SARAJEVO
On this day, 30 August 1995, NATO forces began the military intervention in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
The reason for the intervention was an artillery attack by the Army of the Republika Srpska two days earlier, on 28 August 1995 that killed 43 and wounded 84 civilians in the center of Sarajevo.
The international community, after 40 months of aggression on Bosnia and Hercegovina had given the green light to launch the military intervention and establish the peace in the country.
NATO’s forces intervention called the 'Operation Deliberate Force' ended on 21 September 1995 and included about 400 aircrafts and 5,000 people from 15 countries around the world. More than 1,000 missiles was fired.
In the NATO operation in Bosnia and Herzegovina, the participants were the United States, Turkey, Germany, France, Great Britain, Holland, Italy, Spain and others.
NATO Council approved a military operation earlier, but it was not implemented. Serbian forces commander Ratko Mladic, prevented NATO air strike in June 1995 binding soldiers of United Nations Protection Force (UNPROFOR) to the poles and military installations.
Because of the missed opportunity for the intervention in June 1995, a month later (July 1995) Ratko Mladic had been given a chance to commit the genocide in Srebrenica for which he is now on trial at the Hague Tribunal (ICTY).
War prime minister and member of the Bosnian Presidency Haris Silajdzic told the BBC afterwards:
''Those who target children's hospitals and children while they were playing finally felt how it is to be a target and the feeling of being helplessness. They deserve it.''
Mufid Memija, Bosnian journalist and foreign policy analyst who was engaged in the Presidency and worked with the first president of Bosnia and Herzegovina Alija Izetbegovic during the war, recalls:
"After the military intervention we forgave international community everything we have previously experienced,'' said Memija to the Anadolu Agency.
The bombing destroyed the ammunition, antiaircraft batteries, radar installations, communications facilities, depots, artillery units, command bunkers and others.
The following day, Americans had ordered the cessation of air strike. After three years and four months, Serbs had stopped shelling the Bosnian capital.
During the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina, nearly 200,000 people were killed. It means that every day 140 people died. Only in the capital 1,600 children were killed.
All independent analysts agree on one thing - that had such a determination of the international community to react on events in Bosnia and Herzegovina was shown earlier, it would surely have prevented the genocide against Bosniaks, an outrageous bloodshed on European soil since the World War II.
- NATO intervention in Kosovo -
Kosovo's massacre of civilians also led to the military intervention of international forces. The direct cause was a massacre in the village of Racak on 15 January 1999 which killed 45 Kosovo Albanians.
The Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) has confirmed ''willful punishments, extrajudicial killings and massacres of unarmed civilians by the security forces of Yugoslavia''.
The former NATO Secretary General Javier Solana ordered the bombing of Yugoslavia on 24 March 1999. It was the second most important military engagement of NATO in the events in the Balkans.
The bombing of Yugoslavia ended on 10 June 1999, a day after representatives of the Yugoslav Army and NATO in Kumanovo (Macedonia) signed an agreement on the withdrawal of the Yugoslav Army forces from Kosovo and the entry of international peacekeeping forces.
- Hopes for Syria -
Examples of Bosnia and Kosovo confirm that the speed of intervention and determination of the international community in the global crisis reduces the number of killed, wounded, displaced and dispossessed.
So the citizens of Syria who are being brutally killed every day since spring 2011 hope the international community will hear the screams of the children after the chemical attack and intervene fast in the country in order to stop killing and establish the peace.
englishnews@aa.com.tr
