Serbs shift tactics to thwart NATO
UPI
March 29, 1999 SID BALMAN Jr.
Serbs shift tactics to thwart NATO
(Last updated 4:15 PM ET March 29)
WASHINGTON, March 29 (UPI) Yugoslav commanders have altered their tactics in Kosovo to thwart NATO air attacks and terrorize civilians, resurrecting such practics from the Bosnian war as placing hostages around targets and detaining thousands of men in squalid detention camps.
Rebel ethnic-Albanian commanders and their political superiors said today that some 40,000 Yugoslav troops aided by one the most notorious volunteer paramilitary units from the war in Bosnia-Herzegovina are systematically destroying towns and separating men of fighting age from the women and children.
Representatives of the Kosovo Liberation Army a field commander reached by cellular telephone near the southern town of Prizren and the guerrilla group's senior representative in the United States tell United Press International that the women and children are told to leave the ethnic-Albanian enclave in southern Serbia.
And they say some 120,000 males who look old enough to fight are being held in factories, stadiums and arenas in the towns of Pec, Prizren, Skenderaj, Jakova, Suva Reka and Rahovac. They estimate that Serb-led Yugoslav forces have detained 20,000 males at a soccer stadium in Pec, and almost that many were forcibly marched from Drenica to a munitions plant in Skenderaj.
Dino Hasanaj, the KLA's most senior representative in the United States, and the field commander near Prizren, who asked not to be named, said the Serbians were "torturing" them and planned to deploy the civilians as "human shields" around NATO targets to discourage strikes. Hasanaj cited one case in the town of Glogovac, where the Serbians locked 100 men in a building and set it on fire.
"I call them typical death camps," Hasanaj, an ethnic-Albanian representative at negotiations in France last month who communicates several times a day with KLA commanders in Kosovo, told UPI in a telephone interview from New York.
Kosovar leaders say some of the worst atrocities have been carried out by Zeljko Raznjatovic, a virulent Serbian nationalist and close ally of Milosevic who is also known as Arkan. Arkan and his Tigers, a volunteer paramilitary group, were infamous during the Bosnian war for executing civilians and looting their homes.
The KLA said Arkan has been operating in in and around the towns of Klina, Kamenica, Ferizaj, Pristina and Pec.
NATO intelligence analysts, speaking under conditions of anonymity confirmed most of the claims by Hasanaj and by the KLA field commander in Kosovo, but not the allegation that 100 Kosovars perished in a fire set by Serbian forces. For example, the analysts say they have employed reconnaissance satellites and the high-flying U-2 spy plane to photograph "what looks like 20,000 people" at the open-air soccer stadium in Pec.
The analysts and intelligence officials from two NATO nations say their efforts have been hampered for almost a week by the inability to repair a sophisticated unmanned spy plane known as the Predator. The guidance system in the drone aircraft, which is based in Albania, malfunctioned when the CIA first attempted to launch it last Thursday.
The Predator, which is not much bigger than a large model plane and flies only a few hundred feet off the ground, is equipped with extremely sensitive photographic equipment for providing battlefield intelligence. NATO used the unmanned spy plane, which cost several hundred thousand dollars, for selecting targets to strike in Bosnia-Herzegovina.
The NATO intelligence analysts confirmed accounts of Serbian troops in and around Kosovo abandoning their barracks, which have been the target of numerous air attacks, and relocating to sections of towns where they have forced ethnic-Albanians from their homes. Yugoslav commanders reason that their men are safe from the bombing since NATO planners are taking great care to avoid collateral damage.
The Clinton administration and its NATO allies have been shocked by the brazenness with which Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic's troops have been terrorizing the Kosovars. The execution of Fehmi Agani, a delegate at the talks in France, Baton Haxhiu and three other Kosovar leaders over the weekend brought condemnation from the West and charges that Milosevic may be engineering a genocide in Kosovo.
"There are indications a genocide is unfolding in Kosovo," State Department spokesman James Rubin said. "Crimes against humanity are being committed by Milosevic's forces, and he bears the responsibility."
Rubin said Hashim Thaci, the political director of the KLA, told Secretary of State Madeleine Albright during a telephone conversation from a hideout near Pristina Sunday that Yugoslav troops were "killing civilians and burning houses." Thaci told Albright the "KLA is overwhelmed," Rubin said, and called for the intervention of NATO ground troops, which President Clinton continues to rule out. |
