Edward S. Herman
and David Peterson
Now
a little more than one year after the ending of Nato’s 78- day bombing of
Yugoslavia and the beginning of Nato control of Kosovo (June 10-12, 1999), the
mainstream media have been exceedingly reticent in offering the public serious
retrospectives on the war and its aftermath. One reason for this may be that
Nato’s bombing campaign and year-long occupation not only failed to realize most
of Nato’s proclaimed objectives, but the intervention also produced a far higher
level of ethnic violence than had existed previously–first against ethnic
Albanians, then later against all ethnic minorities. As the Norwegian foreign
affairs analyst Jan Oberg notes, "the largest ethnic cleansing in the
Balkans [in percentage that fled] has happened under the very eyes of 45,000
Nato troops" in occupied Kosovo.
True,
Nato did eventually succeed in getting Belgrade to withdraw the Serb army from
Kosovo. But in the process, Nato’s bombing campaign triggered a Serb military
response against ethnic Albanians that Nato officials themselves had predicted
would occur; a response that was based not on the unprovoked nastiness of Serbs
but rather on rational military calculations. Expulsions were greatest where
fighting was heaviest, mainly in territories controlled by the Kosovo Liberation
Army (KLA). Indeed, in the words of the OSCE, much of the refugee flow was
designed "to keep main communications routes open to supply Serb forces
with material, fuel, and food." Moreover, although Nato had denied any
collaboration with rebel forces during the bombing, top Nato officials now admit
that KLA guerrillas were "constantly on the phone to Nato," and that
Nato had "instigated" a major KLA offensive (Paul Richter, LA Times,
June 10, 2000). President Clinton may have announced that the main purpose of
bombing was "to deter an even bloodier offensive against innocent civilians
in Kosovo" (March 24, 1999), but as the bombing increased it exponentially
(as well as adding Nato’s contribution to Albanian pain), that aim was clearly
not met.
With
the increase in violence following the bombing, Nato officials quickly announced
that the Serb attacks and expulsions would have taken place anyway, under a
pre-arranged plan the Serbs allegedly called "Operation Horseshoe."
But no mention had ever been made of such a plan prior to the bombing, and a
pre-war German Foreign Office report had even denied that Serb actions in Kosovo
constituted "ethnic cleansing;" instead, the report found that the
Serb military campaign was designed to quell an insurgency. UN Special Envoy
Jiri Dienstbier says the same: "Before the bombing Albanians were not
driven away on the basis of ethnic principle. [They were] victims of the brutal
war between the Yugoslav army and the Kosovo Liberation Army" (CTK National
News Wire, April 20, 2000). The fact that Belgrade was willing to allow 2,000
OSCE observers into Kosovo (although the OSCE contingent never exceeded 1,400),
and that it objected strongly to their removal before Nato launched its bombing,
is also inconsistent with a planned "Operation Horseshoe." As the
retired German Brigadier General, and now a consultant with the OSCE, D. Heinz
Loquai argues in his recent book, Der Kosovo-Konflikt Wege in einen Vermeidbaren
Krieg ("The Kosovo Conflict: The Road to an Avoidable War"), the
German Foreign Ministry’s revelation two weeks into the war that it possessed
intelligence confirming the existence of "Operation Horseshoe" was an
outright fabrication culled from Bulgarian intelligence reports and the
imagination of Nato military propagandists. None of this, however, has prevented
apologists for Nato’s war from repeating the lie that Operation Allied Force was
justified by the imminent implementation of this mythical plan to
"ethnically cleanse" Kosovo of its Albanian population. (On June 11,
2000, the ineffable George Robertson asked Jonathan Dimbleby on Britain’s ITV to
"imagine if almost 2 million refugees had been expelled…if Milosevic had
succeeded with that ethnic cleansing.")
In
the face of the Nato-induced surge in violence in March and April 1999, Nato
officials changed course and proclaimed that their new main objective was
returning the Kosovo Albanians to their homes quickly and safely; and with the
help of the media Nato successfully portrayed the bombing as a response to the
mass exodus rather than its cause. But even this new objective was met only in
part–the Albanians who had fled Kosovo did return quickly, but their safety and
welfare were compromised by several factors. One was that Nato bombs had killed
and seriously injured many hundreds of fleeing Albanians. Nato also used both
deadly cluster bombs and depleted uranium munitions in Kosovo, a choice of
weapons not conducive to the long-run safety of the returnees. To date, an
estimated 100 people have been killed and many hundreds injured by exploding
fragmentation bombs. The toll from depleted uranium– radiation-induced
illness–will come later, as it has in Iraq.
Nato’s
bombing also contributed heavily to infrastructure damage, and reconstruction
has been slow. Nato’s generosity was largely exhausted in providing resources to
destroy and kill–the estimated cost of the military operations against
Yugoslavia has run in excess of $10 billion, whereas the resources spent for
humanitarian aid and reconstruction in Kosovo have been well under $1 billion.
Thus, hundreds of thousands remain homeless, jobless, and lacking in basic
facilities.
Nato’s
occupation also failed to bring law and order to Kosovo. This was partly a
consequence of the destruction, poverty, and exacerbated hatred produced by the
war. But it was also a result of the fact that, in direct violation of UN
Resolution 1244 which called for the "demilitarization" of the KLA,
under Nato authority the KLA has been incorporated into a "Kosovo
Protection Corps," thereby legalizing and legitimating what until then had
been an armed rebel force. This, plus the Nato bias in favor of the KLA and
against the Serbs, has helped institutionalize a system of violence and
pervasive fear, mainly damaging to the minority Serbs, Roma and Turks, but also
adversely affecting most Kosovo Albanians. On top of this, organized crime has
soared throughout the region. The British-based Jane’s Intelligence Review
reports that "large numbers of international criminals are now seeking
refuge in Kosovo" (Paul Harris, June 1, 2000). According to a study by the
International Crisis Group, the areas of southwest Serbia (both Kosovo and parts
of Serbia proper) where the KLA’s influence remains greatest have become the
preferred "Balkan route" for the "heroin trail" between
Turkey and Western Europe ("What Happened to the KLA," March 3, 2000),
It
must be admitted, however, that Nato did succeed in "teaching the Serbs a
lesson." But what exactly was that lesson? Certainly not that ethnic
cleansing is unacceptable to the Western conscience. Although Nato allegedly
waged war to terminate ethnic cleansing in Kosovo, and although an agreement of
June 9, 1999, stipulated that Nato would "establish and maintain a secure
environment for all citizens of Kosovo," under Nato’s occupation somewhere
between 60 and 90 percent of Serbs and Roma have left Kosovo, mainly because of
KLA harassment, home burnings, and killing, and a large fraction of Kosovo’s
Jews and Turks have also fled. Thus the biggest story of Nato’s 12-month
occupation is that under Nato’s watch, Kosovo’s ethnic minorities have been
subjected to a truly massive multi-ethnic cleansing. For the media, however,
Nato is trying to do its best under difficult circumstances, and Milosevic
remains the only villain in sight. And they fail to see that the only lesson
taught the Serbs by Nato has been "Don’t mess with us"–a lesson
devoid of moral content.
Now
one year later, Nato’s policies have not brought peace and stability to Kosovo
and the Balkans. Kosovo is still legally a part of Yugoslavia, but while a Nato
protectorate it has been turned over to the Albanians and KLA. This has allowed
them to do a fine job of ethnic cleansing, but has made Kosovo a cauldron of
hatred and violence and a likely base for further instability and warfare.
Unwilling to provide large resources for rebuilding, Nato has no solutions and
no evident "exit strategy." This was not "humanitarian
intervention," it has been an irresponsible misuse of power that made a bad
situation worse, gilded over with lofty rhetoric.
Edward
Herman is co-editor, with Philip Hammond, of Degraded Capability: The Media
and the Kosovo Crisis (Pluto, 2000); David Peterson is a Chicago-based
researcher and journalist.