karadzic, Males, Most popular names, List of most popular family names, Kosovo and Metohia, Ligature, Timeline of Belgrade, International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, The Flower of Scotland, Pan-Slavic colors, List of countries by rail transport network size, Apoapsis, Periapsis. I highlighted these that struck me as prime examples of Serb propaganda.
And your "attempts of NPOV" were as much NPOV as what you've just wrote about me. Nikola 19:28, 26 Nov 2003 (UTC)

I agree this article should be re-written from scratch G-Man 13:43, 26 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Which I'm doing at the moment. As a participant in the conflict (on the NATO side) I have something of an insider's viewpoint, and I should be able to fix most of the problems that seem to have cropped up in this article - the usual minimisation of one side's role and stressing of the awfulness of the other side. -- ChrisO 01:16, 3 Dec 2003 (UTC)
I was not in the army, but I have talked with people who were stationed in various parts in Serbia, and I think I can provide fair representation of the other side. As I guess that the layout of the new article will be somewhat similar to the layout of the old, could you please replace it section by section instead of replacing all at once? This way it will be easier to see the differences. If your layout is not similar, you could first change the layout of the old article, then replace sections with new ones. Nikola 07:10, 5 Dec 2003 (UTC)
Okay, will do. In due course, I would like to focus the article more tightly on the armed conflict (1996-99), which will require major structural changes. I propose to move the pre-conflict history of Kosovo into the related article on Kosovo (which also needs to be rewritten, btw). The section I'm referring to is basically the text from "Kosovo was declared an autonomous region" to "unsuccessful attempts to gather a fighting force", although I've extensively rewritten and added to this as it's not entirely NPOV and omits the wider Yugoslav context (i.e. the political dispute at the federal level). I propose to cover the Rambouillet Conference briefly in the Kosovo War article and expand the separate article on the Rambouillet Agreement to provide more detail.
So far I've got as far as the breakdown of the Rambouillet talks. I'll try to post the first section over the weekend. I may simply do a straight rewrite of the entire article (including the pre-conflict and detailed Rambouillet Agreement text) and then move the appropriate blocks of content into Kosovo and Rambouillet Agreement when I'm done. -- ChrisO 13:41, 5 Dec 2003 (UTC)

Kosovo War rewrite

It's taken longer than I had hoped, but the rewrite is about ready now (basically covering the period from post-WW2 to the failure of Rambouillet in March 1999). See what you think - comments welcomed! -- ChrisO 01:34, 28 Dec 2003 (UTC)

I've now completed the rewrite, taking in the period of the NATO campaign and its aftermath. -- ChrisO 00:57, 2 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Kosovo/Kosova?

Given that Kosovo has two recognised and legitimate names in Serbian and Albanian, I think it's only fair that both names should be given at the start of the article. Please don't remove the Albanian name. At some future point, I may also add the Albanian placenames of the towns mentioned in the article. -- ChrisO 23:28, 8 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Nikola, could you please stop deleting the alternative Albanian placenames? -- ChrisO 11:13, 16 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Neutrality

Does anyone still dispute the neutrality of this page, I certainly dont, It's been improved dramatically from a NPOV perspective. Can the dispute header be taken down? G-Man 00:04, 16 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Given that the article does not really highlight the Serbian POV, and only briefly mentions the murders on Serbs and Roma living in Kosovo, I think it's best left in. Something needs to be added about how this war started as a result of the "Greater Albania" mentality that lives amongst Kosovo Albanians and how they started persecuting Serbs, Roma, and other non-muslims, and a link to how the KLA tried to carry the war to the Macedonian republic is still needed. — Jor 00:11, 2004 Jan 16 (UTC)
This raises a question: what exactly should the scope of this article be? Is it:
  • the conflict between NATO and Yugoslavia during March-June 1999?
  • the conflict between Yugoslav and Serbian forces and the KLA from 1996-1999?
  • the wider political conflict between Serbs and Albanians?
  • and if the latter, during what period? After 1989 or 1974 or 1945 or 1912? Or even earlier?
  • and when should we say the war ended? June 1999? Can the political violence after that date be considered part of the war?
Perhaps we should trim down the article to the period of the armed conflict and move the political debate to a separate "Politics of Kosovo" article? Suggestions welcomed... -- ChrisO 10:35, 16 Jan 2004 (UTC)
Upon re-reading the article I see that the points I mentioned are listed, albeit briefly. I understand how difficult it is to keep it NPOV, and certainly don't think I can do better: I hesitate to edit the article myself. Still I recommend splitting the article: "Politics of Kosovo" seems like as good a name as any to carry information about the Albanian vs Serbian politics. This article should optimally only deal with the conflict from the start of KLA agression in 1996 to the end of the NATO bombing campaign in 1999. The ethnic cleansing of Serbs and Roma which has occured since could either go in the 'Consequences of the war' section, or be removed to a seperate article 'Consequences of the Kosovo War', highlighting the immense crime rate in the rebel province, the ethnic cleansing, a mention of the KLA attacks in the Republic of Macedonia, etc.. — Jor 11:46, 16 Jan 2004 (UTC)
Why is there no mention of the ethnic cleansing of the Kosovan people? Why is the word civilian only used in the context of Serbs or the international community? I'm trying to find out more about the war between the Serbs and Kosovans, as far as I remember the war was infamous for the number of civilian deaths--Dilaudid 16:33, 11 March 2006 (UTC)

the truth

I've been skimming some posts here, and I want to say the real truth: -Balkan Peninsula was always populated by Albanians (they've been called Illyrians before) - In the very beggining they've been 100% christian, but then they've been conqured by Otoman Empire so they've been forced to accpet Islam religion (some located in mountanois sites managed to defend their religion so that how in kosovo, and in albania are christians too) but most of population had to convert to Islamic releigion as forced by Otoman Empire... - Serbs came from capathian montains- from russia, it's beleived that they are by orginin gypsies from russia, so they moved south for a better life they found a new tarritory with high culture, and very civillized nation, so they conqured a part of Illyrian land the southern part and they claim that kosovo is their mother, but its not true... a fact : why their language is similiar to Russain? Why Albanian language is entirely independent language showing no similiarities to any language.... (some with latin), this explains that this language is very old and so is spoken by Albanian certenly they must be very old nations with very old roots in Europe. I must say that serbian nation is very sadist, bloodsucker, its very obvios having on mind where they come from... Once again :"World dont buy Serbian politics, let Albanian nation live independed as it deserves to"

Obviously your attempting to portray Serbs in a negative light, using false racist theories. Serbs are not "gypsies from Russia" but are Slavs instead (they came to the Balkan peninsula in the 6-7th Century while gyspies appeared in the 15th and 16th centureis). Why is the Serbian language similar to Russian? Because they are both based on Slavic. Gypsies have been seen as neusances and burdens to European societies because of their illicit and illegal activities...doesn't this remind you of Albanians? Name an Albanian contribution to society.

"The truth" can rarely be achieved by insults and racism. If that is the picture you would like the world to have of you and the Albanian nation so be it. Just remember that the truth is not about making statements or insulting people it is about knowing what really happened, and if you are a Christian, Muslim, Buddhist, Atheist, Albanian, Serb, Gipsy ,Russian... you should hold it a very precious thing.


the bottom line

Non-Albanians were kicked out from Kosovo. So much for stopping the purported ethnic cleansing. Reality speaks volumes.

The Serbs were rammed an ultimatum they couldn't possibly accept (just like in WWI), Serbian elections after the war were sabotaged by external funding of Milosevic's opposition. Milosevic was expelled from Serbia illegally (Serbian constitution does not allow trial of Serbian citizens abroad for crimes commited in Serbia) by said opposition. Civilian targets were bombed. From what I have read, Serbia has been the soccer ball of the larger powers during the XXth century, not sadist bloodsuckers. I suspect this war shall go in the anals of history as pointless drivel that only made things worse. The flame of nationalism has been rekindled in Europe. We shall reap the winds we have sown.

"From what I have read" are a key words here. Some people did not just "read", they lived through it. Average Albanian is no better than average Serb, I guess. However, what is important is that Serbs and Russians as a whole nations recently were (or in case of Russians, are) drifting toward totalitarian state. I, as a citizen of post-totalitarian country, want to assure you that it worries me a lot more that Chechen or Albanian terrorists. Terrorists cannot kill millions. Stalinists can, and *WILL*, if they'll get enough power. Again, it's not about "bad Serbs", it's about tyranny, no matter under which camouflage (nationalistic, religious, etc...)

Merge from Humanitarian Intervention in Kosovo

I don't know if this article has any information you don't already have, if so merge, if not just redirect. [[User:Cohesion|cohesion ☎]] 20:28, 13 Sep 2004 (UTC)

In any case it's just a personal, highly POV essay. I fear the consequences if it is to be merged. Would probably be best to just redirect. Everyking 21:05, 13 Sep 2004 (UTC)
Yes, i thought so too, but I am not an expert on this so I wasn't sure if it had any hidden gems of new information :) [[User:Cohesion|cohesion ☎]] 22:13, 13 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Cause of Kosovar Albanians exodus during NATO bombing campaign

As the article properly states in a NPOV, "The cause of the refugee exodus has been the subject of considerable controversy." So why does the previous paragraph convolute this by stating "fighting worsened and produced massive outflows"? Obviously fighting worsened, but exactly why there was a massive exodus is what is controversial and I have changed the sentence to reflect a more NPOV as the next paragraph follows. - Dejitarob 23:38, 21 Oct 2004 (UTC)


New check

Still the NPOV tag, two months later what about a new check? --ThomasK 10:15, Dec 19, 2004 (UTC)

Page seems not bad by Wikipedia standards, except for being too long. Needs factoring. 193.60.78.118 15:33, 8 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Political consequences

Despite the successful conclusion of the war, Kosovo exposed gaping weaknesses in NATO. It revealed how dependent the European members had become on the United States military - the vast majority of combat and non-combat operations were dependent on US involvement - and highlighted the lack of precision weapons in European armories. It also served to discredit NATO in the eyes of the US military and American right-wingers, with the alliance's cumbersome agreement-by-consensus arrangements blamed for hobbling the campaign. The experience of Kosovo was a crucial factor in the United States deciding to go it alone in Afghanistan in 2001 and Iraq in 2003, preferring instead to build "coalitions of the willing" rather than rely on its existing alliances.

(my emphasis)

Is this paragraph NPOV? I've highligted the portions which I think are patricularly bad.. I'm not familiar with the specifics of the effects of this conflict on us foreign policy motivations, but certainly America's military supermacy wasn't questioned before the war?

Call me crazy but, an even more crucial factor in us deciding to go it alone is that other disagreed with the war?

I'm going to go ahead and edit this to take out what I think is blatantly untrue. --Freshraisin 10:17, Apr 12, 2005 (UTC)

It is true that the USA provided most of the troops, it is not true that that the USA did go it alone in either conflict.

Brinlarr

Links

Is it just me, or is that first link on the list a little...crazy? I don't see any need to remove it, but I don't see any need for it to be at the top of the list, above much more useful sources.

I retitled the link to the London Observer headline; yes it should be moved down the list somewhat. Nobs 20:18, 12 May 2005 (UTC)

'Right-wing, Right-wingers'

"Some right-wing and military critics in the US also blamed the alliance's agreement-by-consensus arrangements for hobbling and slowing down the campaign."

Shouldn't this just be condensed as 'Some critics' instead of the 'right-wing and military' as there are certainly critics who do not fit into those characterizations who did whats described. Personally I don't see the sentence being useful, but if its included it should at least be accurate. If there are those that would say only 'right-wing and military' were the critics, I would like to see a source. 172.131.58.54 07:35, 4 Jun 2005 (UTC)

"Many on the left of Western politics saw the NATO campaign as a sign of US aggression and imperialism, while right-wingers criticised it as being irrelevant to their countries' national security interests."

This is part of my earlier comment, but is 'right-wingers' really an encyclopedic term? Is there a better way of saying this? 172.131.58.54 07:38, 4 Jun 2005 (UTC)

neutral??!

i'm from kosova and there should be no neutreality in this discussion. it was a war. people were killed. what is there to be neutral about ??!

Wrong, you` re from kosovO.
The spelling commonly used in English is Kosovo; the Serbian spelling is transcribed as Kosova. Using 'Kosovo' does not mean Wikipedia is siding with either party in the war, anymore than using the phrase 'Azad Kashmir' in describing the portion of Kashmir controlled by Pakistan implies acceptance of Pakistan's claims of the territory or using the phrase 'Falkland Islands' implies Wikipedia does not note Argentina's claims to the islands.
Wikipedia's official position is that it poses a neutral point of view; that is, in this case, it supports neither the Serbian, the Albanian, nor the NATO point of view. It is meant to be as impartial as human beings can be, and the way that we do this is by consensus. Despite the feelings of Serbian nationalists, there are neutrals in this conflict. Posters should, when possible, base information on documented sources.
Posters would also do well to include a user ID in each post and the date/time of the posting in UTC. Who believes an anonymous post? --GABaker.
English spelling is the same as Serbian - KosovO. The word Kosovo is Serbian and it is a claiming adjective (meaning kos`s) and "kos" is Serbian for blackbird. And that adjective (Blackbird`s) is reffered to the field where the great battle between Ottoman and Serbian (+ Bosnian and some other allies to be fair) armies was fought in 1389. The Albanians use the word KosovA informally, so the poster was not a Serbian, but an Albanian nationalist.
My source of information for this is my elementary school education as I am from Serbia.
I`m not sure but I think the adjective "blackbird`s" in Albanian would have been said and spelled in a way other then Kosova. I think that the construction of claiming adjectives, as is in Serbian, by adding ov (m), ova (f) or ovo (n) to the noun does not appear in Albanian nor is similar as the two languages are non-related (Albanian is not a Slavic language as Serbian). If this is true, they`re using an Albanised Serbian word for the province. Anyone who knows for certain?
Veljko Stevanovich 3. 12. 2005. 16:45 UTC+1
See Kosovo#Name. Nikola 09:36, 15 December 2005 (UTC)

Whoever you are, kid, you should realize that Wikipedia has a neutral policy. WW1 and WW2 killed people, lots more than your little "balkan conflict" in the late 90s...and guess what, the articles are neutral. Look at is this way, if we biased it in your way, it would be unfair to opposing viewpoints. -Alex, 12.220.157.93 00:52, 25 January 2006 (UTC).

I Agree, but don`t forget that Balkans (and particulary Serbia) suffered terribly in the World wars, much more than the US, for instance.
Veljko Stevanovich 7. Mar. 2006. 16:45 UTC+1


Revert War Going on

We need someone to step in and write a NPOV paragraph. I disagree that it's "plain facts" listed in the last revert are as plain as stated. --GABaker 2231 12 Dec 2005 UTC.

Which part do you think needs to be backed up with a reference?

Problem of this article is too many anonymous post simply eliminate other contributions they don't like. It is inaccurate that Tomahawk is launched from aircraft, and UK is where the B-52 bombers take off from. Image of a shot down MiG-29 is also quickly deleted without giving any reason. It is hard to write a NPOV article with posts like that.--Astrowikizhang 19:03, 13 March 2006 (UTC)

merge Kosovo crisis

I add the Tag to merge with Kosovo crisis. Bonaparte talk 12:28, 4 January 2006 (UTC)

That article talk mostly about Romania. Maybe it would be good to move it to, say, "Romania in Kosovo War" or something similar, and then make a redirect from "Kosovo crisis" to here? Nikola 14:38, 6 January 2006 (UTC)

Sources that were requested

(As for The General's comments - Simply Google them, it's not hard... And I'm not going to do it for you.)

By the way User:CJK if you revert my edits again without discussion here on the discussion page I will ask a mod for a temporary block. Got that? - Nikos.

DenisRS's POV-pushing

User:DenisRS keeps trying to add the following lines to the intro: "Even though the war broke international laws that were signed by NATO members, and was directly classified as an invasion and a crime against humanity by UNO laws, no officials of the responsible NATO countries ever went through the international Tribunal." This is an extremely contentious POV. DenisRS provides no sources, attributes the claim to nobody and states it as an undisputed fact, which it plainly isn't. What's more, it's inappropriate for the intro section anyway: the intro summarises the sequence of events, not whether any of the sides were right or wrong in what they did. It's nothing more than POV-pushing and isn't remotely compliant with WP:CITE or WP:NPOV. It doesn't belong in the article. -- ChrisO 00:53, 2 March 2006 (UTC)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:ChrisO performs POV with selective deletion of informaion

It is severe violation of Wikipedia principles. The sources for the line http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:ChrisO trying to delete are already in the list of sources that is at the bottom of the article. This all is just because this user fails to actually read those sources (he could go to a libriary at least).

ChrisO tries to simply delete information he personally does not like, instead of offering alternative information with source (as it was supposed by Wikipedia concept in case if there is contradicting information), like that would assert that unsanctioned by UNO war is legal, and not aggression, and the responsible parties of that war are not subject of international Tribunal for the crime against humanity for being aggressors. DenisRS 02:13, 6 March 2006 (UTC)

Also, the line "Even though the war broke international laws that were signed by NATO members, and was directly classified as an invasion and a crime against humanity by UNO laws, no officials of the responsible NATO countries ever went through the international Tribunal" does not contain any POV, but only is the ascertaining of the legal status of the war. It says nothing on whether the war was fair or not in the essense, it says only the fact that the war was illegal and the responsible people for this crime -- breaking (international) laws is a crime -- never actually went through prosecution, international tribunal. The matter of legality of the war is cornerstone thing of the event and it can not be considered as secondary. So it should not be moved lower in the article. DenisRS 02:17, 6 March 2006 (UTC)

You appear not to understand the POV policy here. Also you have not provided - nor is there any link in the article to any UN declaration about the war. Rmhermen 02:36, 6 March 2006 (UTC)

Again -- any war without UNO sanction is illegal, and this is not my opinion, but ascrtaining of the fact that is in the sources that listed at the bottom of the article. According to Wikipedia principles, it is not allowed to ask for any additional sources than already are listed. And it is not allowable to ask sources for obvious things. For example, you could ask source that "Kosovo war" is actually called "war" in this article, or why G.W. Bush Jr. is called "President". Nonsense is not allowed.

However, just for the sake of this formalism nonsense -- if some users want it too badly -- I found the direct link to UNO documents: 1) http://daccessdds.un.org/doc/RESOLUTION/GEN/NR0/068/54/IMG/NR006854.pdf

Doesn't work. -- ChrisO 08:31, 6 March 2006 (UTC)

2) http://untreaty.un.org/ilc/summaries/7_5.htm 3) http://untreaty.un.org/ilc/guide/7_5.htm

Again, I did not have to do this, because the information I protect comes from sources that already listed properly.

It is matter of you or ChrisO to question that information if you would ever have chance to find another version about legality of the war. DenisRS 02:57, 6 March 2006 (UTC)

Denis, once again let me point out that the 1st section is a summary of the course of the war. It's not the appropriate place for asserting that it's legal, illegal or anything else. And even if it was, your statement is a straightforward unsourced and unreferenced POV assertion, which isn't permitted. Please go and read WP:CITE and WP:NPOV. -- ChrisO 08:31, 6 March 2006 (UTC)
The word "Kosovo" does not appear in either of the two links. Perhaps WP:NOR. Rmhermen 14:12, 6 March 2006 (UTC)
If the first link does not open anymore, it comes from the second or third link anyway. I just checked, they generate always temporarily links, so the actual addess that will always work is this:

http://untreaty.un.org/ilc/summaries/7_5.htm#_ftnref9

So please see 1974's definition of aggression. And, of course, there is no resolution with the word "Kosovo", but it is not needed anyway. According to definition, any outside unsanctioned war operation held not in accordance with agreement with the subject county is aggression. Kosovo is exactly the case, as well as the lastest war in Iraq and bombings of Yugoslavia in 1995 (but not 1990/1991's war, which was sanctioned).
And it is cornerstone, not secondary property of a war, whether it was legal or not from very beginning. Leaving this to the bottom of the article is the same as speaking about a policeman killing armed and theating criminal without mentioning that the killer was policeman and thus legally done killing and that the killed was armed and threating criminal. DenisRS 23:37, 27 March 2006 (UTC)
Please stop pushing your own personal POV here. As I've already said, the introduction is not an appropriate place to try to characterise the nature of the conflict; it summarises what happened, not whether it was right to happen. Your claims of illegality are highly disputable (I'd call them plainly wrong) as well. I'll add something to the relevant section of the article to explain why. -- ChrisO 00:12, 28 March 2006 (UTC)
There is no my "own personal POV" here; the war is illegal since it was not sanctioned by UNO. Also, legality status has nothing to do with "whether it was right to happen", it just the ascertaining of the fact that the concrete war was illegal, what is cornerstone thing. So please stop deleting information that You personally do not like; it is POV, what is not allowed by Wikipedia principles. DenisRS 00:26, 29 March 2006 (UTC)
This is a common misconception. The UN Charter does not state that war is only legal if sanctioned by the UN Security Council. It does say that a belligerent party may be subject to punitive action by the UN (see Chapter VII), but it doesn't require all military action to be authorised by the UN. While we can legitimately mention the Serbian claim that UN approval was required in the case of Kosovo, it's simply wrong to assert that as a fact, as you keep doing. It's not only POV, it's factually untrue. -- ChrisO 00:45, 29 March 2006 (UTC)
Of course UNO does not state that "war is only legal if sanctioned by the UN Security Council", because every war can be legal if military help of other country is officially requested, contracted by the government. If official government did not ask for military invasion, then the war is illegal by definition of aggression from 1974. There can be no other variant, it is fact, not POV and not untrue. Approval, sanctions are secondary argument and in the information that You want to delete does not rely on sanctions at all. DenisRS 23:52, 29 March 2006 (UTC)
The bottom line here is that the issue is a complex one which can't be summarised in a glib partisan statement like the one that you keep pushing. Go and read something like this (look for the paper on "The Applicability of International Humanitarian Law")for an insight into the legal issues involved. You clearly don't understand the legal context (which is complex, admittedly) and you don't appear to want to follow the neutral point of view policy, which you must comply with if you want to continue editing here. -- ChrisO 00:16, 30 March 2006 (UTC)

NATO losses

Can anyone cite links to officially declared losses by NATO forces? There seems to be a lot of misinformation cirulating on the Net. --Mzabaluev 07:36, 10 March 2006 (UTC)

THE PEOPLE WHO WROTE THIS ARE WRONG

THE PEOPLE WHO WROTE THIS ARE WRONG THERE WAS NO 82ND AIRBORNE IN KOSOVO IT WAS 4/29 FIELD ARTILLERY OUT OF BAUMHOLDER GERMANY AND ALSO 2/3FIELD ARTILLERY OUT OF GIESSEN GERMANY YES IT IS A FACT THAT MOLOSEVIC WAS A MANIAC ALL FOR KILLING AND NOT HELPING THE PEOPLE IN WHICH HE LED BUT BECAUSE OF THE SACRIFICE OF OUR US MILITARY AND MOSTLY THE UNITS ABOVE HE IS NO LONGER IN CHARGE SINCERELY ONE SOLDIER WHO WAS THERE HOOOOOOOOAH —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 168.105.164.3 (talk • contribs) 05:58, 15 April 2006 (UTC)

It`s nice to see your computer`s "Caps Lock" works... Or were you just holding "Shift" pressed all the time?

Milosevic's logic for ethnic cleansing

Hi, I'm new to the Kosovo War page. I'm an economist by training with a degree in European Studies as well. As a Swede, hopefully I'll be able to provide a nonpartizan voice on the Talk page. Below is my first suggestion for improvement.

The article is not very detailed regarding the possible reasons for Milosevic to (most likely) have instigated the ethnic cleansing at the start of the war.

Currently the article reads: "It is unclear what Milošević may have hoped to achieve by expelling Kosovo's Albanian inhabitants. One possibility is that he wished to replace the Albanian population with refugee Serbs from Bosnia and Croatia, thereby achieving the "Serbianization" of the province."

In fact, the main reasons are likely to have been

(1) to create a logistical/humanitarian problem for Nato, thereby delaying or hindering a ground attack, and

(2) to remove a source of local support for the KLA, akin to the US strategy in S. Vietnam of creating 'strategic hamlets'.

What do you think about adding these as additional possible reasons for the ethnic cleansing campaign? I haven't been able to find any direct sources, but neither have I been able to find any sources for the (in my mind) less likely reason of wanting to "Serbianize" the province (how would he do that in the middle of a war?).

Also, should any mention be made of the connection between the breakdown of the Rambouillet negotiations and the impending Nato attack and the expulsion of the albanians? Osli73 15:50, 28 April 2006 (UTC)

Hi Osli73, and welcome to this page. For sure an experience from a member of a peaceful nation like the Swedish is more than welcome here. At the same time it might be difficult for you to "think like the killers" of Balkans. The worst case of such a killer was Milosevic. One can just speculate about superficial goals he had by carrying ethnic cleansing, but the real reasons of course were financial, he got richer and more powerful, after every war he waged. As of the questions and comments you posed, I agree partly with them. Indeed removing the local population would have weakened the support for KLA. Not sure about your first point. If local population was moved from Kosovo, it would have been easier for NATO troops to invade the place. One of the main fears of NATO before invasion was planned, was that local population (mainly Albanians) would suffer during that action, and Serbs could retailiate and kill Albanian civillians or use them as hostages during retreat. As far as Serbianizing the province, indeed that could have been a goal of his. He thought the Bosnian scenario would be the case in Kosovo as well. In Bosnia even as we are speaking there are many refugees who refuse to return. In Kosovo it happened the contrary, all refugees that were forced out by the Serbian troops returned. There is a connection between the failed Rambouillet negotiations, and NATO strikes. That was the threat directed towards Milosevic, if he was not going to comply with Contact Group demands. Expulsion of Albanians happened after NATO strikes, and was carried out by Serbian troops in retaliation. Ilir pz 20:29, 28 April 2006 (UTC)


Thank you for your comments Ilir pz. Again, I'd would like to have some more thoughts on this. As the ethnic cleansing played a very big part in motivating/justifying Nato's attack on Yugoslavia, I believe that understanding what motivated Milosevic to order it is, or should be, of great interest to readers of the article. So far, all we have is speculation. As I believed the motive currently presented in the article, that the aim was to Serbianize the province, is unlikely I proposed two hypothesis of my own. However, I would very much appreciate it if anyone had any references to academic studies or other studies.Osli73 22:30, 29 April 2006 (UTC)

The explanation is that Milosevic didnt order ethnic cleansing, and that it was KLA in whose interest it was, for propaganda purposes. There is ample evidence for this presented at Milosevic trial. The refugees were fleing conflict, bombing - but also were ordered by KLA to flee. The border was closed in early April, to stop the flight of refugees, but was reopened on the insistence of NATO. Don not put wild NATO propaganda allegations as facts and then speculate about them. KosovaKupusPress 17:07, 10 May 2006 (UTC)
There you go that is some Tanjug type of explanation, or explanation found in the pamphlets of Serbian socialist or radical party. Horrible. ilir_pz 09:38, 27 May 2006 (UTC)


Again, I find it very strange that this issue not more well researched or documented. Arguments seem to range from it was the KLA and Nato bombing which drove the refugees out to it all being part of a Serbian master plan. Does anyone have any suggestions?Osli73 11:19, 28 May 2006 (UTC)

We do not need to discuss this. Only a Serb can make such egregious claims. And for people who don't know: you need not edit any articles about Kosovo because you don't know jack about what happen.Ferick 17:13, 30 May 2006 (UTC)

I guess documenting something well takes a bit more time than 7 years. I agree with you that more work should have been done in this field. One thing is for sure, never did KLA or NATO forces did ask refugees to leave Kosovo, that is pure propaganda directed from Milosevic's regime. That was a way to cover his master plan, a plan which did exist for many years, and he was about to complete..fortunately it did not work. (Osli73, please sign your edits using 4"~" so we know the time of your edit.) Thank you,ilir_pz 19:13, 27 May 2006 (UTC)

The whole article is slanted towards Serbs

"Then, in January 1998, the Western powers got a boost when first they installed Milorad Dodik to be Republika Srpska's prime minister, and then they got Milo Djukanovic installed as President of Montenegro despite serious election irregularities there".?

"A massive fight at the Jashari compound led to the deaths of 60 KLA and supporters in the compound".? The whole article reads as if it came directly from a pamphlet writen by the government of Serbia. This will have to change, not just in tone but in substance..Ferick 17:36, 30 May 2006 (UTC)

60 KLA and supporters? I thought that most of the dead in that massacre were members of the family of Jashari family, exclude 4 adults, who were armed. This is one of the most ridiculous statements this article holds. ilir_pz 20:34, 30 May 2006 (UTC)

This article holds more then one ridiculous statements.The whole thing is ridiculous!Ferick 02:26, 31 May 2006 (UTC)

Ferick, not the whole thing is ridiculous, try to check it more carefully. There are facts that are represented here, and with a little more effort from all of us they can be improved significantly. Your constructive help is appreciated. ilir_pz 13:00, 31 May 2006 (UTC)

The tone of the article is, so to speak, Serb-Friendly. Ferick 13:32, 31 May 2006 (UTC)

Ferick, could you please highlight what parts of the text/article are "Serb friendly".Osli73 11:02, 9 June 2006 (UTC)

"mujahideen"

wheres your proof of mujahideen in kosovo, an article about bosnia, how stupid is that, there was no mujahideen in kosovo

Not again this nonsence. What is the relation of Bosnian mujahedins with KLA and Kosovo?? Someone remove the propaganda from the sources and clean up the whole article.

"Trepca mine"

I believe I read that there is no evidence of bodies being disposes of in the mine. Can anyone verify?

I removed a sentence claiming thousands of bodies were disposed of in the Trepca mine, and a source following the sentence, because when I clicked on the source, it did not claim anything of that nature. Edrigu 21:53, 10 June 2007 (UTC)

"Task Force Hawk"

There is only a small reference to Task Force Hawk in the Bombing campaign but not even by name.

The battalion secured Apache Attack helicopter refueling sites and a small team forward deployed to the Albania/Kosovo border to identify targets for Allied/NATO airstrikes.

Task Force Hawk was a battlion of Apaches with support unit as well as infantry, armor, field artillary, MP, and other units. I believe their was a Frontline special on Task Force Hawk a few years ago but I haven't see it.

Sam D Ware 16:21, 15 November 2006 (UTC)

"...or dumped in the Danube."

Is there any person so dumb that he could believe it? Human body is not so etherial that it could dissolve in the water. Please, use your common sense.

EDIT BY GUEST:

CIA and the British Intelligence have found bodies in the water.

Casualty numbers

The Bosnian War article has a good section on casualties (both civilian and military) for the conflict as a whole and for the different sides. Is there any such information for the Kosovo War? I see links to all kinds of sources regarding deaths from NATO bombing but nothing on deaths from the war on the ground. Is there a source for the 10,000 killed Albanians? Is there any source at all for the number of killed Serbs? Roma and other?

It think it would be nice to get a nice comprehensive table of estimated and confirmed casualties. Osli73 23:20, 31 May 2006 (UTC)


Is there anyone who has any sources on the number of civilians and military killed in the ground war in Kosovo? I haven't been able to find anything other than the 10,000 estimate, and even for that figure there is no information about how it was calculated, how many are military and civilian, how many are Serbs, Albanians and others. Anyone? Osli73 11:07, 9 June 2006 (UTC)

That is difficult to do at this stage, Osli73, because there are many still missing, and their families would not like to declare them as killed before any confirmed source says that. I will look into some confirmed numbers as of now, and will bring you some sources to look at. Until then, ilir_pz 11:17, 9 June 2006 (UTC)


Just a quick web search found the following articles/discussions of the numbers killed. I don't know how good the sources are but most seem to say the following:

  • approx. 2,000 persons (civilians and military) were killed prior to the NATO bombardment
  • approx. 500 civilians killed by NATO bombing 'mistakes'
  • perhaps another 1,000 civilians killed in Serbia as 'collateral damage'
  • after the war most mention a figure of up to 10,000 persons killed
  • some mention a total figure of approx. 3,000 persons killed.

The 'sources' I found were:

Osli73 11:34, 9 June 2006 (UTC)

Playing with numbers of the dead is typical of politicians, so I would not like to speculate with such sensitive data. According to some statistics there are (still) about 1500 Albanians missing, so I am not sure where that number fits. I do not thinkg NATO bombing mistakes caused that many casualties. Those numbers have been manipulated with by the Yugoslav military and police for reasons that might be familiar to you as well. I am sure that other number of "collateral damages" is not accurate as well. this HRW article has also some contradicting numbers. On the other hand, this BBC article says that ICTY got reports of 11,000 people killed, but not all were confirmed. Not sure myself. ilir_pz 11:48, 9 June 2006 (UTC)
To give you an answe to your question I will quote the last article I gave above "How much higher is the final death toll likely to be? It is not possible to make any accurate estimates on the basis of what has been found so far because some of the mass graves yet to be opened up may contain many more - or many fewer - bodies than those exhumed so far. Besides, the ICTY says the investigators have found evidence of tampering with the graves, including the burning or apparent removal of the victims' remains." ilir_pz 11:50, 9 June 2006 (UTC)


Ilir, I've found a couple of sources which might be of some help:

I think these sources could be used to improve the article.

Some more sources which could be useful:

Osli73 08:55, 12 June 2006 (UTC)

Links

First of all back then I think those people called themselves Yugoslavs, not Serbs, so let's put these things into a historical perspective. Second of all, if links are dubious in nature we can always post that it's dubious, but both sides must be heard. I am veteran of the Iraq war and I am sick of all the damn politicians and all the BS out there, way too many innocent died during Nato attacks and during "Iraqi Freedom" operation, remember the first casualty in war is the truth, I am also a historian and I was the first one to find out about NATO casualties, it was not here before, the ah-64 chopper, may 5th, wow there are so many mistakes, but I am not going to dwell into ethnic bs who is right or wrong, everybody is right or wrong to a certain point and I have no time for these games. However, certain things need correcting and certain web sites must be available on the main page. E.g. http://www.aeronautics.ru/natodown.htm As far as you Mieciu VANDAL Kapusta go... It was shot down but NATO and its forces never wanted to admit to it, would you ? They wanted to show how powerful they are. If a plane explodes in the air and there is a ball of fire, trust me, it was shot down... Now... these sites might be dubious or not neutral, but there is lot of info here we need to go over...

http://www.aeronautics.ru/nws001/crashes01.htm


Sorry to be pedantic, but I'm pretty sure that Serbs always called themselves Serbs, in much the same way as Scottish people would refer to themselves as Scottish, rather that British. Davu.leon 14:30, 29 August 2006 (UTC)

SOLDIER KILLED BY MINE EIGHTH US CASUALITY IN KOSOVO WASHINGTON, DEC 16 (KUNA) -- A 26-YEAR-OLD U.S. ARMY SOLDIER WHO WAS FATALLY INJURED BY A LAND MINE LAST NIGHT WAS THE EIGHTH AMERICAN CASUALITY IN KOSOVO, THE PENTAGON SAID ON THURSDAY. PENTAGON SPOKESMAN KENNETH BACON SAID THE VICTIM, STAFF SERGEANT JOSEPH E. SUPONCIC, DIED ON THURSDAY AT A MILITARY BASE HOSPITAL FROM HIS INJURIES. BACON SAID THAT THE SERGEANT, WHO WAS A MEMBER OF U.S. SPECIAL FORCES, WAS RIDING IN AN ARMORED HUMVEE WHEN THE ACCIDENT HAPPENED. HE SAID THE DRIVER OF THE VEHICLE WAS TREATED AND RELEASED. "THEY WERE DRIVING ALONG A ROAD THAT WAS THOUGHT TO HAVE BEEN CLEARED OF LAND MINES, BUT THIS IS AN AREA WHERE THERE ARE MANY LAND MINES," BACON SAID. "IT IS OBVIOUSLY A TRAGIC LOSS FOR HIS FAMILY," HE SAID. BACON SAID THE HUMVEE HIT THE MINE IN THE RUSSIAN SECTION OF THE AMERICAN SECTOR NEAR A TOWN CALLED KAMENICA. THE PENTAGON SPOKESMAN SAID THAT SEVERAL AMERICANS HAVE DIED IN TRAFFIC ACCIDENTS IN THE WAR-TORN YUGOSLAV PROVINCE. ONE SOLDIER WAS ELECTROCUTED, HE SAID. BACON ADDED THAT TWO OTHERS WERE SHOT, BUT THEIR DEATHS MAY HAVE BEEN POSSIBLE SUICIDES. THE SHOOTINGS ARE STILL UNDER INVESTIGATION, HE SAID. THERE HAVE BEEN NO AMERICAN CASUALTIES RELATED TO COMBAT IN KOSOVO. (PICK UP PREVIOUS) JF.AJ KUNA 162317 Dec 99NNNN

http://www.kuna.net.kw/NewsAgenciesPublicSite/ArticleDetails.aspx?Language=en&id=1047762

Why does the article say 2 non-combat deaths? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 208.24.252.14 (talk) 06:40, 25 February 2008 (UTC)

Good pages

You said these pages are not working, may be your browser from your country can not access them...

This links seems to be working today. WHO said AH-64 exploaded? Who and how claimed to shot it down? How far is Kosovo from Tirana?

The article says that the crash will not postpone deployment of apache's to the crisis area. But how many of them were EVER deployed to combat? The answer is NONE! It was estimated that there would be huge losses if the helicopters were engaged. So, if anyone knows that even a single one was sent to war, please write. 89.216.173.210 01:19, 2 December 2006 (UTC)

This link is not only non neutral the picture placed there it is offencive. Can't you get a better link?

~:This event did not happen during the Kosovo war. It happened after the war so the place of this link is somewhere else. Mieciu K 19:51, 16 June 2006 (UTC)

The link clearly indicates the casualty of the conflict.

The title of this article is Kosovo War. The Kosovo war ended on June 11, 1999. These people died after June 11, 1999? And by the way Who said AH-64 exploaded? Who and how claimed to shot it down? How far is Kosovo from Tirana? Mieciu K 20:55, 16 June 2006 (UTC)

Nie, kosovo war ended on june 11 and you had it until 10th all the time. The chopper exploded after it was hit, this was top of the line chopper, they do not malfunction and explode in the air out of the blue, rozumiesz?

Who apart from you claims the AH-64 exploaded? Are the guys who supposedly shot it down shy or something because the guys who shot down the F117 aren't shy and probably even got some medals for this achievement. Read this article Wikipedia:References and be kind enough to replay to my questions (in english). Who apart from you says the war ended on 11 July? Mieciu K 20:38, 17 June 2006 (UTC)

Reply

You are a complete idiot, FOR 2 YEARS THE END OF WAR ON THIS SITE WAS JUNE 10th, so I changed it to June 11th, stop putting words into my mouth dude, it seems to me you are part of nato and it seems you were there... I am not going to argue with you forever. I made discoveries not you, you want to revert, fine, I will be back to revert it to the appropriate position. What do you know about army and war strategy and procedure, nic, nothing. It was nato's strategy not to admit to anything to look invincible, this was shot down, search and look better, I explained already and it was 80 kilometers from Tirana, that means close to the border, Yugo forces were inside Albania, in order to stop KLA from entering and stopping them before it was too late. This is what it is, like it or not. And I dont care about f117.Did I mention that?

Do you call your parents "complete idiot"s if not why? Maybe because this phrase is considered an insult and we do not use insults on wikipedia it seems you are unfamiliar with the Rules of Wikipedia, if you put in content without any references it is considered vandalism. Why won't you answer my questions (which can be seen above)? Mieciu K 08:26, 18 June 2006 (UTC)
Let me show you how the Serb viewpoint should look like. "According to ............. (+ serbian goverment source not some personal website/blog) the AH-64 was shot down by ............ (name of the unit) using an .......... (what did they use?) at ......... (time/place) as a result the helicopter ........ (what happened to the AH-64). What happened to the Yugoslav unit afterwards? Did they get any medals?" By the way commandoes do not carry anti-aircraft weapons, they relay on stealth, camuflage and luck instead. Even if they did it would be max. 1 MANPADS missile per 10 soldiers (they are heay and weight over 10kg each). Mieciu K 18:20, 18 June 2006 (UTC)

You are a confused person, because you are reverting what is given and explained, as you are doing with your own Katyn in Poland, calling you idiot is not vandalism because you are disrespecting other people's time, period, I told you 10 times I do not have time to explain you self evident truth, besides, I did not mention serbs claim, and assuming a serb claimed it crashed or not, how do we know he is neutral... I SAID AGAIN FOR THE FINAL TIME... I MENTIONED WHAT BOTH SIDES CLAIM THEY DID IT, AND of course on serbian sides they will claim they bombed it Mr. hypocrite, but I am not including their side because it's obvious they will report what they think and nato will report what they think, so think straight for a moment...

  • Can you write that again? And this time use english. Mieciu K 22:00, 20 June 2006 (UTC)

Total Dead

If somebody can check how many soldiers Yugos lost, according to my friend who is an analyst for CIA headquarters he claims Yugos reported between 560-600, but not 1000 and that was verified, I do not have time to search for that and then get reverted, at any rate, there were 3000 dead civilians across the land, but I am not sure if that included albanians killed by nato bombs or clusters.

A "book of remembrance" was released by the Yugoslav authorities, listing every last death. It lists 169 dead soldiers during the 80 day bombing campaign. This figure must be accurate, because if someone wasn't listed in this book his family would wonder why, so it's very unlikely they could be hiding losses. Of course, any paramilitary losses or foreign volunteers would not be included in that figure. Edrigu 16:30, 9 April 2007 (UTC)


I had relatives in the Yugoslav military at the time. Losses were light because they spent most of their time hiding in the mountains. Barracks that were bombed had been vacated long before. Also, my uncle flew a MEDICAL helicopter with a Red Cross emblem and was shot down by a NATO warplane. Fortunately, he survived. How's that for following the Geneva Convention? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 128.227.69.56 (talk) 21:27, 12 February 2008 (UTC)

Mieciu problem

Every time I've tried to explain this guy can not and does not want to cooperate and it seems to me, this guy is not neutral in any way. The above is a very good explanation,due to my time constraint... I can not write 10 paragraphs every day, in reply, he simply replied in a very rude and ignorant way... can I say that in English ? If he can say it in Polish, it will make some sense, so far, he has been vandalizing this page and he should be stopped asap.

I don't think you have read any one of those articles. Mieciu K 22:35, 20 June 2006 (UTC)

Yes I read them and you must learn from them, because above you told me I should write in English, clearly shows you lack of ethics, values, standards, understanding and so much, your reversals have no meanint and they are clearly not neutral and you keep on inventing new stories every time I revert it or even correct it... but when I ask about other topics, you do not have a clue... so, learn everything from the beginning, here's a thought, go back to kindergarten or ask your parents to reteach you manners. I said my peace, you can say what you want, hey I can give you 10 more links on the above, still, that does not help the situation, I have a feeling you were one of those nato forces? Your country was involved.

  • Than why are you spreading misinformation? how many people can fly in one AH-64 helicopter? And why are you saying the war ended on 11th July? Nato stopped bombing Serbia on July 10th and that's when Operation Allied Force ended. Mieciu K 23:15, 20 June 2006 (UTC)

==Hmmm... this guy is a complete mess, again now he tells us the bombing ended on July 10th, this man is sick.

Correction, calling you sick after you can listen to a raeson is not an argument (true enough) but I am only stressing the point that this is true, you are a sick man.

(From Wikipedia:No personal attacks), "Specific examples of personal attacks include but are not limited to:
  • Accusatory comments such as "Bob is a troll", or "Jane is a bad editor" can be considered personal attacks if said repeatedly, in bad faith, or with sufficient venom.
  • Negative personal comments and "I'm better than you" attacks, such as "You have no life."

What you are doing (calling me a sick man) has a name... its called trolling. And of course it is also rude. Mieciu K 23:04, 22 June 2006 (UTC) http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qn4158/is_20010823/ai_n14418706 - 70 Kfor soldiers dead from 1999-2001 —Preceding unsigned comment added by 208.24.252.14 (talk) 06:33, 25 February 2008 (UTC)

Protected

The page has now been protected to force all involved parties to use the talk page to resolve disputes, rather than furthering this disruptive edit war. Once you have reached an agreement and protection is no longer necessary, please let me know or request unprotection. Thanks. AmiDaniel (talk) 01:57, 21 June 2006 (UTC)

Problems with Kosovo war article

This confused individual has been putting words into my mouth and into others, first he claims war ended on July 11th, then he removes all other info, you have to leave it like it was when Chopper 64 was shot down and 2 american servicemen killed, I never said they were shot down but I gave my best and most accurate assumption what might have happened SINCE NATO NEVER CONFIRMED IT OR DENIED, and as time went by they just did not want tot alk about, what does that tell you? It's time Mieciu K is blocked forever from wikipedia, since his country, poland, was part of nato attacks and he wants to look invincible. So it's time you unprotect it, remember this guy is going out of normal conversaion and he uses non-sense logic, comparing other things to God knows what and then putting words into my mouth, clearly very ignorant, when he replies like... Speak English and when I ask about other things to be looked at, he can never answer because he just does not know it. As you can see, the best version is in the link below. Let's have this done right without vandals like Mieciu. He has time for these games and I am sure his answer will make sense but only to a point. Again, both versions must be explained, what might have happened.

As you can see in his answers above, there will be no agreement with this confused individual

My answer: (About the AH64 crash) "This was a training mission - I want to insist on that - there is no indication of any hostile activity. This accident underscores the great risk that is shouldered by all the men and women associated with operation Allied Force, we salute all of them and our thoughts at the moment are naturally, as you would expect, with the families of the two pilots who lost their lives last night".By Jamie Shea, NATO Spokesman [2].

I do my best to follow these rules and guidelines:

Correct day

The bombing stopped on June 10th, but the war came to an end on June 11th, let's get this straight.

  • On June 10 1999 Slobodan Milošević agrees to withdraw Serbian forces from Kosovo (a de facto capitulation), and Nato stopped bombing Serbia. Why do you think the war came to end end on the 11th? What happened on that day? Mieciu K 12:23, 22 June 2006 (UTC)

It was on that day that both NATO and Milosevic declared the end of war, just because bombing stopped does not mean that many other secret operations were over. http://select.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=FA0A1FFB3C5C0C728DDDAF0894D1494D81&n=Top%2fReference%2fTimes%20Topics%2fPeople%2fS%2fSolana%2c%20Javier Just because bombing on Warsaw in September 1939 stopped, that did not mean the war was over, remember the 63 days uprising in Warsaw, hell on earth in Aug 1944, still, was that the end of war? Just because you find something on google or it's popular opinioN DOES NOT MEAN IT'S TRUE.

  • This talk page is about the "Kosovo war" so let's leave other the Bombing of Warsaw during the IIWW out of it. Interesting link but it's second-hand infotrmation (paper newspapers usually comment things that happened the day before) this link is better:

"On 10 June 1999, after an air campaign lasting seventy-seven days, NATO Secretary General Javier Solana announced that he had instructed General Wesley Clark, Supreme Allied Commander Europe, temporarily to suspend NATO's air operations against Yugoslavia. This decision was taken after consultations with the North Atlantic Council and confirmation from General Clark that the full withdrawal of Yugoslav forces from Kosovo had begun. The withdrawal was in accordance with a Military-Technical Agreement concluded between NATO and the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia on the evening of 9 June. The agreement was signed by Lt. General Sir Michael Jackson, on behalf of NATO, and by Colonel General Svetozar Marjanovic of the Yugoslav Army and Lieutenant General Obrad Stevanovic of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, on behalf of the Governments of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia and Republic of Serbia. The withdrawal was also consistent with the agreement between the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia and the European Union and Russian special envoys, President Ahtisaari of Finland and Mr. Victor Chernomyrdin, former Prime Minister of Russia, reached on 3 June." So in conclusion an agreement was reached on the 9th, combat stopped on the 10th, so (currently) I do not see areason why we should say that the war ended on the 11th. Any more arguments/links top support your theory? I looked thrue serbian govermrnt websites (in english and serbian) but I was unable to find any info on the day that the war ended according to Yugoslavia, or about shooting down an AH-64 on May the 5th 1999. Mieciu K 23:04, 22 June 2006 (UTC)

Argue as much as you want to

Did you just say go on serbian government website, they talk about their life, things that happened today, not about 1999 tragedy, you are a vandal and this is true. http://www.balkan-archive.org.yu/kosovo_crisis/nato/ Sites like this claim, prooven or not it was shot down, but I already explained that, you are beating around the bush again and again and again and repeating same things but in a different manner and way... Ok, war ended on June 11th and bombing is something else, it's obvious you do not understand anything.


  • Why are you lying? The website that you have shown me contains the following information:

"BELGRADE, Yugoslavia (AP) - Two American Apache crew members were killed during a training mission Wednesday when their helicopter crashed in Albania, the U.S. European Command said. The deaths were the first NATO casualties in the air campaign against Yugoslavia. The command said there were no initial indications of hostile fire in the crash, 47 miles northeast of the Albanian capital of Tirana, and the cause of the crash was not immediately known. The names of the two crewmen were not released pending notification of next of kin. The crash was the second time an Apache helicopter has gone down during a training mission in Albania. The first copter crashed April 26 as NATO prepared to put the U.S. attack helicopters into action against Serb forces in Kosovo. Its crewmen escaped with cuts and bruises. See http://www.infobeat.com/stories/cgi/story.cgi?id=2559431157-01d" And of course the 1999 Kosovo war was a tragedy, a tragedy caused by the stupidity of a dictator and his-half blind serbian nationalist friends who started a war (to keep in power) that was lost long before it started. You can mock my wikipedia user name but out of the two of us at least I have the courage to log in and sign my posts. What's wrong with you that you don't want to log in and sign your comments the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia is chasing you or something? Mieciu K 19:35, 23 June 2006 (UTC)

You are a criminal

First of all, I am an american, born and raised in Indiana, I lived in croatia 4 years when I was studying, you are a vandal and a criminal, nothing but garbage, put words in my mouth I AM A HISTORIAN WITH A DEGREE IN HISTORY, you are nothing, I am not pro or a con against what happened in the war, my stuff was neutral, the above attack clearly shows your one sided story, it clearly shows you are part of nato animals who killed over 3000 civilians, almost half of those albanians, those they supposedly came to protect, ok, if you have the courage, give me your full freaking name and address in poland, so I can visit you one of these days, you are not being objective or neutral with pure garbage above. Nothing but vandalism and hate and false attacks and then some...—Preceding unsigned comment added by 66.99.2.90 (talk)

That is enough. There have been very unconstructive statements made here - by both parties - and it's not helping to improve this article. Please take this discussion elsewhere or, better yet, step back and cool off for a few days. Kafziel 20:50, 23 June 2006 (UTC)

You tell him that, he is not doing anything about it and article is wrong, period, i simply asked him if he has courage to talk about it and he does not do anything about it, i am historian and i know what i am saying, ok...

Telling everyone you're an historian holds no weight on the Internet. You can't prove it any more than I can prove I'm the President of the United States. In any event, it doesn't give you the right to threaten others, or to post controversial information without proper citations. Kafziel 20:55, 23 June 2006 (UTC)
"I am a criminal"? Since I am a lawyer please tell me which laws have I broken? And are you threatening me? Why do you want to visit my house? Since I served time in a Polish elite reconissance unit of the 1st Warsaw Armoured Brigade from Wesoła, Poland your physical threats don't bother me. Mieciu K 21:11, 23 June 2006 (UTC)

ANSWER GIVEN

First of all, in my reply above i say... "I simply asked him if he has courage to talk" now if that is a threat of any kind, including physical...you people need to include that in the new webster dictionary. And the above statement "I served in a Polish Elite unit" Tells me that this person is biased to neutrality WHICH I HAVE BEEN TRYING TO ESTABLISH HERE FROM THE VERY BEGINNING. His intentions and slick lawyer talk (prooving guilty before even going to court or assuming innocence) clearly indicates is objectivity towards NATO side.

Citations

Read my replies, read how neutral they could be, Kafziel you are not doing a good job as an administrator, when I tell you war was over on June 11th, legally, that's when it was ended,t he bombing can stop On May 11th, that does not mean it's over. Your statements about me being the president... It also makes no sense because if I were the president I would not bother wasting my time (as I have already done so, a lot) here, talking to people who do not grasp the point citation or not and it's not about citations. But about truth. Attacking me like Mieciu did is vandalistic behavior, putting words into my mouth, not to mention claiming July 11th as the end of war (above) and creating his side of events. Great, keep your own dates!

NATO Losses

Perhaps when this article is unlocked, the correct NATO losses could be put in. (46 Aircrafts, 6 helicopters, 8 unmanned aircraft, 182 cruise missles). [3]

  • "The following are the official NATO losses data released by the Press Service of the Yugoslavian army:" This document is supposedly based on an official Yugoslavian army document, and where is the original document? Where, when by who was it published and what was the name of official document? Mieciu K 19:06, 29 June 2006 (UTC)
With all due respect, a cruise missile isn't a loss of an aircraft; it's a round expended. The figure of 46 aircraft and 6 helos seems high; as for the 8 unmanned drones, well, that's why they fly them. Do you have a detailed list? Does it tally with the NATO list for engagements? GABaker 2020Z 29 June 2006.

I'd like in reference to the shooting down of the AH-64 a real source if at all possible? The claim which is copied and pasted almost word for word from a website doesn't really back up its sources, it looks like a bunch of hearsay.


NATO losses were underreported because the war was not popular in the general public in NATO countries. My relatives in Yugoslavia found pieces of aircraft litering their fields nearly everyday- they couldn't have been Yugoslav planes since the majority that were lost were destroyed on the ground. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 128.227.69.56 (talk) 21:30, 12 February 2008 (UTC)

Slight Bias

Hello. I dont know much about this war. New Zealand (my country) served in it, but primarily as Peace Keeping forces.

However this article seems to have a slight bias against serbs. Serbs, last time I checked, are a nationality/ethnicity and while some organizations of serbian nationality committed atrocities, by consistently referring to them as "the serbs" this article smeels definitely of racist POV.

Its like saying that "the Sunni's" are the cause of all the troubles in iraq, or hating "the American's" for the actions of their government. Is someone addressing this? It seems we need a historian from a definably neutral country, or at least a qualified international historian. Cheers, --Havoc8844 02:02, 28 June 2006 (UTC)

An interesting point. The question is, what do you refer to the Serbian forces involved in the conflict as? JNA/VJ? True, there were some involved, but many of the forces of the ground, Serbian paramilitaries, were recruited from ultra-nationalist and occasionaly criminal gangs. There were also Kosovar Serbian police, (out of uniform) who were supplied with weapons and vitual carte-blanche to carry out intimidation, robbery and murder. This is not by any means to say that all Serbs, inside of Kosovo or in Serbia proper, were in favour of the war, or even of Milosevic himself, and it is not an attempt to whitewash the activities of the UCK, some of whom were undoubtedly involved in actions of dubious legality and morality. The simple fact of the matter, however, is that this was a conflict between Serbs and Albanians, both vying for claim to a land which they have traditionally each regarded as their birthright, and sole possesion. The use of the term Serb here is therefore, while certainly distasteful to those Serbs who wish in no way to be connected to the policies and activities of the Milosevic government, nevertheless justifiable without immediate assumption of racist undertone. Davu.leon 14:52, 29 August 2006 (UTC)

I live in Serbia, and I must say I'm sure over half the nation was against Milosevic. There were protests virtually all of the time between 1996-2000, when he was forced to give up being president after a massive protest. The era of Milosevic is undoubtebly the WORST in Serbian history period. It's true that some Serbs killed Albanians (and some still do), but it's also true that some Albanians killed Serbs (which some still do). There are those guilty on both sides, not just Serbs or just Albanians. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 89.216.128.197 (talk) 19:43, 12 September 2007 (UTC)


Of course this article is biased. For example, there is little or no mention of contracting claims to the popular (and false) notion of "ethnic cleansing". Wikipedia, while I love it so, is primarily written from a Western cultural viewpoint. I live in the US, and what was reported in the media was predominantly anti-Serb and pro-Albanian, probably because it would have been bad form for NATO to side with a dictator (Slobodan Milosevic). The actions of radical Serbs like the paramilitary gangster "Arkan" and Bosnian Serb generals during the civil war have sullied the image of Serbs in the West. Your average citizen who casually follows the news will take the side of whatever is reported to him or her, in this case, anti-Serb. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 128.227.69.56 (talk) 21:20, 12 February 2008 (UTC)

Casualties

The casualties listed are fairly accurate, though I remember the official statement in Serbian press that listed around 700 (not 1.000) Yugoslav combat fatalities. I think the civilian number was 5.000 (either inflated or possibly true if Albanians were counted in my oppinion). 13 destroyed tanks (of which only 6 declared lost due to NATO bombing - the rest were not explained but were probably lost to the KLA). The article does not mention KLA losses, however, that probably exceeded 1.000 men. It should be noted that this was not merely a bombing campaign, but also a low-intensity ground war on Kosovo between the Yugoslav Army & Police and the KLA.

As for NATO losses - the article f-117 mentions an additional f-117 heavily damaged and written-off.

Veljko Stevanovich 2. 7. 2006. 01:30 UTC+1

Meaning of Veljko

So Veljko, how to contact you?Ok, how many planes did your people shot down, also the last official day of war was June 11th when both Milosevic and Nato claimed it's over, signed, sealed and delivered, right? Just because bombs stop falling, does not mean it's the end.

I studdied reports on the net about the air war from both sides and accepted only the ones with hard evidence as fact. So far the two aircraft filmmed are the only trully proven shot down. The second F-117 (a write-off after landing) was long rummored damaged during the bombing and now I beleve it was true since I found out that American sources acknowlaged it(actually at least three were rummored to have been damaged during the bombing apart from the one shot down - but I haven`t found any proofs for the others yet).
I do not entirely rule out that a few more (but only FEW) possibly fell in the neighbouring countries and were hushed-up, but until some proof is found it of course shouldn`t be included in encyclopedia.
Also I forgot to add - I`ve heared that there were several Yugoslav POWs to KLA (one of them a lieutenant if I recall correctly), probably (but I really dunno) many more KLA to Yugoslav army, and also three US soldiers with a Humvee. The soldiers were released, but the Humvee is still on open display in front of the Military Museum in Belgrade.
As for the contact - well, you`re communicating with me on this forum, are you not? (It would be nice of you to sign your name, or at least a nickname, though)
Veljko Stevanovich 9. August 2006. 17:40 UTC+1


Serbian Orthodox Church

When this page is unprotected, would someone please disabiguate "Serbian [[Orthodox Church]]" to "[[Serbian Orthodox Church]]"? Thanks! Disambiguation link repair - You can help! --Iggle 06:33, 16 July 2006 (UTC)

Unprotecting

As far as I can tell, there has been no substantive discussion on the differences over the past two weeks. I do notice however that the discussions further back than that were at times grossly uncivil. I request that the editors pursue their differences with civility in an attempt to find consensus. Attacks, such as acccusations of lying, "vandalistic behavior" and the like, are unacceptable and may have to be dealt with, if the participants cannot take a hint, by more pragmatic means.

I'm unprotecting this article. Happy editing. --Tony Sidaway 22:34, 16 July 2006 (UTC)

About NATO looses

I believe that both sides lie about their looses and that’s normal in war. Serbian side purposely exaggerated NATO looses from reasons of moral and NATO as usual never recognize their looses. It’s not the first time. As always the truth is somewhere in between.

As military freak I have some knowledge about modern warfare. In my opinion, Yugoslav air defense shot down maybe 10 NATO aircrafts and damaged between 40-60 aircrafts. The problem with confirming looses is that Yugoslav air space is very small and except in two cases (F-117 and F-16) the only proof of hits were peaces of various NATO aircrafts scattered all around the country. The planes that crashed outside Yugoslav territory were quickly recovered by NATO. I also believe that if you shot down cruise missile (which cost I don’t know, but surely millions of dollars), before it reaches its target, with Zastava 20 mm anti-aircraft cannon (which cost maybe few thousand dollars) that you can count that as loss.

The NATO looses could have been higher but it’s evident that Yugoslav air defense was hiding their positions and conserving ammunition and missile reserves in case of all out land invasion. In that case, NATO aircrafts would have to fly lower, in order to support advancing NATO troops and would automatically exposed their self to fire of Yugoslav air defense which was best equipped for covering heights to 3.000 m. --Marko M 07:18, 1 August 2006 (UTC)

  • As for the price of a cruise missile at that time I remmember some reliable press source writing that prices of different versions varied from 600.000 USD to 1 800 000 USD, but it can hardly be considered a victory, If a cruise missile was shot down all Nato had to do was send another, remember the difference between economies of Serbia and the USA. In my opinion it would be very hard if not immpossible to hide the figures of US planes shot down, after all it the US airforce has to answer to the congress (the budget), to the press, and there would be a lot of people (the ground crew, the pilots, the air traffic officials, the commanding officers, the guys at the spare parts depot) who sooner or later (after leaving the army) would leak the info to the press that on ______ day an _____ plane from the _______ unit did not come back to base. Mieciu K 09:12, 1 August 2006 (UTC)


The relative sizes of the Nato/US and Serbian economies is not a good yardstick by which to define what is a loss and what is not. Couldn't it just be easier to just say that xx cruise missiles are estimated to have been shot down by YU air defences?KarlXII 11:12, 1 August 2006 (UTC)

  • If we can get some reliable sources that would be a good idea, but not in the battlebox (unless the V-1 are already being added to the World War II battleboxes), maybe as a note at the bottom of the page? I presume that at least some of the cruise missiles were not shot down but crashed due to mechanical or programming errors, or simply crashed into obstacles (they fly at low altitiude) like power lines. I remember one cruise missile for some unknown reason "landed" in a country bordering Yugoslavia. Mieciu K 11:23, 1 August 2006 (UTC)

Mieciu, remember Rule number one. It's not my intention to start a long discussion. My opinion is based at first hand experience as someone who’s been bombed by NATO and on my conversation with my cousin who is colonel in Yugoslav Air Force. There won’t be reliably sources on this subject for many years. Only speculations. Look what happened with NATO report on military loses of Yugoslav army units during Kosovo War. --Marko M 13:01, 1 August 2006 (UTC)

I have nothing against you or official Yugoslavian Army sources (but it should be stated that these numbers come from official Yugoslavian Army sources). I have not been bombed by NATO but I have seen photographs and listened to first hand reports of how Belgrade looked after 1999. If you are Yugoslavian could you please write something about how the perception of the war changed after the fall of Milosevic, this topic interests me a lot and probably other people too. As for the NATO report on military loses of Yugoslav army units during Kosovo War, yes they got tricked which is suprising since all Warsaw Pact armies paid a lot of attention to camuflage and dummy targets so it should not be a suprise for the US airforce. perhaps they have learnt a valuable lesson for the future. Mieciu K 13:11, 1 August 2006 (UTC)

Well, I think, based on my opinion and people arround me who watch TV in Serbia and news press coverage, talk with people etc., that maybe Milosevic was bad to SERBIAN people, but NATO countries are, and going to be the worst scum in modern world history. They targeted our buildings, roads, factories and other, with a goal to destroy our nation. Numerous serbian lives were lost for the cause of The New World Order. And Serbian people will hate NATO countries as long as they will remember no matter who is on power in Serbia. 89.216.173.210 01:36, 2 December 2006 (UTC)

It would be just my personal opinion and if I understand correctly there is no place for personal opinions on Wikipedia. I’ll just say this. Two weeks ago, two American F-16, from US Air Force base at Aviano, landed on Batajnica military airport near Belgrade. They were welcomed by their colleagues, pilots of Yugoslav Air Force. If they, who fought against each other during the war, could find common language, it should be easy for us civilians to do the same. --Marko M 14:05, 1 August 2006 (UTC)

They took down the F 117 because when it opens its bomb bay doors it has a huge radar image ... "stealth" only is true when it is not bombing. 71.141.254.22 07:06, 5 April 2007 (UTC)Steve P.

"And Serbian people will hate NATO countries as long as they will remember no matter who is on power in Serbia."

You must be one of those who keeps writing grafitti "Nikad u NATO!" ("Never join NATO" should do as a translation)

What is "alleged" in a found mass graves?

Some alleged mass graves were also found in Serbia itself, on Yugoslav military bases or dumped in the Danube. Someone please explain this phrase to me, honestly. (Yes, I remember the exhumations - these graves contained children, and not so much as a military but on a "police" grounds.) --HanzoHattori 09:32, 24 August 2006 (UTC)

In all of the recent Balkan wars evidence of massacres has been covered up and most likely in some cases faked, by all sides involved. There have been many proven cases of Serb forces removing bodies and disguising execution sites, (they have even been caught on camera by the BBC), and even the Racak massacre in Kosovo, one of the main catalysts for UN intervention, has been called into question as a possible set up by the UCK. Serbian authorities would no doubt claim that any mass graves discovered by the UN were faked for the purposes of propaganda, and it is not entirely inconceivable that some of them may have been. (Though the contention that it is the UN doing the faking is, frankly, laughable, and a sure sign of hysteric mania. Rather we would assume that parties from the opposite side of the conflict would gather bodies from various areas of fighting, dig a ditch and throw them in.) Therefore, commentators who have become familiar with the region tend to qualify their statements with words such as 'alleged', essentially to cover their ass in a situation where the truth of the matter is unclear, and may never be clear. I can understand your finding such rhetoric distasteful, however it is best to remain as impartial as possible, especially when the atrocities commited make it easy to dehumanise the people, and by extension the nation ,that was involved, exactly the type of thinking that contributes to the continuing cycle of violence and revenge.

As a result, the Serb police did very little officially for the next two months...

...The Serbs concentrated on diplomacy. This is not true. On the 24th March, Serbian forces entered the village of Gllogjan and attemped to do to the Haradinaj family exactly what they had done to the Jasharis: wipe them out down to the last child. The Haradinajs were prepared, however, and managed to fight back and eventually escape after nighfall. Three young men were killed by Serbian forces, two shot in the head while attempting to evacuate the school, and one shot in the back while fleeing. This was one of the events that lead to the outbreak of war, although it didn't gain as much notoriety as the Jashari murders, mainly because in Gllogjan, the Serbs were defeated, thus leaving fewer martyrs to rally the population. Davu.leon 12:37, 5 September 2006 (UTC)

Sources, please!

Hello Mr. Sources - unfortunately my sources are original research, ie. interviewing people who were in Gllogjan on the day, including some who were used as human shields by Serb forces. Clearly this violates NOR, which is why I haven't amended the main article. Davu.leon 12:14, 13 September 2006 (UTC)

Although there is this: http://www.cdhrf.org/English/Weekly/CDHRFReprotNo-401E.pdf, or this 'In March 1998, in their efforts to eliminate the KLA, Serb troops launched an attack on the rebel compound at Glodjane, using with helicopter gunships and armoured personnel carriers.', from http://www.iwpr.net/?p=tri&s=f&o=235663&apc_state=henitri2005. Davu.leon 12:22, 13 September 2006 (UTC)

Self-Contradicting

The article is Self-Contradicting. NATO considered KLA terrorists - and they were never on the same side, despite having a common enemy in 1999. A similiar thing as USA and USSR in World War II. --HolyRomanEmperor 09:46, 9 September 2006 (UTC)

Hey HRE - wrong again. Getting to be quite a habit, isn't it ;) The only person on the American/NATO side who refered to the KLA as terrorists was Robert Gelbard. He was fired the next day. The KLA was offically REMOVED from the US State Dept.'s terrorist list in February 98, before NATO moved in. Moreover, the KLA fed information about the position of Serb troops to NATO during the bombing campaign. So, as I said, wrong again. Don't you actually know ANYTHING about the conflict? Davu.leon 09:27, 11 September 2006 (UTC)
Gelbard was fired the next day? I have tagged the removal of Gelbard as lacking a citation, and as making a synthesis by making it look as if the two facts were somewhat related without providing a reliable source that states so --Enric Naval (talk) 16:21, 31 May 2008 (UTC)

Pictures?

There is a great deal of text here, but little-nothing in pictures. Maps AT LEAST would be helpful. I myself am unsure exactly where "Slovic", "Albanian" and "Kosovo" locations are. Colonel Marksman 17:01, 19 September 2006 (UTC)

Who won

I am not touching it, since I do not know the details of the politics, but if there are any Yugos or independent reading this, who won really? Objectives of NATO:
1. Get referendum vote in 3 years 2. Have NATO Under control Kosovo... reality... after 70 days of bombing nato had no choice but to agree (since milosevic did not give up to withdraw the forces) there will be no referendum in 3 years and that Kosovo will be (at least on paper) part of Yugos. Also, UN has political administration of the province... that means politically Milosevic won and as usual he lost the media war, but he never cared much about it anyways.


I can tell you (I'm from Serbia) - NATO won. Today, Kosovo's gaining independence and NATO forces will be on it's territory and Milosevic is dead. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 89.216.128.197 (talk) 19:36, 12 September 2007 (UTC)

"Of Course."

This whole article needs re-written in prose and wikified.

One line about the tactics that countered NATO high-tech says "Dummy targets were used very extensively. Fake bridges, airfields and decoy planes and tanks were used. Tanks were made using old tires, plastic sheeting and logs, and sand cans and fuel set alight to mimic heat emissions. They fooled NATO pilots into bombing hundreds of such decoys. NATO claimed that Yugoslav air force had been decimated. In reality, as it turned out after the war, most Yugoslav planes and armored vehicles survived unscathed. However, NATO sources claim that this was due to operating procedures, which oblige troops, in this case aircrafts, to engage any and all targets however unlikely they were real. The targets needed only to look real to be shot at, if detected, of course."

What the hell is that? Common, where in wikipedia are there articles written to read like a conversation other than this line in bold? In fact, I'm almost creeped out by it: its like someone wrote that solely to say "hey, just make something look like a target, we can distract them that way."

Ridiculousness of NATO Loses

The article states that "NATO loss three helicopters, 32 unmanned air vehicles (UAVs) and five aircraft — all of them American, including the first stealth plane (a F-117 Fighter Bomber)" This statement is so untrue.

If they took down a stealth plane, and moreover I am certain that they took down more than one, why couldn't they take down weaker planes?Overhere 02:26, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

  • Weaker? The F-117 was the slowest and least agile combat plane in NATO's inventory in 1999. Since when are deaths and injuries "ridiculous"? This is your opinion and we do not add opinions to wikipedia articles, If you know about any reliable sources saying which Nato aircraft, when, where and how were shot down, please share those sources with us. Mieciu K 16:31, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

The F-117 weakest plane of NATO in 1999? You have a wild imagination. What in the world do you think the NATO had, F-007 Satellite bomber?

"Since when are deaths and injuries "ridiculous"?" I think you had trouble understanding what I was writing about because I have no clue as to what in my statement you are contradicting here.

And what exactly is my opinion here? And what do you consider reliable sources - the CIA, FBI? The reason that there aren't many Serbian sources is because although they are witten in the same alphabet, they are mostly in Serbian. If they weren't, I am sure that you would be the first one to post a comment on that site saying that they are biased and lying.Overhere 21:49, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

  • "Weakest plane" is not the kind of language an expert would use, I am just saying that the F-117 has many shortcomings like it's small speed and bad agility. If you have any official Serbian sources be so kind and present them. I and probably many other wikipedians have some knopwledge of the Cyrillic alphabet so i should be able to understand the text. But again this is an encyclopedia so we need precise and reliable information. And what makes you think that Nato could hide the loss of fighter jets costing millions of USD it would be difficult if not impossible while the US defence spendings are publicly known and checked by the congress. Mieciu K 22:36, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

F-117 speed and agility may be consider as minor defects now but in 1999 F-117 was one of the best plains, and it was a huge deal when he was shot down.

Like you pointed out, it would be a waste of time to argue over Serbian language sites because they can't be included on the site.

I still don't get what do you mean by reliable information - NATO, CIA, Fox news...?

"And what makes you think that NATO could hide..." If you examine what they did in wars then and what they do now, covering up their real money expenses from the people that work for them is nothing but a phone call away.Overhere 23:37, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

    • F-117 is overrated, when detected it is in serius danger from surface to air missiles.

No I did not, Serbian language sites can be added:
Wikipedia:Manual of Style (links) "Since this is the English Wikipedia, webpages in English are highly preferred. Linking to non-English pages may still be useful for readers in some cases:

  • when the website is the subject of the article
  • when linking to pages with maps, diagrams, photos, tables; explain the key terms with the link, so that people who do not know the language can still interpret them
  • when the webpage contains key information found on no English-language site"

Reliable information:Wikipedia:Reliable sources It is very hard to hide a loss of a modern fighter jet weighting many tons and costing tens of millions od USD, it can be possible in an undemoctratic country but not in the US. "the people that work for them" The republican senators worked for the democratic secretary of defence? Mieciu K 23:50, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

  • First of all, you don't have a clue as to what the USA can do, you seem to believe everything you hear at Cnn's America news at 6.

Reliable information:Wikipedia:Reliable sources- This doesn't answer anything. Who exactly do you consider a reliable source for this article?

And as for Serbian citation, here is a site that pooped up on the first google page: http://www.novosti.co.yu/code/navigate.php?Id=10&status=jedna&vest=82270&datum=2005-11-25

The article starts of with soldiers description of the night when they took down F-117. It also mentions that later on another f-117 was extremely damaged, and then later a B-2 was destroyed (which was confirmed by US). Due to the newly discovered weakness of f-117, which you also mentioned, a US deal to sell 30-50 f-117s was canceled. Overhere 00:37, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

  • Read the F-117 that one was shot ove Serbia was never denied, info on another one surfaced later, as for the B-2 shot down. Where are the photo's of the wreckage? And where is the US confirmation. Also these soldiers giving the interview did not shoot down those planes, the Serbian Army did, so try to find some official Serbian Army referencess. Mieciu K 01:06, 26 October 2006 (UTC)
  • B-2 didn't fall in Serbia, so the US had the access to the wreckage and they easily took all the remains. That B-2 was taken of the US list which means that he somehow just disappeared.

You honestly believe that the US is some honorable democrat.

And so far you kept avoiding to answer a single one of my questions.Overhere 02:44, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

  • The supposed "B-2" did fall in serbia [4] according to the "Freedom Fighters", so where are the pictures? "That B-2 was taken of the US list" that's interesting never heard of it, show a US military document as proof please, currently all 21 B-2's are accounted for. Us is a democracy - read the democracy article. Which question am I not answering? And by the way I am not anti-Serbian, I am just a sceptic and I do not like badly sourced conspiracy theories and propaganda. Mieciu K 11:50, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

My article stated that B-2 fell in “istocna Slavonija” so don’t try to turn things around.

First of all because you keep avoiding to answer my questions I will answer one of them for you - You believe that the only reliable sources are the once from NATO and the US (correct me if it’s not so). Therefore anything that I would give you in Serbian you would say "Well lets see a US military conformation".

If there is one thing that US has it’s the huge power over it’s media.

You claimed you "are not anti-Serbian", You sure are: First, you understand Serbian (and I am positive that you not Serbian) which means that you are either Croatian or Albanian.

Or Bosnian or Montenegrin or Slovakian or Polish or Russian, to name but a few who can reasonably understand the general ideas behind Serbian language. Even as an Irishman who learned a little Russian in school I can puzzle out some Serbian. Sorry to interrupt. Davu.leon 20:57, 26 October 2006 (UTC)
Not quite. Montenegrin is Serbian, while Bosnian is as close as it gets (I am technically Bosnian, but I always refer to myself as Serbian). Those languages may be close but you would need aditional knowledge to understand them.65.95.79.176 21:30, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

You’re like a Sunni trying to look neutral with his opinion about a Shiite. Second, you dismiss any Serbian reports if they weren’t confirmed by the NATO reports.

If you are such a skeptic why don’t you look into what the reasons for going into Iraq where, and just what the state is there now.

“I do not like badly sourced conspiracy theories and propaganda.” – I’ll give you a whole list of how bad a source the CIA is.

And because this is getting nowhere I’ll get to the point. The following is a conclusion from the article on Kosovo war and has not one of my statements. “NATO used F-117s, and way more powerful planes to bomb Serbia. During the bombing they killed thousands of people, while the Serbian army had survived in good order because the billions of dollars of technology which we know that can detect whether or not North Korea used a nuclear bomb or not, nevertheless could not distinguish between plastic and metal!?”

If you are going to turn of topic like you did before – don’t bother. Overhere 18:53, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

  • I am Polish and I learnt Russian at school so I have some knowledge of Serbian alfabet but almost non of Serbian language. Wikipedia is not about truth it is about verifiability so do not add information that cannot be verified to this article (Wikipedia:Verifiability). "you dismiss any Serbian reports if they weren’t confirmed by the NATO reports" no I don't there is a difference between official NATO information, and some Serbian unofficial newspaper reports and private websites. If you have Serbian military reports be so kind and present them, they wpuld make this article more interesting. Nato wanted to win this war and it won it with 0 combat losses. "During the bombing they killed thousands of people," sources please. If you want to disscus the Iraq war or any other war go elswhere Wikipedia is not an Internet chatroom. "If there is one thing that US has it’s the huge power over it’s media." you are wrong, read Freedom of speech in the United States Mieciu K 19:08, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

"Wikipedia is not about truth" OK???. When you put it that way I guess I'll drop most of my arguments. Nato obviously has more verifiability.

But you clearly don't have any clue about US. "democracy","Freedom of speech in the United States"-sounds very nice on paper.

Tell me what's wrong with my sentence above.“NATO used F-117s, and way more powerful planes to bomb..."Overhere 20:21, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

  • Because writing that a plane is "powerful" is unencyclopedic. The types of planes that took part in this campaign have already been mentioned. Mieciu K 20:24, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

Ok? I'll substitute "more advanced planes' for "more powerful planes"Overhere 20:32, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

Try something like 'during the war NATO utilised military hardware which was technologically far more advanced that that available to the Serbian VJ or MUP. The planes used included the F-117 stealth bomber, and.....' etc. Saying that there were 'way more powerful planes' sounds like the angry rant of a dissapointed child. This is an encyclopedia, not your personal blog. Your english is very good, but you need to be careful that your phrasing conforms to wikipedia rules. Davu.leon 21:10, 26 October 2006 (UTC)
I agree I was thinking about proposing the similar wording. Mieciu K 21:40, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

Alright, if I change it a bit and I "word it technically" nobody has any objections if I put it under the "Criticism of the Case for War"?Overhere 21:34, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

I don't think that is a good idea "Criticism of the Case for War" section is about law issues, not about military equipment exept for equipment that can be described as a weapon of mass destruction or in another way harmful to the civilian population. And Nato combat planes were not weapons themselves, they were weapon carriers. Mieciu K 21:40, 26 October 2006 (UTC)


Seeing that the section "Reaction to the war" criticizes NATO's methods, the following would fit better under that section.

"NATO's real targeting is questioned due to the following: During NATO's bombing campaign NATO used extremely advanced planes such as the F-117 Stealth fighter, and the B-2 bomber and highly precision missiles. During the campaign they killed five thousand Serbians (according to Serbian sources(if you want to mention the other number of casualty claims that's fine with me)), while the Serbian army had survived in good order. NATO claims that the reason for that is because most of the targets hit in Kosovo were decoys, such as tanks made out of plastic sheets with telegraph poles for gun barrels. This is highly controversial due to the fact that the NATO technology is so highly advanced, that they are able to detect whether or not North Korea conducted a nuclear test, while here they claim that they were unable to distinguish between plastic and metal."Overhere 01:45, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

  • Removed this paragraph from the article, this is not a newspaper where you can put your views (Wikipedia:Neutral point of view), add sources to all controvwercial statements. That this article is already badly referenced is not a reason to make it worse. Mieciu K 23:55, 28 October 2006 (UTC)

"your views","add sources" - You are either joking or you are an idiot.

What exactly is my view here?- all of this was mentioned somewhere else in the article so stop that "this is your view" and "add sources" crap.

If you don't give a reasonable reason as to why this is my pov then I am putting it back.Overhere 13:29, 29 October 2006 (UTC)

  • First don't call me names it's rude and against Wikipedia:Etiquette. Fine if it is not your original research than you should have no problem whatsoever referencing that paragraph like you should:

"NATO's real targeting is questioned[citation needed](by who?) due to the following: During NATO's bombing campaign NATO used extremely advanced planes(that's childish and unencyclopedic language) such as the F-117 Stealth fighter, and the B-2 bomber and highly precision missiles. During the campaign they killed five thousand Serbians[citation needed] (which Serbian sources?) (according to Serbian sources(if you want to mention the other number of casualty claims that's fine with me)), while the Serbian army had survived in good order[citation needed]. NATO claims that the reason for that is because most of the targets hit in Kosovo were decoys[citation needed], such as tanks made out of plastic sheets with telegraph poles for gun barrels. This is highly controversial due to the fact that the NATO technology is (is or was?) so highly(spot the redundant word) advanced, that they are able to detect whether or not North Korea conducted a nuclear test (??? is that an opinion of an expert or your own? what does ad 2006 nuclear test monitored by the United Nations have to do with ad 1999 detection of serbian tanks by NATO?), while here they claim[citation needed](who claims?) that they were unable to distinguish between plastic and metal (dummy targets are sometimes very advanced and inclued heat, infrared and electromagnetic emmiters, such inflatable targets cost sometimes thousands of dollars how can you be sure that the serbian decoys were made of plastic and metal?)."

  • What part of it's already in the article don't you understand?

Seeing that you didn't read the article I'll tell you where to look.

Wikipedia-Kosovo War-Consequences of the war-Civilian Casualties- "Yugoslavia claimed that NATO attacks caused between 1,200 and 5,700 civilian casualties." (that is the citation)

Wikipedia-Kosovo War-Military casualties and losses- "Despite the heavy bombardment, NATO was surprised to find afterwards that the Serbian armed forces had survived in such good order."(that is the citation)


Wikipedia-Kosovo War-Military casualties and losses- "Most of the targets hit in Kosovo were decoys"(that is the citation)


Wikipedia-Kosovo War-Military casualties and losses- "decoys, such as tanks made out of plastic sheets with telegraph poles for gun barrels."(that is the citation)


(Korean test)- (not my opinion - read the news sometimes) - Google-news- US confirms north korea (you get around thousand articles)

If US is able "to use highly sensitive satellite technology to detect radioactivity in North Korean air" - they should be able to detect and distinguish plastic tanks and telegraph poles from real tanks. (Nuclear blasts are detected measuring radiation levels are Serbian tanks radioactive?Mieciu K 19:08, 29 October 2006 (UTC))

If you think that some of my wording is nonencyclopedic or nonexpert - by all means change those words.Overhere 17:35, 29 October 2006 (UTC)

  • That entire paragraph was in my opinion unencyclopedic as it does not add any new information to the article, I thought about it for many hours before I decided to remove it entirely. Mieciu K 19:08, 29 October 2006 (UTC)
    • "Editors adding new material to an article should cite a reliable source, or it may be challenged or removed by any editor. (Wikipedia:Verifiability) and I am using that right. Wikipedia itself as a source is not reliable. Mieciu K 19:08, 29 October 2006 (UTC)

First of all, if you are so big on sources why isn't it that you deleted the above information from the article where I got it from. You are basically saying that the information is ok here but not true there? If you deleted my statement because it's untrue why don't you delete the same statements from the rest of the article?

  • Because you have to start somwhere, I started from your unsourced statements. And I don't have much time, and I am sick and tired of being called names or even threatened by pro-serbian editors, this is why I do not add contenet to the Kosovo War article. Mieciu K 22:57, 29 October 2006 (UTC)

"Wikipedia itself as a source is not reliable", "Wikipedia is not about truth" - Well then why do you keep pushing for some "expert encyclopedic terms".~

  • Because I don't want this article to get worse than it is already.Mieciu K 22:57, 29 October 2006 (UTC)

You are welcome to change the wording to "your terms"(whatever they are)

And unless you have a good reason as to the falseness of my paragraph, i am adding it back. Otherwise you are justifying to delete most of that article. I could easily use your citation terms for 3/4 of the article-including the places from where I got my statements. Overhere 21:49, 29 October 2006 (UTC)

    • "Editors adding new material to an article should cite a reliable source, or it may be challenged or removed by any editor. (Wikipedia:Verifiability) is this serious enough? Mieciu K 22:57, 29 October 2006 (UTC)

This is getting ridiculous. I reread your arguments, and they are laughable (all you wanna do is write something of topic and have the final word) so I'll stop this waste of time.Overhere 23:32, 29 October 2006 (UTC)

I see that AV8B Harrier is not listed among NATO losses, it crashed into Adriatic see due to technical reasons during training exercise, on may 2 1999 this was confirmed by NATO.Dualnature (talk) 18:19, 11 February 2008 (UTC)

—Preceding unsigned comment added by 91.148.99.29 (talk) 23:37, 10 February 2008 (UTC)

Infobox and Pictures

I updated the infobox as much as I could but it still needs a picture, a expanded casus belli, and more accurate casultie numbers. --Gw099 01:30, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

The infobox is a mess.

Firstly, the casus belli is wrong - NATO entered the war because of the massive ethnic cleansing conducted by the Serbian Government - over 800,000 Albanian Kosovars had been displaced by the end of the bombing campaign. This needs to be reflected here.

Secondly, citing Ibrahim Rugova as a commander of the UCK is outrageous. Rugova was in no way involved with the KLA, in fact he at first claimed that they were an invention of Serbia intended to dicredit him. It would be more correct to have some of the KLA general staff, although they themselves had no real Command authority over most of the operational zones - so citing them as Commanders is disingenuous. Perhaps we should simply to have the NATO commanders, as it is impossible to convey in a small space the complexity of heirarchy in the KLA, which was a village-by-village insurgency. The simple fact of the matter is that there was no real centralised command in the KLA, though it would be far better to name even Hashim Thaci or Agim Ceku than Rugova, as at least both of these people were at one point members of the KLA.

And as a side note, the war didn't start until 1998. Before then there was a low-level insurgency, with little open conflict and no full scale battles. Davu.leon 10:47, 30 October 2006 (UTC)

Please everybody involved calm down. Often 'leaders' are intended as political leaders, so the the only thing is it has to be consistant - political leaders or military leaders. Second let's not have an edit war over the infobox. Best way might be to do some drafting work here, on the talk page, get some consensus, and then put up what we can all agree on - and cite. 'Horseshoe', for example, is probably a great thing to mention, but (I don't know the sources) may have to be 'X reported that, ... blah blah' and then citing the actual newspaper article (or better, a scholary text) Let's try and work together on this - that's what collaberation of the fortnight is about. Cheers 210.54.239.45 20:55, 30 October 2006 (UTC)

I agree, operation Horseshoe is a great thing to mention - in the context of unsubstantiated Western claims that led to the war ;-) Also, "NATO entered the war because of the massive ethnic cleansing conducted by the Serbian Government - over 800,000 Albanian Kosovars had been displaced by the end of the bombing campaign." It's well documented that the massive outflow of people started after the bombing began - so how can it be the casus belli? // estavisti 21:34, 30 October 2006 (UTC)

The massive outflow started after the bombing yes, because international monitors who had been put there to report on the ongoing ethnic cleansing by the Serbs had to withdraw. That is not to say that many thousands had not already been displaced, merely that the Serbs stepped up their efforts once they thought they had nothing to lose by doing so. Ethnic cleansing of the ethnic Albanians by Serb forces WAS the casus belli for NATO, whether you like it or not. Davu.leon 10:27, 31 October 2006 (UTC)
Rugova was credited for not supporting the violent uprising as far as I can remember. Some sourcing on the reason for this intervention would be useful + sources. Any official documents from NATO available? Wandalstouring 22:03, 30 October 2006 (UTC)

I think the casus belli in the infobox is too black-and-white, following the NATO and KLA line. Both organisations are politically motivated, and the KLA's motivations are deeply questionable given its proven extensive links to organised crime across Europe. The Kosovo conflict was much more complicated than most of the Western media made it out to be, e.g.;

http://listserv.buffalo.edu/cgi-bin/wa?A2=ind0109&L=twatch-l&D=1&O=D&P=8700

KOSOVO ALBANIAN POLTICIAN GUNNED DOWN IN FRONT OF FAMILY

Pristina, Sep 3, 2001 -- (Agence France Presse) Attackers in Kosovo gunned down an ethnic Albanian politician in front of his family over the weekend, a United Nations spokesman told AFP on Monday.

Corin Ismaili, 47, whose party was reportedly loyal to former Yugoslav hardliner Slobodan Milosevic, died in hospital in Pristina after the attack at the hands of unknown assailants at his home in Gornje Godance, around 25 kilometers (15 miles) south of the regional capital, Andrea Angeli said.

Ismaili was secretary of the Democratic Initiative of Kosovo, the United Nations Mission in Kosovo (UNMIK) spokesman said. The Beta news agency said the party was loyal to Milosevic.

United Nations authorities -- who have administered the province since Belgrade's troops pulled out in June 1999 -- said they had found several cartridge cases from Kalashnikov assault rifles at the scene of the killing.

UN officials have launched an inquiry into the attack. 217.134.116.65 17:23, 1 November 2006 (UTC)

1. Serbian Government is not politically motivated? 2. Define, exactly, NATO and KLA political motivation. 3. "Proven extensive links..." With all due respect, this is utter nonsense. There are NO proven links between the KLA as an organisation and organised crime. Certain individuals may have been involved in both, but just because Marko Milosevic was a criminal doesn't mean we can claim that Serbia has proven extensive links to organised crime. 4. The western media are well aware of the complexity of the Kosovo conflict. See Tim Judah, Kosovo War and Revenge, or just about any other book published on the period. 5. Your news report from 2001 is bafflingly irrelevant. Plenty of Milosevic's former allies were gunned down in Serbia too - exactly what are you trying to prove here? 6. Why no username? Are you one of the Serb nationalists who was banned in the recent Arbitration? If not, please create a profile so people will be able to identify you in future. Davu.leon 09:59, 2 November 2006 (UTC)

The diocese is merely replicating a text from the New York Review of Books by Tim Judah, whom you yourself have used as a source. What's the problem? Do you ignore sources you don't like? Are you seriously suggesting the Serb Orthodox Church made up the article, or changed the text? If you want to verify it, feel free to pay for access to the article on the NY Review of Books website. // estavisti 14:49, 2 November 2006 (UTC)
Fine, having skimmed the article, I see one reference that states 'Certainly the KLA has taken money from the Kosovo Albanian mafia but this does not make the KLA, per se, a drug-smuggling organization'. So if you want to add that the KLA has recieved money from the Albanian mafia, fine, put it in, citing Tim Judah as a source. However, be sure you put it in the right place, perhaps on the KLA page, (I really don't see how it's relevant information in the sentence in which you inserted it,) and be sure to cite it as just ONE of the sources of KLA funding. Judah never suggests that this was the KLA's sole financial resource. Davu.leon 15:28, 2 November 2006 (UTC)

Casus

OK, I do not want to engage in an edit war, even when one person is blatantly pushing their POV, so I'll just let the article stay as it is, for now.

  1. How can an uprising by one section of Kosovo Albanian society that hasn't even resulted in independence be characterised as a "war of independence"? That's just as bad as the other guy's version which characterised it as a "secessionist war"? Pushing those phrases is pushing an implicitly biased point of view. On the other hand, the version I proposed ("KLA uprising against the Government of Yugoslavia") doesn't imply anything about the KLA, the Government of Yugoslavia, or the nature of the war. So why is it being removed?
  2. The casus belli was not the alleged "violation of ethnic Albanians' human rights by the Government of Serbia". The reason given for going to war was that ethnic cleansing and genocide was occurring - which was shown to be false. So, the NPOV way of presenting this is as "alleged ethnic cleansing".
  3. Was it a NATO victory? I don't think so. At Rambouillet (before the bombing), Yugoslavia was basically offered NATO military occupation of the whole country and an independence referendum in Kosovo after 3 years. At Kumanovo (which stopped the bombing), it was agreed that only Kosovo would be occupied, and there was no word on independence. So, after 78 days of bombing, the mightiest military alliance in history made concessions to one of the poorest states in Europe (at that time), that was only just recovering from the economically devastating trade embargo of the early 1990s. And that's a victory? Finally, characterising NATO troops as "peacekeepers" is POV. It may be a widely held POV, but it is POV nonetheless. The neutral way of describing military personnel is "troops". --estavisti 17:53, 4 November 2006 (UTC)

Nice to see that the article has been edited countless times since I posted this, with precisely ZERO replies to contribute to the debate. --estavisti 03:19, 6 November 2006 (UTC)

Apologies for the delay. On your first point, it was a war of independence, at least as Kosovo characterized it. Ethnic cleansing and some genocide did occur against ethnic Albanians in Kosovo (and against ethnic Serbs too). It was a smashing NATO victory. Kosovo is just months to a year or so away from independence. We would have never arrived at this political situation had NATO not prevailed.UberCryxic 19:50, 6 November 2006 (UTC)

No, not as Kosovo characterised it. As most of Kosovo's Albaians chracterised it. Either way, that's POV - to state one group's characterisation of the war as fact. "Some" genocide? Source? And how was it a NATo victory? You didn't answer my point about the Kumanovo agreement, that ended the bombing, being much more favourable to Serbia than the pre-bombing ultimatum offered at Rambouillet... And Kosovo's future status is still unclear. This whole year all the "reputable" sources were telling us it would be independent by the end of 2006. Now the resolution of the issue is being pushed back (by Kofi Annan himself), so that just shows how much we can trust those so-called "reputable" sources. Try reading something you disagree with. You might learn something... --estavisti 21:38, 6 November 2006 (UTC)


Civilian casualties

The section states that:

"The largest mass grave so far found is in Dragodan, an Albanian suburb of Priština; those bodies so far identified are of Gypsies and Albanians."

According to UNMIK this is not a "mass grave" and bodies have been of both Albanians, Serbs and Roma. In light of this I'm removing the sentence. If someone has a newer (official) source which says differently I am willing to accept that, of course.

Removing the "POV" and "verify" tags

The POV and Verify tags are only supposed to be temporary measures due to specific complaints. Knowing what these are would help in getting started on adressing them. If we don't have such a list of specific complaints, then we can't justify having the tags there.KarlXII 11:35, 28 November 2006 (UTC)

Can we remove the POV tag? The arbitration case has already been decided and closed and according to the history of the talk page here, there has been very little discussion regarding neutrality (in fact, very little regarding anything) for a while now.--WilliamThweatt 15:14, 22 January 2007 (UTC)

One british SAS killed

Source :

Encyclopédie des forces spéciales du monde, tome 2, Jean-Pierre Husson, Histoire & Collections, Paris, 2001, ISBN 2913903150, p. 95 :

Texte original in french :

Le sergent Robert Lyon, du 22nd SAS, trouva la mort durant un accrochage avec les forces serbes. Les autres membres de son équipe purent être exfiltré en Bosnie, où 2 d’entre eux, qui avaient été blessés avec lui furent soignés à l’hôpital de Siporo avant d’être rapatrié en Grande-Bretagne.

The sergeant Robert Lyon, of 22nd SAS, found death during a fixing with the Serb forces. The other members of its team could be ‘’exfiltré’’ in Bosnia, or 2 of them, which had been wounded with him were neat at the hospital of Siporo before being repatriates in Great Britain.


Can someone provide the revised rambouillet?

the article makes many claims about this but does not source the document, i have tried searching for it but only find the original rambouillet without any revision by the serbian side. does someone possibly have any access to this? full text would be preferable. thank you in advance


I've waited about a month for someone to post a link to this, and I will delete the following part of the article as there are no citations to prove this claim, despite the fact that it is all stated as fact: If the accords did not go far enough to fully satisfy the Albanians, they were much too radical for the Serbs, who responded by substituting a drastically revised text that even the Russians, traditional allies of the Serbs, found unacceptable. It sought to reopen the painstakingly negotiated political status of Kosovo and deleted all of the proposed implementation measures. Among many other changes in the proposed new version, it eliminated the entire chapter on humanitarian assistance and reconstruction, removed virtually all international oversight and dropped any mention of invoking "the will of the people [of Kosovo]" in determining the final status of the province. Even the word "peace" was deleted. The Serbian delegation must have known that the new version would never be accepted by the Albanians or the Contact Group. It was immediately apparent that Milošević had decided to call NATO's bluff, believing that the alliance would either not make good on its threat or would do no more than launch a few pinprick raids that could easily be absorbed. Perhaps most fundamentally, Milošević appears to have calculated that he had more to lose by making peace than waging war — although the KLA threat had not yet been eliminated, its defeat was nonetheless just a matter of time, to his mind, in the face of the far more powerful Serbian and Yugoslav security forces.

Assessment comment

The comment(s) below were originally left at Talk:Kosovo War/Comments, and are posted here for posterity. Following several discussions in past years, these subpages are now deprecated. The comments may be irrelevant or outdated; if so, please feel free to remove this section.

It's really outrageous that this article is being allowed to spread such untrue propaganda about the role Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) played in the war against murderous regime of Serbia in 1999. The article calls KLA a terrorist organization based on an obscure testimony of a disgruntled individual. The article makes ridiculous claims that NATO is an organization that support terrorist and mujahedeens. Please remove this type of propaganda or unblock the editing of this article so that other people can fight off Serbia lies.

Last edited at 18:58, 7 March 2008 (UTC). Substituted at 20:40, 3 May 2016 (UTC)

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