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Air campaign brings death to Kosovars

AS FIRST-HAND observer to the aftermath of Yugoslavian President Slobodan Milosevic’s
policy of ethnic cleansing and genocide in Bosnia and Herzegovina, I agreed
with the NATO air campaign to save the Kosovars from a similar fate. The brutal
war started by the Yugoslavian Army through their vassal Bosnian Serb allies
came dangerously close to destroying an entire people. Two-hundredfifty-thousand
people are missing and presumed to be dead and 1.5 million are refugees (out
of a prewar population of only 4 million). Virtually every mosque, religious
school, library and museum that had any connection to the Ottoman period that
was or is in Serbian-held territory was destroyed. The ground in what’s left
of Bosnia and Herzegovina is sewn with more than 100,000 land mines. Thousands
of villages and hamlets sit empty as the residents have fled or are dead. The
transportation system is largely destroyed, electric production is a fraction
of pre- war levels and unemployment is 60 to 70 percent – all in a nation that
prior to the war had a higher standard of living than Portugal, Greece or Turkey
(all NATO members).

There were no pitched battles, other than perhaps the siege of Sarajevo, during
the last Balkan war. The Bosnian Federation Army had no Air Force and only one
battle tank It was a war waged by a modem and well-equipped army against a mostly
unarmed people whose taxes paid for the arsenal that was now destroying them.
The United Nations’ attempts to end the war through negotiation, U.N. declared
“safe zones” and arms embargoes was a complete failure. Poorly armed U.N. troops
stood idly by and watched the death and destruction, while the Security Council
in New York drafted resolution after resolution condemning the atrocities that
were occurring. In 1993. during the dedication of the Holocaust Museum and Memorial
al in Washington D.C., President Clinton declared that the United States would
never allow another holocaust to occur. But a holocaust was occurring and he
knew it Reports from news reporters, relief workers and troops in Bosnia were
confirming it every day.

The vacillation and indecision that permeated Washington, New York and most
European capitals gave Slobodan Milosevic the time he needed to perpetrate the
worst crimes against humanity since the Nazis. It is true that U.S. led air
strikes finally ended the war. But those strikes came too late to save most
of Bosnia and Herzegovina. The damage had been done. Milosevic lost only the
territory he had gained in Croatia (Eastern Slavonia and the Krajina). The U.S.
brokered Dayton Peace Accord meant that Bosnia itself was to become, in effect,
two countries the Bosnian Federation nearly surrounded by the Serb-dominated
and ethnically cleansed Republika Srpska. Ties between Yugoslavia and the Republika
Srpska are so close that RS citizens can legally carry Yugoslav passports. The
Yugoslav dinar is the currency, and the police least as of June 1998 when I
left Bosnia) were still wearing Yugoslav uniforms. In spite of what Dayton mandates,
for all practical proposes there is no dif ference between the RS and Yugoslavia.
Many of the troops being used by Milosevic in Kosovo today are mercenaries from
the RS. Dayton left behind one other legacy, and that is Milosevic himself.
By signing the Dayton Agreement, he became an almost indispensable agent of
its success. The US and its allies in the UN and NATO became, however unwilling,
partners with a war criminal.

Kosovo today is exactly at the same point in history that Bosnia was in 1993.
But for Slobodan Milosevic the stakes are even higher. Kosovo, although it is
90 percent populated by ethnic Albanians (who are Muslims), is the seat of the
Serbian Orthodox Church and virtually every Serb is orthodox. It is also the
scene of the greatest battle in Serbian history. In 1389 the Serb Prince Lazar
fought a heroic but unsuccessful battle against the invading Ottoman army. Kosovo
thus became the Serbian Alamo. During the intervening 600 years, however, the
region became dominated by ethnic Albanians. This distinction was codified in
1974 when Marshal Tito granted Kosovo autonomous status within the Yugoslavian
Federation. In 1989 Slobodan Milosevic gave a speech in Kosovo to commemorate
the 600th anniversary of the battle. During his visit (in what is believed to
have been a staged event) Serbs living in Pristina complained of mistreatment
at the hands of the police. Milosevic’s answer was, “No one will touch you again,”.
That event and those words propelled Milosevic to the Yugoslavian Presidency.
Milosevic thus owes his political success to those events. In 1989 he revoked
Kosovo’s autonomous status. Virtually every Kosovar civil servant, from police
officers to teachers, was fired. The Albanian language was forbidden and the
University of Pristina was closed. Protests followed but were ignored. Milosevic
who regards himself as the guardian of Serbian civilization, cannot be seen
by his people to yield to what they believe to be an inferior and foreign presence
in the heart of Serbdom.

Ironically, the NATO led air strikes are helping Milosevic achieve his goal
of Serbian domination of Kosovo. The failure of the peace talks and subsequent
bombing : campaign means that Milosevic no longer needs to maintain even the
pretense of seeking a peaceful solution. Yugoslavia is now in a state of war
against the Kosovars, and the Yugoslavs are winning. The rate of refugees leaving
Kosovo into Albania was estimated on March 29 to be 4,000 per hour. At the border,
the Kosovars are stripped of their passports and national identity cards by
Serb policemen and told never to return. Kosovar men of fighting age are being
summarily executed and entire villages are being laid to waste. Sound familiar?
For Milosevic, the prize is Kosovo and his own political survival. Milosevic
knows that NATO, and in particular the United States, does not have the stomach
for a ground war and he knows that air attacks alone cannot stop him. They didn’t
‘ work in North Vietnam, they didn’t work for the Nazis over London, they didn’t
work for the allies over Germany and they alone didn’t work in Iraq.

None of those campaigns would have been or were successful without the use
of ground troops In Kosovo, Milosevic has them and NATO and the Kosovars do
not As much as I hope for Milosevic’s defeat, arrest, trial and lifetime of
miserable imprisonment, I do not believe that the current NATO air campaign
will succeed. Worse I believe it means defeat and death for the Kosovars. Steven
A. Smith – an inspector with the Santa Cruz County District Attorney’s Office,
was a United Nations International Police Task Force Commander in Stolac, Bosnia
and Herzegovina from

June 1997 to June 1998.

– by STEVEN A. SMITH