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Confession of U.S. pilot who bombed Serbian forces in Kosovo: They started using civilian vehicles

2024-03-24 20:18:45Kosova&Bota SHKRUAR NGA REDAKSIA VOX
Confession of U.S. pilot who bombed Serbian forces in Kosovo: They started using
Pilot Phil Haun

Twenty-five years ago, under the direction of the United States, NATO undertook the first large-scale air intervention to halt ethnic cleansing of the Albanian population by Serbian forces, after the failure of diplomatic efforts to stop the war in Kosovo.

The air campaign, which began on March 24, lasted 78 days and ended with the withdrawal of Serb forces from Kosovo and kosovo's deployment on an international protectorate for a decade until talks that led to its independence. Twenty-five years later, VOA brings back memories of an American pilot who bombed Serbian forces targets in Kosovo. Pilot Phil Haun, who returned to Kosovo to assess the impact of his attacks, told colleague Garentina Kraja that morally intervening in Kosovo was the right decision.

Pilot Phil Haun remembers in detail his first flight over Kosovo, 25 years ago, in the A-10 fighter jet.

His mission: striking Serbian military targets to save civilian populations and ethnic cleansing, which in 1999 had turned Kosovo into a death scope.

It was early April 1999, and NATO's success would depend not only on the fragile political unity of the Western alliance, which for the first time was undertook a military operation since the end of the Cold War, but also on the weather.

"It was the first mission. The sky was clear on the first days of April. We were flying over the western part of Kosovo. We saw some Serbian cars and it was the only time we saw Serbian military vehicles on the street. We hit them successfully. "After that, they started using civilian cars," he told VOA.

The Plain of Dukagjini, seen from the sky from the aircraft as part of 'Squad 81', was his first presentation with Kosovo. Several thousand kilometers down, Serbian forces were escalating attacks, after years of diplomatic efforts failed to convince Serbia not to expand the war in Kosovo.

During the weeks when Pilot Haun bombed military targets from the air, Serbian forces on the ground were driving about 1 million Albanians from Kosovo to Albania, Macedonia and Montenegro. With a scenario repeated throughout Kosovo, from Kumanovo to Peja, from Kruse e Madhe and Little to Izbicë and Meja, in 78 days, Serbian forces executed about 10,000 civilians, mostly men.

U.S. Attorney General: Did you think the decision to intervene was the right decision?

Pilot Phil Haun: "It's hard for me to say. I still work for the Department of Defense and I have to say that those are my views and do not reflect the positions of the Pentagon. I've been thinking about this a lot. From a moral point of view, it was the right decision, considering what was happening in Kosovo. I have been engaged in many conflicts, in Iraq, Bosnia, Afghanistan and Kosovo. In my opinion, using force is never the desired solution or to make you feel good. But I have to admit, what we did in the skies of Kosovo makes me feel very good about the use of military force."

He says nato's intervention in Kosovo has shaped it in different ways.

In one of the flights over Kosovo on May 1, 1999, as seen in this simulation carried out by a graphics studio, Haun's plane was hit by Serbian forces with a Russian surface-to-air missile. He made a forced landing in Skopje.

In 2010, pilot Haun returned to Kosovo - this time to see him from the ground and to see up close the impact of the attacks he had carried out.

"After the war there was a lot of discussion about the usefulness of the NATO force and I wanted to go see where I had hit and talk to the people there. Even in places where the bombs had caused damage, people in Kosovo were so sympathetic and constantly thanked me for NATO's commitment. I was impressed by how grateful they were... I went to Kosovo in the spring of 2010. I took along maps and identified what I considered good goal kicks, meaning I had shot targets where I thought I caused significant damage. And then what I considered to be potentially nasty attacks, where I worried about whether I'd caused unintended harm and had to figure out what those were. I was impressed by the human aspect. From heaven you don't have that feeling, of human life, you're up and you look down, just like you look out the window of an airplane, it's hard to see people. So seeing people and understanding what you've done has had a positive impact on the lives of others, that's the thread that connects that story. In the military college we learn that force is used to achieve political objectives and that force should never be used without a political goal. Today, where I look at Kosovo's independence and the political outcome, it helps me close this chapter of my life," said pilot Phil Haun.

Since NATO's intervention in Kosovo, Pilot Haun has conducted combat missions in Iraq and Afghanistan. The air campaign against military targets in the former Yugoslavia has left professional traces, becoming one of the main pillars of his academic engagement.

He continues to write and lecture on airpower in the security program at the renowned AMERICAN university MIT and the Rhode Island Naval Forces War College. The intervention in Kosovo is a concrete example that is studied and discussed with students. NATO's air intervention is considered a turning point and the lessons from it are valuable for the U.S. air force and overall war strategy for achieving political goals. /VOA


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