Tuesday, March 24, 2009

The Kosovo War, Ten Years On

The bombing of then-Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, begun March 24, 1999, was in essence a demonstration of power by which the Atlantic Empire chose to reveal itself to the world. Until then, NATO was considered a defensive alliance; in the words of its first Secretary-General, Lord Ismay, its purpose was to "keep the Russians, out, the Americans in, and the Germans down." During the conflicts in Croatia and Bosnia (1991-1995), the Alliance gradually claimed more and more authority, until it was driving the UN, and not the other way around. But on March 24, 1999, NATO - and Washington - would bypass the UN entirely.

It is said today that the war ("intervention") was fought to protect the innocent ethnic Albanians, who were being "oppressed" by a vicious Serbian regime. But insiders have admitted the purpose of the bombing had little to do with Serbs or the Albanians, and much to do with power politics, especially the U.S. relations with Russia.

As Madeleine Albright once famously asked Colin Powell, "What’s the point of... this superb military... if we can't use it?" That was in 1991, and the outcome of this argument was "Desert Storm": a four-day operation in which the overwhelming and technologically superior forces of the U.S.-led coalition obliterated Iraqi troops in open field. As a result, Americans - and their European allies - came to believe in their military invincibility. However, "Desert Storm" was not the first battle of the future, but the last battle of the past. This was shown by the conflict over Kosovo in 1999, which was conceived as a re-run of "Desert Storm," and ended up being anything but.

Washington's show of force was deliberately and carefully designed. The target was Yugoslavia (Serbia-Montenegro), the only country in the Balkans, perhaps even Europe, without a client regime. President Milosevic may have helped the U.S. impose peace in Croatia and Bosnia (at the expense of some 2 million Serbs), but he insisted on being a free agent. That could not be allowed.

Much of the groundwork had been done already. During the early 1990s, the Serbs had been demonized as aggressors and genocidal murderers, based on propaganda from the conflicts in Croatia and Bosnia. A proxy force was already in place: the "Kosovo Liberation Army," a terrorist organization seeking independence of the Kosovo province (as the first step in pan-Albanian "unification" sought by some since 1878 or so). Though Albanians have sought separation from Serbia since the early 1980s, the KLA represented an escalation of terrorism that Serbia could not ignore. From mid-1997, Serbian police and Yugoslav military tangled with the KLA, mostly to the KLA's detriment.

In October 1998, the U.S. demanded that Belgrade allow OSCE observers into Kosovo, and stop actions against the KLA (the KLA was under no such constraints). Milosevic agreed, hoping to avoid a war with NATO. But the mission was led by William Walker, veteran of black ops in Central America, who helped the KLA stage a "massacre" in January 1999 and prepare the ground for a war. Walker quickly declared the events in Racak an atrocity, which was then used to issue an insulting ultimatum to Serbia: "Let NATO occupy Kosovo and have free access to the rest of Serbia, and after 3 years give the Albanians independence. Or else."

It was meant to be rejected. And so it was. Everything was in place for a short, victorious war.

As usual, the Serbs proved difficult. They did not surrender on the first day. Or the second. Or the seventy-seventh. They shot down NATO missiles and drones in droves, and (at least) two aircraft, one of them the famous "stealth" F-117A. There is even a story of how Serbian pilots, flying 1970s bombers, demolished the base set up for U.S. Apache helicopters in Albania. Whether there is any truth in it or not, the Apaches never flew a single combat mission in Kosovo, and several were said to have been lost to mysterious "accidents" and "mechanical failures." Clever camouflage and ingenious use of decoys also fooled most NATO bombers. Yugoslav military losses were very low, even after 78 days of the war.

The civilians were not so lucky. NATO went after bridges, railroads, buses, hospitals, marketplaces, water and power supply, and industry nodes. Even the Albanians - whom NATO was supposedly protecting - found themselves targeted, as at least two columns of refugees were struck. One of them was moving back from the Albanian border, defying KLA calls for a mass exodus from the province.

The exodus, by the way, came at just the right time for NATO. Its excuse of trying to impose the Rambouillet ultimatum was wearing thin as the war went on, so it was changed to stopping "ethnic cleansing." The media went into overdrive, looking for stories of Serb atrocities that the KLA was all too eager to furnish. Genocide! Secret plans for ethnic cleansing (fabricated)! Mass murders! Hundreds of thousands dead! All were shown to be ephemeral after the war. Only a handful of journalists admitted being duped; the rest went on repeating the fiction about "10,000 Albanian dead."

The longer the war went on, the more "mistakes" resulted in gruesome civilian deaths, the worse things became for NATO. It was now a "test of credibility," a battle not to crush Serbia but to save NATO's own hide. Exasperated, the Alliance bluffed, threatening total war and ground invasion (which was not feasible in the least) unless Belgrade agreed to yield. The terms they offered were actually better than Rambouillet: the UN would guarantee that Kosovo would remain a part of Serbia. It looked good on paper. Moscow urged Belgrade to accept. So Milosevic did.

In June 1999, the Yugoslav Army pulled out of Kosovo in good order. NATO drove in. With it came the KLA. What followed was an orgy of murder, rape, robbery, arson and wanton destruction. Some 200,000 or more Serbs, Roma, Turks, Jews, and even other Albanians who would not support the KLA fled the occupied province. Hundreds of Serbian Orthodox churches, monasteries, chapels and cemeteries were demolished and desecrated. NATO "peacekeepers" stood by and watched.

The terror - dismissed by the cheerleader media as "revenge attacks" - continued for months, then years, reaching a frenzied peak in 2004. So much for "humanitarian" motives of the war.

Eventually, the Empire pushed to violate the armistice, and worked with the provisional Albanian government to create an "independent" Kosovo (February 2008). By that time, they'd already conquered Serbia. Milosevic was deposed in October 2000, by a coalition of opposition parties brought together by U.S. diplomats and spies, funded with "suitcases of cash." The new regime arrested Milosevic - and the rest of the military and civilian leadership - and shipped them off to the Hague Inquisition. Milosevic died there in 2006, under mysterious circumstances. Shortly thereafter, Montenegro seceded, and Yugoslavia was no more. And the Army that successfully survived the bombing? Gutted by the new regime, in the name of "peace and cooperation."

No wonder the Empire continues to believe Kosovo was a triumph. Sure, it didn't go as smoothly as planned, but in the end Serbia was conquered, Albanians had Kosovo, and the UN was once again shoved aside as irrelevant. Except that pummeling Serbia achieved an effect opposite of the one the Empire desired.

The Chinese never forgave the bombing of their Belgrade embassy. In Russia, the war was a turning point; within months, American client Boris Yeltsin was out of power, replaced by Vladimir Putin.

As for the Americans themselves, their leaders learned all the wrong lessons of Kosovo, using the precedent of this evil little war to launch the 2003 invasion of Iraq. The protracted occupation and insurgency have bled the American military and treasury over the past six years, and the troops are still stuck there.

Nor was Kosovo a triumph for NATO; the Alliance was exposed as a paper tiger, as European nations demonstrated complete inability to conduct their own operations, and had to rely on Americans for almost everything.

Just a decade after its supposed moment of triumph (which, appropriately, owed more to media spin than reality) the Empire is failing. Whatever happens to it eventually, the days when it could assert the "right" to bomb anyone, anywhere, for any reason are most likely gone. And the seeds of that destruction were sown in Kosovo. We should remember that.

As for the Serbs and the Albanians, and the fate of Kosovo, Montenegro, and Macedonia... that remains very much an unfinished tale.

10 comments:

Mark Johnson said...

Imagine. Four years later, the US could not have launched the same operation. It's a case of really unfortunate timing and, as GF implies, an unwitting precursor and model of the Iraq War by way of propaganda.

In the end it was the lies that sank the USA. Lies about war rationales, lies about what is important in their leaders, lies about how economies work.

Even stranger, they believed these lies they told. And the only way to make these lies work in any fashion was to hurt people. To wag the dog to get what they wanted.

To summarize the last decade: Surreal. Baffling. Infuriating. And to summarize the coming decade: Consequences.

CubuCoko said...

Very well said, thanks.

Suvorov said...

One of the problems is that Serbia and Russia haven't been "in synch" with each other ever since WWI. They emerged with radically different regimes after that war, and as a result USSR was among those who put Tito in power, thus practically abetting the weak-Serbia-strong-Yugoslavia doctrine. Then after the Cold War while Yugoslavia (Serbia really) was still resisting, Russia embraced the West. And finally now that "democrats" are expelled from the Kremlin, Serbia is governed by Boris II. I am cautiously optimistic though that the ultimate result of 2008 elections in Serbia will be the same as the result of 1996 elections in Russia, where Boris I held on to his power only as a result of massive manipulation and fraud.

CubuCoko said...

Suvorov, believe it or not, I've been thinking along the same lines for a while, just haven't got around to posting anything. The Serbo-Russian relationship is far more complex than the whole "traditional allies" drivel served up by the Western media in order to present Belgrade as a client of Moscow, and the Serbs as "Russians Lite."

Suvorov said...

All right! Great minds think alike hehe. Excellent appearance on the radio, btw. Actually, I hadn't heard that interview before posting my last comment, and it was interesting that you touched on that theme. This is slightly off topic, but speaking of films where there are Albanian criminals, I recently recalled seeing that film where Pierce Brosnan plays a wealthy collector of paintings. There was a group of Albanians unsuccessfully trying to steal a painting from a museum, something which he later manages to achieve himself. That movie came out in the late 90s (before 1999 though!)I am not trying to stir up ethnic hatred here.
Have you been following the events in Belgrade this week? I found several new videos posted on youtube of interviews with John Laughland and Ljubodrag Duci Simonovic on "Pitanja i Otgovori".

Unknown said...

Greyfalcon, I have been following your columns here and on antiwar.com for years and have learned a lot about the true nature of the Balkan conflicts. One thing I have wanted to ask you though was what (if any) your relations are (or were) with Croats, Muslims, and Albanians back when you lived in the former Yugoslavia and when you moved to the US? Have you ever had any concrete dialogue with any of them or have any contacted you about your columns or views? I ask because I see these online "arguments" on blogs and youtube comments section in regards to the Balkans and it all degenerates into sniping and accusations from each side. Is there a genuine search for historical truth from the Croatian, Muslim and Albanian side at all?

CubuCoko said...

I am tempted to say there isn't (a genuine search for truth), if only because they find it desirable to believe in the current fiction (of themselves as righteous victims and Serbs as their persecutors), and nothing compels them to change that belief. Mind you, there could be efforts I'm not aware of.

I do have Muslim, Croat and Albanian friends. By mutual understanding, we steer clear of Balkans politics, dissecting American politics instead. Seems to work pretty well.

CAP said...

First rate summary of the recent history in the region, with an eye to wider politics.

Bravo!

eric siverson said...

It no longer makes any differance Milosevic destroyed NATO in their own court . Serbia has to only showup and claim their victory in the ICJ court .

CubuCoko said...

Except the ICJ refused to hear Serbia's suit against NATO, and is only asking the ICJ for a "non-binding advisory opinion" on the forcible separation of Kosovo. The NATO court (ICTY) actually profited from Milosevic's death by claiming he would have been convicted anyway (though they had zero evidence against him), and the Imperial machine rolled on. Until it ran out of steam on its own, that is.