Another one - Simon Jenkins from The Times:
May 12 1999 OPINION
With our strategy in tatters, now we must face our responsibility to its victims
Oh, what a lousy war
At the end of the classic film Oh! What a Lovely War, a line of blinded soldiers emerges from the fog of the trenches into a grand conference room. Guided by a ribbon, they wend their way through the generals and statesmen who are bumbling and fumbling their way to peace. This week we discern the same dazed figures emerging from the wreckage of Yugoslavia, refugees feeling their way towards a similar endgame. If the bombing of the Chinese embassy proves a turning point in this war, then A.J.P. Taylor was right: human blunders mean more to history than human wickedness. The First World War began when a chauffeur took a wrong turn down a street in Sarajevo. Perhaps the Third World War was averted when a bomb took a wrong turn down a street in Belgrade. War has always been a matter of maps.
The embassy bombing should have been a minor accident. It added just three to the 480 civilians reportedly killed by Nato so far. It also coincided with a far worse atrocity, the dropping of cluster bombs on the hospital and marketplace at Nis, with 15 dead and 70 injured. Such weapons should never be used in city centres. Both incidents give the lie to Nato claims that "all possible steps" are being taken to avoid civilian casualties. Such steps do not apparently include allowing pilots to fly low to check their targets, or using spies on the ground to verify addresses in built-up areas. The "intensified" bombing of Yugoslav cities must now be classified as casual.
Yet the embassy attack typifies the moment when any limited war, prolonged and failing in its purpose, draws into its maw peoples and interests that were no part of the original dispute. During the Falklands campaign, the British Cabinet was scrupulous to avoid this escalation. It went to inordinate lengths to guard the rectitude of its position at the United Nations. It refused to attack Argentina, thus to minimise world sympathy for the enemy and maintain the moral high ground. With the possible exception of the Belgrano sinking, for which there was an urgent military case, the British Government never exceeded the bounds of proportionality.
The confused objectives and strategic idiocy of Nato's bombing campaign has now led to the outcome predicted by its opponents. The inevitable mistakes of urban bombardment have compromised the morality of the cause. Decent men such as Robin Cook and George Robertson have taken to weighing their own atrocities in the same scales as those of Mr Milosevic. The bombing has deflected world attention from the enormity of Kosovo's fate. As a result the only strategy ever likely to dislodge Serb forces from Kosovo, a ground attack, is now barely conceivable. It was ruled out at the Nato summit in Washington on April 24 and lives on only in the bellicosity of British politicians and media. Nato's heart was never in this fight to the tune of a single soldier's life. When in March Mr Blair promised Parliament that there would be no ground war, he sent a simple signal to Mr Milosevic: "Hold on . . . you will win."
This week's manoeuvres have revealed glimpses of the likely endgame. Belgrade appears ready to readmit outside monitors to supervise a refugee return. It appears ready to accept that the monitors be armed, and may even admit Nato units alongside other troops, if they are under UN rather than Nato command. Whether or not the removal in March of the last "Helsinki" monitors facilitated the ethnic cleansing is now academic. It hardly impeded it. What must be beyond argument is that the reinsertion of monitors, under some version of the latest G8 plan, would be an advance on nothing. So too would be any agreed return of refugees.
Such a UN force will have to coexist with some remaining symbol of Yugoslav authority, if only because Yugoslavia would insist, with the support of sympathisers, on recognition of its sovereignty. This means the presence of some Serb troops. Such a UN force would have at some point to confront the Kosovo Liberation Army in the battlefield, which in turn is why Mr Milosevic would be well-advised to agree to such a force.
On the other hand, if the UN deployment showed any partiality to the KLA against the Serb presence, it would be enmeshed in renewed civil war. The primary victims of that war would be any Kosovans foolish enough to have returned. In other words, short of a full-scale military invasion by Nato, there is no endgame that does not recognise Yugoslav authority over and within Kosovo. That is not at all what Mr Blair had in mind.
Such an outcome is quite unlike Bosnia. Bosnia is a partitioned state in which the UN is policing a ceasefire line. In Kosovo the UN would be re-establishing a version of what was "agreed" last October, albeit with beefed-up monitoring and precious few Kosovans left to monitor.
This endgame is a messy version of what would probably have happened had the bombing never occurred. If the ethnic cleansing of Kosovo was, indeed, planned before the bombing then both the bombers and the non-interveners were never going to stop it happening. Mr Cook says that the non-interveners were "complicit" in the cleansing. But he was more complicit, because he claims he knew about the plan. If push came to shove, everyone was prepared to see the same fate visited on Kosovo as had been witnessed in the Krajina and Bosnia. In the Balkans push always does come to shove.
The only difference between the bombers and non-interveners is that the former have vented their anger with missiles. That anger is now surely assuaged. What exists on the ground is a stalemate. There is to be no invasion and continued destruction is simply mindless. If Mr Cook means to go on cluster-bombing city centres, the death toll from Nato action could one day exceed that from ethnic cleansing. Nato must get off this hook. Nobody believes the bombing war is "working", except for a British Cabinet lost somewhere between a focus group and a fantasy.
The true casualties of this tragedy are now littering the camps of Albania and Macedonia. With Belgrade's co-operation, it is possible that some refugees might return to Kosovo. Without it, such a return is hardly conceivable. The Kosovan Albanians will be what they already are, part of the new Balkan diaspora across Europe, more than two million strong. Such refugees are a fact of the upheavals of the past decade. Britain has already received 10,000 from Albania proper. The instability of the Middle East and the Mediterranean rim is producing a migration comparable to that from Eastern Europe a century ago. Europe's border controls are defenceless against it.
Britain is taking in 40,000 "asylum-seekers" a year. Almost all are economic migrants who have learnt that by demanding asylum you can gain entry to Britain that is refused to ordinary migrants. There is now a backlog of some 65,000 cases awaiting a hearing and subject to alleged "computer overload". Even though 90 per cent of cases are refused asylum, few are ever sent home. Every Government has funked the publicity of rounding up and evicting tens of thousands of poor people. This partly explains the Home Office's extreme reluctance to admit any Kosovans, until Mr and Mrs Blair's stage-managed and tearful volte-face last week.
The ultimate reply to all who ask "What can be done?" about the victims of civil war is given by the Statue of Liberty - open arms. Such a humanitarian response to the Kosovan tragedy is beyond argument. Britain posed on the world stage as chief defender of the Kosovans. It failed them and cannot turn aside from the consequence of that failure. These refugees have a clear moral claim to our charity. Instead, Nato has already squandered $6 billion taking vengeance on their tormentors.
simon.jenkins@the-times.co.uk
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