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Humanitarian Bombers in Court
For the first time since
the Nuremburg trials of Nazis in 1946,the former leadership of a western
country was forced to attend court yesterday to defend accusations that their
country had committed war crimes. Under the gaze of a fading portrait of Queen
Beatrix of Holland, ex-prime minister Wim Kok and former foreign affairs chief
Jozias van Aartsen claimed on oath that while the top ministers of the Dutch
cabinet had agreed in general to the strategy of the NATO bombing of
Yugoslavia in 1999, they had not been aware of the decisions to bomb specific
targets which would result in heavy civilian casualties until after the
attacks had taken place. Outside in the cold, relatives of the dead and
injured waited, among the wooden crosses and photographs which they had placed
on the steps of the District Court in The Hague.
For once, western
politicians faced with difficult questions were almost certainly telling the
truth. The Supreme Allied Commander of that war, US General Wesley K. Clarke,
has revealed in his recently published book 'Winning Modern Wars' that the
decisions on selection of particular targets for missiles, cluster bombs and
other NATO munitions were taken by NATO officials and military men in concert
with the political leadership of the USA - under Clinton at that time -
without reference to the ministers of the other NATO countries who were
supposedly equal partners in the alliance.
Wim Kok, who had been a
trade union firebrand before becoming prime minister of the Netherlands, and
is now a corporate board member of Shell and the Dutch Telecoms company
Telfort, avoided giving a view on whether the NATO attack on the Belgrade RTS
TV Studio was justified, saying he had only found out after the bombing that
150 civilians had been inside the building at that time. Ex foreign minister
van Aartsen on the other hand, appeared enthusiastic about the attack. When
the advocate for the victims’ families, Nico Steijnen, asked him about the
Amnesty International report which concluded that the TV studio was a purely
civilian site, the former cabinet member claimed that the studio was in fact a
'dual use' installation which also had a function for the Yugoslavian armed
forces. Van Aartsen also stated that the Dutch govenment had in written
correspondence with Amnesty International on several occasions before this
bombing stating that communications centres in general could be considered
legitimate targets; this, he suggested, could be considered sufficient warning
to the civilians inside the RTS TV building in Belgrade. Even Judge P. A.
Koppen, presiding over the courtroom, appeared to have difficulty concealing
his amazement at this statement.
Sixteen people, all civilians, died in
the attack, which put the television station out of action for three hours
before transmission was resumed.
When asked about the NATO cluster bomb
attack on Nis, a Serbian town near a military airfield, Wim Kok stated, "It's
even more sad, seeing that a market and a hospital were hit, that the actual
target was missed." Following the 15 deaths and 70 injured in Nis, the Dutch
government decided that its own F16 warplanes would cease dropping cluster
bombs on Yugoslavia; the other components of the NATO forces did not change
their policy of using these terrifying weapons.
The packed courtroom
heard an account of the NATO strategy of gradually increasing the range of
sites which it was permissible for US and West European forces to attack,
moving from strictly military targets in phase one of the war, to phase two,
phase two-plus, and phase three, in which communications, transport and other
infrastructure would be destroyed.
Steijnen (for the victims’families):
“What was the difference between phase two-plus and phase three?”
Kok: “In
the NATO Council, the transition between phases two and three was considered
sensitive. So we had phase two-plus, which included ‘C-three centres’ –
command, control and communications targets.”
Steijnen: “Why was it
sensitive, the move to phase three?”
Kok: “That was my
perception.”
Steijnen: “A parliamentary document states explicitly that
civil targets were included. Was that the cause of this
‘sensitiveness’?"
Kok: “I can’t say more. The decisions on specific targets
were not posed to the Netherlands and did not have to be.”
One could
conclude that only a country with no real possiblity of hitting back at its
opponents could thus be coldly, systematically brought to its knees in the 78
days of this bombardment, the first major war in Europe since 1945. The
tensions within NATO had more to do with keeping public opinion on board than
any likelihood that Yugoslavia could score any military successes.
The
court appearance was part of a preliminary hearing in an action for
compensation from the Dutch state on behalf of victims of the NATO attacks on
Nis and the RTS TV Studio. The former defence minister Frank de Grave has yet
to to give evidence, and ex-leader of parliament Jeltje van Nieuwenhoven is
refusing to attend the court.
After today's proceedings, Meindert
Stelling, a leading member of the campaign for the bombing victims and a
founder member of Lawyers for Peace, was optimistic about the outcome. "We
have established that the Dutch government was involved all the way, in the
decision-making process about what kind of targets would be attacked in which
phases of the war. Also, our former foreign minister made it clear that NATO
forces needed to operate within the protocol of international law, meaning
that a target can only be selected for attack if destroying it or putting it
out of action will create a definite military advantage for the attacking
party, according to plans and in the circumstances of the time. The government
will have to prove that the RTS TV studio was actually in use by the
Yugoslavian military. They will also need to show that it was reasonable to
drop cluster bombs at Nis, so close to a civilian inhabited
area."
Stelling, himself a former Dutch Air Force pilot, commented
further on the day's evidence. "Our former prime minister showed that he was
not in control in Holland's relationship with the NATO military apparatus. He
was not in control of whether the war was conducted within international law.
This amounts to neglect."
Stelling concurs that it might have been
convenient for the Dutch leadership and some other European NATO top
politicians not to know which specific sites were to be targetted, in case
they were illegal.
My discussion with Stelling moves onto the wider
issues of the 1999 NATO war against Yugoslavia, and it transpires that, by
coincidence, we have both read the recent book by General Wesley K. Clarke,
who is currently in the running to be the Democratic Party candidate for
election as President of the United States. Although the politicians in the
courtroom today had referred to the bombardment of Yugoslavia as having the
aim of “bringing Milosevic to the negotiating table”, it is clear from the
account of the former Supreme Commander of NATO forces and other insiders (for
instance Michael Hirsh of Newsweek) that before the bombing started, the
western countries made no attempt to negotiate seriously, and instead drew up
an ultimatum, the ‘Rambouillet Accord’ which they knew the Yugoslavian leaders
could not accept because it included the stationing of foreign troops on
Serbian territory with no jurisdiction over their activities by the Serbian
and Yugoslavian authorities.
President Clinton’s secretary of state,
Madeleine Albright, had wooed the majority ethnic Albanian population in
Kosovo with dreams of independence, worsening further the already murderous –
on both sides – relationships between Albanians and Serbs in the province.
Albright had asked what effect a NATO bombing campaign would have in Kosovo,
and was told it would provoke a backlash in the form of expulsions of
Albanians from their homes. Albright then ordered the bombing to start, and
was rewarded within days with TV images of thousands of Kosovan refugees
fleeing ‘ethnic cleansing’. Public support for the war was thus
guaranteed.
This was a good war for NATO, one that kept the western
allies together, put Russia in its place and established a precedent for rich
western countries to use military means to intervene in the ‘humanitarian’
affairs of poorer nations. A war that caring liberals, like Clinton, Blair and
Wesley K. Clarke could be proud of. A war with no casualties at all on the
NATO side.
Nearly five years later, Kosovo is no nearer independence.
It is still formally part of Serbia, but is run as a NATO protectorate. Ethnic
Albanian militias have ethnically cleansed the Jews, Gypsies and Serbians from
the province. Its economy is managed by the World Bank. US company Brown and
Root Services, a subsidiary of Halliburton, is reported to be making good
profits from the construction of a huge permanent US military base, Camp
Bondsteel, which is conveniently located near vital oil and gas energy
corridors including the Trans-Balkan Oil Pipeline.
As we leave the
courtroom, an hour after the end of proceedings for that day, a group of
middle-aged women, Serbian civilians, have dismantled the little shrine of
crosses and photographs on the concrete steps and are picking up the
pieces.
Noah Tucker
27/1/04
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