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is inaccurate.... And you are confusing the civil war which was going on for some time and the NATO war did not "officially start" in 1998....nor was it based on hundreds of thousands of dead bodies... The NATO war started in March of 1999. Prior to that there was a log of negotiations and humanitarian funding provided by the US and 40 other countries. The war started in March of 1999, and it was based on stopping an active plan of Genocide by Milosovic that was being carried via displacement, starvation, destruction, and yes, murder as well. http://www.refugees.org/news/crisis/kosovo_u0998.htmSeptember 1998In mid September, the situation in Kosovo is getting worse and the lives of thousands of innocent people are at risk. Serb forces continue to pound villages in northern and western Kosovo, effecting over half of the province's population in the last seven months. International aid agencies estimate that between 270,000 and 350,000 people have fled the fighting, as many as 250,000 remaining "internally displaced" inside Although their plight has generated worldwide recognition, international attempts to foster a diplomatic resolution to the conflict have failed to yield tangible results.
According to the Associated press, there is talk of possible, eventual Nato-supported military action ranging from the deployment of troops along the Albania- Kosovo border, to air strikes, to the deployment of ground troops, but humanitarian organizations remain skeptical that decisive U.S., European, or Nato-supported action will come soon. In the mean time, daily reports of horrendous human rights violations, massive destruction, and increasing bloodshed document the dire prognosis for Kosavars "contained" in the crisis by recently erected border controls.
On September 16, the New York Times reported that Serbian forces were "rounding up men and boys from ethnic Albanian villages and refugee camps in Kosovo, an act that US officials fear could be the prelude to their execution, as happened during the war in Bosnia." One week earlier, U.S. Assistant Secretary of State, Julia Taft said at a press briefing, "Without a cease- fire, without a pull-back from this intrusive fighting, there will be 100,000 to 200,000 casualties looming in the months ahead."
Still, there are no decisive plans by the U.S., NATO, or European allies to avert the current and impending disasters with military action. The U.S. is "considering a variety of options" for getting emergency aid into Kosovo and continues to support diplomatic interventions and the preservation of Yugoslavian borders.
On September 16, Serbian and Albanian leaders reported heavy fighting in the area between the towns of Kosovska Mitrovica, Podujevo, and Vucitrn, north of the capital, Pristina. German Defense Minister, Volker Ruhe, stated that the West could resort to military action "within three to five weeks," if Milosevic fails to comply with an impending U.N. Security Council Resolution designed to put an end to the conflict. According to U.N. officials, the Resolution will not explicitly authorize military action.
On September 17, the government of Montenegro began implementing a plan to send refugees from Kosovo to Albania. Over 4,000 refugees being held in the village of Meteh, Montenegro, were transported in busses to the Albanian border point of Vermosh.
On September 18, Ethnic Albanian Leader, Ibrahim Rugova, gave his preliminary endorsement to a 3-year U.S.-backed "temporary" plan to restore local autonomy to Kosovo (stripped by Milosevic in 1989). According to the associated press, Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic "supported" the plan aimed at "normalizing the difficult and risky situation and halting the attacks and the use of force."
On September 21, amidst renewed Serbian attacks in the Drenica region, Ethnic Albanian leaders released their version of the U.S. supported "interim" peace proposal. Under the arrangement, Kosovo would become an "independent entity equal" to Serbia and Montenegro, with its own courts, police, and central bank. Its status as a province in Yugoslavia would be retained temporarily and negotiated in the future. Serbian officials rejected parts of the proposal but, reportedly, agreed to release their own version in the upcoming week.
On September 22, the New York Times reported that the "worsening plight" of refugees and internally displaced people from Kosovo was "increasing the possibility of NATO intervention." Britain and France urged the U.N. Security Council to finish drafting the Resolution designed to make (Serbian) "compliance mandatory," and raise the "specter of military force." According to U.S. officials, the pending resolution reflects an emerging consensus in favor of military action, however, "NATO allies have not yet reached an agreement on the use of force." --------------- http://www.refugees.org/news/crisis/kosovo_u052799.htmAnother week of crisis and torment for Kosovar Albanian refugees: May 1999 - still no war The surreal pattern of refugee flight repeated itself this week. The surging thousands of refugees entering Macedonia and Albania over the weekend became--on Wednesday--a trickle. And thousands of refugees reportedly massed in the "no-man's land" on the Serbian side of the Macedonia border were gone without a trace on Thursday morning.
The more than 30,000 refugees who entered Macedonia in a five-day period said they were fleeing intensified "ethnic cleansing" by Serbian forces in Kosovo.
During the week, several human rights reports documented massive rapes, torture, and massacres inside Kosovo. A UN Population Fund report cited "alarming accounts of rape and abduction of Kosavar women refugees." The report decribed the emotional trauma the women felt because rape "carries tremendous stigma in their society." The report said "the weight of evidence collected from interviews with the most recent refugees leaves room for the most somber perspectives concerning the risks facing the Kosovar women still in Kosovo."
As USCR has long urged, the international community has begun to grapple with the prospect of nearly 800,000 refugees facing the harsh Balkan winter, which begins in October Refugees in tent cities--and unknown hundreds of thousands of internally displaced persons hiding in the mountain forests of Kosovo, their villages destroyed--have no means to protect themselves from the elements------------ June 1999http://www.refugees.org/news/crisis/kosovo_u060499.htmThere are currently an estimated 782,100 refugees and displaced persons in the region. This includes 443,300 in Albania, 247,800 in Macedonia, 69,300 in Montenegro, and 21,700 in Bosnia. As of June 3, 76,475 refugees have left the region through the humanitarian evacuation program. Some 40 countries have offered 137,000 places for Kosovar evacuees.------------------ http://www.hrw.org/reports98/kosovo/he NATO bombing campaignNATO's bombing campaign lasted from March 24 to June 10, 1999, involving up to 1,000 aircraft operating mainly from bases in Italy and aircraft carriers stationed in the Adriatic. Tomahawk cruise missiles were also extensively used, fired from aircraft, ships and submarines. The United States was, inevitably, the dominant member of the coalition against Serbia, although all of the NATO members were involved to some degree - even Greece, which played a crucial role despite publicly opposing the war. Over the ten weeks of the conflict, NATO aircraft flew over 38,000 combat missions. The proclaimed goal of the NATO operation was summed up by its spokesman as "Serbs out, peacekeepers in, refugees back". That is, Serbian troops would have to leave Kosovo and be replaced by international peacekeepers in order to ensure that the Albanian refugees could return to their homes. German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer claimed that the refugee crisis had been produced by a Serbian plan codenamed "Operation Horseshoe". While the existence of a plan of that name remains controversial, the United Nations and international human rights organisations were convinced that the refugee crisis was the result of a deliberate policy of ethnic cleansing. A postwar statistical analysis of the patterns of displacement, conducted by Patrick Ball of the American Association for the Advancement of Science <3> (http://shr.aaas.org/kosovo/pk/toc.html), found that there was a direct correlation between Serbian security force operations and refugee outflows, with NATO operations having very little effect on the displacements. Milosevic may have hoped to achieve "Serbianization" by expelling Kosovo's Albanian inhabitants. One possibility is that he wished to replace the Albanian population with refugee Serbs from Bosnia and Croatia.----------------- http://www.osce.org/kosovo/documents/reports/hr/part1/Recognizing that the Kosovo crisis was in large part a human rights crisis, the mission had a mandate to monitor, investigate and document allegations of human rights violations committed by all parties to the conflict. By the time the OSCE-KVM stood down on 9 June 1999, its Human Rights Division had amassed hundreds of in-country reports, and had taken statements from nearly 2,800 refugees. The analysis reveals a pattern of human rights and humanitarian law violations on a staggering scale, often committed with extreme and appalling violence. The organized and systematic nature of the violations is compellingly described. Surveying the entire period of the OSCE-KVM's deployment, it is evident that human rights violations unfolded in Kosovo according to a well-rehearsed strategy. |
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