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Date sent: Mon, 07 Jun 1999 13:35:30 -0700
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From: Sid Shniad <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: THE PEACE THAT BETRAYS THE KOSOVAR CAUSE - Robert Fisk
The Independent June 5, 1999
THE PEACE THAT BETRAYS THE KOSOVAR CAUSE
By Robert Fisk
So we've won the war, have we? That's what we are now being
told by our leaders. Messrs Clinton, Blair, Cook and all the rest are
telling us that NATO may shortly achieve its aim of returning
750,000 refugees to their homes, of installing a NATO-Russian
force in Kosovo and ensuring the withdrawal of Serb police and
troops. NATO, after its failure to crush a country of 10 million
people in fewer than 70 days, can now walk tall again. All the
Albanians who trekked over the frontiers of Macedonia and Albania
are going to head home under "our" protection.
The BBC and CNN have gone along with this scenario - just as
their cameras will be there to record the emotional return of the
people of Kosovo to Pristina, Prizren, Pec and the other scorched
towns. All that will be missing is the truth: that we never went to
war for the return of refugees. We went to war for a peace
agreement accepted by the Kosovo Albanians but rejected by the
Serbs - an agreement that NATO's leaders have themselves now
rejected in their desperation to finish the air bombardment on Serbia.
For the price of peace for NATO is the erasure of the most crucial
paragraph in the Paris peace agreeement - the "final settlement"
promised to the Kosovo Albanians after three years of autonomy
that would almost certainly have led to independence.
Incredibly, we have allowed our leaders to bend the historical
record, to twist the truth out of all recognition so that NATO's
"victory" will be the return of an army of refugees who were not
even refugees when we began this wretched war. And we are on the
point of betraying the Kosovo Albanians whom we persuaded to
sign up for peace in Paris with a promise that the "will of the people"
(90 per cent of them Albanians) would be respected in 2002 with
almost certain independence.
We cannot expect the BBC or CNN to rewind the film for us but
we can nevertheless spool back through the last three months of
history to remind ourselves of why we went to war. In their
campaign of "ethnic cleansing", the Serbs had by the early spring
committed a series of massacres. The world was outraged by what
appeared to be a repeat - if on a smaller scale - of the Bosnian war.
And we in the West still had a score to settle with Slobodan
Milosevic over that terrible conflict.
In Paris, the Kosovo Albanians were cajoled into signing the
American-scripted "peace". Madeleine Albright cosied up to her
"friend" Hashim Thaci, the KLA man known as "The Snake" who
was then the guerrilla army's leading officer. In the end, General
Wesley Clarke - the very same general who has been busy bombing
Serbia's barracks, army, air force, railways, oil refineries, water
treatment plants, bridges, hospitals and housing estates - was
brought in to remonstrate with Mr Thaci. The Kosovo Albanians
would obtain their freedom, they were told, because - under the
terms of the Paris agreement - an international meeting on Kosovo
would be held in three years' time "to determine a mechanism for a
final settlement for Kosovo, on the basis of the will of the people,
opinions of the relevant authorities". Since only 10 per cent of "the
people" were Serbs, the KLA knew what that meant.
Then the war began. And within weeks, the biblical exodus of
the Kosovo Albanians was upon us, driven from their homes by the
Serbs the moment NATO commenced its bombardment of Serbia.
Mr Blair was to tell us that the refugee situation would have been
"far worse" had NATO not gone into action - a suggestion he
mercifully forgot once half the Kosovo nation had poured over the
international frontier. In fact, NATO had every reason to know what
would happen if it went to war with Serbia; on 18 March, General
Nebojsa Pavkovic said in Belgrade that "settling scores with the
terrorists [sic] still in Kosovo doesn't pose any problem and that's
what we'll do if our country is attacked from the air or the ground."
Once the tragedy of the Kosovo Albanians was before our eyes,
General Clarke announced that their exodus was "entirely
predictable". He hadn't shared that information with us, of course,
when the war had begun. And from that moment, the return of the
refugees was adopted as the principal purpose of NATO's war.
NATO troops would not enter Kosovo to "protect" the people -
they would enter in order to ensure their safe return from an exile
which the war itself had brought about. And the promises about the
"will of the people" were forgotten. Independence for the Kosovars
was no longer mentioned.
The "peace" that Mr Milosevic has now accepted is not the
peace of Rambouillet or of Paris. NATO will send in the troops and
force the Serb army out. But it is no longer offering a "mechanism"
to respect the "will of the people". The Albanians will go back to an
international protectorate that contains no formula for independence.
The KLA will be "demilitarised".
And in a world where crystal balls are always broken, I venture
to make a prediction about Kosovo which I sincerely hope will
prove wrong: that in the days before NATO's troops arrive in
Kosovo, the KLA's new commander - the infamous Agim Cecu who,
as a Croatian army general, "ethnically cleansed" 170,000 Serb
civilians from Krajina - will "cleanse" the remaining Serbs from
Kosovo. That the KLA will refuse to be "demilitarised". That in a
few months' time - at most a year - NATO's enemies will be the
KLA, who will be raging against the West for abandoning their
hopes of independence. Then we shall remember how we thought
we had won the war.
[PEN-L:7813] (Fwd) THE PEACE THAT BETRAYS THE KOSOVAR CAUSE - Robert Fisk
ts99u-1.cc.umanitoba.ca [130.179.154.224] Tue, 8 Jun 1999 01:09:52 -0500
