“hit” successfully - Confession of American pilot bombing Serb forces in Kosovo

Twenty-five years ago, under the direction of the United States, NATO undertook the first broad-scale air intervention to stop ethnic cleansing of the Albanian population by Serb forces, following the failure of diplomatic efforts to stop the war in Kosovo. The air campaign, which began on 24 March, lasted 78 days and ended with the withdrawal of Serb forces from Kosovo and Kosovo's deployment to an international protectorate for a decade until talks that led to its independence.

Twenty-five years later, the Voice of America brings back memories of an American pilot who bombed the targets of Serb forces in Kosovo. Pilot Phil Haun, who returned to Kosovo to assess the impact of his attacks, told colleague Garentina Kraja that from the moral point of moral intervention in Kosovo was the right decision.

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

His mission: the crackdown on Serbian military targets to save the civilian population and ethnic cleansing, which in 1999 had turned Kosovo into a death zone.

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

It was the first mission. The sky was clear those early days of April. We were flying over the western part of Kosovo. We saw several 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 civil machines”, he tells about the Voice of America.

Dukagjini's range, seen from the sky from the plane as part of the 81KP, was its first presentation with Kosovo. Several thousand kilometers down, Serbian forces were escalating the attacks, as multi-year diplomatic efforts failed to convince Serbia not to expand the war in Kosovo.

During weeks when pilot Haun bombarded military targets from air, Serb forces on earth were ousting about 1 million Albanians from Kosovo towards Albania, Macedonia and Montenegro. With a repeat scenario throughout Kosovo -- from Gjakova to Pec, from the Great and the Small Krush to Izbica and Meja -- for 78 days, Serbian forces executed about 10,000 civilians, mostly men.

Voice of America: Do you think the decision to intervene was the right decision?

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

He says NATO's intervention in Kosovo has shaped him in various ways.

On one of the flights over Kosovo, on 1 May 1999, as seen in this simulation conducted by a graphic studio, the Haun pilot plane was hit by Serbian forces with a Russian land-air rocket. He made a forced landing in Skopje.

In 2010, pilot Haun returned to Kosovo this time to look at him from the ground and to see closely the impact of the attacks he had made.

After the war there were many discussions about the benefit of the NATO force and I wanted to go see where I had hit and talk to people there. Even in countries where the bombs had caused harm, people in Kosovo were so kind 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 the maps with me and identified what I considered to be good shocks of objectives, which means I had hit targets where I thought I caused considerable damage. And then what I considered to be possible bad attacks, where I worried if I caused unintentional damage and had to understand what they were. In Kosovo 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 of a plane window, it's hard to see people. So seeing people and understanding what you've done has had a positive effect on the lives of others, that's what links this story. In military college, we learn that the force is used to achieve political objectives and that force should never be resisted without political intent. Today, where I see Kosovo's independence and the political outcome, it helps me to close this chapter of my life”, the pilot Phil Haun shows.

Since NATO's intervention in Kosovo, pilot Haun has carried out combat missions in Iraq and Afghanistan. The air campaign against military targets in the former Yugoslavia has left professional tracks, becoming one of the main pillars of its academic commitment.

He continues to write and lecture on military air power in the security programme at the renowned American University MlT and the Marine Forces War College in Rhode Island State. Intervention in Kosovo is a concrete example that is studied and discussed with students. NATO's air intervention is seen as a turning point, and lessons from it are valid for the American Air Force and the overall strategy of fighting for achieving political goals. / VOA