Europe: The Kosovo COnflict

Hmm....an interesting one. I think with every day that goes past it gets more and more apparent that the tip-toe tactics of high-altitude air-strikes are getting us nowhere. Time to get the pilots lower or put some troops on the ground. Civilians are being both disposessed and murdered and we have to do something about it. If that costs some casualties on our side then that would be something I would be prepared to accept. The fact remains that members of armed forces volunteer for active service - they volunteer, essentially, to put their lives on the line in the defence of their country and of their country's politicians. They are big boys (and, of course, girls :) and know the rules by which they play.

They closed off the border from Albania... nowhere for refugees to go...

100,000 Men Missing NATO officials reported 43 mass grave sites in Kosovo and said refugee reports suggested more than 3,000 people had been killed by Serb forces in Kosovo since airstrikes began. At least 2,000 people died in the Kosovo conflict from February 1998 until the NATO air campaign began. David Scheffer, the U.S. ambassador for war crimes, said based on unconfirmed refugee reports and other sources, he believed the NATO estimate of the number of ethnic Albanians who had died to be very low. Youre actually looking at the possibility of tens of thousands of Kosovars who not only are at risk, but also may actually have perished by this stage, Scheffer said We have upwards to about 100,000 men that we cannot account for, he added. On Sunday, NATO said it had graphic evidence, including film taken from allied aircraft as well as refugees accounts, that Serb forces had assembled Kosovo Albanians into grave-digging chain gangs. We understand they are being used by President Milosevic to dig graves for their countrymen killed by Serbian ethnic cleansing, Brig. Gen. Giuseppe Marani said at a NATO briefing in Brussels. He said the burial sites were neat rows of individual graves pointing to the southeast, toward Mecca.

unfortunately, a lot of men and women put their lives on the line for things they don't necessarily agree with. i'm not a politician and i don't have a mind for those sorts of things. it's a real shame that one person can think they're big enough to decide who is worthy and who is not.

Mike, I would not think any ground force would be a great improvement. I appreciate the fact that airstrikes don't change much (they still bomb Iraq - remember, they started THAT offensive around christmas last year - and he's still doing fine), and that the escalation in Kosovo does not depend on heavy arms, anyway. Some militias with AK47s and handguns are enough. And the tools to blow up houses are everywhere to find - according to news reports, they blow off the roofs by placing a burning candle in the upper floor and opening the valve of a gas bottle from cooking stov s. But I don't think pouring more bodies and arms into a scenario like the given will reduce the killing count. There must be other options. And as for the volunteer thing, I don't believe that having a volunteer army or a professional army gives governments rights to throw their people into a mess like this. Take a look at the geography there... And another question would be - excuse me for seeming heartless - what reason does a nation have to send it's men and women into combat? Defense, and possibly securing of ressources (which often served as excuse for aggression). Since WWII, moral implications were added to that list. But is that really something a soldier volunteers for? I guess they do it for income, education and the idea of serving their country - by providing defense against attacks. They will surely not enlist to become tools to be utilized according to somebody else's ideas of morality (even though many soldiers might not reject the notion of acting in accordance with moral and ethical arguments, be that true or not). Another point - while there still is debate on the legality of the Nato attacks (do they now accord to an UN mandate or not?), there are no objectives developed yet. At least none that look sensible. What should a given ground attack achieve? Run to Belgrad, and straighten that guy out? Liberate this province of Jugoslavia, and handing it over to it's proper federal government (which would be the Serbs in Belgrad...)? Liberating it, and granting it independence? Defending it from then on against any external aggression? What are timeframes? What are goals? Limits? Who will pay for rebuilding it? What will become of Jugoslavia? Who will bring the refugees back home? Where shall they live, now that th ir villages are wastes?

speaking of Belgrade...in the last hour or so, a multi-story building there housing a radio station and a television station and (at least at one time) housed the ruling Serbian Socialsts, was struck by missiles, the bottom two to three stories as well as the top two or three stories are now in flames...

now they're saying it housed the Yugoslavian Central Communist Committee...

they are apparently continuing the air strikes on Novi Sad as well...

This link from a Belgrad ISP shows their view of NATO attacks: http://www.beograd.com/index2.html Didn't find too much about Kosovo in there. THe Daily NEWS on bombing brings a list on all the places NATO hit, with time and damage report.

Perhaps it is over now. Today, Chernomyrdin from Russia talked with the Serbian government, and appearently the Serbians agreed to withdraw from Kosovo and have it governed by an UN safe-keeping force. Somebody find a nice article and post it here, please?

Strike at a glance | Arsenal Databank | Interactive Atlas | Refugee Exodus Transcripts | Who's Who | Voices on the Net | Timeline | Links | Discuss Milosevic opens door to new peace talks on Kosovo April 22, 1999 Web posted at: 7:34 a.m. EDT (1134 GMT) BELGRADE, Yugoslavia (CNN) -- Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic has indicated that any new peace negotiations should exclude NATO countries, because NATO alliance members dominated earlier talks. In his first interview with a U.S. news outlet since NATO bombings of his country began last month, Milosevic expressed concern that Belgrade negotiators did not have one- on-one meetings with ethnic Albanian Kosovars in three weeks of talks held in France. "There were no negotiations at all...in all those three long weeks, two in Rambouillet and one in Paris, there were not one single meeting between the delegations to talk to each other. "Albanians and Serbs and others in state delegation couldn't exchange one single word," Milosevic told American academic Ron Hatchett in an interview with Houston TV station KHOU. "I believe when aggression stops, when bombing stops, then it will be very easy to continue the political process," Milosevic said. He said it was clear negotiations would have to be conducted directly between Kosovars and Serbs with no participation by the international community. "In Rambouillet, we are not talking to Albanians, we are talking to Americans, who would like to take our territory for themselves and for NATO. And Albanians were just an excuse for them." Access to captured U.S. soldiers pledged Milosevic went on to offer Red Cross access to three U.S. soldiers -- Staff Sgt. Andrew Ramirez, 24, Staff Sgt. Christopher Stone, 25, and Spec. Steven Gonzales, 22 -- held captive by Yugoslavia and said they were being treated "well". "They are healthy, and in everything the Geneva Convention is respected. So, we are civilized, we will not damage your guys." "We are a very old people in Europe, very old, with a long tradition, and we are respecting prisoners of war. Nothing will happen to your soldiers," Milosevic told Asked if Red Cross officials could visit them, he said, "I think the Red Cross can visit them. I don't know that they are not allowed. ... If there is a Red Cross mission that is under the Geneva Convention they can see them." A spokeswoman for the International Committee of the Red Cross, Suzanne Berger, said the Red Cross had not been notified by Belgrade that the prisoners could be visited. So far, no one outside of Yugoslavia has visited the three since they were captured on a border patrol near the Yugoslav-Macedonia border on March 31. Milosevic also said he blamed NATO's "dirty aggression" for creating the refugee crisis in Kosovo. And he accused the United States of waging two wars -- one with bombs and the other a media blitz. He talked of his past links with the United States. "I was not a politician. Professionally I was in the industry for a long time and then I was a banker. And I was a banker for eight years, I was president of the largest Yugoslav bank. At that time we were dealing with lots of American banks and I had a lot of friends in the U.S." Countering NATO allegations of forced expulsions of ethnic Albanians, Milosevic said there was no doubt many Kosovar Albanians were fleeing the region -- but it wasn't because of his policies. "You are right," he said, "there are a lot of refugees but they are the result of bombing and they are not only Albanians." "Everybody's running away because of bombing. Serbs, Turks, Gypsies, Muslims. Of course, Albanians, their number is biggest," he said. "Deers are running, birds are running, everybody's running away because of bombing." He said it was never his or his country's policy to "to expel any city of Yugoslavia from any part of this country." I must tell you when then was a war in Croatia we protected all Croats in Serbia; we protected when there was a war in Bosnia, we protected all Muslims in Serbia. We preserved all the multi-ethnic state within former Yugoslavia, the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia today with 26 different national communities," Milosevic said. The interview was conducted Monday in Belgrade by Hatchett, a KHOU military analyst who has worked in the Defense Department and who is currently the director of the Center for International Studies at The University of St. Thomas in Houston. Hatchett has reported from Belgrade for KHOU since shortly after NATO forces launched Operation Allied Force in late March.

But there is some brandnew stuff on new conditions and them being accepted, after the russians did some arm-twisting... Can you find that, too?

this is our latest... Russian diplomat visits Belgrade The latest wave of air attacks came as Russian envoy Viktor Chernomyrdin prepared for talks in Belgrade Thursday with Milosevic. Chernomyrdin arrived in Belgrade a few hours after the attack on the residence. Serb television later showed pictures of Milosevic welcoming Chernomyrdin at the "White Palace," another building used by Milosevic for welcoming delegations and for official functions. The former Russian prime minister is to examine ways to end the battle over Kosovo. Russia has strongly objected to NATO's air war against Yugoslavia. In an interview aired Wednesday night on Houston, Texas, television station KHOU, Milosevic said a diplomatic solution was possible once NATO ceased its attacks, which began March 24. "I believe that when the aggression stops, when the bombing stops, then it will be very easy to continue the political process," Milosevic said. He denied that his troops have carried out a campaign of "ethnic cleansing" in Kosovo, a province of Serbia, Yugoslavia's dominant republic. "There was never policy of this country and my policy to expel any citizen of Yugoslavia from any part of this country," he said. Henderson, the British Armed Forces minister, on Thursday challenged Milosevic to explain why 600,000-plus Kosovo refugees have flooded other countries. And he said NATO would only stop its campaign when Milosevic agreed to a peace agreement that allowed them to return home safely, protected by an international force.

(most of the news over here is still about Littleton)

(we get coverage on that, too.)

(but we've heard nothing about a possible peace agreement -- a legitimate one)

guess it took bombing one of his homes to get the message.....we'll see.

Below find an item I found on the Web. The situation in Belgrad is decribed by a serbian filmmaker - his situation is like that of many other media people there, like Radio B92 staff, who are in hiding. Fuses subjectivity with media and art and journalism. One Man's Belgrade Diary by Michael Stroud 3:00�a.m.��12.May.99.PDT -- A 34-year-old Serbian filmmaker has opened his diary about life in the war zone to hundreds of thousands of Internet users all over the world. Identified online by his initials to help protect him from reprisals, A.G. has used text, digitized video, and audio files to describe the frustration, fear, and occasional humor of war. "The diary I write, as well as films my friends and me make now, is an attempt to picture an inside seeing of war, and it's not intended to find the 'ultimate truth'," he wrote in an email message, part of an interview via email with Wired News last week. "Believe me, my life in Belgrade now is only [the] life of a normal person in an abnormal situation, and nothing more spectacular than this." The filmmaker's postings on WebCinema http://www.webcinema.org/war_diaries/ , iFilm http://www.ifilm.net/main.taf?serialnumber=94 , and elsewhere on the Net have provoked a firestorm of discussion, sympathy, and controversy. Some of A.G.'s colleagues have accused him of trying to divert attention from the atrocities Serbians have committed in Kosovo. Most, however, are agape at the intensely personal war diaries and film clips that, in the predigital era, would not have surfaced until after the fighting ended, if at all. "It's something that could only have occurred over the Internet," said WebCinema director Jonathan Sarno, who has known A.G. for several years through the Serbian filmmaker's affiliation with WebCinema, a worldwide affiliation of about 2,000 filmmakers. Moreover, said Sarno, "He has decided to let everybody read [the diaries] at a time when he's in great jeopardy. For the first time in history, he has a distribution medium." It's a medium limited by the intrusions of war. With electricity failing and the police confiscating some of his workplace computers, A.G. has had to write when he could from friends' PCs, often at strange hours of the night. The film files, too large to be transmitted digitally across Serbia's hobbled phone lines, were sent across the border to Hungary and then emailed to Sarno in New York. "I tell NATO and Serbian leadership, 'Plague upon both your houses,'" A.G. wrote in one diary entry. He has harsh words for both sides in the conflict: for the US planes that bomb the Serbs, for the US flour that feeds them when they become refugees, and for the cafe owner who covers over the Coca-Cola emblems in his store with red paper to curry favor with a totalitarian government. "He has a pretty youthful belief that what is happening around him [can be] artistically articulated," said Zoran Amar, a Yugoslavian video engineer who met A.G. in Belgrade shortly after the war began. Amar now lives in New York. Sarno is well aware of the risks A.G. is taking. "I tell him, 'You could become a famous person, or you could be killed.' It's a very, very volatile situation over there, and nobody knows how it's going to play out." A.G., too, acknowledges the possibilities in his diary, recounting how a friend decided "to compose a song which will be a hit, and thus people could remember me when I get killed in this war." But in an email interview, A.G. discounted the chances that his films could cause him difficulties with the Serbian government. "What could be dangerous is my [written] war diary, with thoughts and attitudes sometimes harshly confronted to the official opinion here," A.G. said in a message. "But I think our 'Web police' has more important things to do than to deal with my attitudes.... Anyway, I don't feel relaxed when thinking about 'what if.'" Beyond posting A.G.'s diary and short films on the Web, Sarno has promoted the material to a wider audience, enlisting an American actor to read the written diaries with an Eastern European accent for posting on the site and submitting several of A.G.'s works to the Lower East Side Film Festival, which will take place in New York on 12 May. "Sometimes, I feel that I'm an opportunist in that I'm taking advantage of someone else's situation," Sarno said. But, as a filmmaker himself, he feels compelled to tell "a really good story." Members of the WebCinema mailing list -- which is used, among other things, for trading tips on photo techniques or on where to get a good digital camcorder -- found themselves debating whether A.G. deserved to be heard. "We haven't heard anything about his emotions regarding the hundreds of burnt and now nonexistent villages in Kosovo, tortured [by Serb police] Kosovonians, hundreds of thousands of refugees, etc." wrote filmmaker Karl Lohninger, who compared A.G. to a German filmmaker during the Nazi atrocities. A.G. expressed "empathy and respect for the sufferings of the Kosovo people," in his emailed response. He claimed to have several Kosovo Albanian friends, but refused to descend into the "binary thinking" that divides the people on opposite sides of the conflict into "ones and zeroes," good and evil. "I don't see any sense in writing about [Kosovo] in my diary, because it's not part of my experience," A.G. added. "Maybe you can call me selfish when I think about my ass when being bombed, but I'd be a liar if I write about anything else, and I think each honest diary-writer is to do the same."

Ever noticed on how accessible we net-people are to serbian statements of any kind? No matter if it's me, or WIRED, or anybody. We all can easily read and hear about the situation there, how it's like for the citizens to be bombed. Up to now, I haven't even heard of a Kosovar Website, or an UCK website or something like it. Small wonder: in a newspaper a few weeks ago I read about intellectuals and avantgarde arriving at the border after being driven away from their homes - and their hardware. That's right, those who had some kind of equipment rigged up in a structurally weak area were able to save their lives when they had to flee - but couldn't save their data (excuse the pun).

The conflict on the web: Albanian Sites: http://decani.yunet.com/kip.html http://www.kosova.com Serbian Sites: http://www.kosovo.net http://serbia-info.com/news/kosovo Nato: www.nato.int Radio B92 (liberal Serbian Sender, banned by government - see B92 topic, too) http://www.b92.net (frozen) http://www.freeb92.net Independent Journalists: http://igc.org/balkans/raccooon/kosovo.html