An immediate deployment of an adequate civilian and security presence during the months immediately after the end of the 1999 NATO bombing campaign might well have provided suitable protective mechanisms against the backlash that allowed victims to become victimizers. NATO peacekeeping troops were not directed to stop the abductions, disappearances, retaliation killings, and massive property destruction by groups of ethnic Albanians, which led to a vast reverse ethnic cleansing of the non-Albanian (mainly Serb) population.