By Mark Lynas
Editor OneWorld
Like many others involved in international news reporting, I’ve spent several hours each day over the last three weeks covering the crisis in Kosovo. And despite the relentless outpourings of the NATO PR machine, I’ve found the explanations reported in the mainstream media steadily less convincing.
How is it, for example, that one of scores of simmering local disputes across the world has mushroomed into possibly the most dramatic crisisfacing Europe since World War II? And why is there such a broad consensus amongst both decision-makers and media commentators that bombing an apparently sovereign country is the only way forward?
When I first set about compiling OneWorld’s Kosovo Special Report, I was broadly in agreement with the dominant viewpoint that Milosevic must bestopped. Cases of severe human rights abuse, committed with impunity and official encouragement by Yugoslav military forces and special police, have been well documented by both Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch.
It is reliably estimated that around 2000 people had been killed in the conflict before the peace negotiations began at Rambouillet in February. The pressure for an agreement was intense, and apart from the Yugoslav delegation very few voices of dissent were to be heard. One was Jan Oberg of Sweden’s Transnational Foundation for Peace and Future Research, whose condemnation of the proposed peace deal as “imperialism in disguise” was startling in its rejection of the Western consensus.
At this point the conflict still looked manageable – in terms of numbers killed it was nothing compared to Algeria, Sierra Leone or the DemocraticRepublic of Congo, where an increasing number of African nations are getting mired in a bloody war with little apparent purpose or prospect of resolution. It was certainly on a different scale altogether from the 1995 genocide in Rwanda, where the international community refused to lift afinger to stop the needless deaths of half a million people. The West’s laissez-faire attitude to this tragedy has also been well documented by Human Rights Watch in a recent report.
Then, to the surprise of almost everyone, Milosevic called NATO’s bluff. He refused to sign the American-sponsored deal, and the bombs began to raindown on Belgrade. I still don’t believe that NATO is particularly eager to get involved in a long war in Yugoslavia. The alliance’s militarystrategists are not stupid, and they knew full well that unless Milosevic buckled quickly NATO would get stuck in a potentially disastrous long-termcampaign.
Which raises the question: why did NATO want to get involved at all? First of all, it is abundantly clear that humanitarian concerns had absolutely nothing to do with it. A superficial veil of concern for the rights of oppressed Kosovans has been useful to keep public opinion on side – as countless soundbites from Western leaders and military commanders affirm.
If NATO had really cared about Kosovan civilians, it would never have launched its military campaign without the ground support necessary to protect the two million people then thrown at the mercy of a furious and vengeful Yugoslav army. It was widely predicted that a straightforward aircampaign would make the refugee crisis dramatically worse – although the scale of the catastrophe when it happened was probably as much a surpriseto NATO as it was to international aid agencies.
I believe the real reason for NATO’s intervention is rather less altruistic. This is an issue of geopolitical power, not human rights. Ever since the end of the Cold War, NATO has been busily trying to transform itself into the guarant or of stability for all of Europe and beyond. Fort his it needs to protect both its credibility and its vast militaryexpenditure. The alliance could not simply stand by and allow a small-time demagogue like Milosevic to thumb his nose at American power. Once Yugoslavia knuckles under, the Western powers will replace the stick with the carrot – as a recent British press report revealed.
Hence NATO’s utter lack of interest in Turkey’s brutal suppression of its Kurdish population – who have been in armed revolt for far longer than theKosovans and who have just as strong a claim to nationhood. But Turkey is acompliant state, willing to play the game according to US interests – forexample by allowing its bases to be used for bombing raids over Iraq. So the Kurds are theirs for the killing, condemned by the West as terrorists rather than celebrated – like the Kosovan KLA – as freedom fighters.
There are plenty of other examples of serious humanitarian disasters where Western countries have been not just silent but actively complicit in the torture and murder of innocent civilians. Israel, for example, can happily flout any number of UN resolutions and still be the recipient of billions of dollars of aid from the US. Israel holds stocks of chemical, biological and nuclear weapons which could potentially cause more destruction in the Middle East than Saddam Hussein could do in a century. There’s also East Timor of course, that half-forgotten corner of the world where a third of the population has been killed since the US-approved Indonesian invasion of 1975.
It is revealing also that the US didn’t even try to go through the formal procedures for getting UN Security Council legitimacy for its war in Yugoslavia. Of course both China and Russia could have been expected to use their vetos – but that is what collective security means. It does not mean the unilateral exercise of military might by the world’s one remaining superpower – and its client states like Britain. There is no doubt that the current military campaign is illegal under international law.
The saddest thing of all is that there was once the chance of a peaceful solution in Kosovo. Led by the moderate Ibrahim Rugova and inspired by Gandhian principles, a non-violent resistance movement had successfully mobilised a more democratic and inclusive civil society. Had as much financial support been offered for democratisation in Yugoslavia as has been expended on military hardware in just one night of NATO bombing (anestimated £90 million on the first night alone), things would have been very different. And, as many democracy activists have written, the NATOaction has so strengthened Milosevic that it has set their cause back by decades.
But then a democratic Yugoslavia was never really the West’s concern. Neither was getting rid of Milosevic, who – like Saddam Hussein before him – needed only to be brought back under control. As decades of experienceshow, tin-pot dictators are just fine – so long as they obey the rules ofAmerican power.
From: Special Report on Kosovo
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Please email Mark Lynas on mark@oneworld.org, or post comments to theOneWorld Speakeasy.
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