“What was it like to be in Belgrade during the NATO bombings?”

It wasn’t boring, that’s for sure!

This is going to be a long writing. I’ll try to share my own experience, rather than going through well known facts. After all, I guess that’s what this question is all about. I’ll also share my own thoughts about events I describe. I might (try to) throw a joke, here or there. All the pictures used in this answer were found on the Internet.

So, to begin with, let’s set the theater of operations: Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (FRY). For the readers are not familiar with the recent history of the Balkans, Federal Republic of Yugoslavia was the official (or spiritual or … call it whatever you like) successor of Socialistic Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (SFRY). SFRY consisted of 6 republics: Serbia, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Slovenia, Montenegro and Macedonia. After the secessionist/civil war that took place between 1991 and 1995 (although it started way before 1991, but that’s another story), the SFRY was turned into: FRY, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Slovenia and Macedonia. Obviously, FRY consisted of two republics: Serbia and Montenegro. Kosovo, where most fights in 1999 took place, is a southern province of Serbia. Some would say “was a province of Serbia” (but that’s also another story and I won’t tackle it here). Kosovo is bordering with Albania and in 1999 was mainly inhabited by ethnic Albanians (and still is, I think we can all agree on that). Some political movements among the population of Albanian origin have been calling and pushing for Kosovo independence for several decades before the war of 1999. Some of them got radicalized along the way. The capital of Serbia is Belgrade. The capital of Kosovo is Pristina. Take a look at the following picture.

You can continue reading this account by Đorđe Đurđević published on Quora here:

Leave a Reply