-- begin forwarded message: -- Date: Tue, 4 May 1999 12:06:46 +0900 From: Hendrik To: Multiple recipients of NETSOURCE-L <netsource-l@mail.think.service> Subject: [NS] FWD: The "Humanitarian" war Edited and reposted Originally posted by Caspar Davis <prana@coastnet.SPAMTRAP.com> on April 1 -- quoted message: -- From: Karl Waldron <lakota@clara.co.SPAMTRAP.uk> Subject: The "Humanitarian" war Date: Monday, 29 March, 1999 6:40 PM One wonders what has happened to the western governments' intelligence (in both senses). It is clear that Milosevic could not have sold the west's position at Rambouillet to his people and survived as President. He has long proved that this survival is sole his raison d'etre so the air-war became inevitable once the Kosovars signed up. There is evidence that this scenario was put to the radicals in the KLA by the moderates in order to bring the former "on-side". The error was thus in trying to impose rather than mediate a solution. What we have now is a potential - and wholly forseeable - disaster. It seems pretty certain that NATO will not (and cannot) commit ground troops against a hostile force. The upcoming US election will see to that. Yet there will be pogroms, and rumours of pogroms, which cannot be controlled from the air. The "war" in Kosovo - the one on the ground rather than the one in the air - will be prosecuted by Serb irregulars - veterans of terror - who will hold the urban areas and will prove to be brutal against ethnic Albanians. The KLA are likely to hold the countryside and will be equally brutal against the Serbs. Such 'troops' don't need tanks. All they need is a gun, a can of petrol and a box of matches. There is a paradigm shift as to what is acceptable. Every half-baked bitter and drunken thug with a shotgun, a pistol or a knife 'joins up'. In 1991, I covered the flight of the Kurds from Iraqi Kurdistan to Iran for which resulted in a million Kurds living under canvas. Yesterday, the UNHCR and International Red Cross flew the tents to Macedonia. Diplomats are not particularly creative. I'm sure the "Safe Havens" idea from Kurdistan will be resurrected. Once again we will start drawing the ethnic maps. If Milosevic then signs on a personal basis as guarantor to a partial Rambouillet for a limited area, what price Mr. Clinton's threat of war-crime charges? The west probably has to maintain Milosovic in power as the war has so enervated the liberal opposition that the best bet for a successor in the newly radicalised Yugoslavia might prove to be the (even more) arch-nationalist thug (and Vice President) Seselj. Thus by bombing we've alienated and radicalised the Yugoslav people, virtually destroyed the Yugoslav opposition and given the extreme nationalists an excuse to neuter the independent media; we've lost all our independent observers and what little rule of law, and probable common-decency survived to permit an admittedly imperfect and partial peace in Kosovo has gone in favour of "law of the jungle justice" and recrimination; we've displaced - at least temporarily - 500,000 people now, potentially two million in the coming weeks; we've created a sore in a notoriously unstable region which will probably suppurate for generations. We've secured Milosevic another 10 years. And we've spent millions doing it. The only positive aspect is that, thus far, it has not "cost the bones" of any NATO airman. Unfortunately, the bodies of the Kosovars and Yugoslavians are already piled high. We are doing this for humanitarian purposes. In the tradition of Henry Kissinger, Messrs. Clinton and Blair deserve the Nobel Peace Prize. -- ----------------------------------------------------------------- Subscription information, appended by the listserver: * if you want to leave this list please send an empty message to <leave-netsource-list@hiz.bc.ca> * if you know someone who wants to join this list, please tell them to send an empty message to <join-netsource-list@hiz.bc.ca> ----------------------------------------------------------------- -- end forwarded message --