>From http://www.freerepublic.com/forum/a38f31c535073.htm >>Comments and opinions at site at bottom of article -- as ever. A<>E<>R << {{<Begin>}} FreeRepublic.com "A Conservative News Forum" Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works. Film Depicts Damage Wrought By Kosovo Air War Foreign Affairs News Source: Defense Week Published: April 10, 2000 Author: Christian Lowe Posted on 04/11/2000 05:36:35 PDT by Stand Watch Listen When NATO�s Kosovo air war wrapped up in June 1999, U.S. and NATO officials touted its "overwhelming success." In 78 days and nights of bombing over Serbia and Kosovo, NATO�s three goals of ensuring Europe�s stability, stopping ethnic cleansing and bolstering NATO�s credibility were accomplished without the loss of a single alliance member�s life, they said. But a new documentary film presented last week at the CATO Institute, a Washington, D.C. think-tank that tends to oppose U.S. intervention abroad, argues that NATO�s "victory" was not as clear-cut as some have claimed. In many ways, the situation in the Balkans has either not improved or gotten much worse since the war started in March 1999, according to the film, titled Collateral Damage. Far from stopping the ethnic cleansing and stabilizing Europe�s southern flank, the war resulted in displacement of Serbs and Albanians, crushed economies and a real threat to democratic reform in the region, the film makers say. Two CATO staffers, Gary Dempsey and Aaron Lukas, flew to the Balkans on a shoe- string budget to document the "unintended consequences" of NATO�s bombing campaign. They traveled extensively through the region, filming patrols in Kosovar cities where NATO troops are stationed, inspecting bombed-out industrial complexes in Serbia and interviewing victims of the war who were nowhere near the bombed areas�citizens of Macedonia, Romania and Bulgaria. One repression for another Collateral Damage directly attacks the notion that the air war stopped ethnic cleansing. In fact, according to the film, the Yugoslav army was engaged in a campaign against Kosovo Liberation Army insurgents in the region and switched to a tactic of mass expulsion. The intent was to flood NATO staging areas with refuges, thereby hampering a possible ground invasion, the film said. The U.S. Department of State admitted, although belatedly, that the NATO bombing caused the Yugoslav cleansing campaign to begin, according to the documentary. Up to 2,000 people were killed during the war, including around 1,000 Serbs outside Kosovo, the film said. Since NATO�s occupation of Kosovo, according to Sava Janjic, an orthodox priest interviewed in the film, 200,000 Serbs have left Kosovo. The exodus of Serbian authorities and the organizations they ran has left a void that organized crime has quickly filled, the priest said. "Now, one repression has been replaced with another," Janjic said. The air war did more than stir up the ethnic pot in the region. Precision bombing strikes against bridges, oil refineries and other civilian industrial targets have plunged the region into a severe economic crisis, the film argues. Serbia has suffered $30 billion in damage to the economy, which has seen its gross domestic product cut by 41 percent in 1999, it says. Most disturbing has been the damage done to the city of Nis. Formerly an anti- Milosevic bastion, Nis now boasts 30,000 jobless citizens and an average 3,000 residents using soup kitchens every day, the city�s mayor said in the film. More than just affecting Serbia and Kosovo, the bombing has brought Romania and Bulgaria�s burgeoning export economies to a virtual stand-still, the film says. NATO�s targeting of bridges crossing the Danube river on Yugoslavia�s border has strangled shipping along that vital riparian way. Romania, on Yugoslavia�s eastern border, conducts 67 percent of its trade with European Union member nations, one official said in the film. Because of the downed bridges, the country�s industries can�t move products by barge along the river to customers in Hungary and on into the rest of Europe. The country is losing $50 million a week because of the damage, the official said. A threat to reform The bombs may have splintered the fragile brick and mortar of democratic reform in the region as well�still hardening after years of communist domination. Many of the Balkan countries are trying to become members of the European Union and eventually NATO. But now, that pro-NATO, pro-Europe position is harder to explain, the film said. A Bulgarian journalist said that the NATO bombing had prompted nearly 1 million voters to withdraw support from the ruling democratic coalition government. Some polls showed that 60 percent of Bulgarians disapproved of the bombing, he said. This is a direct result of the prime minister�s support of the NATO war, "and Bulgarians continue to suffer," he said. Macedonia, which served as a staging point for NATO troops at camp Able Sentry, is feeling the political shockwaves as well. That country, tenuously clinging to democracy in its own right, almost elected a communist leader to the presidency in recent elections. It has also resulted in rising tensions between the Slavic and Albanian populations in Macedonia. All of this has served to heighten the influence of the Kosovo Liberation Army in Macedonia, especially among the Albanian minority and refugees from Kosovo, one Macedonian official said in the film. But, ironically, there is little ill will toward the people of NATO countries, the film makers said. Their anger, they said, is focused on the leaders of NATO who pushed the war in the first place. "There was a very high level of animosity directed towards the president [Clinton], for example, and toward Madeleine Albright," said film maker Dempsey. {{<End>}} A<>E<>R ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Integrity has no need of rules. -Albert Camus (1913-1960) + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + The only real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes. -Marcel Proust + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + "Believe nothing, no matter where you read it, or who said it, no matter if I have said it, unless it agrees with your own reason and your common sense." --Buddha + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + It is preoccupation with possessions, more than anything else, that prevents us from living freely and nobly. -Bertrand Russell + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + "Everyone has the right...to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers." 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