By: Mary Mostert, Analyst, Original Sources
October 12, 1998
The Sunday London Telegraph, in a front page article dubbed, "Another Week, Another Final Warning for the Serbs" began, "Richard Holbrooke, the American special envoy, is back in Serbia, delivering the West's latest ultimatum to Slobodan Milosevic over Kosovo. The Yugoslav president has been left in no doubt, politicians and diplomats insist, that if he does not back down, Nato air strikes will follow.
"But Mr Milosevic has heard it all before, just as Iraq's Saddam Hussein had earlier this year when he stared down the threat of Western raids. And there were no signs that the Serbian leader was backing down this weekend. Indeed, yesterday his special police units in Kosovo were fortifying a rugged chain of bunkers along major highways, ignoring UN demands that they withdraw."
Much of the damage done by Bill Clinton to the World's confidence in American leadership is being played out in Kososvo, of all places. Most Americans had never heard of Kosovo until Bill Clinton started talking about bombing the place. And, the more they hear about it, the less enthusiastic they get about sending American airplanes at great expense to bomb it.
Far from "pulling out" of the Yugoslav province of Kosovo, the Serbs appear to be consolidating their victories against the Albanian guerillas who are attempting to secede from Yugoslavia and form their own independent state. The situation is quite similar to the efforts of the Confederate States back in the 1860's when they began to secede from the United States of America. That secession effort ended in a civil war when Lincoln sent troops to put down the rebellion. To this day the REAL story of the American Civil War, the bloodiest war in American history, depends on which American you talk to.
Oddly, the Confederate States of America, like the ethnic Albanian population of Kosovo, were supported by both England and France. In fact, if it had not been for the South's ability to buy weapons from England, the Civil War would never have lasted as long as it did, nor been as bloody.
The London Telegram noted, "The Serbs' defiance is part of a strategy to consolidate battlefield gains made in the past two months against ethnic Albanian guerrillas in a region where the population is 90 per cent Albanian." The fact that 90% of the province is now ethnic Albanians, many of the Serbs having been driven out over the past fifty years, does not necessarily mean that 90% of Kosovo is supporting the Albanian guerillas.
In fact, those on the ground in Kosovo are not even in support of the air strikes, according to a Reuters report in Balkan News Sunday. " 'There's a sort of cease-fire at the moment. But if NATO bombs start falling the Serbs are likely to take the gloves off again, thinking they have nothing to lose," said a diplomat in Kosovo. "Air strikes won't necessarily help the Albanians.'
"Possible plans to deploy around 15,000 to 25,000 soldiers in Kosovo were discussed at NATO's Brussels headquarters on Wednesday, but U.S. Defense Secretary William Cohen said he opposed any use of American ground troops. " 'The right option to use would be air power. It may well be that ground troops will be needed, but you can't have an opposed occupation of Kosovo. That is militarily impossible,' British Liberal Democrat leader Paddy Ashdown, a former soldier recently in Kosovo, said earlier this week.
One has to wonder, if air strikes won't help the Albanians and if Clinton's secretary of Defense says he is opposed to the use of American ground troops, and if the problem can't really be solved WITHOUT putting troops into every village in Kosovo, just exactly what IS the solution? Quite possibly, a solution is in the making in the surprise announcement Friday by the Kosovo Liberation Army rebels who declared a cease fire.
It ought to be obvious to the most casual observer by now that the rebels expected to have the international community move against the central government in Belgrade to support their cause. Only, the international community really doesn't have the stomach for a guerilla war with the Serbs. The Serbs have this bad habit of winning in that kind of environment. So, rather than actually address the real problems in the area, which go back at least as far as the Second World War and the massacres of 1.5 million Serbs by the Croatians, Clinton just wants to start bombing something, ANYTHING to get the people's minds off impeachment.
Kosovo was occupied first by Italy in 1939, and then by Germany. The current Kosovo Liberation Army is the ragtag end of the Communist National Liberation Front which sided first with the Soviet Union and then, when it concluded the Soviets were not sufficiently Communistic, with Mao in China, becoming China's only ally in Europe. However, a China that has moved away from Mao's form of communism, wants no part of a bombing of the Serbs in support of the Communists of the Kosovo Libration Army.
Meanwhile, back in Kosovo, where there is only one road leading to villages occupied by ethnic Albanians, the government forces, made up of a police force, control the road. The heavily armed police, dressed in blue uniforms, are digging trenches and camouflaging bunkers hidden in the hills above major highways.
Balkan News reports, "The network of bunkers is designed to provide "fields of fire", extending for several hundred yards in all directions for small- and heavy-calibre machine guns, say Western observers. "Despite a Yugoslav Army pull-back, there are still Serbian Ministry of Interior police positions throughout Kosovo and there has been no significant reduction," said Gavin Buchan, a Canadian diplomat attached to the 50-person Kosovo Diplomatic Observer Mission (KDOM). "Displaced persons are understandably reluctant to return to places where the police forces are in occupation."
The "displaced persons" refer to ethnic Albanians who moved into the area during and after World War II cand occupied land once owned by Serbs who either disappeared or were killed during either the German occupation or Tito's long dictatorial reign. Even a non-military person like myself can understand why Milosevic would seize the moment as an opportunity to undo some old anti-Serb actions. With Albania's two traditional friends, Russia and China, standing opposed to military action against the Serbs for the supposed sake of the Albanians, with "another week of diplomatic vacillation and stalemate among the nominal allies of the West, (London Telegraph. The fall of the Italian government on Friday fuelled the confusion as Tony Blair and Robin Cook worked the phones from China and London to seek backing for the bellicose line - 'robust' in New Labour terminology - of Britain and America. They have struggled to convince some European colleagues who felt the tough rhetoric could backfire.
"'We are final - this is the last chance,' said the Prime Minister's official spokesman in Hong Kong yesterday, searching for another form of words to express the sentiment that Mr Blair has been pushing daily during his China trip.
"With President Clinton mired in domestic woes, the Prime Minister has enthusiastically adopted the role of Nato hawk-in-chief, and he peppered his trip with late-night international phone calls about the crisis from the mobile "mini-office" that was shipped to Beijing after the Labour Party conference in Blackpool."
At this point, it appears the Tony Blair's prime aim is saving face for NATO. I rather suspect that all involved know by now that the Serbs are not going to roll over and play dead - although they may very well play 'possum for awhile, and that, without ground troops, nothing much is going to change in those mountain villages of Kosovo. Blair had a 20-minute conversation with Boris Yeltsin which "achieved little as the Russian president reiterated his opposition to bombing."
Still, Blair continued his telephone diplomacy, calling other world leaders to seek support for military action "within days" if Mr Holbrooke does not broker a political compromise.
Why? The London Telegraph observed, "It was left to Mr Cook to lobby the European doubters with phone calls from the Foreign Office and, in the evenings, his official residence at Carlton Gardens. "He warned that we were playing for big stakes and that NATO could be seen to be powerless if we did not act now," said an aide.
So, now we are going to bomb something or other to save face for NATO? Apparently so. Cook also marshalled British ambassadors in the other 15 Nato states to put forward the legal case that London is arguing for intervention based on existing UN resolutions and the threat of humanitarian catastrophe for the nearly 300,000 refugees created by the crisis. They don't want to ask the UN for obvious reasons. There would be at least too vetoes - Russia and China, and opposition from many other small states who really aren't all that interested in saving face for NATO or Bill Clinton
However, there has been criticism in some NATO capitals that the tough talking by Mr Blair and his colleagues have backed the alliance into a corner. "We are still pursuing diplomatic initiatives. But because they beat the drums of war so strongly, it now looks like we are weak because we have not bombed the Serbs," complained one European diplomat.
Both Blair and Clinton are becoming increasingly distraught at the lack of support even Western allies and members of NATO. Talking to journalists on the plane from Beijing to Shanghai, Tony Blair rebuked others for their "disunity" and warned that Mr Milosevic would continue going to the brink "unless the international community pulls together and faces up to its responsibilities".
The London Telegraph observed, "The message - reminiscent of his lecture a week earlier to Labour delegates in Blackpool about the tough times ahead - was privately criticised by some for its patronising 'Britain knows best' tone. "But Blair aides insisted: "You have to take a tough line with Milosevic. But we are all going to look stupid if our allies send out different signals," said one.
"The British and American stance received support from Javier Solana, the former pacifist Spanish socialist who is now Nato secretary-general. He has been attempting to rally support by warning alliance members that 'Nato's credibility is now on the line.'"
There is is again. Clinton and Blair, without international support, have shot off their mouths about Milosevic, gotten lots of good press in their countries to prove that they are "leaders" and are now really ticked off that they've looked behind them - and no one is following their leadership. In fact, it's sort of getting harder and harder to figure out who, if anyone IS leading. Certainly Blair's own statements show he has failed to get the support he needed before taking the position he has taken. It appears that few European leaders think Holbrooke will get an agreement with Milosevic and the ethnic Albanian leaders in Pristina, and that will increase the pressure for a military solution - which the ethnic Albanians say won't help, and will certainly create problems with Russia and China. The London Telegraph noted, "Even by the indecisive standards of the West when confronted with carnage in the Balkans, it was a tough week to forge a consensus, with two major European players yesterday effectively lacking governments." The pressure on the new German chancellor-elect, Gehard Schroeder by Bill Clinton could scuttle the new government before it takes office, some observers fear. Then, in the midst of the talk, the Italian government collapsed, which throws NATO military planning into a state of confusions, since the air strikes against the Serbs were due to be launched from Italian bases. However, the London Telegraph noted, "The biggest headache will be: what happens after air strikes. British troops are on stand-by to join a proposed Nato intervention force of up to 25,000 men. But the US, which is heavily committed to the peace-making mission in Bosnia, is loath to send further troops to the Balkans for domestic political reasons. And the Europeans are just as unwilling to go ahead with a Kosovo deployment without the Americans."
So here we are, folks, having made a lot of threats that apparently were designed to frighten the Serbs into quavering submission, and it didn't work. Do we try to save the Clinton Presidency and NATO's face by killing a few more Serbs at, say, $5 million a head, or do we back out of this and get on with impeaching a president whom we KNEW didn't have a clue about foreign affairs?
Personally, I suspect it may not matter in the end. I rather suspect, given all the various component parts of this issue that the Serbs are going to keep Kosovo and the ethnic Albanian Communists who hate their central government can either get over it, or go back to Albania.
To Comment: mmostert@originalsources.com