KOSOVO/A ON-LINE

Topic:
Kosovo and NATO
Authors:

Bojan B. Dimitrijevic, M.A.

Isuf Berisha

Bojan B. Dimitrijevic, M.A.

Judging by the war in Bosnia and earlier threats made by the great powers, the following scenario of NATO's possible involvement in the Kosmet crisis could be inferred: the blocking of the borders of the FRY, instituting of a no-fly zone over the southern province, sending of monitors, in the wake of which a stronger military engagement would take place -- air strikes and the deployment of ground troops. There are indications that some of these already tested models of pressure could be immediately implemented, succeeding one another at much shorter intervals than was the case in the past. The first would be the introduction of a no-fly zone, similar to the models applied in the wars in Iraq and Bosnia.

During the 1992-1995 Bosnian war, the first calls for air strikes against Serb positions were launched as early as the end of summer, 1992. These alarming calls were accompanied by newspaper articles in which potential targets, both military and civilian (the latter being mainly roads and bridges) were listed. However, the strikes against targets in Republika Srpska were carried out only in September 1995. Thus, a three-year period that had elapsed in the meanwhile, served for media and military preparations, because at the time of the first calls for action NATO was not yet strong enough for such a move. One of the stages in this process was the establishment of a no-fly zone over Bosnia and Herzegovina.

Today, the situation is substantially different: the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia is surrounded by NATO forces, a fact that offers political representatives of the international community sufficient confidence to make their threats with ease. Significant NATO forces are deployed in Bosnia and Herzegovina as part of SFOR, and in Macedonia under the guise of UNPREDEP, while an initial contingent of troops have been stationed in Albania since 1995. The skies around Yugoslavia are controlled by AWACS jets which observe air space and communications and Joint Stars which monitor the movement of ground troops. Thus, a solid basis for military threats and subsequent action has been established. Reports that the U.S. aircraft carrier the USS Eisenhower has set off for a journey across the Atlantic, indicate that the major offensive player is already on its way, while the high concentration of military forces, primarily aircraft carriers stationed off the Albanian coast, additionally confirms the final form the military threat is taking.

In the meanwhile, before the offensive forces are fully concentrated, air maneuvers will take place as a public show of force and serve as a rehearsal for attacks, and to maintain tensions until the arrival of the major offensive force. As in the case of Bosnia, a NATO base in Aviano, near Treviso in Italy, will serve as a central gathering point for the Western alliance's air force. During the recent maneuvers, in a very short time 85 jets took to the skies over the turbulent Balkans, 68 of them fighter jets. Only Luxembourg and Iceland did not use this opportunity to participate in this exercise with a symbolic name Determined Falcon. Flights above Albania and Macedonia have demonstrated that NATO superiority respects no state borders. The "sound of freedom" -- a phrase used by U.S. Gen. Short to describe the thunder of his jets -- has still not been heard over Kosmet.

In their military actions in the region so far, NATO forces have managed to obtain all the needed intelligence information on the strength, combat readiness, activities, armament, and locations of all units of the Yugoslav Army, and -- to a certain extent -- of Serbian police forces as well. This was also facilitated by an arms control agreement in the territory of the former Yugoslavia. There is no doubt that a selection of potential (primarily military) targets to be destroyed in Serbia and Montenegro has been made long ago, and that NATO planners only have to work out the details of their forces' future action.

What will these potential targets be? This is the question most frequently asked at this point. It is not an easy task to make forecasts as to whether NATO, taking advantage of its global superiority, will act only against targets in Kosmet, which is most likely, or whether it will also seize the opportunity to eliminate additional military targets in Serbia proper. So far, the activities of the ethnic Albanian guerrilla forces have been limited exclusively to the southern Serbian region and have not involved the three Serbian municipalities that have an Albanian majority. This may indicate that -- at least in the first stage of the military internationalization of the crisis -- NATO will choose to strike only against targets in Kosovo. The experience of the 1995 bombing of Republika Srpska leads us to conclude that targets similar to those chosen in Republika Srpska would also become objectives of the NATO air strikes in Kosovo. There are two types of potential targets. The first include what are known as stationary targets, defined as targets in advance. These are radar tracking facilities, communications centers, anti-aircraft positions, and air fields that could serve as support for resistance by the Yugoslav air force. All these targets exist in Kosovo: there is a regiment of anti-aircraft missile defense, VOJIN tracking facilities, and an air force base near Pristina with a fighter wing containing two squadrons of MiG-21s.

The other group of potential targets includes all active targets engaged in fighting at the time of the intervention. These are the zones in which Serbian police and the Yugoslav army Pristina Corps units are concentrated. Of course, the first target of the strike would be groups of tanks, other combat vehicles, and heavy artillery, and -- to a lesser degree -- military barracks and other army facilities. We say to a lesser degree, because a part of the army units has been deployed outside these facilities for some time now, depending on the developments on the ground. The existence of a rather strong army forces in and around all Kosmet towns (Kosovska Mitrovica, Vucitrn, Pristina, Urosevac, Prizren, Pec, Djakovica), as well as along the border with Albania, offers a long list of potential secondary targets. We believe that also on this occasion, NATO forces, and primarily the Americans, will use the opportunity to test a host of military innovations. It depends to be seen what will be the fate of civilians (mainly of Albanian nationality) in the NATO air strikes, especially having in view the possibility that despite the Western military intervention, Kosmet might still fail to obtain independence, which is so strongly desired by the Albanian movement. Could it be true that such civilian casualties are included in the calculations of those who so strongly wish to hear the "sound of freedom" above Kosovo?

Is NATO realistic in estimating that with such aggressive measures it will finally manage to resolve the centuries-long Kosmet problem? The reason for such a strong action appears to rest on two elements -- the fact that a several month long test period the Yugoslav military and police action failed to eradicate the ethnic Albanian guerrilla force, and on the estimate that the Yugoslav military response will be luke-warm or will be politically paralyzed. The sudden aggressiveness of the Western military alliance, supported by these two convictions, seems to exclude any possibility that the Yugoslav army, guided primarily by internal impulses, might in fact opt for a strong response. Reports intimating the existence of a strong determination to use all military means in defending Kosmet have been indicated by the highest military circles. A decisive resistance and possible heavy casualties, might -- at least to some extent -- sway the initial thrust and zeal of NATO intervention forces.

Finally, let us raise several questions: what will come after the air strikes? Political negotiations? A signal for an all-out Albanian uprising? Deployment of NATO ground troops in Kosmet? Is NATO counting on complete Yugoslav/Serbian military passivity?

Even a superficial glance at the atmosphere we live in shows that NATO planners have been quite well acquainted with the all-pervading atrophy of the Serb will to wage war. Apparently, only the journalists and authorized army departments had shown any interest in the progress of Determined Falcon. The rest of Serbia was busy watching the World Cup in France.

General apathy has been reigning supreme in Serbia for several years now. The sudden fall of the Republic of Serb Krajina, followed by the smooth handing over of the so-called Srem-Baranja region to Croatia, the defeat in Republika Srpska and the uncertainty over its future, the biggest exodus of the Serbs in recent history, all appear to have finally crushed even the most zealous among national romanticists. Grave internal conditions, primarily the drop of the standard of living, have pushed national visions into the second plane and forced the Serbs to struggle exclusively with their everyday difficulties. Cynics might say that the Serb will to fight is equally proportional to the trust they place in their government.

In addition, there has been not a single intimation as to the official strategy in resolving the Kosmet issue. All options and outcomes are open and all of them might, eventually, be presented as a victory of the current Yugoslav/Serbian authorities. Even a deployment of NATO forces in the Yugoslav territory!

(The author is a researcher with the Institute of Contemporary History)









Isuf Berisha
Can NATO intervene in Kosovo? How can Milosevic's war machine be stopped without encouraging the KLA?

*At this point, the West appears involved in a tacit partnership with Milosevic to discipline the Albanians and force them to accept a compromise in resolving the Kosovo problem

*A "No fly zone" combined with a ban on using artillery is an initial condition for ceasefire

Pictures of destroyed and burned towns and villages, and long columns of refugees fleeing them, coupled with reports of massacres of Albanian civilians, have put an end to the unexplainable silence of the West in regard to the latest offensive of the Serb-Montenegrin army and Serb police against KLA-controlled territory. Western politicians and diplomats once again are making statements about NATO's possible intervention to stop the violence and create preconditions for resolving the Kosovo knot through negotiations. Various analysts have returned to debating the old, intervention-related issues, which, in the meantime, were made more complex by new dilemmas stemming from events in the field.

Hence the following questions: Will NATO intervene in Kosovo? In what manner could it intervene? And, the most significant one: Will intervention indeed take place? From a military point of view, NATO intervention would be quite feasible. The military and technological potentials of the Yugoslav Army pose no unsolvable problem to NATO. Moreso, the conspicuous technical inferiority of the Yugoslav Army air force and air defense practically means that it wouldn't stand a chance if attacked by the NATO air force. Thus it appears that any response to a possible NATO intervention would turn out to be a rather hopeless affair.

More important problems are related to the political aspect of intervention, that is, how intervention would be politically and legally justified. In addition, a political objective for the intervention would have to be found, in order to make it militarily successful and -- as such -- also acceptable.

Since it rejects Kosovo's independence -- with the explanation that it would destabilize both the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia and the whole region -- NATO is now blocked by fears that its intervention against Milosevic's military machine in Kosovo would help the Kosovo Albanians gain independence from Serbia. So far, Kosovo Albanian political leaders have not been successful in their criticism of this explanation and its wrong premises. They have failed to make any more significant impact in defending their view that the region's stability cannot be maintained by keeping the Albanians under Serbian colonial authority, and that the FYR of Macedonia would not be destabilized by Kosovo's independence, but rather by Macedonia's discriminatory policy against its ethnic Albanian minority.

One KLA representative recently came forth with the idea about unification of all ethnic Albanian regions. This naive and irresponsible statement, which does not reflect the true sentiments of the Kosovo political body, and has already been rejected by several high-ranking KLA officers, worked in favor of those who are against Albanian liberation from the Serbian colonial authorities. This statement prompted the West to accept a kind of tacit partnership with Milosevic to discipline the Albanians and force them to abandon their attempts to liberate themselves from Serbian colonial rule.

However, the question of Kosovo cannot be resolved through this bizarre partnership. Only Milosevic, who is renowned for foregoing all his public pledges, unless forced to abide by them, could profit from it. The current Serbian offensive against KLA-controlled territories is a major proof of this tacit agreement between the West and Milosevic. Its results are some 250,000 refugees from a number of villages and towns destroyed by systematic shelling, in which anything served as a target, and in which homes were levelled only to be looted and burned in the end.

It appears that, except for having discredited the democratic countries of the West, the Milosevic offensive will otherwise fall short of the results hoped for by the West. It has failed to weaken the KLA, which withdrew from certain territories controlled by it, but suffered minimal losses in doing so. In fact, this offensive cannot end the conflict, and can only expand and intensify it. Therefore, sooner or later, the West, that is, NATO, will be forced to intervene in Kosovo. Because of that, the West is now faced with a challenge to find a type of intervention that will stop Milosevic's war machine and act in support of the political resolution, without giving the impression that it extends backing to the KLA.

The introduction of a "no fly zone" above Kosovo for fighter jets and helicopters, a ban on using tanks and artillery around towns and villages and threats of airstrikes in case of violations, may serve as initial forms of NATO intervention. In this manner, the escalation of the conflict could be prevented and a kind of ceasefire established, as unavoidable preconditions for the start of the talks, internationally guaranteed and mediated, to achieve a peaceful resolution of the Kosovo question.

(The author is a philosopher and publicist from Pristina)