Some of those currently advocating bombing Syria turn for justification to their old faithful friend “humanitarian intervention”, one of the earliest examples of which was the 1999 US and NATO bombing campaign to stop ethnic cleansing and drive Serbian forces from Kosovo.
However, a collective amnesia appears to have afflicted countless intelligent, well-meaning people, who are convinced that the US/NATO bombing took place after the mass forced deportation of ethnic Albanians from Kosovo was well underway; which is to say that the bombing was launched to stop this “ethnic cleansing”.
In actuality, the systematic forced deportations of large numbers of people from Kosovo did not begin until a few days after the bombing began, and was clearly a Serbian reaction to it, born of extreme anger and powerlessness.
This is easily verified by looking at a daily newspaper for the few days before the bombing began the night of March 23/24, and the few days after. Or simply look at the New York Times of March 26, page 1, which reads:
… with the NATO bombing already begun, a deepening sense of fear took hold in Pristina [the main city of Kosovo] that the Serbs would NOW vent their rage against ethnic Albanian civilians in retaliation.
On March 27, we find the first reference to a “forced march” or anything of that sort.
But the propaganda version is already set in marble.
Mr. Blum,
This is an egregious oversimplification of the context that existed at the time of the Nato bombing of Serb forces in Kosovo and other parts of Serbia. Do not forget that Tito’s relatively fair model of governance was turned on its head by Milosevic beginning in 1989 in Kosovo when he rescinded Kosovo’s autonomy and began direct rule from Belgrade. Albanians were kicked out of many state jobs and harassed by a completely opportunistic paradoxically communist and nationalist tyrant and his henchmen, both official and paramilitary in nature (look up Arkan and his Tigers).
For ten years the Albanians under Rugova were forced to go underground, running their schools, healthcare system, etc. in homes and various unofficial venues, under very difficult conditions, while arguing through peaceful non-violent resistance, for reinstatement of autonomy and possible future status as an equal republic. Serbia would have no part of it, and Serbian forces, present in increasing numbers throughout the province, made life miserable for the average citizen and many restless youth were arrested and mistreated, women and elderly harassed, etc. It was an awful period and it doesn’t take much to imagine how an independence movement could have gained momentum under those circumstances.
The question of whether MASS expulsions of Albanians began before or after Nato bombing ignores the atrocities committed during what was already a brutal occupation, and more obviously (and perhaps more egregiously) minimizes the reality that a mass expulsion was still attempted by Belgrade (estimated at 800,000 people). Your cursory analysis also misses the historical context of ethnic cleansing, killings, rapes, etc. initiated and inflicted mostly by the Serbian side against Croats and Bosniaks prior to the Nato bombing, and is therefore lacking in scholarly depth, at best.
Mr. Blum, if your goal is to confront hegemony, so be it. That may very well be a noble goal. But if in your attempt to confront empire, you throw away the moral compass entirely and apply a mass judgement that in ALL cases, every intervention (legal or otherwise), can have no positive moral outcome (even coincidental), then you join the ranks of countless other global dogma that seek absolute certainty and perfect judgement, often sacrificing something fundamental in return, like human dignity and just plain common sense.
Mr. Blum’s explanation of what happened may be described as an “oversimplification”, as could any explanation for events that wasn’t a lengthy, comprehensive history, but it is accurate.
Yes, there were atrocities occurring before the NATO bombing, but the fact is, as Mr. Blum correctly points out, the NATO bombing did not mitigate but escalated the violence on the ground. This is a historical fact.
‘Or take the illegal bombing of Kosovo in 1999, which was characterized in the West as a “humanitarian intervention”, despite the fact that it resulted in an escalation of the “cleansing” and other atrocities on the ground in the former Yugoslavia and a higher civilian death toll in its first three weeks than had occurred during the three months prior, when the “humanitarian catastrophe” had occurred that had served as a pretext for the bombing. U.S.-NATO Commanding General Wesley Clark afterward announced that it had been “entirely predictable” that the bombing had resulted in an escalation of violence on the ground.’
http://www.foreignpolicyjournal.com/2012/08/13/ron-pauls-crimes-against-the-state-religion
‘[I]n the year before the bombing, 2,000 people had been killed and several hundred thousand had become refugees, according to NATO, most of the victims being ethnic Albanians. According to U.S. intelligence, the number of internally displaced was 250,000. The U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) reported a similar figure of 230,000. But after less than two weeks of bombing, the UNHCR reported that 350,000 refugees had fled Kosovo just since the bombing began, and by the time it stopped put the number of refugees at 671,500. As I noted previously, NATO Commanding General Wesley Clark said it was “entirely predictable” that the atrocities on the ground would escalate as a consequence of the bombing. “The military authorities fully anticipated the vicious approach that Milosevic would adopt, as well as the terrible efficiency with which he would carry it out”, he said. On the purpose of the bombing, Clark stated, “We were operating, however, under the instructions from the political leadership. It was not designed as a means of blocking Serb ethnic cleansing. It was not designed as a way of waging war against the Serb and mob forces in Kosovo in any way. There was never any intent to do that. That was not the idea.” The Chairman of the U.S. House Intelligence Committee, Porter Goss, observed that, “Our intelligence community warned us months and days before that we would have a virtual explosion of refugees over the 250,000 that was expected as of last year, that the Serb resolve would increase, that the conflict would spread, and that there would be ethnic cleansing.” Goss also commented, “One of the consequences surely would be that if you stick in this nest, you’re going to stir it up more, and that was one of the things that might have happened and in fact that is one of the things that did happen because Milosevic did in fact, instead of caving in, he reacted by striking back harder against the Kosovars, harder, more quickly, more ruthlessly.” The intelligence community’s predictions in that regard “were very accurate”, Goss boasted. All of this led BBC reporter Gavin Hewitt to remark, “A NATO campaign intended to protect the Albanians appeared to accelerate their misery. Western governments were shocked by the speed and brutality of a forced exodus, but the White House accepts that some ethnic cleansing was expected.”’
http://www.foreignpolicyjournal.com/2012/08/17/the-ignorant-american-matt-johnson-on-ron-paul-and-u-s-foreign-policy
Today we have 250.000 expelled Serbs from Kosovo and total devastation by Muslim Albanians of everything that is Christian and Serbian! Today Kosovo is simply the first ISIL in Europe. Maybe NATO has to bomb once again somebody in the region?
The crucial issue of the Kosovo story is missing in the article: a longstanding Albanian genocide over the Kosovo Serbs lasting from the beginning of the 18th century, when they came to Kosovo from Albania settled there as the Muslims by the Ottoman authorities, up today. The historical ethnic cleansing in Kosovo is so visible from the very statistical facts: in 1455 according to the Ottoman sources, there were only 2% of Albanians in Kosovo nearby Albania’s borders, today there only 3-5% percents of Serbs in Kosovo but only in its northern part that is not under Prishtina control.