Bombing the Host Country - Nato’s Assault on Yugoslavia

Introduction

This essay will aim on the situation in Kosovo in 1999 and will try to have a critique look on NATO’s bombing campaign in Kosovo that year.

The Serbian province and Serbs were considered as the most violate in all of the former Yugoslavia. Serbian authorities repealed Kosovo 's parliament in 1990, forcing the region 's political leaders to seek refuge in the Yugoslav republic of Macedonia, where they declared Kosovo 's independence. However, the underground government of Ibrahim Rugova1, who was elected in May 1992, was declared illegal by the Serbian government.

Albanians in Kosovo continued to agitate for secession from Serbia, seeking either annexation to Albania or outright independence, and tensions started to mount between Albanians and Serbs. In August 1995 Kosovo became the destination of several thousand Serb refugees.2 The government of Albania protested the resettlement of Serbs in the predominantly Albanian region.

In 1996 a militant ethnic Albanian separatist group called the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) formed in the region. Albanian separatists reportedly killed several Serbian police officers in February 1998, tensions exploded between Albanians and Serbian forces, resulting in numerous killings, beatings, and arrests of Albanians by Serbian police and Yugoslav military

1

Ibrahim Rugova was an Albanian politician who was the first President of Kosovo[a] and of its leading political party, the Democratic League of Kosovo (LDK) 2 Albrecht Schnabel and Ramesh Thakur, “Kosovo and the challenge of humanitarian intervention: Selective indignation, collective action, and international citizenship“, United Nations University Press, 2000, p. 33-34

units.3 Despite threats of sanctions by the international community, the Yugoslav government continued to raze villages, killing more than 200 people by June 1998 and driving thousands across the border into neighbouring Albania.

The Serbian Army had been brutally imposing a scorched earth policy on the Kosovan Albanians who after the end of the Balkan troubles wanted there own country. But the diplomacy over Kosovo quickly grew much more complicated. Unlike Bosnia, which was internationally recognised as a sovereign country, Kosovo was still considered a part of Serbia. Any NATO intervention in Kosovo against the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia 's wishes might be taken as an act of war.

NATO and its Intervention in Kosovo
Several NATO governments concluded the alliance could not act in the province without a mandate from the UN Security Council. Russia, meanwhile, was threatening to use its Security Council veto to block such approval. The six-country Contact Group- panel a responsible for monitoring events in the territories of the former Yugoslavia and comprising France, Germany, Italy, Russia, the United Kingdom, and the United States quickly convened to coordinate peace-making efforts, as it had done earlier for Bosnia.

And so NATO started a campaign against the Serbian forces in Kosovo. The main stance that is in the public eyes and what was mainly portrayed was that NATO was intervening for ethnic reason. Prime Minister Blair used the plight of the Kosovar civilians to justify military
3

Schnabel and Thakur,

p. 34

action. Air strikes would be launched "to save thousand of innocent men, women and children from humanitarian catastrophe, from death, barbarism and ethnic cleansing by a brutal dictatorship".4 He said that 250,000 Albanians were homeless with 60,000 forced to leave home in the last month and he raised the spectre of the war spreading. "If Kosovo was left to the mercy of Serbian repression there is not merely a risk but a high probability of re-igniting unrest in Albania; Macedonia destabilised, almost certain knock on effects in Bosnia and further tension between Greece and Turkey. There are strategic interests for the whole of Europe at stake. We cannot contemplate, on the doorstep of the EU, disintegration into chaos and disorder."5

One of the first things that should be considered is that under the international law Serbia is a sovereign state, of which Kosovo is a province.6 At no point in NATO doctrine does it state that NATO should or could interfere in the domestic affairs of any state, no matter how disgustingly its government may treat its own people. 'The North Atlantic Treaty ' begins with the injunction that its parties "reaffirm their faith in the purposes and principles of the Charter…”.7 Article 1 declares: "The parties undertake, as set forth in the charter of the United Nations, to settle any international disputes in which they may be involved by peaceful means, in such a manner that international peace and security and justice are not endangered, and to refrain in their

4

BBC, “UK Politics UK 'prepared to act ' over Kosovo”, March 23, 1999, online http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/politics/301868.stm, accessed June 2011 5 Ibid 6 I used the term “province” because there has been a debate about the independency of Kosovo and its recognition as sovereign state for a while. Kosovo is a disputed territory following the collapse of Yugoslavia. 7 General Assembly resolution 2782, online http://www.un.org/en/events/unday/2009/resolutions.shtml, accessed June 2011

international relations from the threat or use of force in any manner inconsistent with the purpose of the United Nations."8 The intervention of NATO thus contravened both the United Nations Charter and the North Atlantic Treaty itself. This power to enter or attack countries armed forces must come from the United Nations. As usual the United Nations were taking far long to make a decision to start an armed response to the ethnic cleansing problem occurring in Kosovo. But the United Nations had other problems as this battle within this sovereign state was, simply a civil war. NATO was supposedly formed as a defensive alliance to repel a military attack on its member states, however, it radically extended its writ by intervening in a state unconnected to it. Furthermore, from Moscow 's perspective, NATO, by bringing its powerful military alliance to Russia 's borders, had reneged on a bargain it struck with Russia at the end of the cold war. Moscow received assurances from the United States and its allies that they would not take advantage of this situation to tip the geopolitical balance in a way that would potentially threaten Russia 's security.9

The ethnic Albanians refused at first to sign the NATO peace deal, because it failed to guarantee their eventual independence from Serbia. The United States finally induced them to sign by threatening to cut off the KLA’s access to arms and by reminding the KLA that without its assent to the agreement, NATO could not conduct airstrikes against Serbia. When KLA intransigence initially stalled the talks, US officials were palpably frustrated because they feared that their plans to bomb Serbia would be derailed. The President 's description of the peace process also left out some important details. Essentially, the Serbs, who were given the choice of signing or being bombed, were "negotiating" with a gun at their heads. They
8

The North Atlantic Treaty, online http://www.nato.int/cps/en/natolive/official_texts_17120.htm, accessed June 2011 9 Schnabel and Thakur, p. 106

saw the Rambouillet deal as one-sided because, although the plan provided that Kosovo would nominally remain a part of Serbia for three years, it also would have reduced the Serbian government 's actual control over the province to a nullity. Of course, the plan ostensibly would have disarmed the KLA in Kosovo, but because that group can operate out of Albania, it could have stockpiled weapons there. In fact, the KLA made its intentions quite clear: After the three-year transitional period, either Kosovo would become independent, or the KLA would resume the war. Furthermore, Serbia resented the provisions of the peace plan that would have required Belgrade to accept the presence of NATO forces in Kosovo. The West supports illegal arms exports. The arming of KLA can only have taken place by violating the arms embargo against all parts of former Yugoslavia decided by the UN Security Council in 1991a case of one state committing aggression against another, the conflict was, of course, a civil war, the root of which is the province 's ethnic Albanians ' armed struggle to break free of Serbia and establish an independent state.10

Conclusion
Scores of NATO 's violations of international law, the laws of war, of human rights and so on during its bombing campaign have been justified with reference to there being a grand plan of ethnic cleansing, to stopping the atrocities, to fighting a cruel dictator, and with arguments such as 'if we do not counter and stop this now, it will be much worse later. ' The general discussion has not focussed on the crimes committed by NATO, neither on the political legitimacy of ignoring this predictable civil war for years and wait to do something until this something 'has to be ' NATO intervention.

10

Schnabel and Thakur, p.5

Humanitarian concerns were hardly credible. NATO 's action released a humanitarian catastrophe. The international 'community ' let Macedonia and Albania carry 98% of the burden, and relieved itself of the frightening perspective of having the refugees flood EU Europe.11 Today the world is struggling with finding the resources for aid and reconstruction and will be very tempted to take it from funds earmarked for humanitarian relief where there are fewer cameras. It could also be said that NATO 's needed to act to preserve its credibility. NATO argued that to let Serbian aggression go unpunished it would encourage leaders in other troubled areas to pursue dangerous policies. But halting Serbian aggression was no more likely to deter future aggressors than Western actions in the Gulf, which, after all, was defended as part of a new world order that would punish aggressors. In the world of statecraft, most crises are discrete, not tightly linked. The outcome of events in other potential hot spots would be decided by local conditions, not by what the NATO or the UN did or did not do in the Balkans or somewhere else like nowadays in Libya.

11

Schnabel and Thakur, p.379

Bibliography
BBC, “UK Politics UK 'prepared to act ' over Kosovo”, March 23, 1999, online http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/politics/301868.stm, accessed June 2011

-

General Assembly resolution 2782, online http://www.un.org/en/events/unday/2009/resolutions.shtml, accessed June 2011

-

The North Atlantic Treaty, online http://www.nato.int/cps/en/natolive/official_texts_17120.htm, accessed June 2011

-

Schnabel A. and Thakur R., “Kosovo and the challenge of humanitarian intervention: Selective indignation, collective action, and international citizenship“, United Nations University Press, 2000

Bibliography: BBC, “UK Politics UK 'prepared to act ' over Kosovo”, March 23, 1999, online http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/politics/301868.stm, accessed June 2011 - General Assembly resolution 2782, online http://www.un.org/en/events/unday/2009/resolutions.shtml, accessed June 2011 - The North Atlantic Treaty, online http://www.nato.int/cps/en/natolive/official_texts_17120.htm, accessed June 2011 - Schnabel A. and Thakur R., “Kosovo and the challenge of humanitarian intervention: Selective indignation, collective action, and international citizenship“, United Nations University Press, 2000