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Pastimes : Kosovo -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Douglas V. Fant who wrote (8362)	5/14/1999 3:06:00 AM
From: Douglas V. Fant	Respond to of 17770

Ganng, Are you ready to fight a ground/guerilla war in very difficult terrain? 1831 GMT, 990513 - NATO Gets Serious About Ground Option For the first time since the start of Operation Allied Force, NATO appears to be getting serious about using ground troops to seize at least a portion of Kosovo. The reported deployment of 16,000 Marines to Albania represents a significant increase in forces available for deployment into Kosovo, whether a "permissive environment" or not. We have also received unconfirmed rumors of increased Air Force transport activity at Pope Air Force Base, which if true could indicate the deployment of additional members of the 82nd Airborne Division. Latest reports indicate NATO currently has approximately 12,000 troops in Albania, and an additional roughly 14,000 troops in Macedonia. NATO has also been hinting strongly lately that it is reconsidering a ground option. According to a May 11 report in the Washington Post, which cited several anonymous NATO defense and intelligence officials and diplomats, NATO leaders have acknowledged that the air campaign has failed. Their worry now is that, with the Serbian forces well entrenched in Kosovo, and the province largely purged of ethnic Albanians, NATO will be faced with a stalemate. NATO can not afford either to be seen to lose to Yugoslavia or to be left with hundreds of thousands of refugees and a hostile and besieged regime in the heart of the Balkans. NATO's goal is now, therefore, not the prevention of Serbian war aims in Kosovo but the rollback of Serbian successes in the province. To accomplish this, NATO reportedly believes its only option is to escalate the war. There are two ways to do this. One is to dramatically increase the air campaign, which is already logging more than 600 sorties per day. NATO has deployed more aircraft to the theater, and reportedly plans to begin operations from Hungary and Turkey. A substantial increase in the bombardment will almost certainly equate to a serious increase in civilian casualties. But with collateral damage losing its novelty in the Western media after a series of accidents, NATO might be willing to risk the public relations hit to force a quick end to the conflict. Still, the campaign would have to succeed quickly, or NATO could quickly find itself in a worse position than exists today. The second option, which today's meeting between Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban and British Conservative opposition leader William Hague indicates is back on the table, is a ground invasion. This brings us back to our analysis of mid-April. Even with 16,000 Marines, who will not arrive for about 10 days, NATO will not have the forces necessary to take all of Kosovo. It is questionable whether they will have enough troops to make a serious push into the Pagarusa Valley. So again, the question arises: Does NATO have Skopje's permission to launch attacks from Macedonian territory? Recent high level contacts between Skopje and Belgrade make that unclear. And, with Greece refusing the use of Thessalonika, can NATO improve Albania's ports and infrastructure to the degree necessary to support a buildup and supply a ground war?