By Rosalie Bertell

Although it is probably true that the full story of the war started over Yugoslavia’s treatment of Kosovo will not be known until the fighting has ended, there are some truths about this war which we can know right now. Many facets of this conflict were discussed in the Hague Conference. However, the North American media have not been very helpful in covering these aspects of European politics. In this paper, I will summarize what I have learned, considering each of the three time periods: Pre-War, War and Post-War, separately.

Just after World War II, two military blocks – the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and the Warsaw Treaty Organization (WTO) – were formed to provide military security for Europe and to prevent an outbreak of ‘more war’. This became the basis of the Cold War arms race, familiar to anyone who lived through this period of history.

As early as the 1950’s, there were attempts to bridge these two military alliances with a common security organization. This finally came to fruition with the establishment of the Committee on Security and Cooperation in Europe (CSCE) at a Helsinki meeting held between 22 November 1972 and 8 June 1973. The CSCE was ratified at the highest levels of the 35 participant States on 3 July 1973. The Committee was unique in that it included both NATO and WTO countries. Both the United States of America and the former Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) were included. It provided for biennial meetings of Heads of States and annual meetings of Ministers of Foreign Affairs from each of the member countries. Its committed agenda included: early warning of potential conflict situations, conflict prevention, crisis management, and, post-conflict rehabilitation.

With the end of the Cold War, this common security organization expanded its European Role, and, in 1992, it added the following new specialties: a Forum for Security and Cooperation, a High Commission for National Minorities, an Economic Forum, and a Financial Committee of Experts. On15 December 1992, The Office of Secretary-General was established. In 1992, CSCE undertook its first Mission of Long Duration to Kosovo, and by 1994, it had eight such missions in various member countries. Its membership had increased from the initial 35 States to today’s 55 States. It now includes the countries of Europe, the Caucuses, Central Asia and North America, with partnerships with Mediterranean and Asian Countries. It has offices in Prague, Vienna and Warsaw, which were set up in November 1990.

In 1992 the CSCE was declared to be the Regional Arrangement for Europe as is described in Chapter VIII of the United Nations Charter. ( http://www.un.org/Overview/Charter/chapter8.html) The CSCE is now the only United Nations agency that can legitimately speak to the security of Europe.

NATO, which includes 19 countries, still exists but is strictly a military alliance with no ties to the United Nations.

In 1994, the CSCE developed a Code of Conduct on the politico-military aspects of security, which has the weight of international law in the 55 member-states.

In 1995, after developing into a permanently functioning organization with Secretariats and staff, its name was changed from the Committee on Security and Cooperation in Europe – CSCE to the Organization of Security and Cooperation in Europe – OSCE. Each member State has an equal voice meaning that, unlike the United Nations Security Council, there is no veto power in the OSCE. All decisions are made in a consensus manner, with the one exception being: opposition by the State in question can be ignored. Its committed agenda is conflict resolution without the use of force. It prohibits any member State from developing military security at the expense of a loss of security by other member States.

With the eruption of civil war and with crimes against humanity being perpetrated by Yugoslavia in Bosnia, the OCSE expelled Yugoslavia in 1992. The 54 State OSCE went on to develop a Comprehensive Security Model in its Lisbon Declaration of 1996 – LISBON DECLARATION ON A COMMON AND COMPREHENSIVE SECURITY MODEL FOR EUROPE FOR THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY – including under its agenda: arms control, prevention diplomacy, confidence and security building measures, human rights, fostering of democratic government, election monitoring, and economic and environmental security. At the time of the October Agreement signed by President Milosevic (16 Oct 1998) to lessen the conflict between Serbia and the Albanian Kosovors, there was a strong competition between OSCE and NATO as to which organization would police the agreement. This was the first large-scale peacekeeping field-mission for the OSCE, and, unlike NATO, it had no force readily available for the task. The 54 member States were asked to contribute members in order to fulfill the requested quota of 2000 peacekeeping monitors.

In the North American media, this peacekeeping force was referred to as ’2000 unarmed observers’, and, the general population in Canada and in the United States was unaware of the existence of their membership in the OSCE. While the US generously supports NATO both financially and with personnel, it gives little to the OSCE, which has a budget one thousandth the amount of NATO’s and no standing personnel for field missions. While NATO hires 80 people to staff its public relations office, OSCE has one. Therefore it has been much more difficult for the OSCE to make known its successes in peacekeeping over the past nine years of its active missions in Europe than it has been for NATO. More about the OSCE can be found at its web site: http://www.osce.org.

The member States of the OSCE include neutral States like Austria, Switzerland, Finland and Ireland, which do not belong to NATO. Russia in particular belongs to the OSCE and not to NATO and was welcome to send observers into Serbia and Kosovo with the OSCE, while excluded from NATO actions. The OSCE is seen by the United States as a potential rival to NATO, which has been trying to show its usefulness to the Europeans community since the end of the Cold War. NATO badly needed to show that before its 50th anniversary celebration in Washington in April of 1999. NATO was also seeking to be recognized as an important player in the Charter for a Cooperative European Security for the 21st Century, as discussed at the Security Forum of the OSCE in Vienna, and scheduled to be approved at the OSCE summit in Istanbul in November 1999.

Although President Milosevic had agreed to accept 2000 unarmed observers, the OSCE failed to provide them. At first, after the 23 October 1998 agreement, they sent in 200 observers. Gradually over the period between then and March 1999, the number grew to 1200. The observers were given insufficient budget, equipment, and training. NATO placed American William Walker, with a less than stellar reputation, in charge of the OSCE observers. Walker had been the US Ambassador to El Salvador in the war years, and had claimed that the military had played no role in the murder of the Jesuit priests – a claim later proven to be false. Walker also had directed a fund raising effort for humanitarian needs in Nicaragua, which actually funded the Contras.

This insufficient gaggle of observers led by Walker tried to establish peace in Serbia and in Kosovo. Reports of early efforts were encouraging and order was slowly being restored. However, some outside players (yet to be identified), were arming the small band of rebels who called themselves the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA). A massacre, which sparked NATO’s intervention in March, was apparently initiated by a confrontation between the Serbian Army and the KLA, and was reported to the media by William Walker as ‘ethnic cleansing’. Several European newspapers, including Le Monde, debated this. Ethnic cleansing was also supported by some of the observers, who feared for their lives as they were being fired on by both sides of the conflict. And, even if this highly publicized incident was provoked, there was ethnic cleansing going-on or just waiting to break out.

The Rambouillet Meeting was convened to resolve the tension, and the results of this failed effort are well known. Few persons have actually read the Rambouillet Agreement, which substituted the OSCE conflict resolution personnel with armed NATO personnel, and gave NATO forces the right-of entry into all parts of Serbia and diplomatic immunity for all breaches of Serbian law.

A 28,000-strong NATO occupation army, known as the KFOR, would be authorized to “use necessary force to ensure compliance with the Accords.”

The Rambouillet Accord called for virtual independence for Kosovo, including the formation of its own parliament and its ability to conduct foreign policy. In Chapter 4a, Article I, it provided:

“The economy of Kosovo, shall function in accordance with free market principles.”

Kosovo has vast mineral resources, including the richest mines for lead, molybdenum, mercury and other metals in all of Europe. The capital to exploit these resources, which are today mainly state-owned, would undoubtedly come from the U.S. and Western Europe. In Chapter 7, Article XV, the document states:

“The KFOR [NATO] commander is the final authority in theater regarding interpretation of this Chapter and his determinations are binding on all Parties and persons.”

“This Chapter” refers to all military matters. The NATO commander would almost certainly be from the U.S. The APPENDIX B, Section 6a, to the Accord gave extraordinary powers to NATO:

“NATO shall be immune from all legal process, whether civil, administrative, or criminal.”

Section 6b. “NATO personnel, under all circumstances and at all times, shall be immune from the Parties, jurisdiction in respect of any civil, administrative, criminal or disciplinary offenses which may be committed by them in the FRY (Federal Republic of Yugoslavia).”

Section 7. “NATO personnel shall be immune from any form of arrest, investigation, or detention by the authorities in the FRY.”

Section 8: “NATO personnel shall enjoy, together with their vehicles, vessels, aircraft, and equipment, free and unrestricted passage and unimpeded access throughout the FRY including associated airspace and territorial waters. This shall include, but not be limited to, the right of bivouac, maneuver, billet and utilization of any areas or facilities as required for support, training, and operations.”

Section 11: “NATO is granted the use of airports, roads, rails, and ports without payment of fees, duties, dues, tolls, or charges occasioned by mere use.”

Section 15: “The Parties (Yugoslav & Kosovo governments) shall, upon simple request, grant all telecommunications services, including broadcast services, needed for the Operation, as determined by NATO. This shall include the right to utilize such means and services as required to assure full ability to communicate and the right to use all of the electromagnetic spectrum for this purpose, free of cost.”

Section 22: “NATO may, in the conduct of the Operation, have need to make improvements or modifications to certain infrastructure in the FRY, such as roads, bridges, tunnels, buildings, and utility systems.”

It is unlikely that U.S. policymakers ever intended for Yugoslavia’s leadership to sign this document. It was just another step in the preparation for war. Many Europeans believe that the role of Rambouillet in this process was to put the onus on the Yugoslav side for the failure to achieve a peaceful resolution, in order to justify the massive bombing of the entire country.

After Kosovo signed the Rambouillet Agreement, authorizing NATO bombing, President Milosevic acted in anger unleashing all of his forces of ethnic cleansing, massacre and forced expulsion onto the Albanian Kosovors. With the signing of the Rambouillet Agreement, NATO declared itself the legitimate force to punish Serbia and save Kosovo. It justified its failure to obtain sanction for its actions by the United Nation by saying that it could not go to the UN Security Council because of a probable veto by Russia and China. Thus it ignored both the UN’s Regional Security organization – the OSCE, which had the prior claim to UN presence in Europe and had no veto threat, and also the UN provision for action in the face of such a veto in the Security Council. In 1950, the Uniting for Peace Resolution was passed in the UN, allowing the Secretary General to convene the UN General Assembly on 48 hours notice following the use of the veto, in order to pass judgment on the question. This process would have been available in the event that Russia and/or China exercised their veto power to a request by NATO to use force in Yugoslavia. NATO had violated its own Charter, which states that it will only undertake defensive action. NATO’s actions were clearly illegal.

Matters were still further complicated when the Norwegian Foreign Minister Vollebaeck, who was both Chairman in Office of the OSCE and Norway’s delegate to NATO, ordered the OSCE to leave Serbia and Kosovo. This conflict of interest should not have been allowed to occur.

Failure of the first OSCE field-mission to prevent conflict can be attributed to insufficient support from member states, lack of a standing pool of trained personnel, and NATO’s illegal undermining of the mission in favor of its own intervention. If peace in Europe is genuinely desired by the OSCE nations, these weaknesses must be prevented in the future. The OSCE is the only legitimate security actor in Europe, and the United Nations is the only legitimate security agency in the global community. NATO’s action has served to alienate many Europeans against future NATO involvement in European diplomacy.

NATO, with 19 member states, and having 1000 times the budget of the OSCE, which has 55 member States, speaks strongly to the funding priorities of the 19 NATO States. These funding priorities are obviously not for conflict prevention, rule of international law, or peaceful resolution of differences.

The moral authority of the United Nations is its most precious asset. In order to maintain this asset, the UN must speak and act for justice. The UN must first judge that the use of force is needed in a situation, and then should make it very evident that only the amount of force needed should be used. This is the normal description of police action, not war.

CONDUCT OF THE NATO WAR:

During the occupation of Yugoslavia at the end of the war with Bosnia, the NATO force did not make a serious effort to apprehend indicted war criminals. Many of the most notorious perpetrators went about their business with no interference, likely sending the wrong message about the seriousness of the international community about prosecution. Many of these perpetrators of crimes against humanity resurfaced in the Kosovo crisis.

In the beginning of the war, strong efforts were made through the media to convince the public that the intervention of NATO was justified by the urgency and violence of the massacres going on in Kosovo. Many journalists, including the Pulitzer Prize winning journalist, Paul Watson of the Los Angeles Times, seriously challenged this:

One of the few Western journalists reporting from inside Kosovo says his impressions clash with NATO reports of what is happening in the war-torn province. Paul Watson, a Canadian who works for the Los Angeles Times, says he has seen no evidence that Serb authorities have massacred Albanians in the Kosovo capital of Pristina.

In an interview yesterday with the CBC radio program As It Happens, he said he has toured ethnic-Albanian neighborhoods several times and has not seen any bodies. “It is very hard to hide an anarchic wholesale slaughter of people,” said Mr. Watson, who has been in Kosovo since the North Atlantic Treaty Organization began bombing on March 24. “There is no evidence that such a thing happened in Pristina.” NATO blames Serb troops for the exodus of hundreds of thousands of ethnic Albanians in the past three weeks. It says they have been raped, massacred and burned out of their homes. The reports of refugees in border camps support that version. Yugoslavia, however, says the NATO bombings are forcing the ethnic Albanians to flee. “I am certain it is a mixture of both,” said Mr. Watson, who won a Pulitzer Prize for news photography when he was covering the international intervention in Somalia for the Toronto Star. “I have spoken personally to people who have been ordered to leave their homes by police in black. I’ve also spoken to people who are simply terrified.” For example, he said, many people fled the area around Pristina’s airport after a NATO bombing there. “I see a pretty clear pattern of refugees leaving an area after there were severe air strikes.”

Mr. Watson said the effect of the NATO bombing has been to “stir the pot” in Yugoslavia. “We shouldn’t be surprised that it has spilled over. And in spilling over it has created anarchy in the countryside.” That does not excuse Serb atrocities, he said. “But I don’t think that NATO member countries can, with a straight face, sit back and say they don’t share some blame for the wholesale depopulation of this country.

“If NATO had not bombed, I would be surprised if this sort of forced exodus on this enormous scale would be taking place.” He said that the centre of Pristina has been devastated by the NATO bombing: The police headquarters, the post office and other government buildings are in ruins. A graveyard and a children’s basketball court have also been hit. Even so, people continue to walk in the streets. “Even this morning at 10 o’clock, as large explosions were rocking high-rise buildings in the centre of the city, there were people strolling up and down, oohing and aahing as if they were watching a fireworks demonstration.”

Mr. Watson said most of the villages between Pristina and the Albanian border to the southwest were deserted when he traveled through them. He also saw large convoys of vehicles carrying refugees. He did not see large groups of refugees living in the open, as NATO has reported, but he stressed that does not mean it is not happening.

As the bombing continued, it is well documented that NATO claims of ethnic cleansing, force evacuations and deportation, and massacres did occur.

And, although it is probably true that the full story of the war over Kosovo will not be known until the fighting has ended, it is hoped that this paper has helped to shed light on the facts as we know them today.