KOSOVO

AN UNJUST AND UNNECESSARY WAR

POSITION PAPER PREPARED BY THE SERBIAN NATIONAL FEDERATION

Contents:

FOREWORD                                                                                       1

HISTORY                                                                                          4

Medieval Serbian State: 4

The Battle of Kosovo: 5

Under the Turks: 6

The Modern Era: 8

Kosovo Under Tito and His Successors: 9

THE WAR                                                                                          11

Rationale and Reality: 11

Before the Bombs: Unremarkable, Low-Intensity Conflict: 12

The Set-Up at Rambouillet: 14

The KLA: From “Terrorists” to “Parters”: 17

Misuse and Abuse of International Law: 19

THE AFTERMATH                                                                              25

“Mass Graves”: Atrocity Management under NATO Occupation: 25

Ethnic Cleansing: Myth and Reality: 26

The Hague: Bad Justice, Worse Politics: 27

CONCLUSION: LESSONS OF KOSOVO                                            30

National Sovereignty and the New World Order: 30

Neoimperialist High-Mindedness: 32

The New Globalism and Australia’s Choices: 34

SYDNEY, AUGUST 1999

FOREWORD

         On March 24 1999 NATO powers led by the United States attacked Serbia and Montenegro, which form the Yugoslav Federation. In June 1999 Slobodan Milosevic made his predictable capitulation to those powers, which had relentlessly reduced the civilian infrastructure of Yugoslavia to rubble in 78 days of bombardment.

Australia’s political and media establishment, on the whole, supported the war against the Serbs. This support was based on several wrong assumptions about the nature of the conflict, on numerous distorted perceptions of the key issues at stake, and on the misguided assessment of this country’s interests.

The purpose of this paper is to set the record straight. The Serbian community in Australia is presenting it not in order to advocate one side over another in the conflict in the Balkans, or to lobby for any particular set of policy options. Before deciding on a different policy we need a proper debate. In order to have an informed debate we need comprehensive, objective and timely information. If the material presented herein makes a contribution to that debate-to-be, our efforts will have been worth while.

         The material is divided into three sections. The first deals with history, from the mists of medieval antiquity to the beginning of the acute phase of the crisis in Kosovo in 1989. Incongruously, many commentators take that year – when the Albanians of Kosovo allegedly “had their autonomy taken away from them” – as the starting point in their reportage and analysis. The fallacy of the Western policy in Kosovo cannot be grasped without resorting to history. Yet nations that but faintly remember themselves can hardly be expected to understand, or care for, the history of others. Such absence of historical memory has taken many people through the looking glass and into the virtual reality of CNN reportage, Bill Clinton’s press conferences, and NATO briefings.

         In the second part, formal justifications for the war, as given in Washington, Brussels and elsewhere, are subjected to the long-overdue scrutiny that has been missing in our media. The reader will form his own conclusions; ours is that the decision-makers on both sides of the Atlantic have a bias in Balkan affairs which goes beyond any one piece of coherent policy, and which falls outside the parameters of rational debate.

      They waged war on an independent nation, our ally in both world wars, because it refused foreign troops on its soil; all other justifications are post facto rationalizations. They aided and abetted secession by an ethnic minority within that nation, secession that – once formally effected - will render many European borders tentative. In the context of any other European nation the story would sound surreal. The Serbs, however, have been demonized to the point where they must not presume to be treated like others. But the fact that the West could do anything it chose to the Serbs does not explain why it should.

         Humanitarian argument has been invoked. But what about Kashmir, Rwanda, Burundi, Sudan, Uganda, Angola, Congo, Sierra Leone, Sri Lanka, Algeria, and so many other unhappy lands? Properly videotaped and Amanpourized, each would be good for a dozen “Kosovos”. Compared to the killing fields of the Third World, Kosovo before the bombing was a brutal but unremarkable low-intensity campaign, uglier than Northern Ireland, but much less so than Kurdistan.

         Under 2,000 fatalities on all sides in Kosovo in 1998, in a province of over two million, was comparable to the homicide tally of 450 in Washington D.C. (population 600,000) in the same year. Counting bodies is poor form but it helps clear thinking. Bearing in mind the many brutalities, aggressions and “ethnic cleansing” ignored by the Western alliance - or even condoned, notably in Croatia, in eastern Turkey and East Timor - it is clear that “Kosovo” is not about universal principles. In Washington Abdullah Ocalan is a terrorist, but KLA are freedom fighters.

What is it about, then?  “Regional stability”, we were told next: if we don’t contain it now, it will engulf Macedonia, Greece, Turkey, the whole of the Balkans in fact, with much of Europe to follow. But the “cure” - bombing Serbia into signing a plan that will effectively detach Kosovo, with NATO troops brought in to seal the deal – will engender countless new hotbeds of instability. It will unleash an uncontrollable chain reaction throughout the ex-Communist half of Europe. Its first victim will be the former Yugoslav republic of Macedonia, where the restive Albanian minority comprises a third of the total population. The West oddly condones the refusal of the government in Skopje to grant autonomy to its Albanians. But with the KLA in charge in Pristina and the Serbs gone the rising expectations among Macedonia's Albanians will be impossible to contain.

         Will the Pristina model not be demanded by the Hungarians in Rumania (more numerous than Kosovo’s Albanians) and in southern Slovakia? What will stop the Russians in the Ukraine (Crimea), in Moldova, in Estonia, and in northern Kazakhstan from following suit? What about the Turks in Thrace, and the chronically unstable and unviable Dayton-Bosnia, to mention but some of the European dominos that may fall in the wake of Kosovo’s evolution under NATO? And finally, when the Albanians get their secession on the grounds of their numbers, will the same apply when the Latinos in southern California or Texas eventually outnumber their Anglo neighbors and start demanding bilingual statehood, leading to reunification with Mexico? Are Russia and China to threaten the United States with bombing if Washington does not comply?

But those ethnic groups that want the U.S. and NATO in today will want them out tomorrow, as soon as their own purposes have been served. Therefore, before dealing with the implications of NATO’s “victory” in the final part of this paper, it is important to reiterate the real intentions of the Clinton administration and its European satellites. This war was not about “human rights” or “ethnic cleansing.” This NATO war was an act of criminal aggression against a small nation that has never threatened any member of this supposedly defensive alliance.

So what is the significance of Kosovo? The clue lies in the meaning of Kosovo for the Serbs. It is the land where the Serbian nation was forged in defeat. In taking Kosovo from the Serbs, in aiding and abetting their expulsion, “the West” is robbing them of their history and their identity. It is committing a kind of cultural genocide against their nation - and that is the point. In the new world order of the NATO empire there are to be no nations, no religions, no cultures - just one vast free-trade global marketplace of producers and consumers. In destroying Kosovo “the West” is destroying the Serbs, but it is also fatally wounding itself. The bombing may have stopped, and NATO’s empire of half a billion people has crushed ten million Serbs; but the real task of contemplating the consequences has just begun. This paper seeks to open that debate.

The outcome, for now, is in line with a deeply flawed model of the new Balkan orderwhich seeks to satisfy the aspirations of all ethnic groups in former Yugoslavia - except the Serbs. This is a disastrous strategy for all concerned. Even if forced into submission now, the Serb nation shall have no stake in the ensuing order of things. Sooner or later it will fight to recover Kosovo. The Carthagian peace imposed on the Serbs today will cause chronic imbalance and strife for decades to come. It will entangle the West in a Balkan quagmire, and guarantee a new war as soon as Clinton’s successors lose interest in underwriting the ill-gotten gains of America’s new Balkan clients.

Our conclusion is that NATO has won, for now, but “the West” has lost. Among the charred corpses and smoking ruins of Kosovo there lies an unreported, metaphysical casualty. The war was fought to destroy the very principles that constitute the West, namely the rule of law. The demand for Serbia’s submission that had preceded the war was an act of self-betrayal, completely incompatible with the logic of a system of sovereign states which for the past 350 years has formed the basis of Western politics, liberalism and the rule of 1aw. In that sense this war may be seen as the defining moment of our civilization, and the test of its chances for survival in the coming century.

         The misguided effort to transform NATO from a defensive alliance into a regional peacekeeping organization, a mini-U.N. with “out-of-area” self-appointed responsibilities is a certain road to more Bosnias and more Kosovos down the line. Now that the Clinton Administration and NATO were successful in Kosovo, we can expect new and even more dangerous adventures of this sort elsewhere. So far from this period being the end of history, Bill Clinton and NATO have given us round two of the Cold War. This time around the Russians, Chinese, Indians and others will know better than to believe the slogans about free markets and democratic human rights, and the future of “the West” in the coming conflict may be uncertain.

If the war was “post-national” in its aims it was also “post-national” in its implementation. NATO is an anonymous international bureaucratic apparatus, desperate to extend its shelf-life now that its raison d’etre has disappeared. If Clinton and NATO are allowed to triumph, in place of the old system of national legal systems creating free markets and national liberties, a chilling new world order of allegedly universal human rights will be set up.

The problem is that the notion of “human rights” can never provide a basis for either the rule of law or morality. “Universal human rights,” detached from any rootedness in time or place, will be open to the latest whim of outrage or the latest fad for victimhood. Antithetical to the concept of national sovereignty, the notion of “universal human rights” implies that there can be a single global system of civil law with someone (the American-controlled NATO?) playing the role of world government.

In the new division of the world between “us” and “them” they will present the available options to those as yet undecided in brutally stark terms when the moment comes. Australia will have to make its moral, political and geo-strategic choices. Neutrality will not be an option.

HISTORY

         Kosovo is many diverse things to different living Serbs, but they all have it in their blood. They are born with it. The variety of meanings is easily explained by the symbolism and emotions that the word "Kosovo" embodies, clearly above anything that the geographic concept might imply. It is in Serbian blood because it is a transcendental phenomenon. The Kosovo region is a somewhat sleepy valley with surrounding hills seeming to have overstretched in their descent. Some 4,200 square miles in size (with an additional 2,000 square miles of the adjacent plain of Metohija), this cradle of the Serbian nation is carried by two broad-shouldered gentle giants, somber and dark Mount Kopaonik in the north and white-capped and fair Mount Shara in the south.

Kosovo has been a battlefield many times in its history. It is a junction that led many a nation astray, if not to a dead end. Byzantines, Bulgars, Serbs, Magyars, Austrians, Albanians, and Turks - all marched through it at certain times, but in a sense got nowhere. Today, Americans, Britons, Frenchmen and others follow in their footsteps. Kosovo can be viewed as nature's boxing ring where world ideologies (Christian, Bogomil, Muslim, then more recently Marxist, and now “liberal democratic” globalist-imperialist) each won individual rounds, but not the fight. Many a time Serbia was defeated in these plains, but never decisively and never permanently.

MEDIEVAL SERBIAN STATE

Though few modern history books tell us much about her, in the first three centuries of the second millenium AD Serbia was one of the strongest and most culturally and economically advanced states in the whole of Europe. The preconditions for the creation of the Serbian nation came about in the seventh century AD, after this distinct branch of Slavdom spread out widely and established itself across the western half of the Balkan peninsula. To Byzantium barbarian incursions were often a passing irritant: even when they ransacked the walled cities they soon left. Slavs, on the other hand, were not nomadic types. They tended to settle, and changed the ethnic character of the Balkans.

         The Byzantine Empire, apprehensive of the pressure from the north, scored a success in 870 when the Serbian rulers were baptized. Mass conversion of the Serbs to Christianity was accompanied by strong political and cultural influences from the Empire. A significant role was played by the translation of biblical and liturgical texts and by the alphabets adapted to the Slavonic languages.

         A talented and determined Serb leader of that time, Stefan Nemanja (1166-1196), took advantage of the weaknesses of the Byzantine Empire and greatly extended his authority, territorially and politically. He ruled the best part of today’s Serbia (including the state’s heartland of Kosovo) and Montenegro. His son Stefan Nemanjic (1196-1227) enjoyed the support of the Byzantine Empire, but when the situation changed after the western crusaders led by the Venetians conquered Constantinople, Stefan came to terms with the West. Through political maneuvering in this period of turbulence he managed to keep his own state intact. He improved its reputation and rank by receiving a royal crown from the Pope (1217), which among his descendants and heirs brought him the appellation of the “First-Crowned King” - Stefan Prvovencani.

         The King’s youngest brother, Sava, sought to acquire a unified ecclesiastical framework within Serbia, torn as it was between Rome and Eastern Orthodoxy. He obtained agreement from the Byzantine Patriarch to form a separate archbishopric; his successors would be chosen and appointed by the Serbs themselves. This gave an impetus to the vibrant growth of the Serbian Orthodox Church. The Serbian kingdom and its autocephalous church provided the framework for the flowering of an authentically national culture and arts. This is best evidenced in the Raska School that has given Europe some superb examples of medieval architecture and fresco painting.

         Intra-dynastic disputes, bloody at times, did not stop Serbia’s growth in territorial scope, wealth, and cultural significance. Its zenith was achieved under Stefan Dusan (1331-1355), who took advantage of the internal troubles within the Byzantine Empire. Dusan’s authority reached from Macedonia and Albania to Epirus and Thessaly and he was subsequently crowned as Tsar (Emperor) in the year 1346. He was great not only as a soldier and as the leader of victorious campaigns, but also as a lawgiver, a builder of churches and a generous patron of arts and literature. Throughout this heyday of Serbia’s medieval glory Kosovo and Metohija was its very heartland. It was populated by a homogenous Serbian population. This is confirmed by the many royal charters and by the recorded personal and geographic names in the area. The very name of the region - Kosovo and Metohija - is derived from the Serbian word kos (“the field of the blackbird”) and “metoh,” a word of Greek origin which means “church estate.” Albanian nomads accounted for about two percent of the total population in the western parts of the region, in the mountains along the present border with Albania.

Medieval Serbia was an eminent member of the “international community” of its time. Serbian royal courts communicated on levels of respect and honor with Venetian doges, Hungarian kings, Bulgarian tsars, and Byzantine emperors. In addition, they were connected through marital arrangements with most of them. All that was to crumble into dusk with the onslaught of the Turk. After a fateful and for the Serbs disastrous battle, Kosovo became a grave, and a grave means death and dust. But it also means rebirth and a source of new life. Kosovo is therefore transcendental.

THE BATTLE OF KOSOVO

Of all Kosovo battles only one counts in the formation of the psyche of a Serb. It is the one that began in the early hours of Vidovdan (St. Vitus' Day, June 15, 1389, June 28 by the New Calendar). Modern historians have had understandable difficulties in trying to decipher the realities of the Battle of Kosovo. They have had to sift through a myriad of often rhapsodic and idealized, mostly apologetical, renditions of relevant decisions and events. But to the credit of epic writers, many of them provided data that were later corroborated by more reliable sources.

On the eve of the battle, Prince Lazar - according to contemporary chronicles, asked for a golden goblet of wine to be brought to him and toasted his knights: Do not be faithless, and take this golden cup from me as a memento. This scene reminds one of the Christian saga of the Last Supper, with Lazar aware of treachery among humans and of his own fate. Before going into battle, Lazar left the Serbian people the famous statement, which they have eternally treasured and which is the essence of the Gospel Message: The Earthly Kingdom is short-lived, but the Heavenly One is forever.

          At the Battle of Kosovo Sultan Murad succeeded in surprising the Serbian army, as he had done at Marica in 1371. He launched his attack early in the morning while Lazar and his comrades were at prayers in the nearby Samodreza Church. It was there that news reached him that the enemy was already attacking his front lines. The Serbs consolidated their position at first, and by the midday it seemed that the tide may turn in their favor. The quick thinking of the sultan’s son, Bayazit, decided the day. He attacked the flank of the advancing Serbian force, and succeeded in repulsing and throwing into disarray the hitherto victorious Christians. Lazar tried to rally his troops and led them into a new attack, which failed. Wounded, Lazar was taken prisoner, and his army, rapidly falling apart, was beaten and dispersed on the early afternoon of that very day. It could not be saved even though a Serbian knight, Milos Oblilic, had mortally wounded the sultan, striking him in the abdomen with a concealed dagger. Milos got access to Murad’s tent by pretending he had come to surrender and wanted to kiss the sultan’s foot.

         There they were, in that tent, all the featured actors of the Kosovo drama, ready for the final Shakespearean resolution of the plot. Prince Bayazit had Lazar and his nobles executed by the sword, in the presence of the dying sultan. As Vidovdan 1389 came to a close, the night that would last five centuries began. For the Serbs, Kosovo became a symbol of steadfast courage and sacrifice for honor, much as the Alamo, the Boyne, or Culloden. Over the centuries the sacrificial courage of Prince Lazar and his army has epitomized the dictum that it was better to die heroically than to live under the alien yoke. To the Serbs the lesson was that eternal values must be placed before earthly ones, that spiritual force is superior to the force of arms, that by moral fortitude alone we can transcend our mortal frame and step from time into Eternity. The legacy of Vidovdan teaches them that the forces of darkness are defeated in the end and that virtue ultimately triumphs - even when such victory may seem impossible - because there is God. Kosovo has redefined the Serbs as an eminently, quintessentially Christian nation.

THE AFTERMATH

The battle of Kosovo was one of the most decisive events in the history of South Eastern Europe. It meant not merely the fall of the medieval Serbian Empire and the conquest of the Balkans by the Turks, but also an important stepping stone in the struggle of Islam against Christianity. By 1459 their country finally became a mere province of Turkey. The nobles were completely exterminated. Not content with seizing their land, the Turks used the Serbs as the tools of their own enslavement. One boy in every family was torn away from his home and brought up as a Muslim; they were the Janissaries, the famous crack regiments which made the Turks so long the terror of Europe.

From 1459 to 1804 Serbia ceased to exist as a state and a self-governing nation. When everything seemed lost, many Serbs turned into local bards to keep alive the memories of their people’s past glories by their songs, and ballads, and tales - always with an eye to the great days which would come again and console them for the miseries of the present. For centuries every village had its own singer, often a blind man, sometimes even a man gifted with the “second sight,” as the bards of the Scottish Highlands in past days. In the long winter evenings the villagers gathered round these singers and listened to them as they chanted, to the accompaniment of their primitive one-stringed fiddle (gusle), the adventures and victories of dead Serbian heroes. For over five centuries every Serb has celebrated every year the anniversaries of the great battle, not only as a day of mourning for the lost day, but as an event to be remembered and avenged. Vidovdan was a proof that for the Serbian nation, as for every man and woman, death is followed by resurrection.

The Balkan peninsula became a two-realm society, Muslim and Christian, one privileged and the other discriminated against. It was up to each individual to decide whether he wanted to live and die as an exploited non-person – or make a compromise with his conscience and lead a more favored existence. Hard decisions had to be made. As Islamization progressed, it took root better in some areas, among certain classes and in certain environments. The process was much swifter in Albanian and Bosnian lands than in Serbia’s former medieval state. The Albanians did not have an autocephalous Church, and their Christianity - whether Byzantine or Latin - had not become as integral in Albanian life; it remained either Greek or Italian. And in Bosnia the widely spread Bogomil sect had reinterpreted the tenets of Christianity to such an extent that Islam appeared more acceptable than either Orthodoxy or Roman Catholicism.

Wealth and material position were important factors affecting the decision to convert. This contributed to the new stratification of the society under Ottoman rule, and a new power balance among national groups. The balance was shifting, and as far as the Albanians and Serbs were concerned; it was shifting drastically in favor of the Albanians, to the detriment of good relations between them. The weight of their Albanian tradition proved a lighter burden; theirs is the saying Ku este shpata este feja (“Your faith is where the sword is”). First-class warriors, fascinated by swords and guns, used to discipline and obeying when ruled by a strong hand, the Albanians represented a much better medium to be cast into the Turkish mold than the individualistic and unpredictable Serbs. The Albanians’ readiness to come to terms with the conquerors gave them an upper hand. This was the beginning of a tragic division, of separate roads for them and for the Serbs. The former became the rulers and the latter the ruled.

Considerable numbers of local Serbs, finding Muslim vengeance and reprisals intolerable, withdrew from Kosovo and moved to the neighboring Habsburg Empire (today’s Vojvodina). Fertile farmlands thus abandoned by the Serbs were gradually settled by the neighboring Muslim Albanian nomads. The pattern of Albanian settlement developed in uneven waves, but typically, upon the seizure of a plot of Serb-owned land, fellow tribesmen were brought in from the mountains to protect the acquisition and to help expand the considerable space needed for the herds. Thus an age-old pattern of social rivalry could be discerned: migrant herdsmen (Albanians) were in constant conflict with the settled farmers (Serbs). This fairly familiar pattern of social conflict was enhanced by the religious dimension, however. As a Muslim, an Albanian herdsman could persecute and rob a Christian Serb peasant with complete impunity.

One must credit all Balkan people with their capacity for survival. But while some did it the hard way, others compromised and adapted to what they probably regarded as a temporary and unwelcome situation at first. The tragedy unleashed by NATO on March 24, 1999, proves that Serbs fall into the first category. The Kosovo legacy seemingly does not let them act differently. Their Albanian neighbors are survivors, too, but they assured their continuity in an easier way - such as Islamization in Turkish times, or contemporary media-sanctioned victimhood. This does not imply some form of congenital “duplicity,” but rather a pragmatic approach by an intelligent survivor.

THE MODERN ERA

Uneven levels of national integration among Serbs and Albanians in the age of nationalism, in the 19^th and 20^th centuries, gave fresh impetus to the old religious rivalries. In the Kingdom of Serbia (1912-1914), during the Great War (1914-1918), in the Kingdom of Yugoslavia (1918-1941), and during the Axis occupation (1941-1945) those conflicts were transferred into new rivalries, this time involving a strong international component related to the changed roles. Ethnic Albanians, former bearers of the Ottoman state and its religious tradition, became a minority in 1912 that was strongly antagonistic towards the state ruled by the Serbs, their former serfs. Finally, Tito’s communist games with the national question within communist Yugoslavia (1945-1991) came as the final coup to every attempt at establishing inter-ethnic communication that would be based on individual, instead of “collective” rights of a nation.

Following its liberation from the Turks (starting with the uprising in 1804 and ending at the Berlin Congress in 1878) Serbia took a new lease of life. In the first Balkan War Serbia - in alliance with Bulgaria Greece, and Montenegro - attacked Turkey. Within one month the armies of the four Balkan allies had driven the Turks out of all their huge possessions in Europe, except for a belt of land around their capital. The Christians who had long lingered miserably under the yoke of Turkey were set free by their own free kinsmen from across the frontiers. Albanian beys and tribal chiefs were caught by surprise. Defending their privileges, this ruling stratum (just like the Bosnian Muslims’) became in the declining Ottoman Empire an obstacle to its modernization. In their view Albanian national integration was not based on cultural unity, even less on liberal European principles. The Albanian League, formed on the eve of the Congress of Berlin, called for a resolution of the national question within the Ottoman Empire. Dissatisfied with the Porte's concessions to the European powers, the League tried to cut all ties with Turkey, and sultan Abdülhamid II (1876-1909) ordered military action and destroyed the Albanian movement. At the same time, escalating persecution of the Serbs in Kosovo and Macedonia was an integral part of the pan-Islamic policy of the Sultan. The result was at least 60,000 expelled Serbs from the vilayet of Kosovo at the turn of the century.

The Albanians, let down by Turkey, sought foreign support from those Powers which, in their desire to dominate the Balkans, could help their aspirations. Austria-Hungary was willing to do so. After the occupation of Bosnia-Herzegovina (1878), the Dual Monarchy planned to penetrate further into the Balkans, towards Salonika. For Vienna the Albanians in Kosovo and Macedonia were a stepping stone on that road. Vienna launched important cultural initiatives. Books about Albanian history were printed and distributed, national coats-of-arms were invented, and grammars written in order to create a unified Albanian language based on the Latin script. An important cultural initiative was the “Illyrian theory” about the Albanians’ origin. It was launched from the cabinets of Viennese and German “ethnographers” and skillfully propagated in a simplified form. According to this theory, for which reliable scientific evidence has never been found, the Albanians are “the oldest nation in Europe” created through a mixture of pre-Roman Illyrian and Pelasgian tribes from an Aryan flock (Volksschwarm). A dubious scientific thesis about the origins of the Albanian nation was turned into the mythological basis for national integration, which - in the fullness of time - became the main pillar of the Albanians' modern national identity and the basis for their territorial aspirations.

On July 28, 1914, Austria-Hungary declared war on Serbia. Its Premier Nikola Pasic made a prophetic comment upon hearing the news: "This is the end of Austria. God will help us to come out winners." Indeed, by 1918 Serbia inched ever nearer to the fulfillment of its war aim - the unification of all South Slavs in one independent state. At the same time its relations with the Albanians took a new turn. Austria-Hungary was about to leave the historical scene; but it was about to be replaced by Italy.

Rome stirred Serbo-Albanian conflicts within the newly established Yugoslav state, because it sought to establish its dominance over the eastern Adriatic coast. In Yugoslavia, like in pre-war Serbia, many ethnic Albanians accepted Italian tutelage because they were antagonistic towards the state ruled by their former serfs. And yet in the aftermath of World War I, after centuries of social immobility, Kosovo suddenly went through a revolutionary change that opened many doors to the Albanians. But even when in the 1930s it became obvious that many Albanians had already begun to participate in Yugoslav day-to-day reality - culturally, professionally, and politically - the residue of the bitter past was still noticeable. In 1941 the bedlam started all over again.

KOSOVO UNDER TITO AND HIS SUCCESSORS

The Italian occupation of Albania (1939) encouraged the Kosovo Albanians: their dream of a Great Albania was a step closer, and became a reality - after the fall of Yugoslavia in April 1941 - under the aegis of the Italian crown. Mussolini’s Albanian allies mercilessly persecuted the Serbs of Kosovo: over 100,000 were expelled, while ten thousand were killed. Comparable numbers of Albanian settlers moved to Kosovo from Albania. New persecutions of the Serbs followed the capitulation of Italy (1943), when Kosovo fell under the direct control of the Third Reich. The Albanians in Kosovo wholeheartedly supported their new masters. Thousands of Albanians enthusiastically enlisted in the SS Skenderbey division, and terrorized the remaining Serbs.

The attempt to achieve a reconciliation of the Serbs and Albanians after 1945, within the framework of Soviet-type communism, proved to be impossible: the geo-political realities remained unchanged; the old rivalry only acquired a new ideological label. Seeking to win over the Albanians of Kosovo, Tito made it an autonomous unit within Serbia. The balance of power eventually shifted radically in favor of the Albanians. Serbs forced out of Kosovo during World War II were not permitted to return. Many more were forced to leave: 200,000 in the twenty-year period of 1961-1981 alone. A quarter of a million Albanians came from Albania (1941-1948).

Decreeing the creation of new nations - the Macedonians (by linguistic criteria) and Montenegrins (by state tradition), and then the Bosnian Moslems (by religion) - Tito sapped the Serbs’ strength. Kosovo was only one part of his game. As a Croat brought up in the anti-Serb Habsburg setting and on Lenin's teaching, Tito eroded all Serb interests in the name of stifling “Greater Serbian hegemony”. His brand of national-communism had made local republican and provincial party leaderships the bearers of their “national interests.” In Kosovo this took the direction of creating a second Albanian nation-state. National-communism in the last phase of Tito's rule, marked by the Constitution of 1974, had became the main obstacle to a liberal evolution of the system. As Tito's only legacy – following his death in 1980 - there remained an ideological army and the bulky party-bureaucratic apparatus, divided along republican and provincial borders.

Those borders, allegedly administrative, increasingly resembled the frontiers of covertly rival nation-states, linked only by the authority of the departed leader. Kosovo’s competencies were hardly any different from those of the federal republics. Tito’s Albanian apparatchiks in Pristina ensured that the shift was reflected in demographics: in 1946 the Albanians made up about 50 percent of the population of Kosovo, but by 1981 it was 77.5 percent. The corresponding percentage for Serbs had dropped to 15 percent. Thus, as the Albanian goal of an ethnically pure Kosovo almost turned into a reality, that reality became increasingly unbearable for those who could not pack up and leave.

By 1969 Kosovo had a supreme court and the Albanian flag. Belgrade University departments at Pristina were turned into an independent university focused on Tirana, which sent to Kosovo 240 university teachers, together with Albanian textbooks. Then came the aggressive folklore: Albanian movies, TV and radio, sports and cultural exchanges. Economically, with 8 percent of the Yugoslav population, Kosovo got 30 percent of Belgrade’s Development Fund. The Kosovo authorities used these funds to buy up land from Serbs and give it to Albanians. In the decade to 1989 two billion dollars were poured into Kosovo’s economy by Serbia and the Yugoslav Federation. Yet Kosovo consistently lagged far behind other parts of Yugoslavia: the Albanians’ birth rate of 32 per 1,000 is the highest in Europe and they have the largest families (7 members).

The Serbs resented being forced to learn Albanian and to attend schools with instruction in the Albanian language. Then came the escalation of Albanian expectations, primarily among the burgeoning ranks of the younger generation. Their demand for the creation of a “Republic of Kosovo” - with the right to secession - was advanced in 1981, only a year after Tito's death. The attempt to hush up the Albanian question, together with visible attempts to minimize the problem of the forced emigration of the Kosovo Serbs, resulted in the deep frustration of the whole Serbian nation. The Serbs realized that the Titoist order was based on their inequality in Yugoslavia. Their frustration was skillfully used, after 1987, by Slobodan Milosevic, the leader of the Serbian communists. Milosevic’s aim in the late 1980s was to renew the Party by using patriotic slogans, but never believing in them. This was the opposite to the rest of Eastern Europe, where communism’s demise by means of genuine nationalism was under way. Democracy in Serbia was thus blocked by the unresolved national question. Many Albanians responded to Milosevic with strikes and demonstrations. Their actions strengthened Milosevic’s position. The results were the limitation of autonomy, unrest and police repression in Kosovo (1989). Serbia, thanks to Milosevic, acquired the image of “the last bastion of communism in Europe” while the Albanian separatist movement obtained the halo of Western-approved victimhood in its supposed search for “democracy and human rights.”

The secessionist movement of the Albanians in Kosovo, derived from the logic of the Titoist order and based on ethnic intolerance, led to the homogenization of the Serbs in Yugoslavia. It created Milosevic, the neo-communist quasi-nationalist, and resulted in the homogenization of the other Yugoslav nations. Due to the inability of the communist and post-communist leaderships to place democratic principles above narrow national interests, ethnic mobilization directly led to the civil war. It led to Slobodan Milosevic, who in 1987 uttered the famous phrase to the Kosovo Serbs - “No one will beat you again” – and subsequently destroyed his nation. It had also made the attainment of others’ ambitions – however unjust or unreasonable – not only possible, but almost inevitable.

THE WAR

RATIONALE AND REALITY

The rationale for U.S./NATO intervention in Kosovo is easily stated. It goes something like this: The current crisis in Kosovo is simply the latest episode in the aggressive drive by extreme Serbian nationalism, orchestrated by Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic, to create an ethnically pure Greater Serbian state. This aggression - first in Slovenia, then in Croatia, and then in Bosnia - has now come to Kosovo, largely because “the West” (and notably NATO) refused to stand up to him.

Prior to 1989 Kosovo was at peace under an autonomy that allowed the Albanian people a large degree of self-rule. That status quo was disturbed by the Serbs, by their revocation of Kosovo’s autonomy and the initiation of an apartheid-like system of ethnic discrimination. After a decade of oppression by the Serbs, the Albanians of Kosovo were subjected to a pre-planned program of genocide, similar to that committed by the Serbs in Bosnia. The rise of the KLA was a response to this threat.

According to this official version of events, the United States and “the international community” first exhausted the possibilities for a diplomatic settlement to the crisis, repeatedly offering the Serbs the opportunity to accept the Rambouillet agreement, a peaceful solution that would be fair to all parties. But while the Albanians, including the KLA, chose the path of negotiation and peace, the Serbs rejected it. Accordingly, NATO had no choice but to move ahead with a military response, namely air strikes, which in Bosnia forced the Serbs to the peace table.

The 79-day air campaign was directed against Milosevic and his security apparatus, not against the Serbian people. Unfortunately, as the Serbs moved ahead with their pre-planned program of genocide, the NATO air campaign could not stop the displacement of hundreds of thousands of Albanians. But the price was worth it: they are now coming back anyway, and any failure to achieve NATO’s stated objectives would have been completely unacceptable. International stability would be threatened and American and NATO credibility would be destroyed if genocide were allowed to succeed in the heart of Europe at the dawn of the 21^st century.

That, in a nutshell, is the case as made by President Clinton, Prime Minister Blair, NATO, and their supporters. Hardly any part of this summary justification is true, however. Some parts of it are skewed or exaggerated interpretations of the facts, some are outright lies. As in Bosnia, America’s Kosovo policy cannot be justified without recasting a frightfully complex conflict, with plenty of blame to go around, as a caricature: a morality play in black and white where one side is completely innocent and the other entirely villainous. As has been outlined above, pre-1989 Kosovo was hardly the fantasyland of ethnic tolerance the pro-intervention caricature makes it out to be. Under the 1974 Tito constitution, which elevated Kosovo to effective equality with the federal republics, Kosovo’s Albanians exercised virtually complete control over the provincial administration. Hundreds of thousands of Serbs left during this period in the face of pervasive discrimination and the authorities’ refusal to protect Serbs from ethnic violence. The result of the shift in the ethnic balance that accelerated during this period is the main claim ethnic Albanians lay to exclusive ownership of Kosovo.

Prior to 1989 Albanian demands mounted that the province be detached from Serbia and given republic status within the Yugoslav federation; republic status, if granted, would, in theory, have allowed Kosovo the legal right to declare its independence from Yugoslavia. One of the ironies of the present Kosovo crisis is that Milosevic began his rise to power in Serbia in large part because of the oppressive character of pre-1989 Albanian rule in Kosovo. In short, rather than Milosevic being the cause of the Kosovo crisis, it would be as correct to say that intolerant Albanian nationalism in Kosovo was largely the cause of Milosevic’s attainment of power.

But in 1989 Kosovo’s autonomy was not revoked but was downgraded - at the federal level, albeit at Milosevic’s initiative - to what it had been before 1974. Many Albanians refused to accept Belgrade’s reassertion of authority and large numbers were fired from their state jobs.  The resulting standoff - of boycott and the creation of alternative institutions on the Albanian side and of increasingly severe police repression on the Serbian side - continued for most of the 1990s. The political problem in Kosovo - up until the bombing began - had been fairly clear: how much autonomy will its Albanians settle for? But now we are constantly told that “autonomy is not enough” and that only independence will suffice. One cannot help but think of Turkish Kurdistan, where not only have the Kurds never been offered any kind of autonomy but even suggesting there ought to be autonomy will land you in jail. But of course we don’t bomb Turkey over the Kurds; on the contrary, as a NATO member Turkey was one of the countries helping to bomb the Serbs.

BEFORE THE BOMBS: UNREMARKABLE, LOW-INTENSITY CONFLICT

While after 1989 there was a tense stand-off in Kosovo, there was no warfare. That changed in early 1998, as the result not of any pre-planned Serbian program of “ethnic cleansing” but of the KLA’s deliberate strategy to turn a political confrontation into a military confrontation. Attacks directed against Serbian police and officials, Serb civilians and insufficiently militant Albanians were accurately calculated to trigger a massive response by Serbian forces. The growing cycle of violence, in turn, further radicalized Kosovo’s Albanians and led to the possibility of NATO military involvement, which was the KLA’s real goal rather than any realistic expectation of victory on the battlefield. It has been a stunningly successful strategy.*

Atrocities were committed in Kosovo by Milosevic’s forces as well as the KLA before the bombing. The extent and specifics of the reports that the media often treated as fact were open to question, however. Then the “massacre” at Racak happened.

Let it be recalled that in February 1994 the Bosnian Muslim government staged the infamous “marketplace massacre” in Sarajevo, killing scores of its own people. Ballistic, forensic and circumstantial evidence notwithstanding, the U.S. government promptly blamed the Serbs for the carnage. The U.N. on the ground knew the score, so did everybody else involved in this sordid matter, but over the past decade Washington has never allowed mere reality to get in the way of its creativity in the Balkans. Markale was no exception. Plus ça change… The prelude to NATO’s war against Serbia in 1999 was yet another stage-managed “massacre,” heralded to the world by an American diplomat in January 1999. This time the venue was the village of Racak, in Kosovo.

The principals were all Albanians: the victims, the stage-managers, and the ultimate political benefactors. The media went into a fit of rage over the discovery of 45 dead Albanians there, allegedly “civilians butchered in cold blood” by the Serbs. The head of the OSCE observer mission in Kosovo, William Walker, immediately asserted that the Serbs were to blame. Belgrade’s claim that the bodies were in fact KLA guerillas fallen during the fight in the surrounding areas was scornfully rejected as “Serbian propaganda.” Not a hint of doubt was printed the mainstream English-language media.

But according to Le Monde (“Were the dead in Racak really massacred in cold blood?” by Christophe Chatelot in Pristina, January 21, 1999), Walker and the Albanians “gave the version which does not give answer to many questions”:

“Isn’t the massacre of Racak too perfect? … How the Serb police could gather a group of men and quietly take them to the place of execution, while they were constantly under the KLA fire? How the ditch at the edge of Racak could escape the glance of the inhabitants, familiar of the places, present before the night? And how come that the observers present for more than two hours in this very small village failed to see the ditch too? Why are there only a few cartridge cases around the corpses, and little blood in this sunken lane where 23 people were supposedly shot several times in the head? Weren’t the bodies of the Albanians killed in the combat by the Serb police, and joined together in the ditch to create a scene of horror, in order to initiate the predictable wrath of the public opinion?”*

         There was no massacre at Racak, but real horrors did occur - on both sides of the Kosovo divide - after NATO bombs started falling, causing the humanitarian disaster for Serbs and Albanians alike. “We act to protect thousands of innocent people in Kosovo from a mounting military offensive,” declared Bill Clinton on the first day of the bombing. This was a demonstrable lie, given that he had been offered ample prior warning that air strikes against Yugoslavia would provoke bloody reprisals against Kosovo’s Albanian residents.

“The warnings were there for President Clinton,” reported the Washington Post (April 1, 1999). “For weeks before the NATO air campaign against Yugoslavia… CIA Director George J. Tenet had been forecasting that Yugoslav forces might respond by accelerating their campaign of ethnic cleansing in the province of Kosovo — precisely the outcome that has unfolded over the past week.” Top-ranking military officials corroborated Tenet’s assessment. Indeed, on March 30th, NATO supreme military commander Wesley Clark admitted that from the very beginning, “we never thought that through air power we could stop these killings on the ground.” An earlier report in the Post described a meeting between Mr. Clinton and Italian Prime Minister Massimo D’Alema shortly before the war began, in which D’Alema asked the President what would be done if Milosevic responded to an air strike by escalating his military campaign in Kosovo. Not knowing how to respond, Clinton looked helplessly at his National Security Adviser, Samuel Berger, who blithely replied, “We will continue the bombing.”

If the air strikes exacerbated the suffering, Clinton’s chosen strategy was to reinforce failure — at whatever cost to both the Serbs and the ethnic Albanians. Incredibly, when White House spokesman Joe Lockhart was asked about Serb retaliation against Albanians in Kosovo, he replied: “We knew he was going to do this.” This admission prompted liberal columnist Michael Kelly to conclude, “the President and his advisers are guilty of criminal irresponsibility. For the United States made no serious efforts to prepare for what Lockhart says we knew was coming, a wave of killing and ‘cleansing’ U.S. officials now compare to genocide.”

So much for the “moral imperative” behind NATO’s attack. But back to Racak: the real meaning of The Massacre That Never Was of January 1999 became clear at Rambouillet, one month after the event, and fully obvious when the bombs started falling on Belgrade in March. It was a necessary massacre as a prelude to a premeditated war.

THE SET-UP AT RAMBOUILLET

The primary justification for NATO attack against Yugoslavia was not the “human tragedy” but its refusal to sign the Kosovo peace agreement put forward by the United States and some of its allies at Rambouillet, France, in February 1999. President Clinton claimed at that time that the Albanians “chose peace” by eventually signing the agreement, even though “they did not get everything they wanted.” The Serbs, he claimed, refused to negotiate, even though the deal left Kosovo as part of Yugoslavia.

As in several other instances in the preceding months, the president was telling us only part of the story. Most consumers of “the media” in the Western world assume that the deal America put together at Rambouillet was even-handed, offering advantage to neither side, but including the core concerns of both Albanians and Serbs alike. But few journalists and fewer commentators have taken the time to look at the actual agreement. Anyone taking the trouble to read it will see that the “peace plan” actually gave the Albanians precisely what they want: de facto independence now, with guaranteed de jure independence in three years. For the Serbs, signing the Rambouillet agreement would actually be signing away all Serbian sovereignty over Kosovo immediately. It was not even a “take it or leave it” proposition, as Secretary of State Albright said back in February 1999, but “sign it or get bombed.”

There were, in fact, no negotiations at all, save those between the U.S. and the KLA. No sovereign, independent and self-respecting state could have signed the Rambouillet agreement, which – inter alia - postulated that:

·          “Kosovo will have a president, prime minister and government, an assembly, its own Supreme Court, constitutional court and other courts and prosecutors.”

·         “Kosovo will have the authority to make laws not subject to revision by Serbia or the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, including levying taxes, instituting programs of economic, scientific, technological, regional and social development, conducting foreign relations in the same manner as a Republic.”

·         “Yugoslav army forces will withdraw completely from Kosovo, except for a limited border guard force (active only within a 5 kilometers border zone)”; the same was to apply to all Serb police forces.

·         “The parties invite NATO to deploy a military force (KFOR), which will be authorized to use necessary force to ensure compliance with the accords.”

·         “The international community will ensure that these provisions are carried out through a Civilian Implementation Mission appointed by NATO.”

·         “The Chief of the CIM has the authority to issue binding directives to the Parties on all important matters he sees fit, including appointing and removing officials and curtailing institutions.”

·         “Three years after the implementation of the Accords, an international meeting will be convened to determine a mechanism for a final settlement for Kosovo on the basis of the will of the people.”

So much for the political stipulations of the “peace” deal. The Rambouillet accord had a remarkable military annex, too. That annex - besides turning Kosovo into a NATO colony in every respect - would have subjected all of Yugoslavia to its military occupation. It revived the hated colonial concept of “extraterritoriality,” under which the colonizers were immune from being tried by the courts of the colonized country, even if they committed - as they often did – rape or murder. But most remarkably of all,

·         “NATO personnel shall enjoy, together with their vehicles, vessels, aircraft, and equipment, free and unrestricted passage and unimpeded access throughout the FRY including associated airspace and territorial waters. This shall include, but not be limited to, the right of bivouac, maneuver, billet and utilization of any areas or facilities as required for support, training, and operations.”

·         “NATO is granted the use of airports, roads, rails, and ports without payment of fees, duties, dues, tolls, or charges occasioned by mere use.”

·         Yugoslavia shall “grant all telecommunications services, including broadcast services, needed for the Operation, as determined by NATO. This shall include the right to utilize such means and services as required to assure full ability to communicate and the right to use all of the electromagnetic spectrum for this purpose, free of cost.”

·         “NATO may… make improvements or modifications to certain infrastructure in the FRY, such as roads, bridges, tunnels, buildings, and utility systems.”

·         “NATO shall be immune from all legal process, whether civil, administrative, or criminal.”

·         “NATO personnel shall be immune from any form of arrest, investigation, or detention by the authorities in the FRY.”

·          “NATO personnel, under all circumstances and at all times, shall be immune from the Parties, jurisdiction in respect of any civil, administrative, criminal or disciplinary offenses which may be committed by them in the FRY.”

The arrival of NATO troops in Kosovo would have been, by itself, a gross violation of Yugoslavia’s and Serbia’s sovereignty. But the proposed accord required that Yugoslavia allow NATO unfettered access to any and all parts of the country’s territory, with all costs to be borne by the host country! This blatantly violated Yugoslavia’s sovereignty in so provocative a manner that it could not have been accidental.

It is not difficult to imagine a working group in the Washington bureaucracy charged with the task of thinking up the most intrusive and insulting clauses possible to insert into the agreement. Clearly, U.S. policymakers never intended the Serbs to sign this document. It was meant to be unacceptable.

The “Rambouillet Peace Accord” was, in truth, a declaration of war disguised as a peace agreement. The Yugoslav delegation at Rambouillet agreed to give the Albanians autonomy in Kosovo. Belgrade was ready to grant them control over their day-to-day lives including religious, education and health care systems, and local government operations. But they tried to negotiate changes to preserve the right of the Yugoslav federal government to determine economic and foreign policy, for Yugoslav national law to continue to apply in Kosovo, and for any international presence in Kosovo to be limited to observation and advice, not control. The Serbian negotiating efforts were summarily dismissed and the Serbs were told they had only two choices: sign the agreement as written - or face NATO bombing.

The war could have been easily avoided. As Le Monde Diplomatique – among others - pointed out (“Behind the Rambouillet talks,” May 1999), the Yugoslav leaders had accepted its main provisions, and the only outstanding issue was the nature of the force to be deployed in Kosovo. It was only when the United States unilaterally introduced the provision of a three-year transition to Kosovo’s independence, and added the amazing military protocol, that the Serbs had no choice but to refuse.*

         On 19 March 1999 the “Kosovo Liberation Army,” previously dismissed as terrorists, signed the “accords”. The Serbs had been nicely stitched up. The rest – including the 78 days of savage bombing, the subsequent NATO occupation of Kosovo, the KLA rampage and the ethnic cleansing of the Serbs – is by now history.

THE KLA: FROM ‘TERRORISTS’ TO ‘PARTNERS’

After the U.S. Administration’s decision to bomb has turned Kosovo from a crisis into a disaster, the West no longer had a “Kosovo policy” - it only has a KLA policy. That group’s true colors have become all too apparent when it unleashed an orgy of anti-Serbs violence in the aftermath of the Yugoslav Army’s withdrawal in the second week of June 1999. The U.S. has promoted as the legitimate representative of the Kosovo Albanians a terrorist group steeped in criminal activities - particularly the drug trade - and with strong links with radical Islamic groups, including Osama bin Ladin and the Iranians.

The KLA made its military debut in February 1996 with the bombing of several camps housing Serbian refugees from wars in Croatia and Bosnia.* The group expanded its operations through 1996 but was given a major boost with the collapse of neighboring Albania into chaos in 1997. This facilitated a huge influx of arms into Kosovo from the areas of northern Albania no longer controlled from Tirana. From its inception, the KLA has targeted not only Serbian security forces but Serbian and Albanian civilians as well. In view of such tactics, the Clinton Administration’s then-special envoy for Kosovo, Robert Gelbard, had little difficulty in condemning the KLA (also known by its Albanian initials, UCK) in terms comparable to those he used for Serbian police repression:

‘The violence we have seen growing is incredibly dangerous,’ Gelbard said. He condemned the actions of [the] Kosovo Liberation Army... ‘We condemn very strongly terrorist actions in Kosovo. The UCK is, without any questions, a terrorist group,’ Gelbard said. [Agence France Presse, February 23, 1998]

In the ensuing year the KLA’s strategy was to escalate the level of violence to the point where outside intervention would become inevitable, and it worked. Given the military imbalance it is clear that the KLA had always expected to achieve its goals less because of its own prospects for military success than because of a hoped-for outside intervention. As one KLA activists openly put it, “We hope that NATO will intervene, like it did in Bosnia, to save us” (New York Times, June 22, 1998).

By early 1999, the Clinton Administration had completely staked the success of its Kosovo policy on either the acceptance by both sides of a pre-drafted agreement, presented at Rambouillet, that would entail a NATO ground occupation of Kosovo, or - if the Albanians signed the agreement while Belgrade refused - on bombing of the Serbs. At that point for the Administration, cultivating the goodwill of the KLA — as the most extreme element on the Albanian side, and the element that had the weapons capable of sinking any diplomatic initiative — became an absolute imperative:

In order to get the Albanians’ … acceptance [of the peace plan], Ms. Albright offered incentives intended to show that Washington is a friend of Kosovo… Officers in the Kosovo Liberation Army would… be sent to the United States for training in transforming themselves from a guerrilla group into a police force or a political entity, much like the African National Congress did in South Africa. [New York Times, February 24, 1999]

The Times’ comparison of treatment of the KLA with that of the African National Congress (ANC) — a group with its own history of terror attacks on political opponents, including members of the ethnic group it claims to represent — is a telling one. It points to the seemingly consistent Clinton policy of cultivating relationships with groups known for terrorist violence — not only the ANC, but the Palestine Liberation Organization and the Irish Republican Army. The strategy was to wean away a group from its penchant for violence by adopting its cause as an element of U.S. policy.* By the time the NATO air strikes began, the Clinton Administration’s partnership with the KLA was unambiguous. Its effusive embrace of an organization that only a year ago its own top officials labeled as  “terrorist” was startling. This partnership has obscured troubling allegations about the KLA that the Clinton Administration has thus far neglected to address. Among the most troubling aspects of the Clinton Administration’s effective alliance with the KLA are numerous reports from reputable unofficial sources — including the highly respected Jane’s publications — that the KLA is closely involved with:

•   The extensive Albanian crime network that extends throughout Europe and into North America, including allegations that a major portion of the KLA finances are derived from that network, mainly proceeds from drug trafficking; and

•   Terrorist organizations motivated by the ideology of radical Islam, including assets of Iran and of the notorious Osama bin-Ladin — who has vowed a global terrorist war against Americans and American interests.

Open program of ethnic cleansing of the remaining Serbs in Kosovo, on which the KLA eagerly embarked in the wake of the withdrawal of the Yugoslav Army, has revealed that organization’s true character and intentions. That the U.S. Government sees the KLA as an acceptable partner is unsurprising, however, in view of Washington’s role in the most brutal and extensive campaign of ethnic cleansing in the former Yugoslavia. This takes us back to the summer of 1995.

THE GHOSTS OF THE KRAJINA

The Administration’s “humanitarian” justification for the war - the contention that this is about returning Albanian refugees to their homes - is rank hypocrisy. Many commentators have noted that the Administration had turned a blind eye to the cleansing of hundreds of thousands of Serbs from the Krajina in 1995. This is not quite accurate. They did not turn a blind eye: they actively abetted the Croatian Army.

Not unlike Kosovo’s Albanians, the Krajina Serbs were secessionists seeking to create an independent polity in what they considered an ancestral ethnic homeland. By the mid-1990s Milosevic had left them in the lurch. This act of betrayal was surprising only to those who believed the rhetoric about Milosevic being a nationalist bent on creating a “Greater Serbia.” This is nonsense. Unlike his equally thuggish colleagues Franjo Tudjman and Alija Izetbegovic, Milosevic is an opportunist – not a nationalist.

As for that old bogey, “Greater Serbia” - as opposed to Greater Croatia or Greater Albania – it is all in the definitions. There has been only one consistent rule in the break-up of Titoist Yugoslavia: the Serbs - the nation that gave up its state to create the South Slav union - were alone deemed to have no legitimate interest in how it broke up. One the one hand, the Serbs in the Krajina (and Bosnia) were expected to accept Tito’s borders – or else to be regarded as “aggressors” for wishing to remain in the state in which they had been living until then. On the other hand, Kosovo - a region that was part of Serbia even before Yugoslavia was created - is up for grabs. The double standard is breathtaking.

Accordingly, no threats of military retaliation by the U.S. and NATO accompanied Croatia’s rout of the Krajina Serbs. In fact, the massacre could not have occurred without timely and generous American assistance. Croatian nationalist politician Stipe Mesic admitted that the Krajina was Tudjman’s reward “for having accepted, under Washington’s pressure, the federation between Croats and Muslims in Bosnia.” Croatian assembly deputy Mate Mestrovic explained that the Clinton Administration “gave us the green light to do whatever had to be done.” “Operation Storm,” received specific prior approval from Peter Galbraith, the U.S. ambassador to Croatia.

The Croats received tactical support from NATO. As Croat forces began their attack, U.S. aircraft under NATO command destroyed Serbian radar and anti-aircraft defenses in the region.* American EA-6B electronic warfare aircraft patrolled the skies in support of the unfolding offensive, jamming communications between Serb units. But there was also a covert American presence on the ground in support of the Croats. Military Professional Resources Incorporated (MPRI), a private military and intelligence consulting firm based in Virginia, had been hired by Tudjman in early 1995 to upgrade his Ministry of Defense into a modern fighting force. According to MPRI information officer Joseph Allred, the firm exists so that “the U.S. can have influence as part of its national strategy on other nations without employing its own army.”

MISUSE AND ABUSE OF INTERNATIONAL LAW

         The attack against Yugoslavia once again establishes the truth of the axiom ‘Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power tends to corrupt absolutely.’ There is no legal sanction whatsoever for this unilateral action by NATO carried out at the behest of the US. The attack was in clear violation of Article 53 of the U.N. Charter; it had not been authorized by the Security Council, acting under Chapter VII. No country, group of countries or regional arrangement, no matter how powerful, can arrogate to itself the right of taking arbitrary and unilateral military action against others. NATO attack signals a return to anarchy where might is right. What NATO has tried to do is to intimidate a government through the threat of attack, and now through direct and unprovoked aggression, to accept foreign military forces on its territory. While there are several traditional descriptions for this kind of coercion; peacekeeping is not one of them.

The collapse of countervailing military power, and the reduction of the United Nations into an obedient organization of the United States, have now led to the disregard for a whole slew of international laws. Some American legal specialists have claimed that NATO actions constitute an “evolving” system of international laws. The reality is that the U.S. is making up the laws as it goes along. In essence, NATO has declared that whatever it does is the new international law overriding all past laws. Indeed, the U.S. has declared itself the prosecutor, judge and executioner of whatever laws it chooses to make up to advance its policy agenda. The following are some of the main violations of international laws committed by NATO.

(1) NATO actions violated Chapter I, Article 2 (4) of the UN Charter. This article unequivocally states: “All Members shall refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state, or in any other manner inconsistent with the purposes of the United Nations.” Chapter VII, Article 39 states: “The Security Council shall determine the existence of any threat to the peace, breach of the peace, or act of aggression and shall make recommendations, or decide what measures shall be taken in accordance with Articles 41 and 42, to maintain or restore international peace and security.”

Efforts to justify bombing through earlier resolutions or Chapter 7 of the Charter are acts of distortion and convenience. Article 51 of Chapter VII states that “Nothing in the present Charter shall impair the inherent right of individual or collective self-defense if an armed attack occurs against a Member of the United Nations, until the Security Council has taken measures necessary to maintain international peace and security.”

Yugoslavia did not attack any neighboring states outside its sovereign borders. Instead, Yugoslavia was attacked by NATO, although no member of NATO was attacked by Yugoslavia. NATO bypassed the Security Council to illegally attack Yugoslavia because of the certain veto by Russia and China. Prior to the attack the Security Council had adopted a total of three resolutions relating to the Kosovo problem prior to the bombing campaign, all of them in the course of 1998: Resolutions 1160 (31 March 1998), 1199 (23 September 1998) and 1203 (24 October 1998). All three resolutions stated various measures to be taken as means to resolve that threat to the peace and security within the region. In particular all three called upon both Yugoslav and Albanian forces to refrain from violence and terrorism. All three were emphatic in their demand that the situation in Kosovo be resolved by peaceful negotiations within certain guidelines. Those guidelines included “substantial autonomy” for the Albanian population of Kosovo and a commitment to the territorial integrity and sovereignty of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. It is clear that the measures stipulated in these resolutions were within the scope of the Council’s authority pursuant to Article 41 of the Charter.

There was no express or implied authorization in any of the resolutions for the use of force. There is nothing in any resolution authorizing the use of force pursuant to Article 42 of the Charter. Resolutions 1160 and 1199 implicitly contemplated that the Security Council could at some future time authorize the use of force. Both resolution explicitly stated that the Council could consider “further action and additional measures” being adopted if the existing measures were not complied with. This indicated the possibility of an authorization for the use of force pursuant to Article 42. However, prior to the bombing campaign there had been no Security Council resolution other than Resolution 1203, adopted in October 1998. It did not authorize the use of force either by the United Nations itself or by NATO. Accordingly there is no doubt that the NATO attack was a clear violation of the prohibition of the use of force contained in Article 2(4) of the UN Charter. Furthermore, the threat to Yugoslavia made before the bombing attack commenced - to the effect that it would be bombed if it did not sign the Rambouillet document - amounted to a separate violation of Article 2(4). The provisions of Article 2(4) are binding upon all NATO members, given that they are all members of the U.N.

(2) The bombing of Yugoslavia is a violation of NATO’s own charter that claims it is a defensive organization and is only committed to force if one of its members is attacked: “It provides deterrence against any form of aggression against the territory of any NATO member state. It preserves the strategic balance within Europe.” Maintaining an alliance without predetermined external threats serves notice to non-members that they should keep their powder dry. A single military alliance without the prevalence of countervailing military power now poses a serious threat to other states and will provoke them to seek appropriate military counter balancing measures. Already there are moves among Russia, China and India to forge a strategic partnership. Thus, the rationale for NATO’s existence would become a self-fulfilling prophecy.*

 (3) The so-called Rambouillet “Agreement” was presented in violation of Articles 51 and 52 of the 1980 Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties. Article 51 entitled Coercion of a Representative of a State declares: “The expression of a State’s consent to be bound by a treaty which has been procured by the coercion of it representative through acts or threats directed against him shall be without legal effect.” Article 52 entitled Coercion of a State by the Threat or Use of Force reads: “A treaty is void if its conclusion has been procured by the threat or use of force in violation of the principles of international law embodied in the Charter of the United Nations.”

(4) NATO’s objectives in Kosovo are a violation of Clause IV of the Declaration of Principles Guiding Relations Between Participating States of the Helsinki Accords Final Act of 1975, which guarantees the territorial frontiers of the states of Europe. “The participating states will respect the territorial integrity of each of the participating states,” it states. “Accordingly, they will refrain from any action...against the territorial integrity, political independence, or the unity of any participating state.” The former Yugoslavia was a party to this agreement, not the new states such as Croatia and Bosnia that subsequently invoked the Helsinki territorial principles to preserve their boundaries that were carved out from the old state. While attempts by Serbs of Croatia and Bosnia to remain part of Yugoslavia were denied, and their declarations of independence rejected in the name of the territorial integrity of Croatia and Bosnia which had never existed under modern international law, the right of the Kosovo Albanians to secede was recognized.

(5) Any eventual recognition of Kosovo’s “independence” will violate ban on recognition of provinces that unilaterally declare independence against the wishes of the federal authorities. The precedent exists, however: secessions of Slovenia, Croatia and Bosnia were swiftly recognized without considering the consequences. Led by Germany, European and American recognition of those Yugoslav republics was accomplished in disregard of international law doctrine forbidding recognition of secessionist units whose establishment is being resisted forcibly by a central government. In the case of Bosnia-Herzegovina, it was recognized although it did not fulfil any conditions of a de facto state. The 1933 Montevideo Conventions on the Recognition of New States, declared that a state only comes into existence and should be recognized if it has (a) clearly recognized boundaries, (b) a stable and well-defined population, and (c) a government in control.

(6) The ongoing destruction by the KLA of Serbian religious and historical sites in Kosovo - which NATO occupying troops have allowed to proceed - is in violation of the 1954 Hague Convention for the Protection of Cultural Property in the Event of Armed Conflict. This Convention was adopted in the light of experience during two world wars when there was wanton destruction of cultural and historical property in Europe.

(7) The 1949 Geneva Convention (IV) Relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in time of War specifically prohibits deliberate attacks on civilians. Part II, Article 13 states: “The Provisions of Part II cover the whole populations of the countries in conflict, without any adverse distinction based, in particular, on race, nationality, religion or political opinion, and are intended to alleviate the sufferings caused by war.”

The Geneva Conventions Act (amended 1995) of the United Kingdom specifically states that “civilians shall not be the object of attack” (Schedule 5, Article 52.1) and that “civilians shall enjoy protection unless they take a direct part in hostilities” (Schedule 6, Article 13.3). The attack on the Serbian television station leading to the deaths of at least 20 civilians and serious injury to many more constituted an intentional and premeditated attack on civilians. The bridge at Varvarin was bombed at noon on a market day. Cluster bombs were dropped on purely civilian quarters of Nis and other cities. Those were acts of mass murder, not collateral damage.

(8) Beyond the above, there are several other international regulations about the environment that are being violated by the attacks on chemical plants, fuel storage facilities and refineries. The 1976 Convention on the Prohibition of Military or Other Hostile Use of Environmental Modification Techniques, and the 1977 Protocol I Additional to the Geneva Conventions are relevant here. Article 55 states: “Care shall be taken in warfare to protect the natural environment against widespread, long-term and severe damage. This protection includes a prohibition of the use of methods or means of warfare which are intended or may be expected to cause such damage to the natural environment and thereby to prejudice the health or survival of the population.”

Other relevant conventions wantonly violated by NATO include the Vienna Convention for the Protection of the Ozone Layer (1985, UNEP), the Montreal Protocol on Substances that Deplete the Ozone Layer (1987), and the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (1992). And yet, in Yugoslavia, oil refineries and chemical plants have been attacked. Long-term environmental consequences are as yet to be assessed. Many of the American weapons used radioactive depleted uranium for more efficient penetrating effect.*

It has been argued in Washington, London and Brussels that the attack on Serbia was justified under the 1948 Genocide Convention and/or other general humanitarian principles. Claims have also been made that Article 2(4) of the UN Charter which upholds the territorial integrity of states against external military attacks, is countered by Articles 1(2) and 55 of the Charter, which speak of self-determination of peoples.

These articles, including Articles 73 to 91 which deal with “Non-Self Governing Territories” and the “Trusteeship System,” pertain to decolonization, however, and not to the right to secede from existing sovereign independent states. Article 1 of International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (1976) refers to the rights of minorities to self-determination but did not include the right to secede.

In addition, there was no “genocide” in Kosovo. NATO bombing led to the human catastrophe. Its unqualified and unrestrained bombing campaign that included the infrastructure is likely to kill hundreds of thousands of Yugoslav citizens in the long run, through lack of proper medical facilities, polluted water, atmospheric poisoning, ozone depletion, and climatic change. NATO committed ecocide in the short term, and it likely will have committed genocide in the long term.

If NATO had the right to intervene in Kosovo, does it now have the right to intervene in Palestine, Kashmir, Tibet and “Kurdistan,” where human rights violations are also taking place? Can any state now bypass the UN Security Council and attack another state by invoking humanitarian considerations? Three points need to be made:

(1) NATO cannot unilaterally invoke the 1948 Genocide Convention, the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and other humanitarian laws, and proceed to attack independent states. Only the Security Council can do so. It was deliberately by-passed by NATO knowing that Russia and China would veto such an attack.

(2) There was no humanitarian intervention by the West when Nigeria crushed the Biafra separatist movement (1967-1970), causing the deaths of one million Ibos. There was no reaction when Pakistani forces killed one million and drove out ten million Bengalis (1971), or when the Pol Pot regime killed one million Cambodians, to name just a few cases. In the latter two cases, the US condemned India and Vietnam for their military interventions and threatened military action against them. However, both India and Vietnam intervened AFTER the human catastrophes had taken place. On the other hand, NATO’s rush to bomb CAUSED the human catastrophe in Kosovo, as did Western interventions earlier in Croatia and Bosnia by promoting and rushing to recognize them as independent states against the wishes of the Serbian populations.

(3) Ethnic cleansing is not genocide. If it were, the Allies were guilty of genocide for endorsing the expulsion of 12 million Germans from Poland, Czechoslovakia and elsewhere at the end of the Second World War, and the European Jews committed “genocide” when they drove out nearly a million Palestinians in 1948.

As a final blow to the existing international legal norms, in the aftermath of Milosevic’s surrender to NATO the UN Security Council adopted Resolution 1244, based on a G-8 document adopted in Bonn three days previously. It condemns “all acts of violence” by the local parties, but had nothing to say about the brutal NATO bombing campaign that killed thousands of Yugoslav civilians and devastated the country. It pays lip service to the “sovereignty and territorial integrity” of Yugoslavia” but fails to provide an operational framework for that “sovereignty and integrity” to be upheld.

More alarmingly, Resolution 1244 simultaneously decides (Para. 11a) that the civilian presence is tasked with “promoting the establishment, pending a final settlement, of substantial autonomy and self-government in Kosovo, taking full account of annex 2 and of the Rambouillet accords.” So, the US-manipulated Rambouillet dictate – which the Transnational Foundation in Sweden aptly called “perhaps the most shameful event in modern diplomatic history” - was sneaked into the text in brazen contravention of what had been agreed with Belgrade. To make things worse, the same Para. 11f mentions “facilitating a political process designed to determine Kosovo’s future status, taking into account the Rambouillet accords.” This formulation can - and will - be used to justify a process towards establishing an independent “Kosova.” This reflects the Western powers’ intent: NATO will never leave and hand Kosovo back to Belgrade. In addition to the distrust between Serbs and Albanians, this has been rendered impossible by the manner in which NATO powers have resorted to the sustained campaign of anti-Serb atrocity management (“mass graves”) in order to provide a post facto justification for their attack.

According to the dictate, first Yugoslav forces had to start withdrawing, then bombing stopped, and then international forces moved in. This was bound to create a vacuum that permitted KLA to move in and persuaded non-Albanians to begin to leave immediately. Are we to believe that this was not foreseen by NATO? Annex 2 (4) of the Security Council Resolution 1244 stated that the “security presence” shall “establish a safe environment” for all people in Kosovo. But already in the first month of NATO occupation (June-July 1999) tens of thousands of Serb civilians were forced out of Kosovo; the mission failed in achieving its main stated task at the very outset.

The UN Security Council did not provide an authorization for the illegal NATO attack on Yugoslavia in March 1999. Three months later this body suffered further humiliation by adopting a resolution that was designed to give NATO a fig leaf of legitimacy and quasi-legality in reaping the fruits of its aggression.

         At the Nuremberg Trials (1945-1946) Mr. Justice Jackson’s clause on aggression defined the chief “Crime Against Peace” for which indictments against the Nazi political leaders were prepared. They were: (a) Planning, preparation, initiation, or waging war of aggression, or war in violation of international treaties, agreements, or assurances; or (b) “Participation in a Common Plan or Conspiracy” for the accomplishment of any of the foregoing. An application of this definition to NATO’s actions shows criminal culpability that calls for its own separate war crimes trial. That has been, and remains, the cardinal war crime springing from the NATO war against Serbia.

THE AFTERMATH

        When the war ended, NATO occupiers were neurotically anxious to uncover evidence of Serb atrocities in Kosovo. If there were none, then the whole edifice on which the “Alliance” had based its war would have collapsed. As NATO forces extended their reach throughout Kosovo in the aftermath of Milosevic’s surrender, the Western media pack sought to bludgeon public opinion and justify the aggression after the fact.

“MASS GRAVES”: ATROCITY MANAGEMENT UNDER NATO OCCUPATION

        At the center of this propaganda effort was a series of reports on alleged “mass graves.” The victors verily chortled over each fresh cemetery – tombs with individual markers notwithstanding – and proclaimed them the justification for the pulverization of Serbia in 78 days of aerial savagery. The Independent of London (“Propaganda Wars” by Philip Knightley, June 27) was one of the few media outlets to warn us that

If history is any guide, then many of the atrocity stories from Kosovo that have dominated the media since the end of the war will turn out to be false. Written and filmed by some of the self-styled “mass-grave correspondents”… the atrocity story is a tried and tested way of arousing hatred. It fortifies the mind of the nation with “proof” of the depravity of the enemy and his cruel and degenerate conduct of his war. Your battle against him can then be painted as a righteous one, a test of civilised values over barbarity.