Virtual peace: Another dictator gets away with murder

June 13, 1999

UNITED NATIONS -- Twas’ a famous victory. The sanguinary carnage which has plagued Kosovo’s ethnic Albanians for over a year, the refugee exodus of one million Kosovars, the scorched earth policies evoking Biblical wrath--has all been stopped by NATO’s magic wand. And Slobodan Milosevic gets to keep Kosovo in Yugoslavia!

In our self congratuately way, we can now claim success--we have seemingly outwitted the ghosts of Balkan history--ground troops did not have to fight their way into a Kosovo quagmire and mercifully there were no fatalities. Now a 50,000 strong NATO force-including Americans, British and French--will enter Kosovo’s quagmire as peacekeepers!

Yet, beyond the political choreography there’s another dimension. Milosevic has lost the war but NATO has not really won the political peace--look at the record.

While Serbia’s army and security forces have taken a drubbing, they are not defeated in the field. In Serbia’s surrealistic world they can claim that Yugoslavia was not invaded by NATO troops nor did Belgrade have to surrender Kosovo province.

Though NATO has gained genuine concessions from Belgrade, Yugoslav rule in the disputed region will continue with Western blessing. As with the tainted Bosnian peace accords crafted by William Holbrooke, the aggressor gets away with murder!

NATO’s central doctrine of the safe return of Kosovar refugees is predicated on two things--that there is something to return to, and more significantly, that the people can live in freedom from Serb rule. The Albanians become the double victims here.

For those returning home, a devastated land awaits. Recall that a few years after the Bosnian accords, 750,000 displaced people have not returned home. The tender charms of ethnic cleansing have convincingly made Albanians fear living under Serb rule. As this column has stressed for over a year, Kosovar Albanians don’t want autonomy to live under diluted Yugoslav rule, they want to break from Belgrade!

Russian diplomacy working hand in glove with Germany’s center-left Social Democrat/Green coalition was at the core of the deal. Finland’s President Martti Ahtisaari, an old U.N. hand, made it more palatable for all sides. The U.N. gave its blessing to an international protectorate and NATO peacekeepers will attempt to stabilize and rebuild this shattered land. U.S. troops will serve in the Balkans for a generation.

Milosevic, like Saddam Hussein in Iraq, secures his place as one of those perennial despots who can be put in the box but not really eliminated.

As the Sunday Times of London opines, “Milosevic still rules in Belgrade. Serbia must remain a pariah state while his rule lasts. The Serbian people are suffering the consequences of his failure. They must continue to endure the economic and international costs of his regime until they rid themselves of it. Trade sanctions against Serbia should remain.”

Germany’s respected Frankfurter Allgemeine adds, “The agreement with Belgrade remains unsatisfactory first and foremost because it does not touch upon the main source of instability and misery in the Balkans--Milosevic and his regime.”

The ferocious stupidity which allowed the situation to go so far as it has is an indictment as much of Western political stamina as much as Milosevic’s mendacious neo-nationalism. Milosovic’s regime who brought us ethnic cleansing in Vukovar Croatia, the siege of Sarajevo and Srbrnica in Bosnia, and hundreds of forsaken hamlets known only to God in Kosovo, will not change his stripes only his tactics.

The U.S. and Western Europe will get the bill for rebuilding Kosovo and Serbia too. We must play hardball--deliver assistance, the condition being Milosevic’s ouster.

More ominously the KLA and Albanians who turned to the USA may now turn on the USA precisely for the reason that as reality sets in, they will perceive themselves as losers. Moreover the wishful thinking about disarming the KLA belies the fact that the movement still has scores to settle with the Serbs--especially the vulnerable civilian minority left behind in Kosovo. NATO peacekeepers will seem “in the way” of such score settling.

The airwar against Milosevic from three miles high-- has produced a stunning technological victory. Now we can revel in virtual peace. One hopes the diplomats will make down-to-earth decisions all the people of Kosovo can live with on the ground.

John J. Metzler is a U.N. correspondent covering diplomatic and defense issues who writes weekly for World Tribune.com.