Original article (in Bosnian) was published on 28/03/2022
The claim that the air strike operation carried out by NATO in 1999 in the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia was called “Angel of mercy” has been repeated in the media since the operation itself. Still, it is a myth. This name of the operation is not mentioned in any official document.
For years, the public discourse claimed that the NATO air strike operation, carried out in 1999 in the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, was called the “Angel of mercy”. This claim has been repeated in some media every year since the operation, especially around the anniversary of the beginning of the air strikes, on March 24.
Examples of using the term “Angel of mercy” in the context of NATO air strikes in the FRY in 1999 can be found in media reports that are more than two decades old. It is not clear who first used the term, but it has been used in the media for more than twenty years. For example, on March 23, 2014, BN website published an article claiming that the NATO bombing was called the “Angel of mercy”. We found the same claim in articles published on numerous websites in the region (2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021), with some of them stating that it was a “cynical” or “sinister” title.
The first publication of this claim in the media in 2022 was found in an article from February 19 on the website Direktno (.hr). The article deals with the dates of the beginning of various armed conflicts.
NATO’s Operation Angel of mercy, a three-month bombing of Yugoslavia for war crimes in Kosovo, began on Wednesday, March 24, 1999.
This allegation was emphasized by many holders of various public positions in Serbia. That is how this claim was published, among other things, in the announcement of the Office of the Minister of Innovation and Technological Development in Serbia. It was also stated by the Prime Minister of the Republic of Serbia, Ivica Dacic, and several other politicians (1, 2).
On the eve of the anniversary of the beginning of the operation in 2022, several articles were published in the media in BiH and the region, stating the same claim about the name of the NATO operation.
What are the facts?
On March 24, 1999, NATO launched an air strike operation in the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. According to Deutsche Welle, the operation lasted until April 10, 1999, and “ended with the signing of a military-technical agreement on the withdrawal of the Yugoslav army and police from Kosovo”.
In an article from March 2020, BBC points out that “the reason for this intervention was the persecution of Albanians in Kosovo by the Serbian security forces”.
Despite frequently repeated claims, the operation was not called the “Angel of mercy”.
According to a 2008 article published on the website Pescanik, there is no mention of the term “Angel of mercy” in official NATO documents.
The operation against FR Yugoslavia, which began in March 1999, was called the “Allied Force”, which in no way can be translated as “Angel of Mercy”. Since the entry of NATO troops in Kosovo and Metohija in June 1999, the operation has changed its name to “Joint Guardian” (as it is called today), i.e., “Bodyguard” or “Associate Guard” which is a little closer to the term “Guardian Angel”.
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In short, there is no mention of a term even remotely similar to the phrase “Angel of mercy” or “Merciful angel”.
Istinomer, a website for verifying facts from Serbia, also dealt with the incorrect term of the NATO military operation in 1999 in the FRY. According to the analysis published in April 2021, it cannot be stated with certainty where the allegation that the mentioned operation was called “Merciful angel” came from. It is assumed that the term originated in Serbia and was coined for propaganda purposes. However, the origin of this incorrect term cannot be reliably determined.
One of the explanations for the origin of this term refers to a possible misinterpretation since the American component that made up the NATO operation in the FRY was called “Noble Anvil“. The word “anvil” is spelled similarly to “angel”, which is the English word for “angel”.
Politicians in Bosnia and Herzegovina also incorrectly called the NATO operation in the FRY “Angel of mercy”. Our partner website Istinomjer wrote about the unfounded claim made by a member of the SDS’ main board, Boris Sukalo, in an analysis that you can read here.
Thus, the operation launched by NATO on 24 March 1999 in the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia was called the “Allied Force” and not the “Angel of mercy”, as is often claimed.
Since the source of this inaccurate claim cannot be determined, articles and posts on social networks claiming that the NATO operation in the FRY in 1999 was called “Angel of mercy” are assessed as the distribution of fake news.