NATO and Kosovo

Ivo H. Daalder takes issue with Layne and Schwarz:

DURING the early weeks of the Kosovo war, critics of the Clinton administration were appalled by NATO's lack of planning. NATO, after all, had gone to war for the ostensible purpose of protecting the Kosovar Albanians, only to see 1.5 million of them being forced from their homes. With the benefit of hindsight, however, it ought to be evident to these critics that their conclusions about the administration's fallibility were premature. While the diplomatic and military strategies hardly proved optimal, there can be little doubt that NATO won the war. Having myself been one of the critics, I have no compunction admitting that this is the case. Not so Christopher Layne and Benjamin Schwarz, who recently argued in these pages that the Clinton administration bears primary responsibility for the humanitarian crisis in Kosovo ("For the Record", Fall 1999).

Layne and Schwarz's contention is based on three arguments. First, the conflict in Kosovo was essentially one that pitted a radicalized and violent Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA), bent on independence, against a Belgrade government that sought to defend the status quo. Second, the humanitarian calamity that befell the Kosovar Albanians (who constituted 90 percent of Kosovo's population) was the result not of what Serb military, paramilitary and police forces did, but of NATO's decision to bomb Serbia. Third, the people of Kosovo today are worse off because NATO intervened.

In essence, Layne and Schwarz blame the victims for the crimes inflicted on them and then compound that error by confusing those who sought, however ineptly, to prevent the crimes with those who perpetrated them. But even a cursory examination of the evidence suggests Serb responsibility for the conflict. What is more, NATO's intervention in the end created a situation that is infinitely preferable for individual Kosovars to the one in which they found themselves before the war. Indeed, their life is better and their future more promising than would have been the case under the Rambouillet agreement, the rejection of which by Slobodan Milosevic was the reason for NATO's intervention.

LAYNE and Schwarz rightly contend that the "historical background of the Kosovo crisis is complex", but they then proceed to ignore even the most basic historical facts of the conflict. This is unfortunate, since such facts might help explain why Serb and Albanian aims proved irreconcilable. For example, it might be useful to acknowledge that Milosevic rose to power in Serbia partly on the backs of the Kosovar Albanians. In 1989 he stripped away the constitutional autonomy Kosovo had enjoyed during the previous fifteen years. In its stead emerged a highly repressive Serb regime that denied Albanians any authority in running day-to-day life in the province. It is equally important to recall that for eight years after autonomy was taken from them, the Albanian people resisted Serb repression without violence. Instead, they contented themselves with setting up parallel state structures--organizing elections for a "presidency" and "parliament", providing Albanian-language education for their young, and seeking in many other ways to circumvent Serb authority.

Yet, eight years of non-violent resistance proved incapable of either denting Serb control or gaining international sympathy. As a result, some Kosovars came to believe that violence offered a better prospect for success. Indeed, the Dayton Accord that ended the war in neighboring Bosnia suggested that the most effective means of attracting international attention was through violence rather than peaceful resistance. This helps to explain the emergence of the KLA-a small, ideologically diverse group that initially consisted of no more than a few hundred fighters.

Rather than dealing with the problem posed by the KLA in a proportionate manner, Serb authorities decided to show the Kosovars who was boss. By the summer of 1998, some 30,000 Serb interior police and army forces were engaged in a systematic campaign to eradicate the KLA. At times, their actions proved particularly brutal, as when Serb forces raided the village of Gornji Obrinje in late September, massacring 34 people, including 21 women, children and elderly ranging in age from 4 to 95. By early fall, some 450,000 Kosovar Albanians--25 percent of those living in Kosovo--had been expelled from or fled their homes. Of these, about 50,000 huddled in the mountains with neither food nor shelter--facing the prospect of a strong winter above and marauding Serb forces below.

This, then, was the kind of counterinsurgency that Serb forces conducted during 1998. Contrary to Layne and Schwarz's contention that this was a normal or even an effective way of dealing with the KLA, Serb actions proved to be not only brutal but counterproductive. The KLA grew rapidly in size and support; the Albanian population became radicalized; and the international community was galvanized to act--hardly the textbook outcome of a successful counterinsurgency campaign. This was not just a conflict pitting two irreconcilable sides against one another. It was a fight between a government bent on wreaking havoc and a defenseless population looking for protection from what had started out as little more than a ragtag band of rebels.

WHEN NATO bombing commenced on March 24, 1999, Serb forces accelerated their campaign against the Kosovar Albanians by forcibly expelling as many of them as possible from Kosovo. Layne and Schwarz pin the blame for this development squarely on NATO: "not until NATO began its bombing did Belgrade's objective in Kosovo change from counterinsurgency to a deliberate campaign to expel the province's ethnic Albanians." This confuses pace with intent. What changed was the pace with which Serb forces acted, not their purpose, which remained unchanged.

There is no doubt that the NATO bombing led to an acceleration of atrocities against the Kosovar Albanian population. Prior to the commencement of the air campaign, Serb forces had paced themselves in the belief that, as one Serb diplomat reportedly put it, "a village a day keeps NATO away." [1] However, once the bombing started and the prospect of using NATO ground troops had been publicly ruled Out, the constraint on Serb actions was lifted. NATO's mistake, as Layne and Schwarz rightly argue, was in believing that the bombing would force Belgrade to the negotiating table and in failing to prepare for the possibility that Milosevic might instead accelerate his campaign against the Kosovar Albanians.

This was a major, indeed, a tragic failure on NATO's part. But that is a far cry from blaming NATO for what the Serbs did. The self-described Serb campaign of "ethnic cleansing" in Kosovo was neither novel nor somehow out of character. Much the same had happened in large parts of Croatia in 1991 and Bosnia in 1992-95. The world had already witnessed Vukovar, Prijedor and, of course, Srebrenica. To these could now be added similar horrors--from the methodical emptying of Djakovica to the wiping out of Suva Reka to the destruction of Belanica.

None of this was accidental, or suddenly and spasmodically decided the day NATO bombed. This was a methodical, well-planned and ruthlessly executed campaign. As John Kifner has shown (New York Times, May 29, 1999), its purpose was twofold: first, to remove the KLA's "base of support and cover", and second, to depopulate Kosovo in an effort to defuse a "demographic time bomb." Belgrade developed a specific plan for this very purpose--Operation Horseshoe. In early 1999 Serbia steadily increased the strength of its army and interior police forces in and around Kosovo to 42,000 troops, adding 1,000 heavy weapons to their arsenal, and began recruiting irregular and paramilitary forces to conduct the heinous crimes that would become an intricate part of the campaign. [2] These were the carefully planned steps necessary to prepare for what a senior Serb army general in January 1999 referred to as the "hot spring", in which "the problem of Kosovo and Metohija will be definitely solved." [3] This was not some conting ency plan, as Layne and Schwarz assert. Rather, it was a systematic plan to alter Kosovo's ethnic balance that Belgrade began to implement on March 19, 1999--five days before the first NATO bombs were dropped.

The results of the plan's rapid execution are well known. One and a half million Kosovar Albanians were forced from their homes--85 percent of the entire population. More than 10,000 people were killed, many mutilated or burned in more than 200 mass graves. Thousands of women were raped. In short, not one Kosovar Albanian remained untouched by this brutality--a brutality for which no one other than the Serb perpetrators was responsible.

LAYNE and Schwarz are strangely silent about the outcome of the war. Could this be because NATO's success nullifies their thesis? There can be little doubt that, in the end, NATO achieved its main objective: to create a safe and secure environment for the Kosovars. These requirements were met when NATO and the Serb military signed their agreement on June 10, spelling out how and when the Serbs would depart and NATO would move into Kosovo. Moreover, contrary to other arguments, this outcome was better than would have been the case if the Rambouillet plan had been accepted. Under that plan, 5,000 Serb security forces would have remained in Kosovo; today there are none. Kosovo is effectively an international protectorate, one run by the United Nations and NATO, and shorn of Serb sovereignty in all but name.

Within one month of NATO forces entering Kosovo, 750,000 refugees returned. That is a remarkable testament to the success of U.S. and NATO policy. It stands in marked contrast to the fears all of us shared just a few months ago--fears of permanent exile for nearly a million people, and of starvation and death for many hundreds of thousands.

Of course, daily life in Kosovo is far from normal--adequate housing remains sparse, the economy is in ruins, and no administrative infrastructure exists. Moreover, while nearly all Albanians have returned, there has been a large exodus of Serbs. And in the chaos and confusion that accompanied the end of the war, a few hundred Serbs and Albanians have been killed. Though tragic, it is important to put these developments in perspective. The killings after the war have occurred at a rate that is still well below the murder rate in many U.S. cities. And while many Serbs left precipitously in fear of returning Kosovar Albanians, this cannot be compared to the systematic and forced expulsion of the province's Albanian population prior to and during the war.

The Kosovo war was a tragedy. It is clear that NATO did not adopt the best strategy either for dealing with the conflict or for conducting the war. It is therefore certainly legitimate to ask whether an alternative strategy would have had a greater chance of success at preventing Milosevic from inflicting terrible depredations against the Kosovar people. But it should be equally clear that NATO's intervention made a difference for the better. Compare Kosovo to Bosnia, where at least 100,000 died while NATO stood on the sidelines. Although NATO acted too late in Kosovo to prevent a major tragedy, it intervened early enough to avoid a repeat of Bosnia. And that, in the end, is no small achievement.

Ivo H. Daalder is a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, and co-author of Kosovo: Anatomy of a Crisis (Brookings Institution Press, forthcoming).

(1.) Barton Gellman, Washington Post, April 18, 1999.

(2.) R. Jeffrey Smith and William Drozdiak, Washington Post, April 11,1999; and James M. Dorsey, Wall Street Journal, September 1, 1999.

(3.) "Briefing of SACEUR General Wesley Clark" (Brussels: NATO Headquarters, April 13, 1999), available at www.nato.int/pictures/1999/990413/b990413c.jpg.

Christopher Layne and Benjamin Schwarz reply:

IVO DAALDER, a former Clinton administration NSG staffer, understandably seeks to whitewash the administration's dismal record of failure in Kosovo. But measured by its own declared objective, the administration's strategy was disastrous. It triggered the very humanitarian crisis it ostensibly intervened to prevent; created a KLAdominated Kosovo that threatens long-term Balkan stability; and makes a mockery of the notion that Kosovo will be transformed into a multi-ethnic democracy.

Dr. Daalder deals with unpleasant facts in characteristically Clintonesque fashion. All accounts of what happened in Kosovo agree on the fundamental point: whatever plans the Serbs may have had to expand the conflict, until March 24 the war in Kosovo was a counterinsurgency. The Serbs decided to pursue the objective of depopulating Kosovo of its ethnic Albanian population only after the bombing started.

No doubt, the Serbs' pre-bombing counterinsurgency was brutal--although the actual scale of that brutality remains an open question. (The bodies found thus far after diligent search suggest that the number of ethnic Albanians killed was far less than the 10,000 claimed by NATO.) In any event, counterinsurgencies are always brutal: civilians inescapably become targets of violence, because the insurgents draw their manpower and political support from the population in whose name they fight. In any guerrilla war, the line distinguishing fighters from noncombatants evaporates. Dr. Daalder excoriates the Serbs because their pre-bombing counterinsurgency created a refugee problem. He should learn more about military history.

The ferocity of the war between the Serbs and the KLA in Kosovo is explained by the conflict's historical roots. On this point, Dr. Daalder's argument is disingenuous. He says he recognizes the origins of Kosovo's ethnic conflict, but for him they extend back only as far as 1989, when Belgrade revoked Kosovo's autonomy. If Dr. Daalder went further back, he would have discovered that the Serbs had legitimate grievances, having been systematically discriminated against during Kosovo's period of autonomy. Going even further back, few Serbs have forgotten that many ethnic Albanians sided with Nazi Germany after Yugoslavia was invaded in 1941, and some fought in Nazi SS formations. Our point is not that the Serbs are the good guys. In Kosovo there are no good guys--just a history of mutual repression and retribution that negates the idea that right or justice lies clearly on one side or the other.

Events in postwar Kosovo confirm this. Dr. Daalder tosses off the repression perpetrated against the province's remaining Serbs by claiming that the postwar death rate in Kosovo is lower than in many U.S. cities. A more relevant yardstick is that since the war ended, ethnic Serbs in Kosovo have been killed at nearly the same rate at which ethnic Albanians were being killed from the beginning of 1998 until the bombing commenced in March 1999. In short, Kosovo's ethnic Albanians are no more prepared to live in peace with Serbs than the Serbs were with them.

Dr. Daalder thinks the Kosovo war ended in success, but his is a strange definition of victory. NATO's intervention all but guaranteed the KLA's accession to power. The KLA has made clear that it has no interest in a democratic or multi-ethnic Kosovo. The KLA is committed to independence and a "Greater Albania", a goal inconsistent with any reasonable notion of Balkan stability. Now, the Clinton administration has reportedly resigned itself to Kosovo's independence, notwithstanding its previous recognition that this would be a dangerous outcome. If "peace" prevails in Kosovo and Bosnia, it is only because the United States and NATO have undertaken the task of maintaining a major military presence of indefinite duration. Perhaps that is "success"--but, if so, it is success of a peculiar kind.

COPYRIGHT 1999 The National Interest, Inc.
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