 |
Al-Ahram Weekly 16 - 22 March 2000 Issue No. 473 
|
||
Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
| ||
|
Al-Ahram Weekly 16 - 22 March 2000 Issue No. 473
|
||
| Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
| ||
Egypt Region International Economy Opinion Culture Special Focus Travel Living Sports Profile People Time Out Chronicles Drugs, lies and NATO strikes
By Gamal Nkrumah
The sprawling southern African country of Mozambique recently hit the headlines when it suffered its worst natural disaster in living memory -- a month of incessant torrential downpours combined with two devastating cyclones, Eline and Cynthia. The floodwaters rose too quickly for men and women to cope, and some 500 people lost their lives. Tens of thousands more were marooned in trees and on rooftops as three major rivers, the Limpopo, the Save and the Zambezi, burst their banks. The hundreds of thousands who live in their valleys are now at the mercy of nature -- and the humanitarian relief agencies -- after a third of the staple maize crop, plus up to 70 per cent of other grains, was destroyed.
There was a measure of solace this week for those of us who argued against the utterly senseless bombardment of civilian targets by NATO troops in the Balkans, and in defence of the national sovereignty and territorial integrity of states such as Iraq and the Yugoslav Federation. For the first time, key players in the Kosovo débâcle have talked openly about their mistakes, their miscalculations -- and even their mendacity.
Of course, it is true that the ethnic Albanian majority in Kosovo had legitimate concerns and were being persecuted by the Yugoslav Third Army. But it is one thing to apply concerted international pressure, as was successfully done in the case of apartheid South Africa, quite another to charge in all guns blazing, convinced of the categorical imperative of being seen to take "decisive" military action.
The end result, as we all know, is that Yugoslavia's infrastructure -- like Iraq's before it -- lies in tatters. Yet Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic -- like his Iraqi counterpart -- is still in power, while the ethnic Albanians, like the Kurds of Iraq, have been left both stateless and restless. Worse, their province is facing economic ruin. Those still struggling to live there are now utterly dependent on humanitarian assistance, arms-dealing and drug-trafficking.
"I don't wish to be impertinent, but I don't think most of our civilian leadership generally understands air power and how it should be employed," opined General Mike Short, commander of the NATO and allied forces in the Balkans, during a recent highly-publicised BBC television debate. "Their only exposure to it has been films of the Gulf War, which looked very much like video games." Short went on to express his resentment at being lied to by top Clinton Administration officials. President Bill Clinton himself had confirmed his reputation for shamelessly evading the truth, and US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright had deceived him too. "I don't see this as a long-term operation," she said on the eve of launching the strikes. "I was being told, Mike, you're only going to bomb for two or three nights," winced an obviously embittered Short. As we all know, the relentless pounding of Kosovo and the rest of Federal Yugoslavia raged for 78 days.
Gaining an advantage was clearly the name of the game. The problem is, no one is really clear what the advantage was supposed to consist in. It certainly was not a moral advantage; but neither was it plausibly economic, military or even political. The NATO strikes were above all an impressive show of force, just as in the Gulf a decade ago. They were designed to strike terror into the hearts of those who dare snub Washington. Milosevic's temerity provided America with a golden opportunity to flex its muscles in public.
US pilots were responsible for over 80 per cent of the bombing missions flown. Clinton's refusal to allow Apache helicopters to engage in active combat, allegedly in order to protect American servicemen from attack, meant that for the most part the bombs had to be dropped from over 4,600 metres. It is hardly surprising, then, that the raids were generally far from accurate. One "legitimate military target" turned out to be the Serbian television headquarters, another the Chinese embassy in Belgrade.
But in the eyes of Washington policymakers, bombing civilian targets was not their greatest faux pas -- it was their moments of demonstrable ineptitude of which they were the most ashamed. "I owe it to my people to stand up and say we're just not doing this right," Short publicly confessed this week.
Kosovo was put under interim international control after Milosevic's Third Army pulled out of the war-torn province. As NATO's K-FOR peacekeepers prepared to enter the province on 12 June, they discovered the Russians had got there first. Moreover, reports about the leakage of top secret information regarding NATO's war plans has cast a long shadow of doubt over the competence and professionalism of both NATO and the Pentagon. The Serbs, according to a secret US investigation, had ample access to highly sensitive air tasking orders. Meanwhile, Russia's surprise occupation of Pristina airport at the end of the Kosovo war shocked and troubled many Western observers. The Russians and the Americans immediately launched into an impromptu slanging match. The confusion of roles persists today, as the Russians operate as part of K-FOR in sectors controlled by NATO states, but are not directly under NATO control, Moscow insisting its troops be answerable only to its own commanders.
Not that there was anything morally superior about the Russians, for their part. Their brashness and brutality can easily reach American proportions, as their escapades in Chechnya graphically illustrate. Yes, the Russians may have made a big show of supporting their co-religionists, and fellow Slav-speakers, the Serbs. But, as in Iraq, it was Moscow's desertion of its so-called "friends" at the critical moment which sealed Yugoslavia's fate. Finding himself double-crossed was a crucial factor in persuading Milosevic to stand aside and let NATO troops enter Kosovo.
Today, there are 44,000 NATO troops stationed in Kosovo out of an anticipated 49,000. Only last week, NATO ministers rejected a call for the deployment of 2,000 additional soldiers.
The population of Mitrovika, 32 kilometres north-west of the provincial capital Pristina, is emblematic of the delicate ethnic balance of Kosovo. Some 20,000 Serbs occupy an enclave to the north of the River Ibar that bisects the city. The Albanians, who constitute 80 per cent of its population, control the rest. Simmering ethnic tensions boiled over on 2 February when rocket-propelled grenade attacks on a UN convoy killed four Serbs. Their deaths sparked off a month of ferocious revenge killings, as enraged Serbs drove off over 1,000 ethnic Albanians, effectively sealing the city's partition. But they did not do so unaided. "This is not a simple question of local Serbs," Richard Holbrooke, US ambassador to the UN, declared this week. "This is being stirred up by the Yugoslav authorities."
In such claims, however, US officials conveniently overlook the fact that Gen Agim Ceku, former commander of the now officially disbanded Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA), took up residence in Mitrovica recently, where he has been quite deliberately stirring up anti-Serb hysteria.
Ethnic clashes such as this could, if not checked, lead ultimately to the partition of Kosovo into an ethnic Albanian south and a Serbian north. Indeed, such events have a tendency to take on a terrible momentum of their own. This renewed outbreak of violence comes at a time when there are growing fears that Kosovo's ethnic Albanian drug-traffickers are now handling as much as five ton of heroin a month, while their tentacles continue to spread throughout Europe and North America. A kilo of heroin in worth $10,000 in Kosovo, $20,000 in the Yugoslav capital Belgrade and over $40,000 in Britain or Italy.
Indeed, much of the European heroin business is run by the ethnic Albanian Kosovo drug barons and the closely aligned Milan drug Mafia, with help from ethnic Albanians in Germany and other European countries. According to INTERPOL, four Kosovo Albanian families effectively monopolise this narcotics trade. "Everything is worked out on the basis of the family or clan structure -- the Fic, or brotherhood -- so it is impossible to plant informers," warned Marko Nicovicvice, president of the New York-based International Narcotics Enforcement Officers Association, in a recently released report.
Perhaps the greatest irony of all is that it is largely thanks to NATO's Kosovo adventure that the province has emerged as a smugglers' paradise. Meanwhile, NATO's K-FOR troops simply have no mandate to take action against the most hermetic narcotics ring in Europe. Dropping bombs way off target is about the only extracurricular activity they are allowed to indulge in. Milosevic may be Uncle Sam's latest bogeyman, but he can still sleep soundly at night.
