Kosovo? I know that the Milosovic apologists have their very own websites...but so does those who witnessed the genocide as it occurred. Please remember to put this Kosovo in Context with the 200,000 killed in Bosnia. Wouldn't want you to omit that....now, would we?
The Washington Post
The Unappreciated General
The General Who Did Too Good a JobBy Patrick B. Pexton
Tuesday, May 2, 2000; Page A23
Nine years ago, Washington put on a lavish victory parade for the conquering troops of Desert Storm. The nation cheered the men and women who, in a six-week air campaign and 100-hour ground war, with only 148 combat deaths, defeated a ruthless dictator who had seized and pillaged a neighboring land. The generals who led an unwieldy multinational coalition to triumph were feted, toasted and mentioned as presidential material.
Not so for the general who won Kosovo, although he too ousted a murderous tyrant who burned and occupied a neighboring land. This general also led a cumbersome multinational coalition to victory in a short war--this time with zero combat deaths. But Gen. Wesley Clark, supreme allied commander Europe, will come home to no special welcome, no TV or book deals and no talk of the presidency. Clark's reward for victory is early retirement. Tomorrow, several months before his tour of duty would normally end, Clark will turn over the European command to an officer more to the liking of the ever-cautious White House and defense secretary.
Clark's problem was that he was a great general but not always a perfect soldier--at least when it came to saluting and saying, "Yes, sir." In fact, when he got orders he didn't like, he said so and pushed to change them.
Clark disapproved the gradualism of the initial bombing campaign against Belgrade. He wanted to hit hard and massively. But NATO governments and diplomats in Washington felt Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic would yield after only a few bombs and cruise missiles, as he had in Bosnia. They were wrong. Clark, who was part of the delegation that negotiated the Dayton accords with Milosevic, knew Kosovo was integral to Serb identity and to Milosevic's rise to power. He would not give it up easily.
When it became clear the initial NATO bombing wasn't working, Clark pushed for every airplane he could get, much to the dismay of the U.S. Air Force. Indeed, one of the unsung accomplishments of Kosovo is how quickly Clark built up air power--far faster than was done in Desert Storm. Clark prodded and cajoled the Europeans and the White House into accepting expanded, and riskier, target lists. He ordered 50 Apache attack helicopters to take the battle to the Serb ground troops, only to see the force reduced in size and then left to sit in Albania while the White House and Pentagon fretted about casualties. Clark also was right about readying troops for an invasion. The preparations for a ground war helped persuade Milosevic to surrender.
More presciently, Clark was right about the Russians. When fewer than 200 lightly armed Russian peacekeepers barnstormed from Bosnia to the Pristina airport in Kosovo to upstage the arrival of NATO peacekeepers, Clark was rightly outraged. Russians did not win the war, and he did not want them to win the peace.
Clark asked NATO helicopters and ground troops to seize the airport before the Russians could arrive. But a British general, absurdly saying he feared World War III (in truth the Russians had no cards to play), appealed to London and Washington to delay the order.
The result was a humiliation for NATO, a tonic for the Russian military and an important lesson for the then-obscure head of the Russian national security council, Vladimir Putin. As later Russian press reports showed, Putin knew far more about the Pristina operation than did the Russian defense or foreign ministers. It was no coincidence that a few weeks afterward, Russian bombers buzzed NATO member Iceland for the first time in a decade. A few weeks after that, with Putin as prime minister, Russian troops invaded Chechnya. Putin learned the value of boldness in the face of Western hesitation. Clark learned that he had no backup in Washington.
Recent events in Kosovo show that Clark's bosses in the Pentagon and White House still don't get it. The chairman of the Joint Chiefs, Gen. Henry Shelton, rebuked Clark in February for using 350 American soldiers to reinforce French troops who were unable to quell violence between Albanians and Serbs. After the American reinforcements were pelted with rocks and bottles, Shelton and the White House, panicky about potential casualties, told Clark not to volunteer U.S. troops again.
But Clark was right to act. He understood the value of using force quickly and early to show who was in control, and to demonstrate to the European allies that the United States is willing to put lives at risk too.
Both Desert Storm and Kosovo were imperfect victories because the despots who caused them were left in power. But the military fought them well. The thousands of Air Force, Navy and Marine Corps pilots and support troops who quietly rejoined their squadrons when the Kosovo war ended deserve more than a historical footnote. And Clark deserves more than a pink slip.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn?pagename=article&node=&contentId=A51403-2000May1¬Found=true
The Kosovo War started in April of 1999, and it was based on an active plan of Genocide by Milosovic that was being carried via displacement, starvation, destruction, and yes, murder as well.
http://www.refugees.org/news/crisis/kosovo_u0998.htmSeptember 1998In mid September, the situation in Kosovo is getting worse and the lives of thousands of innocent people are at risk. Serb forces continue to pound villages in northern and western Kosovo, effecting over half of the province's population in the last seven months. International aid agencies estimate that between 270,000 and 350,000 people have fled the fighting, as many as 250,000 remaining "internally displaced" inside Although their plight has generated worldwide recognition, international attempts to foster a diplomatic resolution to the conflict have failed to yield tangible results.
According to the Associated press, there is talk of possible, eventual Nato-supported military action ranging from the deployment of troops along the Albania- Kosovo border, to air strikes, to the deployment of ground troops, but humanitarian organizations remain skeptical that decisive U.S., European, or Nato-supported action will come soon. In the mean time, daily reports of horrendous human rights violations, massive destruction, and increasing bloodshed document the dire prognosis for Kosavars "contained" in the crisis by recently erected border controls.
On September 16, the New York Times reported that Serbian forces were "rounding up men and boys from ethnic Albanian villages and refugee camps in Kosovo, an act that US officials fear could be the prelude to their execution, as happened during the war in Bosnia." One week earlier, U.S. Assistant Secretary of State, Julia Taft said at a press briefing, "Without a cease- fire, without a pull-back from this intrusive fighting, there will be 100,000 to 200,000 casualties looming in the months ahead."
Still, there are no decisive plans by the U.S., NATO, or European allies to avert the current and impending disasters with military action. The U.S. is "considering a variety of options" for getting emergency aid into Kosovo and continues to support diplomatic interventions and the preservation of Yugoslavian borders.
On September 16, Serbian and Albanian leaders reported heavy fighting in the area between the towns of Kosovska Mitrovica, Podujevo, and Vucitrn, north of the capital, Pristina. German Defense Minister, Volker Ruhe, stated that the West could resort to military action "within three to five weeks," if Milosevic fails to comply with an impending U.N. Security Council Resolution designed to put an end to the conflict. According to U.N. officials, the Resolution will not explicitly authorize military action.
On September 17, the government of Montenegro began implementing a plan to send refugees from Kosovo to Albania. Over 4,000 refugees being held in the village of Meteh, Montenegro, were transported in busses to the Albanian border point of Vermosh.
On September 18, Ethnic Albanian Leader, Ibrahim Rugova, gave his preliminary endorsement to a 3-year U.S.-backed "temporary" plan to restore local autonomy to Kosovo (stripped by Milosevic in 1989). According to the associated press, Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic "supported" the plan aimed at "normalizing the difficult and risky situation and halting the attacks and the use of force."
On September 21, amidst renewed Serbian attacks in the Drenica region, Ethnic Albanian leaders released their version of the U.S. supported "interim" peace proposal. Under the arrangement, Kosovo would become an "independent entity equal" to Serbia and Montenegro, with its own courts, police, and central bank. Its status as a province in Yugoslavia would be retained temporarily and negotiated in the future. Serbian officials rejected parts of the proposal but, reportedly, agreed to release their own version in the upcoming week.
On September 22, the New York Times reported that the "worsening plight" of refugees and internally displaced people from Kosovo was "increasing the possibility of NATO intervention." Britain and France urged the U.N. Security Council to finish drafting the Resolution designed to make (Serbian) "compliance mandatory," and raise the "specter of military force." According to U.S. officials, the pending resolution reflects an emerging consensus in favor of military action, however, "NATO allies have not yet reached an agreement on the use of force." ---------------
The Kosovo war was fought to STOP and PREVENT genocide.....
Genocide By Mass Starvation;
NATO Strategy Makes Sense On One Level. But, In Humanitarian Terms, It's A Fatal Miscalculation. Los Angeles Times
April 25, 1999, Sunday, Home Edition
http://www.refugees.org/news/op_eds/042599.htmPresident Slobodan Milosevic's ability to stop and start massive refugee flows out of Kosovo is a chilling sign of his power and intent. From the Nazis to the Khmer Rouge, closed borders have been a serious sign that genocide is occurring. Genocide does not require gas chambers or even mass graves. A favored tactic is calculated mass starvation. That is what is happening in Kosovo. Serb forces used food as a weapon during the war in Bosnia. They rarely engaged in battle, preferring to surround and besiege an area, subject it to shelling and cut it off from food.
Long before the bombing began, Milosevic began a systematic campaign to deplete Kosovo of its food resources. Beginning last summer, Serb forces:
restricted importation of basic items into Kosovo, including wheat, rice, cooking oil, sugar, salt, meat, milk, livestock, heating fuel and gasoline;
looted warehouses and burned fields, haystacks, winter food stocks and firewood.
killed livestock and often dropped their carcasses into wells to contaminate the water;
shot at ethnic Albanian farmers trying to harvest or plant;
Harassed, persecuted and sometimes killed local humanitarian aid workers;
created nearly 300,000 internally displaced people, most of whom stayed with private families, eating what private stores of food they had managed to save.
In the best of times, Kosovo is not a self-sufficient food producer.
By early this year, with planting and harvesting brought to a halt and with food stocks consumed or destroyed, there were no food reserves outside Serbian government shops. Most of the population was dependent on humanitarian aid delivered through a network of U.N. agencies and local and international nongovernmental organizations. That network is gone. The International Committee of the Red Cross, the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees and the World Food Program are out of Kosovo. International nongovernmental groups have been expelled and are now working with refugees outside Kosovo. Local nongovernment groups have been decimated, their staff members lucky to become refugees themselves.
Before NATO's military objectives can be achieved,
Milosevic will already have accomplished his objective: Grinding down Kosovo's 1.8 million ethnic Albanians. One rule of war is this: Men with guns do not starve; civilians do. NATO is not going to beat the Yugoslav military by starving them out, and if it did, the civilians would perish long before them.
As hunger and disease loom, various interim steps have been suggested: internal safe havens, food air drops, humanitarian corridors. Each is flawed, largely because each requires cooperation from Milosevic that in all likelihood will never come to be.
Milosevic could achieve his aims simply by dragging his feet. Everyone is concerned about the lives of NATO servicemen, but the people on the executioner's block cannot wait for a risk-free, soldier-friendly environment for their rescue. They can't wait for the amassing of 200,000 troops, if that will take months of buildup and field support. They can't wait for a "permissive environment."
Mass Graves, Mass Denial (PDF)
http://www.bard.edu/bgia/journal/vol2/63-66.pdfhttp://www.religioustolerance.org/war_koso.htmDid the Serbs commit genocide?Civilian populations are increasingly being targeted during recent civil wars. However,
atrocities must match certain specific criteria before they are considered genocide. The Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide
defines genocide as "certain acts committed with the intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group as such. The proscribed acts include killings, causing serious bodily or mental harm, imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group, forcibly transferring its children to another group, or deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its destruction in whole or in part." Ethnic cleansing in Bosnia during the mid 1990s started as mass expulsions of civilians. It escalated to include internment in concentration camps, mass executions, rapes, etc.
There was a clear policy by the Serbs "to exterminate Muslim Bosnians as a group..." Their actions were generally considered to be genocide. There is a general consensus that widespread atrocities were also committed by the Muslims and the Croats (largely Roman Catholic). But the level of their war crimes did not reach genocidal proportions.
There have been allegations that the Serbs were engaged in genocide in Kosovo before and during the NATO bombing. Media correspondents and human rights investigators conducted large-scale interviews of Kosovar refugees. The data collected show that the Geneva Conventions concerning civilians had been ignored and that extremely serious war crimes were perpetrated by the Yugoslavian army, police and militias.
There appeared to be a consensus of human rights investigators that the quantity and type of documented atrocities proved that genocide was committed by the Yugoslavian government against the ethnic Albanians in Kosovo. This belief was confirmed as the NATO forces occupied Kosovo. Mass graves were located and are being systematically examined by forensic specialists. Ethnic Albainians came out of hiding with horrendous stories to tell. In excess of 11,000 murders were reported to authorities. According to a report by the U.N.'s chief prosecutor in Yugoslavia, Carla Del Ponte, on 1999-NOV-10, 2,108 complete corpses and an unknown but large number of incompete corpses were found. By 1999-NOV, a total of 195 grave sites in Kosovo had been analyzed; another four hundred remained to be investigated. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/2147781.stmMass grave found near Srebrenica Tuesday, 23 July, 2002, 22:35 GMT 23:35 UK
Forensic experts in Bosnia have discovered a mass grave in the north-east of the country, close to the site of the Srebrenica massacre in 1995. It is thought the grave contains the bodies of Bosnian Muslims killed by Bosnian Serb forces after they captured Srebrenica. Skeletons 'incomplete' The grave site was discovered on Monday near the Serb-held village of Kamenica, some 70 kilometres (45 miles) north-east of Sarajevo.
The commission said it had "reliable proof" that the remains were transported to the grave from another location, in order to conceal the remains from war crime investigators.
He said some of the skeletons were incomplete, and that others were found with their hands bound by wire.
More than 7,000 Bosnian Muslims were killed after the fall of Srebrenica, in the worst massacre Europe has seen since World War II.
So far 6,000 bodies have been exhumed from numerous mass graves around the town, but only 300 have been identified.
Bosnian Serb wartime leader Radovan Karadzic and his army chief Ratko Mladic have been implicated in the Srebrenica massacres. New mass grave found in Kosovo as Milosevic trial nearsPosted: 02/11/2002 11:10 amLast Updated: 2002-02-11 11:58:09-05
Kroni I Mbretit, Yugoslavia - Kosovo villagers have discovered a new mass grave, just two days before former Yugoslav president Slobodan Milosevic goes on trial for engineering genocide in their province.
The remains were uncovered in western Kosovo on Sunday. The remains of up to 20 bodies were found in a shallow grave by children playing in the area.
Several villagers living near the grave will offer testimony in the upcoming trial of Milosevic, which starts tomorrow in the Hague, but their testimony will focus on other events, and not the grave uncovered Sunday.http://www.wndu.com/news/022002/news_12301.phphttp://archives.cnn.com/2001/WORLD/europe/09/09/serb.grave/BELGRADE, Yugoslavia -- Serbian forensic experts have discovered another mass grave near a lake in southwestern Serbia. The grave is believed to contain bodies of ethnic Albanians killed during the 1999 war in Kosovohttp://archives.cnn.com/2001/WORLD/europe/06/11/bosnia.pit/index.htmlBosnia mass grave foundJune 11, 2001 Posted: 3:58 AM EDT (0758 GMT)
MOUNT MALUSA, Bosnia -- A mass grave containing bodies of victims of the notorious Foca prison camp has been discovered in Bosnia, Reuters has reported.
Bosnian Muslim officials found the grave hidden deep in a dense forest after receiving a letter signed by "a Serb from Foca," the agency said. Barbara Boxer at Rice for SOS hearings:http://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/19/politics/19cnd-rtex.h ...
"My last point has to do with Milosevic. You said you can't compare the two dictators. You know, you're right; no two tyrants are alike. But the fact is Milosevic started wars that killed 200,000 in Bosnia, 10,000 in Kosovo and thousands in Croatia, and he was nabbed. "
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