Appendix: Kosovo

From an Associated Press photo:

Milica Rakic's grandmother holds what she said was the little girl's favorite doll at Milica's funeral service, Monday April 19,1999, in the Belgrade suburb of Batajnica. The family said three year old Milica was killed by a fragment of a NATO bomb on Saturday that destroyed part of their family home.

Camellia Fever, Camelliiflorus.

"We in American did not get excited about camellias until the 1920s.
After that time, camellia fever spread very fast, mainly because American
men took the camellia as one of their flowers."

~ William L. Hunt,
Southern Gardens,
Southern Gardening, 1982

The creation of a "new" political positioning:
Humanitarian Intervention

"The New Interventionism" was hailed by intellectual opinion and legal scholars who proclaimed a new era in world affairs in which "the enlightened states" will at last be able to use force where they "believe it to be just," discarding "the restrictive old rules" and obeying "modern notions of justice" that they fashion. "The crisis in Kosovo illustrates...America's new willingness to do what it thinks right–international law notwithstanding."

All text adapted from Noam Chomsky, The New Military Humanism, Lessons from Kosovo, 1999

In the course of the civil war of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (FRY) and the ongoing ethnic conflict between Kosovo Albanians and Serbians, fighting in Kosovo escalated through 1998. By October, as U.S. envoy Richard Holbrooke reached an agreement with Milosevic (formal, and not observed), U.S. intelligence reported "that the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) intended to draw NATO into its fight for independence by provoking Serbian forces into further atrocities." [In February 1998, U.S. Special Envoy to the Balkans Robert Gelbard had announced in Pristina that the U.S. regarded the KLA as "without any question a terrorist group" and "condemns very strongly terrorist activities in Kosovo."]

A Serbian massacre of Kosovo Albanians in Racak on January 15, 1999, with some 45 civilians killed, received extensive coverage and is believed to have been the decisive event that impelled Washington to initiate preparations for war.

By March, two peace proposals are on the table, neither of which was available to the general public.

1) With the majority of NATO countries skeptical about its preference for force, the U.S. presents its "take-it-or-get-bombed" Rambouillet Agreement, calling for a complete military occupation, substantial political control and monitored supervision of civil affairs of Kosovo by NATO, and effective military occupation of the rest of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia at NATO's will.

2) The Serbian National Assembly responded to the US./NATO ultimatum on March 23. It's Resolution rejected the demand for NATO military occupation, called on the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) and the United Nations to facilitate a peaceful diplomatic settlement, and condemned the withdrawal of international monitors, ordered by the U.S. on March 19 in preparation for the bombing five days later.

On March 24, U.S.-led NATO forces launched cruise missiles and bombs at targets throughout the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, "plunging America into a military conflict that President Clinton said was necessary to stop ethnic cleansing and bring stability to Eastern Europe." By bombing the FRY, Clinton informed the nation, "we are upholding our values, protecting our interests, and advancing the cause of peace."

Officials of the U.N. refugee agency Catholic Relief Services had warned that the threat of bombing "would imperil the lives of tens of thousands of refugees believed to be hiding in the woods," predicting "tragic" consequences if "NATO made it impossible for us to be here."

On March 27, U.S.-NATO Commanding General Wesley Clark announced that it was "entirely predictable" that Serb terror and violence would intensify after the NATO bombing. On the same day, State Dept. spokesperson James Rubin said that "The United States is extremely alarmed by reports of an escalating pattern of Serbian attacks on Kosovar Albanians civilians." Shortly after, Clark reported again that he was not surprised by the sharp escalation of Serb terror after the bombing: "The military authorities fully anticipated the vicious approach that Milosevic would adopt, as well as the terrible efficiency with which he would carry it out."

The direct result of the U.S./NATO bombing campaign: increased Serbian atrocities; ethnic cleansing; sudden, massive flight and expulsion of Kosovo Albanians; the near-total devastation of the economic infrastructure throughout Yugoslavia, including electricity and water supplies, to a level that made "prospects for economic reconstruction seem bleak".

The casualties among Serb civilians in the first three weeks of the war were higher than all of the casualties on both sides in Kosovo in the three months that led up to the bombing, and yet those three months were supposed to be a humanitarian catastrophe.

Human Rights organizations have confirmed U.S./NATO use of depleted uranium weapons as well as cluster bombs in Kosovo, turning "parts of the province into a no man's land," "littered" with unexploded bomblets.

The democratic opposition to Milosevic's regime in the province of Vojvodina - once a bright spot in Yugoslavia's otherwise dismal political scene - has become a vociferous enemy of the United States and NATO. Having become a ground zero in the bombing campaign, nearly all pro-Western sentiment has been crushed.

How can angels be so wrong?

• The Folly of Proof | Appendix: IRAQ

• The Folly of Proof | Appendix: SUDAN