Virginia Hernandez Madrid

Madrid

Updated Sunday, March 24, 2024-02:14

On the night of March 24, 1999, the landline telephone lines between Madrid and Belgrade were not working well. "At that time there were almost no mobile phones or much internet, so

you could manage to communicate but after a lot of insistence

."

Mira Milosevich

, principal researcher at the Royal Institute of Elcano, was born in the capital of the then Yugoslavia, but on that March day 25 years ago she already lived in Madrid.

At 8 p.m., NATO planes

began a

bombing

campaign

against Slobodan Milosevic's regime that lasted

78 days

. The death toll is unclear, but ranges between the 1,200 reported by some NGOs and the 2,500 confirmed by Belgrade.

The researcher has two important memories from the conversations of those days with her mother. When she asked her, if she knew

Javier Solana

, the Spaniard who was then Secretary General of NATO, she would tell him

not to bomb at night

, because she was very afraid of him and she couldn't sleep. But also

what kind of soldier is he willing to kill but not die

in a battle.

"Serbia is a country that has been at war many times and the thing about the invisible enemy, because the planes were imperceptible to the human eye, made people very angry.

Milosevic was never as strong politically as during those days

," he points out.

The bombings did not have the approval of the UN Security Council, in which Russia and China vetoed the attack, nor did they respond to a defense of the Atlantic Alliance of a member country, as established by its regulations. The reason given was

to nip in the bud the "ethnic cleansing"

that Serbia was carrying out

against the Kosovo Albanians

, the majority population in Kosovo.

This was a province within Serbia that Milosevic had stripped of its autonomy a decade earlier, having just come to power. The Kosovo Albanian majority had proclaimed independence and,

after the other Balkan wars of the 1990s

, clashes between KLA (Kosovo Liberation Army) guerrillas and Serbian army troops led to a

new conflict in this hornet's nest. European Union

that broke out in

1998

.

"The invisible enemy, because the planes were imperceptible, made people very angry. Milosevic was never so strong politically"

Mira Milosevich, principal researcher at Elcano

International mediation brought the parties together in the French city of Rambouillet in February 1999, but Milosevic did not accept either the deployment of NATO troops in Kosovo or an independence referendum within three years. "

The decision

to bomb Yugoslavia - at that time composed of the republics of Serbia and Montenegro -

was not legal but it was legitimate

. Because it is true that there was no genocide like in Sebrenica [in Bosnia Hezergovina], but

ethnic cleansing was underway of about a million Kosovar Albanians

," explains Mira Milosevich.

"However, converting Kosovo into

an independent state in 2008 was neither legal nor legitimate

, because it clearly violated UN resolution 1244 that Serbia signed when it capitulated in June 1999 and this resolution guaranteed its territorial integrity," continues this expert.

"Kosovo is now in limbo

," says Milosevich, "which blocks both the EU's enlargement to the Balkans and, of course, its status in international institutions such as the UN." Five EU countries, including Spain, do not recognize Kosovo as a state.

A few days ago, the EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs,

Josep Borrell

, warned Serbia and Kosovo that

they put their European integration "in danger" if they do not manage to move towards the normalization of their relations

. It was one year since an agreement was reached between both parties, in which Brussels mediated, but which has not gone beyond the signature: "It damages their reputation as credible and reliable partners," said Borrell.

Already in 2013, the Brussels Agreement was sealed to give autonomy to the Serbian municipalities in the north of Kosovo, which, according to Milosevich, Kosovo is not complying: "I do not see that the tension can decrease and without solving this conflict neither of the two can enter the EU and

they can only do so at the same time

."

The harm of nationalism

"

It is the drama of the Balkans

, it is not only the Serbs and the Kosovars, it is the Serbs and the Croats and the Albanians on one side and the other," explains

Julia R. Arévalo

, a Spanish journalist who at that time worked in the office. of Belgrade of the EFE agency and is currently president of the alliance of European agencies EPA, based in Frankfurt. "You realize to

what extent nationalism can harm people

, turn neighbors into enemies, people who had gotten along well until three minutes ago. These are terrible hatreds that resurface."

When the sirens sounded that day in Belgrade, she was live with EFE Radio. The alarm was very close to the offices of the Spanish agency in the Old Belgrade area: "It was thunderous, a brutal sound. I had to raise my voice and ended up shouting to make the entrance for that live show. At that moment you

don't think about that there is going to be a bombing, but that you have to inform

and you have to continue.

During almost the entire war campaign, the EFE office became

the eyes and ears of Spanish speakers

both in Spain and Latin America, because Milosevic did not allow the foreign press to enter until a month and a half had passed after the start of the bombings: " "It was an incredible professional experience, it's the biggest thing I've ever covered.

It was three months of constant adrenaline

," he recalls.

"The sirens sounded at eight in the afternoon and I didn't think about the bombing that was going to happen, but rather that we had to continue and report"

Julia R. Arévalo, EFE journalist who covered the attacks

He remembers the

constant electricity cuts

because NATO systematically attacked electrical installations, the black market to buy even detergent, having to travel

one of the

main bridges at night

in a car without lights at full speed

to avoid becoming a target of the attacks - "that was when I was most scared," he confesses -,

the bombing of Serbian public television and the Chinese Embassy

, ​​the almost biblical plague of insects that filled every corner because there was no time to fumigate that spring...

Also the teamwork with the International section of EFE in Madrid, who wrote their texts due to energy shortages, and with the

switchboard

operators

- those were different times, as Mira Milosevich remembered in the conversations with her mother with whom we started - that

they kept the lines open all night so that they would not be cut off

and so that the professionals could talk to their families. "They had a pretty bad time. I told my mother not to worry because they were bombing on the outskirts. But I saw the news and I saw yourself saying that the missiles were falling in the center of Belgrade, which is where I lived and worked."