The Fire in 1999? The United States, NATO and the Bombing of Yugoslavia
David Bruce MacDonald
Since the end of the Cold War, the methods and objectives of United States foreign policy have come under increasing scrutiny. The Gulf War would produce Ramsey Clark’s The Fire this Time, charging the United States with war crimes in Iraq (Clark, 1992). Christopher Hitchens’s more recent The Trial of Henry Kissinger (Hitchens, 2001) accuses this former Nixonite hawk of a wide variety of atrocious crimes, giving new insight into Daniel Ellsberg’s glib remark in 1972 that ‘Henry has the best deal Faust ever made with Mephistopheles’ (Vonnegut, 1974: 197).
This chapter will critically examine NATO’s 1999 air campaign against Yugoslavia, Operation Allied Force. I will argue that while the United States did not commit war crimes in this case, they did break numerous international laws and conventions, causing untold ‘collateral damage’ in the process. Its humanitarian goals notwithstanding, NATO’s operation was found wanting on numerous counts. We can cite NATO’s haste in rushing into an underprepared military solution; its unwillingness to endanger the lives of its own soldiers to protect Yugoslavia’s civilians; its use of highly questionable weaponry on civilian targets; and its seeming ignorance of the region’s specific features. The chapter begins by looking at some of the background to NATO intervention, including members’ conceptions of strategy and where these went wrong. We will then examine the consequences wrought by the air campaign, and examine what international laws and conventions were broken. A final section considers the question of blame, and how much of it should be borne by the United States. However, I will also argue that there are important mitigating factors that must be taken into consideration when analyzing Allied Force and its aftermath.
The Allied campaign in Yugoslavia in 1999 was not without its precedents. The 1990 Gulf War reinforced US enthusiasm about the use of advanced technology to win a conflict quickly and efficiently. It took under six weeks for a force of some 800,000 troops to decimate the Iraqi army, with a US fatality rate of less than one per 3,000 soldiers. This, according to Stephen Biddle, ‘made the Gulf War a shaping event for defense planning in the 1990s … a Gulf War yardstick’ (Biddle, 1996: 142–43). Of importance here was the belief that the world’s problems could now be solved using high-altitude bombing and the latest military technology. However, the Gulf War also involved highly questionable tactics against civilians. Former US Attorney General Ramsey Clark would accuse the United States of no fewer than nineteen separate war crimes, including breaches of the Hague and Geneva Conventions, the Nuremberg and UN Charters, and the US Constitution, for the dropping of over 80 thousand tons of bombs, and the deaths of between 125,000 and 150,000 Iraqi soldiers and civilians (Clark, 1992: xvii–xviii, 38, 40).1
A second precedent was to be found in the 1995 NATO air-strikes in Bosnia-Herzegovina. After sixteen months of failing to get Bosnian Serb leaders to negotiate over the Contact Group Plan, the US launched Operation Deliberate Force on 30 August – the largest military action in NATO’s history. Bosnian Serb positions around Sarajevo were pounded by US planes, coupled with French and British artillery from the Rapid Reaction Forces operating in Bosnia (Holbrooke, 1998: 101–2). Certainly there was a predecent for the 1999 air strikes – the airstrikes of 1995. These produced exactly the result the Americans intended, and with surprising speed. After 16 months of failing to get Bosnian Serb leaders to negotiate over the Contact Group Plan, US military and political staff concluded that more forceful means would be required to bring the Bosnian Serbs to the bargaining table. Within hours, Slobodan Milosevic secured the signatures of all the relevant high-ranking Serbian and Bosnian-Serb leaders to a document creating a joint delegation to participate in negotiations. This document, later referred to as the ‘Patriarch Paper’ by US Chief Negotiator Richard Holbrooke, gave Milosevic ‘virtually total power over the fate of the Bosnian Serbs’ (Holbrooke, 1998: 105–6). Holbrooke’s analysis of this state of affairs was as arrogant as it was representative of US views at the time:
I was beginning to get the sense of the Pale Serbs: headstrong, given to empty theatrical statements, but in the end, essentially bullies when their bluff was called. The Western mistake over the previous four years had been to treat the Serbs as rational people, with whom one could argue, negotiate, compromise, and agree. In fact, they respected only force or an unambiguous and credible threat to use it. (Holbrooke, 1998: 152)
These two precedents yielded a number of lessons: first, the UN was a useful tool of US foreign policy; second, air power could achieve quick and effective results; third, the Serbs were bullies who understood force and little else; and fourth, the United States had the right (even perhaps the duty) to intervene in Yugoslavia.
However, Kosovo was not ‘a second Bosnia.’ In Bosnia, the Serbs formed roughly one-third of the population, but in Kosovo they accounted for just 10 per cent. While there were few real cultural and linguistic differences between Bosnian Serbs, Croats, and Moslems, Serbs and Albanians spoke different languages, and were of different (and historically antagonistic) ethnic groups. Another difference was the nature of the conflict. The Bosnian conflict was largely confined to the region; Kosovo had enormous potential for spillover, making it potentially far more destabilizing. The military strategy, too, was dissimilar. While a combination of air strikes and ground forces had succeeded in Bosnia, Clinton hobbled his administration early in the Kosovo debacle when he announced: ‘I do not intend to put our troops in Kosovo to fight a war’ (quoted in Daalder and O’Hanlon, 2000: 130). Without ‘crucial land-based reinforcements,’ Deliberate Force would not have succeeded. This military reality, along with others, seems to have been ignored (Shawcross, 2001: 332).
More important, perhaps, was the alliance’s underestimation of Kosovo’s significance in Serbian politics. While Milosevic happily sold out the Bosnian Serbs during the Dayton peace process, he was not prepared to give up Kosovo, which was seen to be historically Serbian. Bosnia was never as important to the Serbs as Kosovo – the ‘Serbian Jerusalem,’ site of the Battle of Kosovo of 1389, and location of some of Serbia’s most revered churches and monasteries. Additionally, the reaction against Kosovar nationalism in the mid-1980s was key to Miloevic’s rise to power. Kosovo made his reputation, and its loss would clearly be his undoing – something US strategists failed to take into account (Hyland, 1999: 44–5).
The war begins
In 1998, an asymmetrical civil war was taking place in Kosovo, pitting a ragtag but determined Kosovo Liberation Army (created in 1996) against units of the Yugoslav armed forces, loosely allied with a variety of Serbian paramilitary groups – among them the infamous ‘Tigers’ of Zeljko Raznatovic (‘Arkan’), and Vojislav Seselj’s ‘White Eagles’. In 1998, the conflict produced some 300,000 refugees and hundreds of dead, but hopes were raised when a ceasefire agreement was signed in October, calling for the reduction of Yugoslav military and police units in Kosovo and the creation of a 2,000-strong ‘Kosovo Verification Mission’ to monitor the situation. However, neither side appeared to have had any intention of honoring the agreement. By January 1999, the fighting had resumed (Bardos, 1999). Yugoslavia would soon be denounced in the eyes of the world after Serbian paramilitary forces massacred Albanian civilians in the village of Racak on 15 January. Three weeks later, on 6 February, the European Union, Russia and the United States launched a series of negotiations at the palace of Rambouillet, just outside Paris (Bardos, 1999).
The question of whether war could have been averted is an important one. It seems clear, in hindsight, that the 90-page ‘Rambouillet Peace Agreement’ was designed to be unacceptable to the Serbs. Under the agreement, a NATO-appointed Civilian Implementation Mission (CIM) would have had direct control over Kosovo, including ‘the authority to issue binding directives to the Parties on all important matters he saw fit, including appointing and removing officials and curtailing institutions’ (quoted in Parenti, 2000: 110). Of particular concern was the unpublicized ‘Appendix B,’ which would have allowed NATO personnel complete and unrestricted access throughout the region, including airspace and waterways.2 Even Henry Kissinger called the Rambouillet text ‘a provocation, an excuse to start bombing … a terrible document that should not have been presented in that form’ (Shawcross, 2001: 329).
But the messenger as well as the message was provocative. As Allan Little argued, ‘The Americans knew that because it had to be Nato [making the demands], the chances of the Serbs accepting the deal were very small’ (Little, 2000). It seems clear from a reading of the events leading to the conflict, and an analysis of US calculations, that the US believed Milosevic would respond only to force or the threat of force. The sooner such force could be brought to bear, the sooner the conflict would be resolved and the US could pull out of the region. By 22 March, in a last-ditch attempt to convince Milosevic to sign, Holbrooke led a mission to Belgrade, but this effort was ultimately unsuccessful. So on 24 March, NATO began Operation Allied Force (Bardos, 1999). Some 51 targets had been hastily drawn up, and within a short time, 40 had been hit. The first targets included a military academy in the suburbs of Belgrade, the Batajnica airbase, a major communications mast on Mount Avala, and Yugoslavia’s air-defence systems (Judah, 2000: 237–8). As Clinton argued, NATO had three primary goals: ‘To demonstrate the seriousness of NATO’s purpose so that the Serbian leaders understand the imperative of reversing course, [to] deter an even bloodier offensive against innocent civilians in Kosovo, and, if necessary, to seriously damage the Serb military’s capacity to harm the people of Kosovo’ (Daalder and O’Hanlon, 2000: 101).
Operation Allied Force lasted seventy-eight days. In the first month, NATO flew an average of 300 sorties a day, about 100 of these being bombing runs (or ‘strike sorties’). This was then increased as the conflict progressed to 500 sorties daily with 150 bombing runs. By the end of May, the daily rate had increased to between 600 and 700, with almost 300 daily bombing runs. Altogether, nearly 40,000 aircraft sorties were flown during the course of the conflict (Greenberg, 2000: 212; Daalder and O’Hanlon, 2000: 143–4, 209). The campaign would end on 2 June, when Finnish President Maarti Ahtisaari and Boris Yeltsin’s personal envoy Viktor Chernomyrdin finally persuaded Milosevic to sign a somewhat modified version of the Rambouillet Agreement, later codified as UN Security Council Resolution 1244. Kosovo would remain legally a part of Yugoslavia, but would be subject to a separate international administration known as the United Nations Mission in Kosovo, or UNMIK. On 9 June, a Military-Technical Agreement paved the way for withdrawal of Yugoslav forces, and the entry of KFOR troops (Bardos, 1999).
In hindsight, the US severely miscalculated the duration of the war. Believing that Milosevic would buckle at the first display of high-tech military power, the CIA argued in January 1999 that ‘Milosevic doesn’t want a war he can’t win…. After enough of a defence to sustain his honour and assuage his backers he will quickly sue for peace’ (see Borger and Taylor-Norton, 1999; Borger, 1999). Milosevic, too, was convinced that NATO would back off after a token bombing campaign, which he jokingly called ‘bombing lite’ (Judah, 2000: 229). As Michael Ignatieff paraphrases the ‘cynically cheerful scenario’: ‘we would pretend to bomb Milosevic, and he would pretend to resist and then a deal would be done, dropping a province he could no longer control into the lap of the international community.’ However, the truth turned out to be otherwise: ‘In his cynicism, Milosevic gambled that NATO would never go to war for its values. In our innocence, we gambled that he would never risk destruction for his’ (Ignatieff, 2000: 48–9; see also Bardos, 1999).
In their enthusiasm to finish the war quickly, washing their hands of what they saw as a bloody and intractable situation, the United States and its allies engaged in a wide variety of breaches of international law, many of which involved the targeting of civilians and civilian infrastructure, and the use of weapons and tactics which had no legitimate place on any battlefield.
Unintended civilian consequences?
If the situation prevailing in Kosovo before Allied Force was serious, it would pale next to the full-scale catastrophe that the bombing campaign produced. By mid-April, after only two weeks of bombing, some 350,000 refugees had poured out of Kosovo, fleeing south to Macedonia and Albania (Chomsky, 2000: 34). By the end of the campaign, the refugee total stood at 850,000, with an additional 500,000 people internally displaced within Kosovo (Daalder and O’Hanlon, 2000: 108–9; also Crace, 1999). The bombing soon became a backdrop for a program of systematic ethnic cleansing, as the number of Serbian troops and police in Kosovo increased by 25 per cent to 40,000 men (Norton-Taylor, 1999). Almost from day one, Serbian forces began rounding up ethnic Albanians from Pristina, Qirez, and other cities (Black and Borger, 1999).
Forced expulsions took place at gunpoint, with Serbian militia groups going door to door. In some instances, heavy weapons such as tanks, artillery, helicopters and aircraft were used to promote an exodus. During the conflict, over 100,000 homes in 500 villages, towns and cities were damaged or destroyed, most looted beforehand. Horrific crimes, such as shooting, burning people alive, amputation, rape, and even the hacking-off of nipples, were reported throughout this period (Daalder and O’Hanlon, 2000: 109–11). Estimates of the death toll hover around 10,000 Albanian casualties (mostly at Serb hands), along with thousands of Yugoslav soldiers and civilians (Greenberg, 2000: 212).
Western policymakers, it seemed, had seriously miscalculated the effects of the bombing – Milosevic had not backed down. James Rubin, Albright’s State Department spokesman described an ‘escalating pattern of Serbian attacks,’ while former National Security Advisor Carnes Lord argued: ‘although western officials continue to deny it, there can be little doubt that the bombing campaign has provided both motive and opportunity for a wider and more savage Serbian operation than what was first envisioned’ (quoted in Chomsky, 2000: 35). As one journalist wrote forcefully: ‘At bottom there remains the terrible truth that the volcanic catastrophe of the sudden Kosovo population displacements were triggered by the Nato bombing, and by the decision of Western governments to impose impossible conditions on the Serbian sovereign state. We knew it would happen, the Serbs said it would happen, and it did happen’ (quoted in Gott, 1999).
While the creation of hundreds of thousands of refugees was certainly an unintended consequence of NATO’s air war, it was not entirely unpredictable. While Serbia drove people out, the indiscriminate nature of NATO’s high-altitude bombing also triggered massive population shifts. Other factors included the lack of power supplies, telephone lines, and clean water, coupled with a more general fear of violence. This included the fear of getting caught in the middle of KLA and Yugoslav crossfire, the fear of a NATO ground war (which the KLA predicted), and an unwillingness to join the KLA ‘general mobilization’ that was taking place throughout Kosovo. That 70–100,000 Serbs also fled Kosovo during the bombing suggests that the campaign itself and the fear it generated were driving everybody out (Parenti, 2000: 131, 135).
Civilian deaths
According to Human Rights Watch, NATO was directly responsible for the deaths of between 488 and 527 civilians in 90 separate incidents. In breaking down the causes of these deaths, HRW charged that NATO had pursued a range of questionable tactics. It had
conducted air attacks using cluster bombs near populated areas; attacked targets of questionable military legitimacy, including Serb Radio and Television, heating plants, and bridges; did not take adequate precautions in warning civilians of attacks; took insufficient precautions identifying the presence of civilians when attacking convoys and mobile targets; and caused excessive civilian casualties by not taking sufficient measures to verify that military targets did not have concentrations of civilians (such as at Korisa). (Human Rights Watch, 2000a)
The organization also noted that 43 of the attacks took place during daylight hours, when civilians were most likely to be working in targeted buildings or using roads and bridges that were scheduled for attack (Human Rights Watch, 2000a). Had NATO given adequate warning to civilians that an attack was coming; had they attacked at night; had they been more careful with target selection; and had they bombed from a lower altitude, casualty rates could have been reduced by as much as 50 per cent (Parenti, 2000: 122; Daalder and O’Hanlon, 2000: 122–3).
Three of the most catastrophic attacks occurred in mid-April. On 12 April, at least ten people died and sixteen were injured after NATO pilots targeted a passenger train going over a bridge in mid-morning. NATO first denied the bombing, then later dismissed it as an ‘uncanny accident’ (Helm, 1999). The next day, NATO bombed the Belgrade suburb of Banjica, intending to hit a military barracks. It also hit the Military Medical Academy hospital some 50 metres away, putting both injured soldiers and civilians at risk (Fisk, 1999). On 14 April, a refugee convoy coming from Djakovica in southwestern Kosovo was struck with nine 500-pound laserguided bombs launched by US F-16 fighter planes. Up to 80 civilians were killed in this attack, which NATO leaders later admitted was an accident – they thought that they were firing on military vehicles, not tractors (Walker et al., 1999). Even during the first three weeks of the assault, it was clear that NATO’s air campaign was not targeting only military installations. As Maggie O’Kane concluded, ‘After 17 days of bombing it is clear that Nato’s targets are as much politically motivated against Mr. Milosevic personally, as they are strategically driven’ (O’Kane, 1999a).
Classified under the amorphous military heading ‘lines of communication,’ 70 per cent of Danube road bridges were destroyed, 50 per cent of Danube rail bridges and 50 per cent of Kosovo’s road corridors. By the end of May, electrical grids and transformers were also being destroyed. Cigarette factories, fertilizer plants, chemical factories, even the homes and offices of Milosevic’s political allies were attacked, as well as his party headquarters (Daalder and O’Hanlon, 2000: 200–201). Of the obviously non-military targets, the bombing of the Serbian Radio and Television headquarters in Belgrade on 23 April was one of the most dubious, and resulted in 14 deaths. There was certainly no military or strategic value in the raid, leading Human Rights Watch to conclude: ‘In this case, the purpose of the attack again seems to have been more psychological harassment of the civilian population than to obtain direct military effect. The risks involved to the civilian population in undertaking this urban attack grossly outweigh any perceived military benefit’ (Human Rights Watch, 2000a). Other inexplicable targets included the Dubrava Penitentiary in Kosovo, which was subject to two attacks, on 19 and 21 May. The first bombing resulted in the deaths of 3 prisoners and 1 guard, the second resulted in the deaths of some 19 prisoners (Human Rights Watch, 2000a).
In Montenegro, where Milo Djukanovic’s anti-Milosevic government had been steering a neutral course, bombs rained down on Podgorica and Danilograd – ostensibly, it was argued, to knock out Yugoslav radar defences (Dinmore, 1999). On 9 April, a residential suburb of Pristina was attacked, when a bomb was ‘seduced off the target’ (Crace, 1999). Peripheral regions such as Vojvodina were also hit. The mayor of Novi Sad noted that by 20 April, 7 bridges, 50 businesses, and some 20 schools had been hit, together with 1 museum, 2 monasteries and the university. The total damage, he estimated, already ran to 7 billion deutschmarks. The Danube, which had carried some 10 million tons of shipping annually, was paralysed during the conflict, blocking off the main transportation route for Balkan countries to the West (O’Kane, 1999b). During this period, NATO dropped white propaganda leaflets assuring the population that not they but their government was being targeted.
Another key concern was the environmental degradation and destruction that occurred as a corollary to Operation Allied Force. On 18 April, NATO forces bombed the Pancevo combined fertilizer factory and oil refinery. The immediate result was ‘a huge toxic, carcinogenic cloud of gas phosgene, chlorine and hydrochloric acid over Belgrade … as well as 15–20 kilometer long slicks in the Danube.’ Other bombing targets included the Prva Iskra detergent plant in Baritz, led to a discharge of toxic gases. The bombing of a Nis tobacco plant led to an explosion of chemical additives, discharging cadmium into the atmosphere. The repeated bombing of the Zaztava plant in Kragujevac resulted in poisonous piralena liquid flows into the Lepenitsa river. Repeat bombing of the Milan Blagojevic plastic manufacturing plant in Lucani brought about severe petrochemical explosions. In other regions, including Belgrade, Pristina, Pancevo, Lipovic, and Novi Sad, the targeting of refineries and fuel depots led to uncontrollable fires and serious problems of air pollution (Lykourezos, 1999).
A large number of cultural, religious and educational buildings and monuments also appear to have been destroyed during the campaign. According to UNESCO, 12 historical monuments in Kosovo, central Serbia and Vojvodina were completely demolished by NATO attacks, and another 39 suffered substantial damage. Many of these were on UNESCO’s World Heritage list, including the fourteenth-century Gracanica Monastery, which was bombed twice, and the thirteenth-century Pec Patriarchate. Additionally, NATO air strikes purportedly hit more than 2,000 schools. On 10 April alone, NATO attacked and destroyed village schools in the towns of Bogutova, Raska, Lacevci, Tavnik and Lozno, the first having been targeted with no fewer than six missiles (Lykourezos, 1999). What exactly NATO was hoping to accomplish with such attacks is unclear.
Whether it was the result of faulty intelligence or sabotage, the Chinese Embassy attack will count as one of the worst blunders of modern warfare. Targeting the wrong side of Belgrade’s Lenjinov Boulevard, NATO bombed the embassy on 7 May, rather than the Federal Directorate of Supply and Procurement on the opposite side, provoking violent antiUS protests in China. The CIA claimed to have been using maps dated from 1992 (Evans, 1999). In the end, one employee was fired and several officials were disciplined after the attack, in which three Chinese lost their lives (Dalder and O’Hanlon, 2000: 147). Coming at a time when a diplomatic breakthrough seemed to be on the horizon, its political effects were devastating. Lawrence Freedman argues that, ‘[w]hile [it is] impossible to prove, this attack may have added a couple of weeks to the length of the war’ (quoted in Daalder and O’Hanlon, 2000: 147).
Many of these tactical errors were the result of a lack of long-range strategic planning. At the beginning of Operation Allied Force, NATO had drawn up only 51 targets for its sketchy battle plans; by 28 March, these were expanded to include a target list ‘aimed at demoralizing Serbia’s population.’ In practice, some 60 per cent of NATO targets were of questionable ‘dual use’ (Judah, 2000: 256–7; for a further discussion, see Ignatieff, 2000: 170). Rather than encouraging the Serbs to rise up against Milosevic, attacks on civilians and civilian infrastructure, recalled one analyst, ‘played directly into Milosevic’s hands and, appeared to contradict the claim that the enemy was Milosevic and not the Serbian people’ (Judah, 2000: 239). In this respect, Operation Allied Force was a dismal failure.
Depleted uranium
The highly controversial use of depleted uranium (DU) ammunition has also raised serious concerns. Depleted uranium – what is left over when natural uranium has been enriched – is an extremely effective material for anti-tank weaponry, since it is 70 per cent denser than lead, and can easily punch through armor (Kirby, 2001). In all, NATO launched 112 strikes with depleted uranium ammunition, with 84 targets in Kosovo (Kroeger, 2001). Most of these weapons fell in civilian areas, among the very civilian populations NATO was supposed to be defending. Many European governments have also expressed concern about higher-than-normal rates of leukemia and radiation poisoning among their peacekeeping troops. Soldiers from Italy, Belgium, Holland, Spain, Portugal, the Czech Republic, and France have all died of suspicious causes after six-month tours in the Balkans (BBC News, 2001b).
DU ammunition was widely used during the Gulf War, where an estimated 940,000 DU projectiles were dropped on Iraq by Coalition forces (BBC News, 2001e). Between 1994 and 1995, NATO warplanes also dropped some 10,000 rounds of DU ammunition in Bosnia, creating what NATO peacekeeping troops have called ‘Balkan Syndrome’ – little different from ‘Gulf War Syndrome’ (Kroeger, 2001). Both syndromes appear to have identical symptoms that include ‘increases in birth defects, stillbirths, childhood leukemia and other cancers’ (Lykourezos, 1999; see also Kirby, 1999). While various oblique statements concerning the use of these weapons were made during Operation Allied Force, only in June 2000 did NATO finally admit it had used ‘approximately 31,000 rounds of DU’ during the campaign (BBC News, 2000a). NATO denies any link between DU weapons and leukemia or other radiation illnesses. It does acknowledge that the burning clouds of vapor produced by DU weapons are radioactive, but claims these are short-lived and localized (Kirby, 2001).
However, radiation physicists at the University of Maryland submitted a report to the US Department of Energy in April 1999, concluding that ‘DU should never be used in a battlefield scenario, because of its hazards to health.’ British biologist Roger Coghill has argued that while DU in its inert form is relatively safe, it poses a serious threat when it hits a target. At this stage, ‘DU catches fire, and much of the round is turned into burning dust. The particles are extremely small, they can travel up to 300 kilometers. They are also beta-emitters, which are dangerous if inhaled.’ According to Coghill, ‘The particles can then lodge in the lungs, resisting the body’s attempts to flush them out, and can wreak havoc with the immune system’ (quoted in Kirby, 1999). Some 43 per cent of DU is also water-soluble, which means it can enter the bloodstream and move anywhere in the body (BBC News, 1999d). A recent study by Middlesex University examined urine samples from people in Bosnia and Kosovo, and found DU in every sample collected, suggesting ‘it was likely that the metal was present in the food chain’ (BBC News, 2001d).
The effects of DU weaponry were certainly not confined to Yugoslavia. By mid-June 1999, scientists in northern Greece reported 25 per cent increases in radiation levels whenever the wind blew from Kosovo. Bulgarian researchers also reported increases in radiation levels of as much as 800 per cent during and after the conflict (Kirby, 1999). As of 2001, there had been no attempts by NATO to clean up the debris from DU weapons. In January, a United Nations monitoring team found ‘parts of DU weapons lying about in villages and graveyards where they could easily be picked up’ (BBC News, 2001a).
Cluster bombs
Another evil during the air campaign was the use of cluster bombs, many of which caused civilian casualties. Cluster bombs have been around since the 1960s, and were widely used in Vietnam and Iraq. Unlike typical bombs, cluster bombs contain 150 to 250 submunitions or ‘bomblets’ that are designed to explode over a large area once the bomb has been dropped from an aircraft (Marcus, 2000). What makes cluster bombs extremely dangerous is their high dud ratio; about 10 per cent of bomblets do not explode on impact, leaving large amounts of unexploded ordnance. Cluster bombs can easily drift from a designated target to civilian areas if dropped from high altitude, and their brightly colored casings are often attractive to children. This has contributed to numerous child fatalities (BBC News, 2001c).
During the Gulf War, an estimated 62,000 cluster bombs were dropped on Iraq, leaving behind a minimum of 1.2 to 1.5 million unexploded bomblets (Human Rights Watch, 1999). More than 1,600 civilians (400 Iraqis and 1,200 Kuwaitis) were killed, and over 2,500 injured, in the first two years after the Gulf War from accidents involving submunitions (Human Rights Watch, 1999). During Operation Allied Force, cluster bombs were also a weapon of choice, and approximately 1,400 were dropped on Kosovo by British and US forces, resulting in the deaths of some 200 Kosovar civilians and two Nepalese Gurkha peacekeepers (Wood, 2000; BBC News, 1999a).
The KLA and regional instability
There is no doubt that the NATO campaign wrought horrific devastation. Whether or not its actions constitute war crimes as such, Yugoslavia’s infrastructure and economy will not soon recover from the pounding. Independent estimates indicate that the NATO campaign caused $30–40 billion in damage to the Yugoslav economy. The conflict also left Serbia awash with refugees. Before the campaign, the province was already struggling to absorb between 500,000 and 550,000 refugees from the Croatian and Bosnian conflicts. To these were added another 230,000, mostly Kosovar Serbs, during and after the campaign. By the end of 1999, Yugoslavia had the dubious distinction of supporting the largest refugee population of any country in Europe, while also being among the poorest (Bardos, 1999; Human Rights Watch, 2000b).
Added to these refugee problems were serious problems of instability in Kosovo itself. Another unintended consequence of Operation Allied Force was the massive increase of KLA power, coterminous with Milosevic’s ethnic cleansing activities. It appears that the rapid growth of the KLA by 1999 to a ‘30,000 strong force equipped with grenade launchers, anti-tank weapons, and AK47s’ was closely linked to Kosovars’ increasing involvement in the heroin trade in Switzerland, Germany, and Scandinavia. One intelligence source claimed in the Berliner Zeitung that some DM 900 million had reached Kosovo since 1997, half of it from illegal drugs money (Boyes and Wright, 1999).3 In the West, the KLA were first denounced as terrorists, but this position later changed, and Holbrooke was sent in to negotiate with several different KLA factions (Hyland, 1999: 45). After the bombing campaign ended in early June, the KLA agreed to disband, and a 3,000-member Kosovo Protection Corps was created. However, the real goal of the KPC, according to its leader Agim Ceku, was to retain some form of Kosovar military organisation while continuing to train Albanians in military techniques (Daalder and O’Hanlon, 2000: 178). Though they had been officially disbanded, many KLA units remained intact, and managed to hide the majority of their weaponry (Bardos, 1999).
Once the peace accord was signed, KFOR forces began slowly moving into the region. By September, 49,000 of the 50,000 force were moved in, and due to their efforts nearly all of the Albanian refugees were able to return home by the end of June. However, while this force was described as ‘creating a secure environment for refugees and internally displaced persons to the return to their homes,’ this was not true for all (Daalder and O’Hanlon, 2000: 176). As Yugoslav troops were withdrawn and NATO forces moved in, a dangerous power vacuum developed, leading inexorably to the rise of extremist factions which rapidly became the key power bases in the province (Bardos, 1999).
The first targets were Serbs and Romani, both of whom were subjected to revenge attacks. Human rights violations against Serbs, such as executions, abductions and intimidation, increased after the bombing. Romani left en masse after intimidation, killings, and house-burning by Kosovar militia groups. The OSCE blamed members of the KLA and the Kosovo Protection Corps for much of the damage (BBC News, 1999c). Half of all murders in the five months after the bombing were of Serbian civilians, even though Albanians now made up 95 per cent of the population, prompting the BBC to report: ‘Though on a much smaller scale, the revenge attacks on Kosovar Serbs have taken on the form of ethnic cleansing in reverse’ (BBC News, 1999b). By the end of the year, the International Red Cross estimated that some 247,000 Serbs and Romani had fled the province. Pristine’s Serbian population was reduced from 20,000 to 1,000 (Judah, 2000: 287, 289).4 Attacks on Serbian Orthodox religious sites also became commonplace, with claims that some eighty churches and monasteries were destroyed after June 1999 (Bardos, 1999). By 2000, international officials were arguing that the wave of violence against Serbs and other minorities was ‘orchestrated’ and ‘systematic’ (Human Rights Watch, 2000b).
This situation was not helped by the power struggles within the KLA. By the end of 1999, the KLA was splitting into several competing factions, and politically motivated assassinations began among rival groups for control of territory and resources (Bardos, 1999). By 2000, UN agencies reported that the rates of theft, blackmail, and kidnapping had risen 70 per cent (Bardos, 1999). In their 2000 report, Human Rights Watch argued: ‘Despite an ongoing security gap for minorities, political violence, and growing crime, with elements of former KLA and Kosovo Protection Corps clearly implicated, NATO and the UN remained unable or unwilling to confront the perpetrators in a decisive and consistent manner’ (Human Rights Watch, 2000b). While assistance to Kosovo was but a small fraction of the costs of waging war, Western governments were reluctant to donate the $25 million needed to bridge the financial gap for 1999, and would not even consider the $125 million gap for 2000. In the words of one reporter, the UN administration was being ‘starved of funds by the countries that had fought and won the war.’ By the end of 1999, there was ‘no justice, no police, no power, no water, not even new identity documents to replace those the Serbs had stolen in the spring.’ Bernard Kouchner rightly called it ‘a scandal’ (quoted in Shawcross, 2001: 366–7). Human Rights Watch (2000b) has tactfully called US policy a ‘laissez-faire approach.’
Regional instability
One of the West’s avowed aims in launching this campaign was to prevent regional instability. Yet, such instability became, insidiously and inexorably, a part of Operation Allied Force. Economically, both Romania and Bulgaria paid a heavy price for their support of the NATO air campaign. In Romania, President Emil Constantinescu hoped that by obediently granting NATO full access to Romanian air space, and joining the embargo against Yugoslavia, a ‘second Marshall plan’ would be forthcoming. It was not. Romania’s foreign debt of $2.8 billion was not written off, nor was there compensation for the estimated $1 billion of losses resulting from the conflict. Romanian shipping companies alone claimed losses of $1.3 million a month due to the blockage of the Danube river, formerly used to transport 67 per cent of its exports (Guruita, 1999).
In Bulgaria, the Ministry of Trade and Tourism estimated that nearly 168.7 million leva ($90.7 million) had been lost as a result of ‘forfeited profits, spoiled produce, and breached contracts.’ The blockage of the Danube resulted in transportation company losses of 67.9 million leva, prompting one leading politician to remark that Bulgaria was ‘seduced and left, or will be left, as a pregnant bride at the altar’ (quoted in Karadjov, 1999). Hungary, which had only been a NATO member for twelve days prior to Operation Allied Force, estimated that it too had lost hundreds of millions of dollars in trade because of the conflict (Hartung and Kaufman, 2000: 207). Yugoslavia’s neighbors, it seemed, have paid an unreasonably high price for their cooperation and compliance.
Sadly, the worst punishment was reserved for Macedonia. Here, Albanians comprised 23 per cent of the country’s entire population, and with the bombing campaign they became an increasingly vocal and militant minority (Bassett, 1999). Tens of thousands of refugees flooded into Macedonia during Operation Allied Force, with few resources to accommodate them. By 2000, radical elements within the KLA formed a National Liberation Army, and began to provoke violent insurrections in Macedonia (Bardos, 2001). In the wake of regional instability in 2001, this country, which had enjoyed eight years of relative peace, was forced to call on NATO for assistance, and within a few months 3,500 NATO MFOR (Macedonian Forces) were stationed throughout the country as part of Operation Essential Harvest (see Reuters, 2001a, 2001b, 2001c; also Jovanovski, 2001). While NATO (primarily British peacekeepers) did help to defuse the situation in Macedonia, the increased militancy and size of the KLA and its successors were almost certainly a legacy of the bombing campaign and Milosevic’s brutal reaction to it.
Assigning blame
There is little doubt that the United States bears primary responsibility for Operation Allied Force and its consequences. US allies had few precision-guided munitions in their arsenals, and some countries, like France, constantly questioned the legitimacy of almost every dual-use target. While Britain was arguably the US’s strongest ally, the British too did comparatively little. A Commons Defence Select Committee report in 2000 stated that Britain’s air forces were ‘badly equipped,’ and were responsible for fewer than 5 per cent of NATO sorties. ‘Britain’s major contribution to the campaign,’ the report claimed, ‘was to drop unguided 1,000 lb. cluster bombs,’ these being ‘of limited military value and questionable legitimacy’ (BBC News, 2000b).
For those on the ground, it was clear that the United States was in charge. NATO pilot Captain Martin de la Hoz argued that ‘All the missions that we flew, all and every one, were planned by US high military authorities. Even more, they were all planned in detail, including attacking planes, targets and types of ammunition that we would have to throw’ (quoted and discussed in Parenti, 2000: 122–3). Towards the end of the campaign, the possibility even arose that the United States would have continued in Kosovo without its NATO allies. As Sandy Berger declared in a speech on 2 June, there would be a victory in Kosovo, ‘in or outside NATO…. A consensus in NATO is valuable. But it is not [a] sine qua non. We want to move with NATO, but it can’t prevent us from moving’ (quoted in Daalder and O’Hanlon, 2000: 160). It was thus clear that the US was using NATO as an instrument of its own foreign policy, and was willing to do what it thought right irrespective of its allies.
Did the United States commit war crimes during Operation Allied Force? I believe not. But it did break numerous domestic and international conventions in its quest for ‘justice.’ The US and its NATO allies clearly violated the UN Charter, which prohibits nations from attacking other states for claimed violations of human rights. This is covered by Article 2(4), which prevents ‘threat or use of force against’ another state. There are only two exceptions: Article 51, which allows a nation to use force in ‘self defence if an armed attack occurs against’ it or an allied country; the Charter also authorizes the Security Council to employ force to counter threats to or breaches of international peace, but only with its explicit permission (Lobel and Ratner, 2000: 113). For its part, NATO claims that it based its attacks on several UN Security Council resolutions, in particular Resolution 1199 (September 1998) and Resolution 1203 (October 1998), both of which imposed strict limitations on Serbian military activities and troop deployments in Kosovo – limits ignored by the Milosevic regime. Daalder and O’Hanlon (2000: 102–3) argue, ‘the international legal basis for NATO’s action was admittedly ambiguous – but certainly not altogether lacking.’
While this ‘ambiguous’ basis seemed sufficient for NATO, this fact alone confers no real legitimacy. As Alexander Lykourezos has countered: ‘When the Security Council intends to sanction the use of force, it has always done so in its resolutions, in a clear and unequivocal fashion. The Security Council had no intention to authorize the use of force, since it was clear that such a resolution would raise vetoes from China and Russia who have been vocal in their opposition to the exercise of force against Yugoslavia…. NATO … unilaterally and unlawfully, decided to circumvent the UN and take matters into its own hands’ (Lykourezos, 1999; see Sections 3.1.2 and 3.2.1).5
Loebel and Ratner have also argued that bypassing the Security Council meant the United Nations was unable to open real negotiations with the Serbs: ‘It is possible that the settlement that ended the war would have been achieved without the use of force. The Security Council might have required a deletion of several of the most objectionable aspects of the so-called Rambouillet Agreement that mandated that other peaceful means to resolve the crisis be attempted’ (Lobel and Ratner, 2000: 114). However unlikely, the Council might have broken through Milosevic’s intransigence and brokered some sort of compromise. However, by forcing his hand, NATO insured that Milosevic would act ruthlessly to safeguard his own self-preservation.
The United States also violated NATO’s 1949 founding treaty, which obliges member nations to act only in accordance with the principles and procedures of the United Nations. Force is only authorized for mutual self-defense when a member state is under attack; NATO may only resort to force to defend a non-member state if the government of that state specifically requests NATO assistance. The exception to this rule is if force is authorized by the UN Security Council. In this case, it clearly was not (Lykourezos, 1999, Section 3.3.1; also discussed in Valasek, 2000: 50–51).
Even the United States Constitution was violated. Article 1, Section 8 obliges Congress to declare war before troops can be deployed against a sovereign state. This was not done, even though Undersecretary of State Thomas Pickering testified before the House Committee on International Relations that the bombing campaign was indeed an act of war. The US’s War Powers Act was also violated during the bombing. This requires the president to seek approval from Congress for any military action lasting over sixty days, something Clinton failed to do. No one, however, seemed to mind. The War Powers Resolution allows the president, as Commander in Chief of the armed forces, to deploy US troops, but only if one of three conditions prevails: there is a declaration of war; there is specific authorization from Congress; or there is a national emergency as a result of an attack on US soil, including its territories, possessions and armed forces.6 In the case of Kosovo, none of these conditions was fulfilled.
The most damning violations concern breaches of the 1949 Geneva Conventions, incidentally adopted as Article 2 (a) and (c) of the Statute for the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (Lykourezos, 1999). Protocol I (1977) is meant to afford general protection for civilians in times of war against hostile military operations. Combatants are required to take great care in discriminating between military and civilian targets, and they must take all necessary precautions to avoid or minimize harm to civilians. As Human Rights Watch argues, ‘Attacks which may be expected to cause incidental loss of life or injuries to civilians, or to cause damage to civilian objectives are indiscriminate if this harm to civilians is excessive in relation to the concrete and direct military advantage anticipated (Protocol I, article 57 (2))’ (Human Rights Watch, 2000a). By failing to take adequate steps to minimize civilian casualties, by their attacks on ambiguous ‘dual-use’ targets and their assault on civilian infrastructure, including passenger trains, hospitals, monuments and prisons, the United States and its allies did indeed violate Protocol I of the Geneva Conventions through indiscriminate attacks.
US ‘war crimes’?
During the bombing campaign, Yugoslavia in fact took the ten NATO countries to the International Court of Justice, claiming that Operation Allied Force was a violation of Yugoslavia’s sovereignty. In opening Yugoslavia’s case, Rodoljub Etinski accused NATO not just of committing ‘illegal acts,’ but also of committing crimes against peace and ‘the crime of genocide.’ In Greece, thousands of well-known personalities, including high court judges, signed on to a suit to indict NATO leaders for crimes against humanity at the ICTY (Wolf and Smith, 1999). Yugoslav authorities would buttress this with a two-volume ‘white book’ entitled NATO Crimes in Yugoslavia, complete with an array of lurid pictures (Judah, 2000: 259).
By November, two Canadian lawyers had filed three thick volumes of evidence against some 67 NATO leaders, with ICTY chief prosecutor Carla Del Ponte. The charges included causing billions of dollars in property damage and maiming and/or killing thousands of civilians. Two months later, Del Ponte made it clear that it was unlikely that any formal investigation into NATO wartime activities would take place. For many, this was hardly surprising, given that the ICTY was established in 1993 by the UN Security Council at the behest of the United States, and has been primarily supported, both financially and militarily, by the same country (Parenti, 2000: 127–8). In the end, it is doubtful that the United States will ever be brought to account for its actions in Kosovo. While a moratorium may someday be issued on DU weapons and cluster bombs, such moratoria are unlikely to lead to any charges against the United States. As Christopher Hitchens has argued in The Trial of Henry Kissinger, ‘The United States is the most generous in granting immunity to itself and partial immunity to its servants, and the most laggard in adhering to international treaties’ (Hitchens, 2001: 128).
While the United States broke a variety of domestic and international conventions, it is doubtful that this will result in legal repercussions. While the US should be brought to task for violating the Geneva Conventions, the other charges are more contentious. I would argue that there are a number of mitigating factors in favor of the United States and its NATO allies that make claims of NATO war crimes somewhat untenable. The first issue is Serbia’s own culpability in war crimes, and perhaps even genocide. Milosevic and his paramilitaries, not NATO, were to blame for the deaths of an estimated 10,000 Albanians during the campaign, and for the ethnic cleansing of 850,000 civilians. Serbian leaders have also been convicted of genocide. On 2 August 2001, the ICTY found Bosnian Serb General Radislav Krstic guilty of genocide, for his role in the execution of some 7,000 Bosnian Muslim men and boys near Srebrenica in July 1995 (Transitions Online, 2001b).
More recently, Milosevic himself was turned over to the Tribunal to stand trial for genocide in Bosnia. While Milosevic and his colleagues may well be guilty of such atrocities, it was no coincidence that on 27 May 1999, during the bombing campaign, Milosevic was indicted along with four senior colleagues. As William Shawcross reports (2001: 347), the Tribunal had long been demanding Allied intelligence intercepts, which had hitherto been withheld. Certainly, a cynical double game is evident here. NATO members were happy to ‘play ball’ with a ‘genocidal’ dictator when it suited their own ends. When he was no longer useful, he was abandoned. But nevertheless the fact remains that Milosevic’s machinations over the past ten years have resulted in hundreds of thousands of civilians either killed or turned into refugees.
Also, there were real crimes committed in Kosovo, and these should not be ignored. In June 2001, mass graves were uncovered around Yugoslavia: six near Belgrade, and others close to an army training site near Petrovo Selo, a village in eastern Serbia. Altogether, an estimated 1,000 bodies had been transported out of Kosovo and hidden during the war (Graham, 2001). In March 1999, according to the Serbian Crime Investigation Department, Milosevic ordered the Serbian interior minister to ‘eliminate all the traces that could lead to any evidence of crimes’ (Transitions Online, 2001a). He was also alleged to have ordered a cover-up of any graves ‘that could be a subject of interest to the Hague officials’ (Stojkovic, 2001). Milosevic’s own activities, combined with those of such paramilitary groups as the Tigers and White Eagles, prove that there was a real need for military intervention, even if Western claims of genocide later proved to be exaggerated.
A second issue concerns NATO’s humanitarian assistance and efforts to deal with the refugee problems. While perhaps too little, too late, NATO did try to mitigate the refugee crisis brought about by the bombing campaign. By early April, NATO responded to requests by the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, and began a relief operation for Albanian refugees. By the end of May, NATO had flown some 4,500 tons of food and water and 8,500 tons of medical supplies and other equipment to the refugee camps. This humanitarian relief prevented epidemics from breaking out in the camps and resulted in fewer lives lost (Daalder and O’Hanlon, 2000: 124–5). Also, NATO efforts to resettle Kosovar Albanians after the conflict were surprisingly effective, with 808,913 refugees of 848,100 returning by November 1999. Certainly, the revenge attacks and the ethnic cleansing of Serbs and Romani demonstrate reluctance and a certain cynicism after the fact, but it remains true that NATO succeeded in re-establishing peace for Kosovars, in what Tim Judah (2000: 286) has called ‘the quickest and biggest refugee return in modern history.’
A final point concerns the United Nations’ tacit approval of the campaign, even if it violated the UN Charter. When Russia introduced a draft UN resolution on 26 March 1999, backed by India, China, Belarus and Namibia and calling for an end to the bombing, Secretary General Kofi Annan refused to condemn NATO’s actions. Rather, he tacitly supported the organization, arguing that ‘there are times when the use of force may be legitimate in the pursuit of peace’ (quoted in Daalder and O’Hanlon, 2000: 127). In his keynote speech in September 1999, Annan would again justify Operation Allied Force, forcefully contending: ‘If, in those dark days and hours leading up to the genocide [in Rwanda], a coalition of states had been prepared to act in defence of the Tutsi population, but did not receive prompt Council authorization, should a coalition have stood aside and allowed a horror to unfold?’ (Wheeler, 2001: 114). The UN also played a key role in bringing about the ceasefire which ended the conflict, approving both a Chapter IV resolution recognising a peace accord, and implementation procedures for an open-ended KFOR mission under Security Council control (Daalder and O’Hanlon, 2000: 174–5).
One could certainly argue that the UN is a tool of the Western powers, and that the five permanent members of the Security Council hold the rest of the world in check. There is no doubt that the structure of the UN, and its funding methods, are imperfect and in need of reform.7 However, if one is to condemn the US based on UN conventions and articles, Annan’s tacit approval of the campaign, and his use of the offices of the UN to end the conflict, do demonstrate a degree of cooperation and good will between these two organizations – like it or not.
I also find myself in agreement with Nicholas Wheeler’s assessment: that while NATO should be brought to task for bypassing the Security Council, the Council, by its own inaction, equally undermined the legitimacy of the UN as a force for peace and security in the world. Three Security Council resolutions (1160, 1199, and 1203) were adopted recognizing human rights abuses in Kosovo. ‘Consequently,’ argues Wheeler, ‘having willed the ends of policy, the Security Council was failing in its duty by not willing the military means to implement the demands in the face of persistent non-compliance’ (Wheeler, 2001: 119). The international system is not perfect, and while one does not want to see an out-of-control United States wreaking havoc on the world stage, NATO is – rightly or wrongly – filling gaps in the UN’s international security framework. Rather than condemn it, we should applaud its goals, but continue to express concern (and outrage if need be) over its more objectionable methods.
Conclusion
The United States committed many abhorrent acts during Operation Allied Force, and bore a greater part of the responsibility for NATO’s activities in the campaign, some of which stood in violation of the Geneva Conventions. Nevertheless, there was a very real humanitarian catastrophe in Kosovo which the UN was unwilling to solve, due largely to Chinese and Russian objections. NATO spent billions of dollars attempting to defuse a conflict which had little strategic import for the United States. While the use of DU weapons and cluster bombs should be denounced, as well as the destruction of civilian infrastructure and the killing of civilians, the situation could have been much worse than it was. We can be thankful that the atrocities of the first Gulf War were not repeated in Kosovo and Yugoslavia as a whole. Clinton’s fire in 1999 – fortunately – did not mirror that ignited by George H.W. Bush nine years earlier.
References
Bardos, G. (2001). Country files: Yugoslavia: Annual report 2000: The end of the Milosevic regime. Transitions Online, 16 August. http://archive.tol.cz/frartic/yugar00.html.
——— (1999). Country files: Yugoslavia: Annual report 1999: War, intervention, and anarchy. Transitions Online. http://archive.tol.cz/countries/yugar99.html.
Bassett, R. (1999). Balkan endgame? Jane’s Defence Weekly, 31 March.
BBC News (2001a). Depleted uranium: EU concern grows. 6 January.
——— (2001b). NI Balkan vets offered health tests. 9 January.
——— (2001c). Call for cluster bomb ban. 8 August.
——— (2001d). Fresh fears over depleted uranium. 12 April.
——— (2001e). WHO studies depleted uranium in Iraq. 23 August.
——— (2000a). Nato reveals Kosovo depleted uranium use. 22 March.
——— (2000b). UK Kosovo role slammed: The contribution of air strikes was ‘at best marginal.’ 24 October.
——— (1999a). Nato bomb caused Gurkha deaths. 22 June.
——— (1999b). Q&A: Counting Kosovo’s dead. 12 November.
——— (1999c). Horrors of Kosovo revealed: Mass graves containing the bodies of Kosovo Albanians have been discovered. 6 December.
——— (1999d). Depleted uranium ban demanded. 17 December.
Biddle, S. (1996). Victory misunderstood: What the Gulf War tells us about the future of conflict. International Security 21, no. 2 (Fall): 142–3.
Black, I., and Borger, J. (1999). Serbs remain defiant as the missile attacks go on. The Guardian, 26 March.
Borger, J. (1999). Misjudging Milosevic. Guardian, 19 April.
Borger, J., and Taylor-Norton, R. (1999). Belgrade in week four of the war they thought would be over in four days. Guardian, 19 April.
Boyes, R., and Wright, E. (1999). Drugs money linked to the Kosovo rebels. The Times, 24 March.
Chomsky, N. (2000). Rogue states: The rule of force in world affairs. London: Pluto Press.
Clark, R. (1992). The fire this time: U.S. war crimes in the Gulf. New York: Thunder’s Mouth Press.
Crace, J. (1999). Fifty years and counting. Guardian Education, 20 April.
Daalder, I., and O’Hanlon, M. (2000). Winning ugly: NATO’s war to save Kosovo. Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press.
Dinmore, G. (1999). Federal republic at risk of splitting. Financial Times, 25 March.
Evans, M.(1999). CIA planners failed to check the phone book. The Times, 10 May.
Fisk, R. (1999). ‘Collateral damage’ lies dying in a shattered Belgrade hospital. Independent, 14 April.
Freedman, L. (1999). The future of international politics in the wake of Kosovo. Jane’s Defence Weekly, 21 July.
Gott, R. (1999). Stop the war. Nato should lose. Guardian, 10 April.
Graham, B. (2001). Mass grave trail leads to Milosevic. Sunday Times, 17 June.
Greenberg, R. (2000). U.S. policy in the Balkans. In M. Honey and T. Barry, eds, Global focus: U.S. foreign policy at the turn of the millennium. London: Palgrave Macmillan.
Guruita, B. (1999). The price of acquiescence. Transitions Online, 7 October. http://archive.tol.cz/oct99/theprice.html.
Hartung, W., and Kaufman, R. (2000). NATO expands east. In M. Honey et al., eds, Global Focus. London: Palgrave Macmillan.
Helm, T. (1999). Pilot knew he had hit train on bridge but fired again. Daily Telegraph, 14 April.
Hitchens, C. (2001). The trial of Henry Kissinger. London: Verso.
Holbrooke, R. (1998). To end a war. New York: Random House.
Human Rights Watch (2000a). Civilian deaths in the Nato air campaign. Human Rights Watch Reports 12, no. 1 (February). www.hrw.org/reports/2000/nato/.
——— (2000b). World report 2000: Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. www.hrw.org/wr2k/Eca-26.htm.
——— (1999). NATO’s use of cluster munitions in Yugoslavia. Human Rights Watch Backgrounder, 11 May. www.hrw.org/reports/1999/nato2/index.htm#TopOfPage.
Hyland, W. (1999). Clinton’s world: Remaking American foreign policy. London: Praeger.
Ignatieff, M. (2000). Virtual war: Kosovo and beyond. London: Vintage.
Jovanovski, V. (2001). Macedonia: NATO deploys. Transitions Online, 16 August. www.tol.cz.week.html.
Judah, T. (2000). Kosovo: War and revenge. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
Karadjov, C. (1999). Cashing in on cooperation. Transitions Online, 9 October. http://archive.tol.cz/oct99/cashing.html.
Kirby, A. (2001). Q&A: Depleted uranium weapons. BBC News, 4 January.
——— (1999). Depleted uranium ‘threatens Balkan cancer epidemic.’ BBC News, 30 July.
Kroeger, A. (2001). Depleted uranium: Bosnia tests start. BBC News, 25 January.
Lake, A. (2000). 6 nightmares: Real threats in a dangerous world and how Americans can meet them. Boston: Little, Brown.
Little, A. (2000). Behind the Kosovo crisis. BBC News, 12 March.
Lobel, J., and Ratner, M. (2000). Humanitarian intervention: A dangerous doctrine. In M. Honey et al., eds, Global Focus. London: Palgrave Macmillan.
Lykourezos, A. (1999). Before the prosecutor of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia: Complaint charging NATO’s political and military leaders and all responsible NATO personnel with grave breaches of the Geneva Convention of 1949 and violations of the laws and customs of war. Athens, 3 May. www.nato-warcrimes.gr/html/eng/readit.html#.
Marcus, J. (2000). Analysis: Why use cluster bombs? BBC News, 8 August.
Mason, B. (1999). Kosovo: The lessons and the winners. BBC News, 11 June.
Norton-Taylor, R. (1999). Weighing the military options. Guardian, 11 May.
O’Kane, M. (1999a). One man in the bullseye. Guardian, 10 April.
——— (1999b). Bitter view in eye of storm. Guardian, 20 April.
Parenti, M. (2000). To kill a nation: The attack on Yugoslavia. London: Verso.
Reuters (2001a). Macedonian peace plan announced. The Press, 14 August.
——— (2001b). Rebels agree to disarm to Nato. The Press, 16 August.
——— (2001c). Nato mulls wider Macedonia role. The Press, 20 August.
Shawcross, W. (2001). Deliver us from evil: Warlords and peacekeepers in a world of endless conflict. London: Bloomsbury.
Stojkovic, D. (2001). Unearthing the recent past. Transitions Online, 19 June. http://bal-kanreport.tol.cz/look/BRR/article.
Transitions Online (2001a). Sinking evidence. 28 May. http://balkanreport.tol.cz/look/BRR/article.
——— (2001b). Guilty of genocide. 7 August. http://balkanreport.tol.cz/look/BRR/article.
Valasek, T. (2000). Nato at 50. In M. Honey et al., eds, Global Focus. London: Palgrave Macmillan.
Vonnegut, K. (1974). Wampeters, Foma & Granfalloons: Opinions. New York: Dell.
Walker, M., et al. (1999). The moment a pilot had to decide. Guardian, 20 April.
Wheeler, N.J. (2001). Humanitarian intervention after Kosovo: Emergent norm, moral duty or the coming anarchy? International Affairs 77, no. 1: 113–28.
Wolf, J., and Smith, H. (1999). Yugoslavia takes Nato to court for genocide. Guardian, 11 May.
Wood, N. (2000). Kosovo mine expert criticises NATO. BBC News, 23 May.