A just war?

The war has been justified on purely humanitarian grounds but, in fact, it is a more complex conflict which reaches into the the future political and strategic complexion of south Eastern Europe as a whole. While ordinary people in the West are unaware of this even shop keepers and taxi drivers in the Balkans debate the implications.

Consider the following:

• Despite the comparisons with Hitler now used to describe Slobodan Milosevic, he was until recently courted by politicians from the US and Western Europe. Dayton negotiators, like the US’s Richard Holbrooke, made it plain that they preferred his company to that of the other leaders in the Bosnian crisis, Franjo Tudjman and Alia Izetbegovic. Many of the players in that war, including Holbrooke but also Britain’s former Foreign Secretary Douglas Hurd and Italian Foreign Minister Lamberto Dini returned after 1995 to do business with the man now described as ‘the butcher of Belgrade’.

As for the war in Bosnia itself, at least 60,000 people were killed and 2 million were displaced during the conflict. All attempts to assist the weaker side – the Bosnian Muslims – were met with obstruction including any attempt to lift the UN-imposed arms embargo. Supporters of the current war acknowledge the discrepancies in the international community’s approach to Bosnia and Kosovo but justify their recently-acquired robustness by saying ‘it [Bosnia] must not be allowed to happen again’. However, it is open to argument that NATO has learned from its past mistakes how not to make new ones..

• The desire to sideline and ultimately eliminate the Milosevic regime began to seriously take effect a year after Dayton. But demonstrations in Belgrade during the winter of 1996-7 failed to overthrow the government. And although the Western-sponsored election of Milo Djukanovic in Montenegro in 1997 was encouraging, many feared public opposition would erupt inside the small republic if it sought to break with Belgrade. Too many people in Montenegro wanted to keep their ties to the Federation.

• Meanwhile, in Kosovo itself 6 people were killed in 1996. In 1997 rumours abounded that the KLA a shadowy organization with ties to Albanian leftist groups in the Switzerland and Germany was preparing to launch an armed struggle. The US was rumoured to be promoting and financing it from an early stage. Many, including the moderate Albanian leader, Ibrahim Rugova, (and some Western journalists) speculated that this was Milosevic-inspired disinformation. Others saw it as the natural response to the Ghandi-esque policies of Rugova which had failed to deliver full independence.

• During 1998 the violence worsened. Policemen, Serb officials and even Albanian "collaborators" were killed by KLA snipers and, according to the UNHCR, 90 Serbian villages were ethnically cleansed in the course of the year. Reprisals were taken against those considered to be members of the organization. This involved the use of scorched earth tactics whereby houses (in the case of Kosovo this often turned out to be large compounds) were burned down to flush out the terrorists. However, compared with Bosnia, where thousands were killed in a week during the early part of the war in 1992 only 1700 Albanians (mainly fighters) 180 Serb policemen and 120 Serb soldiers were killed in Kosovo last year. The regime in Belgrade has not been stupid: it knew that it was being provoked into massive retaliation and refused to respond in the required manner.

• The killings in Kosovo were still the West’s best hope of provoking the fall of the Milosevic regime even though the conflict was of low intensity compared with many other places in the world. By February the parties gathered at the chateau of Rambouillet in France to discuss peace. At the last moment, when it looked as though some agreement might be reached the Americans handed the Serb delegation an annexe to the final document demanding freedom of movement (and much else) to NATO troops and personnel not only in Kosovo but throughout the whole of Yugoslavia. No sovereign state would have accepted such terms. Naturally, they were rejected not just by Milosevic but by a vote in the Serbian parliament. The scene was set for the air campaign to begin.

• Perhaps the diplomatic players believed their own propaganda. Christopher Hill, the US ambassador to Macedonia, was confident that Milosevic would cave in before the first bombs fell despite being told by well-informed Serbs that this was not going to happen. It is unsurprising in these circumstances that the NATO allies were unprepared for what followed.

With such confusion and a cavalier belief in the likelihood of Serb capitulation at the last minute, NATO went to war. Despite attempts by CNN among others to talk up the conflict by showing what purported to be the large movement of refugees from Kosovo in the preceding months few appeared to have moved out of the province before March 24^th. There were no camps before then. After the bombing began huge numbers of refugees flooded out of the province.

The rest is history.

Last modified: diciembre 17, 1999

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Jordi Ros