On kosovo---how does one stop genocide?

[Zuni]

A number of people are calling the NATO intervention in kosovo an major war crime. But let me ask this: Would have been better to do nothing when all the signs pointed to the Serbs being readied for a genocidal campaign of terror?
Despite left wing and tinfoil hat claims to the contrary, thousands of kosovars had been killed, hundreds of villages set to fire and people were being forced out of kosovo before the bombing began.

What if the Western nations intervened in rwanda in the early stages of that genocide? Would you now be calling it imperialism and laugh at the notions that the Hutus were going to commit genocide?

If one is to prevent genocide, they cannot wait until it has already happened to stop it. You have to intervene quickly and decisevly. So NATO didn't wait until the body count reached genocidal proportions in Kosovo. The Serb actions in Bosnia, Croatia and what they had already done in kosovo suggested it would get ugly very soon.

Would have been better to just let the ethnic cleansing happen so the US wouldn't be labeled as Imperialist? Would it be better to listen to ramsey clark and call Milosevic a friendly socialist who was targetted because of his anti-imperialist stance?

[bpilgrim]

1. A Diplomatic Solution

By Howard Zinn 1999

A FRIEND WROTE to ask my opinion on Kosovo. He said many people were turning to him for answers, and he didn't know what to say, so he was turning to me (knowing, I guess, that I always have something to say, right or wrong).

Several things seem clear to me, and they don't fit easily together in a way that points to a clean solution.

Milosevic and his Serb forces are committing atrocities.

But bombing won't help. It can only make things worse, and that is already evident. It is creating more victims, on both sides.

The Kosovo Liberation Army may not represent the wishes of the Kosovar people. It turned to armed struggle to gain independence, ruthlessly putting its countrymen at risk, when a protracted nonviolent campaign of resistance was already going on and should have continued.

I think of South Africa, where a decision to engage in out-and-out armed struggle would have led to a bloody civil war with huge casualties, most of them black. Instead, the African National Congress decided to put up with apartheid longer, but wage a long-term campaign of attrition, with strikes, sabotage, economic sanctions, and international pressure. It worked.

more...
http://www.progressive.org/zinn9905.htm

[Zuni]

5. Zinn makes good points

but how does he justify his opinion of the KLA 'ruthlessly putting their people at risk' with support for various left wing movements like the Sandanistas, The VietCong, the PLO or even castro?

[Blue_Chill]

11. Real easy to say "let's wait a while longer" when you aren't in danger.

As for me, if someone ever decides to kill all the hispanics in the US, I would rather risk a bomb landing on my home then you sitting back and doing nothing about it.

[Uzybone]

13. Comparing Kosovo to South Africa..

is ridiculous. Aparthied was repugnant but it wasnt like the whites had the blacks in camps and were readying them for the kill. A better comparison (and a far worse one) would be Rwanda.

[Jerseycoa]

14. Rwanda's the perfect example nt

[reachout]

2. Your question follows from a false premise

NATO commenced it's aggression on the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia on March 24, 1999, in order to force the Milosevic regime to sign the Rambouillet accord. According to the document, which was presented to the Yugoslav delegation in a take it or leave it manner, NATO would have the right to occupy all of Yugoslavia. The rationale for the occupation was that only NATO could guarantee peace and security in the Serbian region known as Kosovo and Metohija.

The air assault on Yugoslavia was illegal (United Nations Charter, NATO's own Charter), immoral and unnecessary.

The reasons for attacking Yugoslavia changed almost daily:

- Get Milosevic to sign on to Rambouillet "peace plan"
- Prevent a humanitarian catastrophe
- Prevent a wider war
- Preserve the credibility of NATO


Eventually, the raison d'être became to prevent massacres, genocide, and to have the refugees return home. On many occasions NATO leaders, such as President Bill Clinton, Secretary of State Madelaine Albright, Defence Secretary William Cohen, or the British Prime Minister Tony Blair, his Foreign Minister Robin Cook, or Defence Minister George Robertson, took to the airways and told the public that thousands of Albanians were being massacred. Indeed, the daily stories of massacres, as related by NATO spokesman Jamie Shea, were the glue that kept the alliance together.

It was all a lie. No different really from the "Weapons of Mass Destruction" story.




Some reading:

Despite Tales, the War in Kosovo Was Savage, but Wasn't Genocide

By DANIEL PEARL and ROBERT BLOCK
Staff Reporters of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL



http://www.geocities.com/spyjaguar/311299.html

"But other allegations -- indiscriminate mass murder, rape camps, crematoriums, mutilation of the dead -- haven't been borne out in the six months since NATO troops entered Kosovo. Ethnic-Albanian militants, humanitarian organizations, NATO and the news media fed off each other to give genocide rumors credibility. Now, a different picture is emerging.

Some human-rights researchers now say that most killings and burnings occurred in areas where the separatist Kosovo Liberation Army had been active, or in urban streets that backed into rural areas where KLA fighters could infiltrate. They say the Serbs were trying to clear out areas of KLA support, using selective terror, robberies and sporadic killings.

The KLA helped form the West's wartime image of Kosovo. International human-rights groups say officials of the guerrilla force served on the Kosovo-based Council for the Defence of Human Rights and Freedoms, whose activists were often the first to interview refugees arriving in Macedonia. Journalists later cited the council's missing-persons list to support theories about how many people died in Kosovo, and the State Department this month echoed the council' recent estimate of 10,000 missing. But the number has to be taken on faith: Western investigators say the council won't share its list of missing persons."




John Laughland
THE MASSACRES THAT NEVER WERE
November 3, 1999
The Spectator (London)


Contrary to propaganda, mass graves in Kosovo are a myth, says John Laughland

http://www.wpunj.edu/cohss/old_cohss/polisci/faculty/mc-kos5.htm


"So what is the final body count? A senior intelligence source in Croatia insists that, with 20 forensic teams active in Kosovo throughout the summer - some 500 professional criminologists altogether - the total number of bodies exhumed in Kosovo to date is 670. Yet, as a matter of policy, the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia refuses to play the numbers game.

Suspicion must therefore remain. As an Albanian man said, whose daughter had admitted lying to the American TV channel CBC when she claimed that her sister had been killed by the Serbs: 'Against the Serbs, you had to fight in every way, even with propaganda like this' - a thought with which Alastair Campbell is unlikely to disagree. The story about Rajmonda avenging the death of her sister by indiscriminately killing Serbs had been beamed around the world at the height of the conflict. As a friend of the family said, 'If this small lie ... made some kind of impact on what Western countries did in Kosovo, then it's worth it.' Of the impact such stories had, there can certainly be no doubt whatever; their veracity, however, is a different matter."



Charley Reese
Orlando Sentinel (US), November 14, 1999

What to do when facts are different? Why, just stop reporting


http://www.agitprop.org.au/stopnato/1999111408.htm



"Americans should never forget that their government and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization lied through their teeth repeatedly to justify the unjustified attack on Yugoslavia.


The kernel of the nut is that NATO lied to justify the attack, lied during the attack and lied about its intentions after the attack."

[Zuni]

6. But what would have happened in Kosovo?

I think the atrocities would have continued and escalated. A lot of what was predicted in kosovo was based on Bosnia, where the very real atrocities did occur.
The idea that since the number of atrocities in kosovo were not as great as believed would mean that the Serbs did not have genocidal intentions is a poor argument.
NATO's very presence and concern prevented the worst excesses from taking place until after the NATO war had started and Slobo had nothing to lose.

[RPG-7]

3. The key there was Russia

Yes, something should have been done long ago but our bombing didn't even matter. The regime fell apart instantly when the Russians pulled the plug on them and it would have fell apart the instant that happened regardless of our bombing campaign. We had the leverage on Russia to do that years before.

[Zuni]

8. We tried to get russia to pull the plug long before

but even during the NATO war, they kept shipping all kinds of goods into Serbia.
The Serbs were their favorites in the conflict.
Slobo collapsed because the NATO bombing created serious animosity towards him in Serbia. His judgement led to an unwinnable war, and the people ousted him.

[RPG-7]

10. we cared so incredibly much..

that we did absolutely nothing except keep shipping arms to Israel so they could sell them to Serbia while we armed the Bosnians and the KLA.

I don't buy that for a minute.

[lcordero]

4. Every intervention and every deployment

is dictated by big business.
I'm only told what other people want me to know and more than likely, they haven't told me the truth. I see every deployment and every intervention as questionable. I see every deployment and intervention as a Reichstag fire.

"Human Rights" is code phrase for "I'm going to kill your people and take your money."

[Zuni]

7. How do I debate that?

You have no facts to back that up.

[Blue_Chill]

9. You can't.

Don't try, go have beer instead.

[libview]

12. ramsey clark is a great man!!

We should mind our own buisness.

[SahaleArm]

22. If you're a war criminal...

Ramsey Clark, the war criminal's best friend: http://www.salon.com/news/feature/1999/06/21/clark/

[bpilgrim]

24. he doesn't defend u.s. foreign policy anymore

he is a FORMER U.S. attorney general :evilgrin:

peace

[Devils Advocate NZ]

15. There was NO genocide! That is the entire damn point!

The Serbian military was fighting a civil war against a terrorist organisation determined to ethnically cleanse Kosovo of Serbs and amalgamate it with Albania to become "Greater Albania". These terrorists first formed in 1982, and have been carrying out violent attacks on Serbs in Kosovo since then.

I'm not going to bother with your arguments about how genocide should be stopped, because it is clear that THERE WAS NO GENOCIDE, nor were there even plans for a genocidal campaign.

The US killed more civillians in Iraq in three weeks than the Serbian military is accused of killing in Kosovo after nearly two years of open war! Where is the genocidal campaign? In fact, the US killed more civillians in Afghanistan, Iraq, and FAR, FAR, more civillians in Viet Nam!

It seems that the Serbian military is supposed to be able to carry out a war without killing any innocents at all, whereas the US can kill as many innocents as it wants.

But I know what your argument is going to be: "but we didn't target them intentionally". Ok, then prove that the Serbs DID target civillians intentionally! If they did, how did they manage to kill less than ONE TENTH the amount of civillians as the US killed in Iraq?

The fact is, the Serbs were NOT targetting civillians.

But I hear you proclaim, why would the media say they were, if they weren't? I'll answer that one with a question: Why did they lie about Iraq? The obvious answer is because the media is a tool of its owners, who are of course part of the ruling elite, and the ruling elite has plans that they don't necessarily like to share with us common people, and so we need to be manipulated.

How did this manipulation occur? Take for example all the propaganda pieces regarding civillians being "expelled" from their homes. Did the media tell you this is not only allowed by the laws of war, but is REQUIRED if their houses are in a war zone? Did you EVER hear the media tell you that? Of course you didn't, because the media was trying to paint the legitmate and legally required actions of the Serbian military as "ethnic cleansing".

It is a simple equation: KLA (Kosovo Liberation Army) terrorists would operate in towns and cities, and would have bases in predominantly Albanian areas because they received either willing support from the locals, or because they had threatend the locals to cooperate. The Serbian military would then begin an operation to capture or kill the terrorists operating in that area (who would have been killing Serbs, Albanians and anyone else who stood in their way), a totally legitmate and in fact right thing to do - after all if there were terrorists in your town wouldn't you want the government to try and capture or kill them?

The Geneva conventions and international law state that civillians must be evacuated from war zones, or at the very least be given the opportunity to leave in safety. So of course the media would tell you that the Serb military had ordered all civillians out of a town. Then the military would carry out it's operation. Any civillians who hadn't left the area would be at risk of being killed, as any US soldier would tell you who is rolling around Bagdad in a hummer.

Of course when US troops kill dozens of civillians in such an operation, it is an unavoidable consequence of military action, and the media hardly even bothers to tell you about it, but when Serbian military operations resulted in such casualties the headlines scream "Massacre!", "Genocide!" etc. Of course no one bothers to find out whether they actually were civillians and not terrorists. No one bothers to find out whether they were forced to remain in town by the KLA (after all only the "bad guys" use human shields) and no one bothers to find out if they were actually killed by the KLA for trying to leave.

Nope, the press just leaves out the "unimportant bits" and let's YOU jump to the WRONG conclusion about what they tell you. They distort the truth to make it seem like the Serbs were evil, while ignoring the fact that the KLA was being supported by Osama Bin Laden (even the US State Dept. said so in 1998), and were in fact terrorists involved in an "ethnic cleansing" operation of their own.

Of course, the proof is in the pudding. We all heard about the mass graves where hundreds of civillians were buried after the evil Serbs came and liquidated them. So where are they? Before the war we told of tens of thousands of deaths. After the war, and a whole lot more quitely we were told that only just under three thousand bodies were found, and that there were no "mass graves" of any more than five bodies.

Even more quietly we were told that some of those bodies were actually Serbs, and some were killed by US bombing, and that some were Albanians ("collaborators") murdered by the KLA. The remainder could just as easily be explained as "collateral damage" (to borrow a US military term) as anything else, and in fact the numbers are so small that it seems the Serbs must have been the most incompetent "mass murderers" ever, or they never actually intended to kill civillians.

So the next argument is "maybe they weren't trying to kill them, only drive them out". That would be a possibility until you found out that a large proportion of Albanian refugees actually fled further INTO Serbia rather than away from it! If Serbs were trying to drive them out, why would they allow them to enter the rest of Serbia? Why would they WANT to? Does that make sense in terms of a campaign against them by Serbs?

Of course it doesn't! That would be like saying the Kurds were being attacked by Saddam Hussein's forces, so they fled into Baghdad! It's just plain nuts.

Face it: The KLA were terrorists and the US supported them. Take for example this article:

Zharku stressed that, during the war, the UCK had obtained concrete evidence of all Albanians working for the local police, which had been set up by the Serbian MUP.

"During the war, our intelligence services managed to obtain a copy of the local police payroll. That list contains the names of Kiki, Elezi, Topojani, Reci and Idrizi. Kiki was even appointed commander of police station 2," Zharku said. He added that the list had been published in Fakti, a Shkup-based (Skopje) daily, only a few days after the NATO strikes against Serbia had begun.

Otherwise, five members of the UCK, Ejup Ranjeva, Rrustem Dema, Enver Axhami, Bujar Tafili and Nuhi Provaliu, were arrested by the UNMIK (UN Interim Administration Mission in Kosovo) police on 27 October on charges of war crimes committed between 27 February and 8 March 1998 under the law of the former Yugoslavia. All of them have been reported to the police by witness Agim Idrizi.
http://emperors-clothes.com/reports/news/kp111003.htm

The people being refered to as having been killed by the UCK (Albanian for KLA) were Albanians in the Serbian Interior Ministry (ie Police). Why would Serbians who were killing or expelling Albanians let Albanians not only be in the police, but in one case here, be a station commander? Why would the Albanians want to? Notice also that five KLA members have been indicted for war crimes commited a YEAR before the US attack on Serbia.

The fact is that such indictments are merely a cover. The US made too big a deal about the KLA being terrorists, and there is far too much evidence of their murderous acts, for the ICTY to just pretend they never happened, so a token number of KLA fighters have been indicted, while the KLA itself now rules Kosovo.

In fact, here (http://www.kosovo.com/kla_decapit .jpg - remove the space before the '.') are some pictures of KLA fighters holding up severed heads of Serb soldiers. These pictures are very graphic, but I draw your attention to them for one reason: The top right photo shows three KLA fighters - One an older man and one a teenage boy. Could bodies of such KLA fighters, who weren't in uniform (unlike these ones) be the source of "Serbs killed old men and boys" accusations? Of course they could, and with the controlled media, they were.

The fact is you were lied to. Hell, even Clinton may have been lied to, though I doubt it. I believe that Clinton knew the score but could do nothing to prevent it because it was handed to him as a 'fait accompli' by George Bush Snr. Oh, you didn't know? Yes, the US involvement in Yugoslavia's breakup was started by Bush Snr, but of course we all know a Bush wouldn't start a war for nefarious reasons, don't we?

[bpilgrim]

16. thanks Devils Advocate NZ

i always apreciate your input, very valuable :toast:

peace

[imhotep]

17. also

The Constitution does not authorize playing the world's policeman.
There must be a threat to the United States.

[Darranar]

18. I have to disagree with you...

it was a campaign of ethnic cleansing.

Could the reports have been exxagerated? Yes; in fact, I wouldn't be surprised if they were.

Was the intervention justified? Not the way it was carried out.

However, it is a fact that Milosevic carried out ethnic cleansing against the Albanians within Kosovo. The question is whether the intervention was the right way of dealing with the problem.

Lots of regimes use "fighting terrorism" as an excuse to commit crimes. Israel, Russia, and the US come immediately to mind. I do not see Serbia as any different in this case.

US slaughter of innocent civilians is not the issue here. I doubt you would find many in this discussion supporting the war in Iraq.

I still think Dennis Kucinich's stance was right: the ethnic cleansing was wrong, but so was the intervention.

[Devils Advocate NZ]

21. No its NOT A FACT!!! A fact can be PROVEN!

It is a media based ACCUSATION!

You can't seem to break free of the programming so let me ask you again:

If the Serbs were trying to "ethnically cleanse" (which by the way is a term invented by a Bosnian Muslim who said that Bosnian Muslim areas had to be cleansed of Serbs) Kosovo of Albanians, why would they kill less Albanians in two years than the US killed in Iraq in three weeks? Why would they allow Albanians to go further INTO Serbia, including to Belgrade? Why would they allow Albanians to be members of the police force? Why would Albanians want to be part of a police force that was supposedly "ethnically cleansing" them and their families?

You have fallen for the LIES told by NATO, who were determined to break-up Yugoslavia and rape it the way they did the rest of the Soviet Union. Of course no-one in the media points out that Yugoslavia was the most powerful Eastern European nation to have refused to be privatised by the international corporations.

No-one tells you that Yugoslavia was actually making a success of socialism, so the West HAD to do something to stir up a war so that they could justify invading and then selling off its resources.

So what they did was arm and support Muslim Fundamentalist terrorists (just like in Afghanistan) to overthrow the legitmate government. These terrorists were also supported by Osama Bin Laden (just like in Afghanistan) and then when the government did what any government woudl do (fight back against terrorists) invented stories of genocide to create false justification for an invasion.

You have been suckered.

US slaughter of innocent civilians is not the issue here. I doubt you would find many in this discussion supporting the war in Iraq.

That is the entire point! There is far more evidence that Hussein was ethnically cleansing Kurds, yet most people on this board believe the war in a Iraq was a media generated lie. Why can you not see that the SAME media, told the SAME sort of lies, for the SAME reasons, about Kosovo? Why do you believe the VERY SAME reporters when they say things you agree with, but call them "media whores" when they don't?

They're ALWAYS "media whores", now and during the lead-up to the attack on Serbia. They do not report the truth, they report what the ruling elite WANT you to think is the truth. It's a kindler and gentler (that is less noticable) 'Big Brother' from Orwell's 1984, but is even more powerful for it. You don't notice that the media has generated an "artificial reality" where they manipulate the "facts" to come to the predetermined conclusions the ruling elite want.

Until you come to terms with the fact that you don't know what is REALLY going on, becuase the media refuses to tell you, you will be just like all the human batteries living in the computer generated world of "The Matrix" - living a lie.

[Darranar]

19. Well...

I do not think that there were enough nonviolent efforts to stop the ethnic cleansing. One way one does not create peace is by launching a war, which is why I have a hard time accepting the "humanitarian war" argument.

Efforts should have been made to stregthen the opposition parties against Milosevic. This did occur to an extent after the bombing campaign, and that was a good move on the part of Clinton and his administration.

Efforts should have been made to aid the nonviolent resistance against the ethnic cleansing, and in the process efforts to undermine the KLA and other organizations committing terrorist attacks against Serbian civilians.

[eridani]

20. In the case of Kosovo, that's easy

First recognize that the primary genocide and ethnic cleansing is that of Serbs, Jews and Gypsies by the Albanian majority. Recognize that there is an Albanian majority there in the first place because of their very enthusiastic cooperation with the Nazis in sending 500,000+ Serbs to death camps in WW II.

Then we have the problem of the Milosevic response. The problem was serious and legitimate--the response, namely curtailing the post WW II realtive autonomy of Kosovo and random reprisals directed at the general public with no real attempt to get at the actual perps, is not. (Sort of reminds you of someone we know, right?)

But then, Milosevic was not a dictator. He was in office due to winning a plurality in an election where his opposition was divided. Even so, 2/3 of Parliament members were in opposition parties. They passed a resolution to have the UN take over administration of Kosovo as a protectorate. Clinton insisted that the only alternative was for NATO to take over the whole country, something he knew would be rejected. Like Bush, he wanted a war.

It would have been very easy to get the Serbian proposal negotiated successfully, though who knows whether the UN would have been able to deal with the ongoing ethnic cleansing any better than NATO is dealing with it now. At least they wouldn't be coping with depleted uranium and cluster bombs all over the place and a devastated infrastructure.

[Sufi Marmot]

23. Ok, so what about Rwanda then?

Should the world have intervened? If so, how? Bombing wouldn't have been effective against rampaging gangs hacking people to bits with machetes....

I've always thought that the UN should put together a rapid-response force for places where violence against civilians was quickly spiraling out of control. Not peacekeepers per se, rather a very well trained multinational force that could be quickly inserted into an area to restore order and disarm combatants, and also provide security and logistics for relief effors. A force authorized to shoot back at uncooperative locals.

Such a force would be voluntary and drawn from the regular militaries of participating nations - members would be paid more than regular soldiers because they are volunteering to serve in conflicts that have little to do with the interests of their home nations. Such volunteers would have to be willing to be led by officers from other nations. The existance of such a force would hopefully obviate the (often partisan) domestic political difficulties that prevent nations from deploying their regular armies to prevent genocide in nations unimportant to their national interests.

-SM