THE FATAL FLAWS UNDERLYING NATO'S INTERVENTION IN YUGOSLAVIA

By Lt Gen Satish Nambiar (Retd.)

(First Force Commander and Head of Mission of the United Nations Forces
deployed in the former Yugoslavia 03 Mar92 to 02 Mar 93. Former Deputy
Chief of Staff, Indian Army. Currently, Director of the United Services
Insitution of India.)

My year long experience as the Force Commander and Head of Mission of
the
United Nations Forces deployed in the former Yugoslavia has given me an
understanding of the fatal flaws of US/NATO policies in the troubled
region.

It was obvious to most people following events in the Balkans since the
beginning of the decade, and particularly after the fighting that
resulted
in the emergence of Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia-Herzegovina and the former
Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, that Kosovo was a 'powder keg' waiting
to
explode. The West appears to have learnt all the wrong lessons from the
previous wars and applied it to Kosovo.

(1) Portraying the Serbs as evil and everybody else as good was not only
counterproductive but also dishonest. According to my experience all
sides were guilty but only the Serbs would admit that they were no
angels
while the others would insist that they were. With 28, 000 forces under
me and with constant contacts with UNHCR and the International Red Cross
officials, we did not witness any genocide beyond killings and massacres
on all sides that are typical of such conflict conditions. I believe
none
of my successors and their forces saw anything on the scale claimed by
the
media.

(2) It was obvious to me that if Slovenians, Croatians and Bosniaks had
the right to secede from Yugoslavia, then the Serbs of Croatia and
Bosnia
had an equal right to secede. The experience of partitions in Ireland
and
India has not be pleasant but in the Yugoslavia case, the state had
already been taken apart anyway. It made little sense to me that if
multiethnic Yugoslavia was not tenable that multiethnic Bosnia could be
made tenable. The former internal boundaries of Yugoslavia which had no
validity under international law should have been redrawn when it was
taken apart by the West, just as it was in the case of Ireland in 1921
and
Punjab and Bengal in India in 1947. Failure to acknowledge this has led
to the problem of Kosovo as an integral part of Serbia.

(3) It is ironic that the Dayton Agreement on Bosnia was not
fundamentally
different from the Lisbon Plan drawn up by Portuguese Foreign Minister
Cuteliero and British representative Lord Carrington to which all three
sides had agreed before any killings had taken place, or even the
Vance-Owen Plan which Karadzic was willing to sign. One of the main
problems was that there was an unwillingness on the part of the American
administration to concede that Serbs had legitimate grievances and
rights.
I recall State Department official George Kenny turning up like all
other
American officials, spewing condemnations of the Serbs for aggression
and
genocide. I offered to give him an escort and to go see for himself
that
none of what he proclaimed was true. He accepted my offer and
thereafter
he made a radical turnaround.. Other Americans continued to see and
hear
what they wanted to see and hear from one side, while ignoring the other
side. Such behaviour does not produce peace but more conflict.

(4) I felt that Yugoslavia was a media-generated tragedy. The Western
media sees international crises in black and white, sensationalizing
incidents for public consumption. From what I can see now, all Serbs
have
been driven out of Croatia and the Muslim-Croat Federation, I believe
almost 850,000 of them. And yet the focus is on 500,000 Albanians (at
last count) who have been driven out of Kosovo. Western policies have
led
to an ethnically pure Greater Croatia, and an ethnically pure Muslim
statelet in Bosnia. Therefore, why not an ethnically pure Serbia?
Failure to address these double standards has led to the current one.

As I watched the ugly tragedy unfold in the case of Kosovo while
visiting
the US in early to mid March 1999, I could see the same pattern
emerging.
In my experience with similar situations in India in such places as
Kashmir, Punjab, Assam, Nagaland, and elsewhere, it is the essential
strategy of those ethnic groups who wish to secede to provoke the state
authorities. Killings of policemen is usually a standard operating
procedure by terrorists since that usually invites overwhelming state
retaliation, just as I am sure it does in the United States.

I do not believe the Belgrade government had prior intention of driving
out all Albanians from Kosovo. It may have decided to implement
Washington's own "Krajina Plan" only if NATO bombed, or these expulsions
could be spontaneous acts of revenge and retaliation by Serb forces in
the
field because of the bombing. The OSCE Monitors were not doing too
badly,
and the Yugoslav Government had, after all, indicated its willings to
abide by nearly all the provisions of the Rambouillet "Agreement" on
aspects like cease-fire, greater autonomy to the Albanians, and so on.
But they insisted that the status of Kosovo as part of Serbia was not
negotiable, and they would not agree to stationing NATO forces on the
soil
of Yugoslavia. This is precisely what India would have done under the
same circumstances. It was the West that proceeded to escalate the
situation into the current senseless bombing campaign that smacks more
of
hurt egos, and revenge and retaliation. NATO's massive bombing intended
to terrorize Serbia into submission appears no different from the
morality
of actions of Serb forces in Kosovo.

Ultimatums were issued to Yugoslavia that unless the terms of an
agreement
drawn up at Rambouillet were signed, NATO would undertake bombing.
Ultimatums do not constitute diplomacy. They are acts of war. The
Albanians of Kosovo who want independence, were coaxed and cajoled into
putting their signatures to a document motivated with the hope of NATO
bombing of Serbs and independence later. With this signature, NATO
assumed all the legal and moral authority to undertake military
operations
against a country that had, at worst, been harsh on its own people. On
24th March 1999, NATO launched attacks with cruise missiles and bombs,
on
Yugoslavia, a sovereign state, a founding member of the United Nations
and
the Non Aligned Movement; and against a people who were at the forefront
of the fight against Nazi Germany and other fascist forces during World
War Two. I consider these current actions unbecoming of great powers.

It is appropriate to touch on the humanitarian dimension for it is the
innocent who are being subjected to displacement, pain and misery.
Unfortunately, this is the tragic and inevitable outcome of all such
situations of civil war, insurgencies, rebel movements, and terrorist
activity. History is replete with examples of such suffering; whether
it
be the American Civil War, Northern Ireland, the Basque movement in
Spain,
Chechnya, Angola, Cambodia, and so many other cases; the indiscriminate
bombing of civilian centres during World War Two; Hiroshima and
Nagasaki;
Vietnam. The list is endless. I feel that this tragedy could have been
prevented if NATO's ego and credibility had not been given the highest
priority instead of the genuine grievances of Serbs in addition to
Albanians.

Notwithstanding all that one hears and sees on CNN and BBC, and other
Western agencies, and in the daily briefings of the NATO authorities,
the
blame for the humanitarian crisis that has arisen cannot be placed at
the
door of the Yugoslav authorities alone. The responsibility rests mainly
at NATO's doors. In fact, if I am to go by my own experience as the
First
Force Commander and Head of Mission of the United Nations forces in the
former Yugoslavia, from March 1992 to March 1993, handling operations in
Croatia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, and Macedonia, I would say that reports put
out in the electronic media are largely responsible for provoking this
tragedy.

Where does all this leave the international community which for the
record
does not comprise of the US, the West and its newfound Muslim allies?
The
portents for the future, at least in the short term, are bleak indeed.
The United Nations has been made totally redundant, ineffective, and
impotent. The Western world, led by the USA, will lay down the moral
values that the rest of the world must adhere to; it does not matter
that
they themselves do not adhere to the same values when it does not suit
them. National sovereignty and territorial integrity have no sanctity.
And finally, secessionist movements, which often start with terrorist
activity, will get greater encouragement. One can only hope that good
sense will prevail, hopefully sooner rather than later.

Lt General Satish Nambiar Director, USI, New Delhi
6 April 1999


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