UNMASKING NATO
THE US/NATO campaign to justify the relentless bombing of Yugoslavia is just as intensive as the bombing itself. Both need to be challenged. A great deal hinges, for example, on when and why. When did the "ethnic cleansing" in Kosovo start? Why was the bombing initiated? The following twelve questions attempt to elicit some answers.
1. Was there "ethnic cleansing" prior to the Rambouillet ultimatum of US/NATO, and is its use accurate in the current situation?
ROLLY KEITH, a long-time worker in international security teams, participated in the OSCE (Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe) Kosovo Verification Mission to monitor a peace agreement negotiated between the Yugoslav government and the KLA. The peace agreement quickly fell apart when, in Keith's opinion, the KLA violated it and began conducting terrorist attacks and killing policemen in order to provoke the Yugoslav authorities to retaliate. Keith was in Kosovo until March 20th when the OSCE's 1,300 observers were quickly withdrawn a few days before NATO began its bombing campaign. During his time in Kosovo, he saw no signs of genocide or ethnic cleansing. Some civilians were being displaced because of terrorism, but "there were no mass humanitarian problems until NATO bombs came down."1
The German Foreign Office and German courts involved in litigation concerning the Albanian population in Kosovo also reported no signs of genocide prior to the March '99 bombing campaign; instead, "a selective forcible action against the military underground movement (especially the KLA) and people in immediate contact with it in its areas of operation." They concluded, "A state program of persecution aimed at the whole ethnic group of Albanians exists neither now nor earlier."2
ACA SINGER, a leader of the local Jewish community in Belgrade, and a survivor of Auschwitz, is incensed at the US/NATO bombing campaign and calls US/NATO claims of genocide "despicable."3 Recently, hundreds of American Jews who are survivors or relatives of survivors of the Holocaust signed a letter to the German Green Party highly critical of the use of the terms "genocide" and "Holocaust.''4
PAUL WATSON, a Canadian who works for the Los Angeles Times and who reported from inside Kosovo, contradicted NATO claims, saying he had seen no evidence that Serb authorities massacred Albanians in the Kosovo capital of Pristina. Watson, who has been in Kosovo since NATO began bombing on March 24, declared, "It is very hard to hide an anarchic wholesale slaughter of people. There is no evidence that such a thing happened in Pristina .... I am certain it is a mixture of both [Serb intervention and NATO bombing]." Watson, a Pulitzer Prize winner for news photography, said, "If NATO had not bombed, I would be surprised if this sort of forced exodus on this enormous scale would be taking place."5
LT. GEN. SATISH NAMBIAR, (Retd.), reported, "Portraying the Serbs as evil and everybody else as good was not only counterproductive but also dishonest. According to my experience [Bosnia, '92-'93] all sides were guilty, but only the Serbs would admit that they were no angels, while the others would insist that they were. With 28,000 forces under me and with constant contacts with UNHCR and the International Red Cross officials, we did not witness any genocide beyond killings and massacres on all sides that are typical of such conflict conditions. I believe none of my successors and their forces saw anything on the scale claimed by the media.6
2. Was the Rambouillet "agreement" a sincere diplomatic effort to resolve the differences with Yugoslavia and Slobodan Milosevic?
ACCORDING TO DAN GOURE--Deputy Director for Political and Military Studies at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, MSNBC military analyst, and former Bush administration Pentagon official--the Rambouillet meetings constituted "a significant compromising of Yugoslavian sovereignty" and was "a trap for Milosevic . . . a no-win situation for him . . . Rambouillet was not a negotiation, it was a set-up, a lynch party...."7
Citing Agence France Presse, FAIR reported that the Serb delegation seemed receptive to international peacekeepers as long as they were not under NATO command. The head of the Serb delegation "insisted that the peacekeepers answer to a non-military body such as the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe. . . or the United Nations. A US official confirmed that "The discussions are on whether it should be a UN or OSCE force."
The next day, Secretary of State Madeleine Albright declared, "We accept nothing less than a complete agreement, including a NATO-led force.... Furthermore, the US refused to allow the Serbs to sign the political agreement until they first agreed to a NATO-led force to implement it."8
The KLA initially refused the Rambouillet accord because it did not grant their demand for a referendum, which, given the prevalence of ethnic Albanians in Kosovo, would have certainly given Kosovo independence after a 3-year NATO-sponsored 'holding' or 'autonomy' period. The US administration forced the Albanian delegation to sign the agreement to give Yugoslavia no other options but to lose Kosovo or be bombed. The French at the time were already very uncomfortable with giving the Serbs only a "lose/lose" situation.9
3. Is the massive exodus of refugees entirely due to "evil" Milosevic?
MANY NEWS SOURCES, including the New York Times, have admitted that the administration (and more specifically George Tenet of CIA and Pentagon officials) knew that a NATO bombing would be countered by a Yugoslav decision to remove the ethnic Albanian population of Kosovo. Ken McCarthy of Brasscheck notes that the largest refugee camp management and security exercise ever conducted in US military history took place less than ten days before the US/NATO bombing assault created the largest refugee population in Europe since WW2. "NATO soldiers... participated in the exercises in California alongside US troops."10 In other words the NATO campaign was a calculated strategy with calculated consequences!
4. Does the bombing campaign achieve the "humanitarian" results invoked by US/NATO?
SO FAR, THE BOMBING CAMPAIGN has achieved the opposite. It has CAUSED a massive exodus of refugees that is still increasing, and the increase in refugees is then invoked as a justification for more bombing. The relentless reports about Serb atrocities against Albanians naturally causes Albanians to flee based on the reports. Military strategists are almost unanimous in believing that the "ethnic cleansing" being carried out by Milosevic (to the extent it is actually occurring) cannot be stopped from the air but needs the involvement of ground troops. Bombing Serb civilians and civilian infrastructure does nothing to improve the lot of the Albanian refugees; instead, it constitutes what are considered, under international law, WAR CRIMES. While the rationale given in much US/NATO propaganda is that the bombing of civilian targets is meant to turn the population against Milosevic, it has, quite predictably, achieved just the opposite. In actuality, the strategy pursued by US/NATO is indistinguishable from that pursued by the Third Reich, where attacks on civilians and the civilian infrastructure were used as a means of demoralizing and breaking the psychological sense of identity and self of the subject populations.
5. Are civilian casualties just a "mistake" and do they merely constitute "collateral damage"?
US/NATO REPORTED MANY CIVILIAN TARGETS it has attacked: bridges, highways, factories, power grids, Serbian TV facilities, dams and hydroelectric facilities, political party headquarters, residences of politicians, and so on. If it intentionally targets civilian installations, the death of civilians is part of a planned strategy. It is not an accident. The use of cluster bombs in civilian areas is not a "mistake"! If a military campaign is already causing great numbers of civilian casualties, then targets more civilian sites, and escalates the number of civilian fatalities, that is not a mistake! The major US/(NATO) "mistakes" are as follows:
April 5: A laser-guided bomb missed its target and fell on a residential area in Aleksinac, 200 kilometres south of Belgrade.
April 9: NATO admitted hitting civilian homes in a strike on a telephone exchange in Pristina, regretting "unintended damage or loss of civilian life" when a bomb struck "some 200 to 300 meters from the target."
April 12: Two missiles were fired at a railway bridge at Grdelica Klisura, some 300 kilometers south of Belgrade as a train was crossing, killing 55 passengers.
April 14: The Yugoslav authorities accused NATO of killing 75 people and injuring 25 others in strikes on two refugee columns near Djacovica, in southwestern Kosovo. On April 19, NATO said it was attempting to neutralize military vehicles and admitted targetting two convoys.
April 28: NATO admitted it had mistakenly bombed a residential area at Surdulica, 250 kilometres south of Belgrade, during an attack on an army barracks. NATO said a missile overshot its target.
May 1: NATO hit a bus crossing a bridge at Luzane, north of Pristina, causing 47 deaths among the passengers, according to Serbian officials.
May 7: NATO admitted it was "highly probable" that a cluster bomb went astray and hit civilian buildings at Nis.
May 7: The Chinese embassy in Belgrade was hit by NATO missiles.
May 13: NATO attacked a convoy of Albanian refugees near the village of Korisa. The refugees had just been allowed to return to their homes by the Yugoslav regional military commander. NATO first claimed that the casualties were the result of Serb shelling, then admitted to the attack, but alleged the Albanians had been put there as "human shields." The constantly changing rhetorical defenses and blame-the-victim strategy are the usual fare of NATO propaganda (compare the CIA excuses re: bombing the Chinese Embassy).
6. Is the refugee crisis due only to the current Kosovo situation?
HERE ARE THE FIGURES for refugees in the Balkans:
·In Yugoslavia: 223,000 refugees from Bosnia, 300,000 from Croatia, and 55,000 from Kosovo (Lt. Gen. Satish Nambiar, Former Deputy Chief of Staff of the Indian Army, and First Chief Commander and Head of Mission of the UN Forces deployed in former Yugoslavia, Mar. '92-Mar. '93, estimates the total at 850,000.)
·In Bosnia & Herzegovina: 836,000 internally displaced refugees, 30,000 from Croatia;
·In Croatia: 30,000 from Bosnia, 62,000 internally displaced;
·In the rest of Europe: 128,000 from Bosnia and Croatia; 100,000 from Kosovo.
7. Are all Kosovars merely the victims of Milosevic's alleged brutality?
THROUGHOUT THE 1980s and then especially in 1996-98 there were constant acts of Albanian provocation and terrorism in Kosovo. These were reported extensively by the New York Times and other mainstream news sources at the time, but are now conveniently forgotten. Albania, and especially an SS regiment called the Skanderberg Division, were guilty, with the Croats, of the most unspeakable atrocities against Serbs and Jews as allies of the Third Reich. The KLA has been organized with the help of the CIA, German BND, and Albanian government factions close to Sali Berisha, who has helped organize their mercenary Islamic fundamentalist contacts, their funding (almost wholly from drug dealing) and organized crime contacts, and their weapons supplies through Iran, Pakistan, and Turkey. While Clinton originally welcomed the Afghan muhajjediin as "freedom fighters," now Osama bin Laden has become a "terrorist." As Jerry Seper reports in the Washington Times, some members of the KLA were trained in terrorist camps run by international fugitive Osama bin Laden--who is wanted in the 1998 bombing of two US Embassies in Africa.11
8. Is Yugoslav TV targeted out of concern for "freedom of information"?
FROM GRENADA TO IRAQ AND NOW KOSOVO, wars have escalated the Pentagon's attempts at media control. In Grenada, it was selection of what news sources to allow in. In Iraq was added TOTAL CENSORSHIP of news stories. In Kosovo, the same two tactics apply, plus an attempt to obliterate all sources of information coming from US/NATO's "adversary" (which the US officially claims not to be "at war" with). The attacks on Yugoslav TV are purposely conducted against those sites that have many journalists in them (rather than merely relay stations). British spokespersons have said Yugoslav TV needed to broadcast 6 hours of NATO 'news' (i.e. propaganda), but did not mention a reciprocal 6 hours of Yugoslav news broadcast on NATO countries' media. Some Internet sources claim that the attack on the Chinese Embassy was also aimed at Chinese journalists.12
On May 14, the Clinton administration was attempting to shut down Yugoslav access to the Internet (or rather, the rest of the world's Internet access to Yugoslav sites ). Thanks to world-wide Internet protests, this plan apparently was reversed. US/NATO also had plans to use specially equipped B-52's to force its own TV propaganda on a Yugoslav audience. It is now, instead, resorting to leafleting propaganda. The real reason behind the US attacks on Serb TV and attempts to censor TV and radio in the Serb parts of Bosnia is that the information provided on civilian casualties and diplomatic efforts to end the war severely damage the credibility of much US/NATO propaganda.
9. Are the NATO governments, who claim to be moved by "humanitarian" concerns actually helping the humanitarian relief effort?
MCNAMARA, head of the UN High Commission on Refugees, complained, "We are extremely disappointed with the response of donor governments ... [who] have not contributed" to the operation's estimated three-month budget of $143 million. The budget, which has been revised three times since NATO began its bombing campaign on March 24, is now geared to cover as many as 950,000 refugees from the province of Kosovo. But only $78 million has actually been raised, all of which has already been spent or committed, McNamara said. "The governments who are not giving us funds are the first to criticize." Many European governments have been among the worst contributors, with Britain providing just $809,000, France some $818,000, and Italy $816,000, although private Italian donors have given $8.5 million. The largest donor overall is Japan with $23 million. McNamara slammed moves by Western governments to sign bilateral aid agreements with regional states, accusing them of being often inefficient and a further drain on the UNHCR's stretched resources. Many of these bilateral agreements are "not coordinated, and the UNHCR is usually left to pick up the consequences of those bilateral arrangements, which are often not followed through and not necessarily wholly for humanitarian reasons."13
Contrasted with humanitarian relief, the US is spending tens of billions of dollars on the war effort without batting an eyelid.
10. Is the US intervening on the side of law and order?
·ARTICLE 2 OF THE UN CHARTER prohibits the use of force against a sovereign state which has not committed aggression on other states.
·NATO's own charter claims itself to be a defensive organization and is committed to force only if one of its members is attacked. No member of NATO was attacked.
·The so-called Rambouillet "Agreement" is a violation of the 1980 Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties which forbids coercion and force to compel any state to sign a treaty or agreement. NATO is "asking" Serbia to sign or be bombed.
·The Helsinki Accords Final Act of 1975 guarantees the territorial frontiers of the states of Europe.
·The recognition of the independence of Croatia, Slovenia, then Bosnia-Herzegovina, and now the attempted forced secession of Kosovo is in clear violation of the Helsinki Accords and international law.
·If the Serbs in Croatia, Bosnia, and apparently Kosovo, are not granted the right of self-determination and secession, NATO's illegal use of force is compounded by double standards.
·Recent votes in the US Congress have denied the President the authority EITHER to conduct the AIR war OR to introduce ground troops into the conflict, under the War Powers Act. The US/NATO war is thus illegal also under US law.
·A bipartisan group of 17 Members of Congress filed a lawsuit on April 30, 1999, in federal court against President Bill Clinton for violating both the US Constitution and the 1973 War Powers Resolution with regard to Yugoslavia by engaging in war without a declaration of war from Congress. The president also violated the 1973 War Powers Resolution for failing to officially report to Congress on his aggressive actions against Yugoslavia within the mandated forty-eight hours. The plaintiffs ask the court to order the president to end hostilities, then withdraw troops no later than June 24, 1999. Congress voted 427 to 2 against a declaration of war with Yugoslavia, voted to prohibit funding for ground elements, and finally, denied support for the ongoing air campaign.
·A group of Canadian lawyers and professors has lodged a complaint with the International War Crimes Tribunal, arguing NATO leaders are acting like outlaws by bombing Yugoslavia. The complaint also alleges "open violation" of the United Nations Charter, the NATO treaty itself, the Geneva Conventions, and the Principles of International Law Recognized by the Nuremberg Tribunal. (The latter makes "planning, preparation, initiation, or waging of a war of aggression or a war in violation of international treaties, agreements or assurances" a crime.)
·An international legal team representing the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (FRY) introduced an unprecedented lawsuit against 10 NATO-member countries before the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in the Hague, asking it to issue preventive measures ordering the respondent states to ''cease their acts of use of force'' and to ''refrain from further threats to use the force'' against Yugoslavia. The accusation claims that the air attacks launched since March 24 by NATO against Yugoslavia violate the United Nations Charter, several treaties regarding the protection of civilians, and the International Convention Against Genocide.14
11. What are the reasons for US/NATO aggression?
Although some liberal and many radical critics of the US/NATO aggression against Yugoslavia agree in dismissing the "humanitarian" pretexts for the war, they provide varying explanations. Because the aggression is complex, several explanations may be correct, but carry different weight. Some of the best analysts of the destruction of Yugoslavia and the US/NATO "divide and rule" policies in this decade point to the strategy of creating IMF and World Bank indebtedness, then destabilizing the country to make what remains of the once partially socialist economy an easier prey for international monopoly capital, reducing the affected population to their "mercies."15
Other analysts suggest that the intervention is also a way of controlling and/or putting down increasingly radicalized working classes in Eastern Europe who are starting to see through the sham of the "free market" promises made during the "end of the Cold War."16 Still other analysts point to the important role of natural resources in the region. Multinational corporations and "their" institutions, such as the IMF and the World Bank, are extremely interested in the Kosovo region's resources as a means of control that can effectively deny regional self-development, and also be used in the competition over energy resources among the principal regional blocks in the New World Order (USA/Americas; EU/Eastern Europe/Central Asia; Japan/China/Far East). Michel Chossudovsky points out that several Western oil companies- including Occidental, Shell, and British Petroleum-are intensely interested in Albania's abundant, unexplored oil deposits, while Western investors are attracted by Albania's extensive reserves of chrome, copper, gold, nickel, and platinum. Chossudovsky notes that Kosovo, on the other hand, is important for containing 1/3 of Yugoslavia's coal reserves-the main source of its electricity. The director of Kosovo's Stari Trg mining complex has described the region as "Serbia's Kuwait," with the richest lead and zinc mines in Europe and huge lignite deposits. The mines-estimated to be worth $5 billion-are publicly owned.17
Frank Viviano and Kenneth Howe (The San Francisco Chronicle, August 28, 1995) write that coal and oil deposits have been identified on the eastern slope of the Dinarides Thrust. According to Bosnian officials, Chicago-based Amoco was among several foreign firms that initiated exploratory surveys in Bosnia. The West is anxious to develop these regions. Viviano and Howe also report "substantial petroleum fields in the Serb-held part of Croatia just across the Sava River from the Tuzla region." The latter, under the Dayton Agreement, is part of the US Military Division with headquarters in Tuzla.18
The Balkans also constitute a strategic geographical area for the transport of raw materials. Several authors (Michel Collon and others) assert that if the allegedly enormous resources in the Caspian Sea area (the oilfields of Kazakhstan, the gas fields of Turkmenistan, and the enormous offshore oil reserves of Azerbaijan) are developed, either a Danube route (with Belgrade and Serbia placed strategically), or a pipeline that would go from Bulgaria all the way through Kosovo would have to pass through the Balkans. Control of the regions (and the usual installation of US bases) would therefore be paramount to a successful development of the Caspian Sea region. While all these reasons are important, and the bombing creates increased forms of dependency and multinational expropriation, the war also creates monstrous economic devastation.
12. What are the economic costs?
PROF. CHOSSUDOVSKY REPORTS that if the NATO campaign against Yugoslaiva is prolonged". . . the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) have estimated that the cost of taking care of refugees through the end of the year will top $430 million." Then there are increased transportation costs, lost investment, and declines in tourism and trade affecting Yugoslavia's six Balkan neighbors as a result of the war. Yves Thibault de Silguy, the European Union's (EU) Commissioner for Economic and Monetary Affairs, adds that reconstruction costs could reach $30 billion.19
Actually, the main reason for the air massacres is to be found in the tripolar world, with the institutional consolidation of the EU and the introduction of the euro. The divide-and-rule policies of the US, now under NATO cover, are aimed at control or power projection over strategic energy reserves and their main transportation routes; increasing tensions among member nations and areas of Europe; controlling relations between the EU, Eastern Europe and Russia; and creating enormous economic devastation and a refugee crisis that the EU will probably have to resolve on its own.
Pentagon documents and Pentagon expert Wolfowitz explicitly say they want to avoid the emergence of an independent European defense force (i.e. one not controlled by the US). Far from resolving a "humanitarian crisis," the US/NATO aggression was intended to exacerbate it, further destabilizing the Balkans and thereby Europe, while enhancing NATO's role as a vehicle for US world dominance.
NOTES:
1. From Steve Staples <sstaples@canadians.org>.
2. From official documents by the International Association of Lawyers Against Nuclear Arms as published by the German daily Junge Welt on 4/ 24/99. Translated by Eric Canepa of the Brecht Forum, New York. Documents are viewable on the Progressive Review website, courtesy of Sam Smith.
3. "Auschwitz Survivor in Belgrade now Fears NATO," NYT, 4/99.
4. Contact: <naimanr@preamble.org>.
5."Reporter Challenges Reports of Massacres in Pristina," The Globe and Mail (Toronto), 4/14/99. Reports in the NYT, by correspondent Steve Erlanger from ca. May 5 to May 15, while in Kosovo, also confirm that US/NATO bombings are in large part to blame for the exodus.
6. "The Fatal Flaws Underlying NATO's Intervention in Yugoslavia," USI, New Delhi, 4/6/99.
7. Institute for Public Accuracy, May 4, 1999.
8. FAIR, May 14, 1999.
9. Cf. Jane Perlez, "No Winners at Kosovo Peace Talks," NYT, February 25, 1999.
10. Sam Smith, "Undernews," Progressive Review, 4/13 99.
11. Cf. Diana Johnstone, "Notes on the Kosovo Problem and the International Community"<http://kosovo.serbhost.org/diana_johnstone.html>; Michael Chossudovsky, "Kosovo Freedom Fighters Financed by Organized Crime"<http://www.transnational.org/features/crimefinansed.html>; Progressive Review, Balkan Archives <http://prorev.com>.
12. Jared Israel, Counterpunch, 5/13/99.
13. AFP news wire release, 5/9/99.
14. Information partially from G.C. Thomas, Department of Political Science, Marquette University, quoted by Sam Smith, "Undernews," Progressive Review, 4/1/99. The last item in the list is from "Conflict-Yugoslavia: NATO Accused of Genocide at World Court," IPS, 5/10/99.
15. Diana Johnstone, "Seeing Yugoslavia through a Dark Glass: Politics, Media and the Ideology of Globalization"; Michel Chossudovsky, "Dismantling Former Yugoslavia, Recolonising Bosnia"; Michael Parenti "The Destruction of Yugoslavia."
16. Michel Collon, "Yugoslavia: A New War for Loot"; Allen Myers, "The Wrong Weapons to Defeat Imperialism"; Dave Stratman,"Why Is the U.S. BombingYugoslavia?" New Democracy <http://members.aol.com/newdem>.
17. Sam Smith, "Undernews," Progressive Review, 4/9/99.
18. Michel Chossudovsky, "Dismantling Former Yugoslavia, Recolonising Bosnia."
19. Jim Lobe, "Economy: Balkans Economies Battered by War in Yugoslavia," IPS, 4/29/99.