What the Balkans can tell Iranians about life after war

Recent history in the Balkans may offer a useful lens for the postwar questions now confronting many ordinary Iranians.

That question has taken on added urgency after repeated suggestions by President Donald Trump this week that the war could end in the very near future.

Among the most instructive comparisons is the NATO intervention in Yugoslavia in 1999—a conflict that carried sharply different meanings depending on where it was experienced.

For many outside observers, the war began with NATO’s 78-day bombing campaign launched in March of that year after the collapse of peace talks. But for those on the ground in Kosovo, the conflict had already been unfolding for years.

It had taken shape not through airstrikes, but through a gradual tightening of control: checkpoints, dismissals from public jobs, the closure of Albanian-language schools and the growing presence of security forces.

By the time NATO intervened, many Kosovo Albanians saw the bombing not as the start of war but as a new phase of a conflict they had already been living through.

For many Kosovo Albanians, the bombing was accompanied by fear but also a measure of hope. By early 1999, large numbers of civilians were already fleeing violence, and accounts from refugee camps in Albania and North Macedonia often reflected a similar sentiment.

Fragments of those fears and hopes remain preserved in television reports from the time, now widely available online.

“We are afraid of the planes, but we are more afraid of the soldiers who burned our homes,” a young man from Prizren tells the BBC in one such report.

Another refugee says: “When we heard NATO had attacked, we thought maybe someone had finally come to stop this.”

For others, the calculus was more reluctant. A teacher later reflected: “We did not want war. But once it began, we felt it might be the only way for things to change.”

At the same time, civilians in Serbia experienced the war very differently.

In Belgrade, air raid sirens sent residents into shelters night after night as bridges, factories and military sites were targeted. In the early days, a sense of defiance took hold, with people gathering in public spaces despite the risk.

“We know it is dangerous, but we do not want to leave our city alone,” one student said.

As the bombing continued, defiance gave way to exhaustion. Power outages became more frequent, daily life more strained and uncertainty more acute.

“At first, people were angry. After a while, we were just tired,” one resident later said.

The Kosovo war illustrates how the same military intervention can carry entirely different meanings depending on lived experience.

For many Serbs, NATO’s campaign became a symbol of foreign aggression and national humiliation. For many Kosovo Albanians, it represented the possibility — however uncertain — that years of repression might finally end.

After 78 days, Yugoslav forces withdrew and international peacekeeping troops entered Kosovo. For many Kosovo Albanians, that marked the beginning of a return to homes that were often damaged or destroyed. For many Serbs, the war remained a defining national trauma.

The contrast endures in how the conflict is remembered.

“We hated the war,” one Kosovar later wrote. “But without it, we might still be living in that fear.”

A Serbian citizen offered a starkly different view: “For us, this war was neither freedom nor justice. It was simply bombing.”

As Iranians begin to consider what might follow the current conflict, the Balkan experience offers no simple answers—only a reminder that the meaning of war is rarely shared equally.

If the war does end soon, as Trump suggests, its consequences inside Iran may prove equally contested.