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This article was first published in June 2010 on a website (www.crappytown.com) which disappeared in mid-2018. The links are to articles archived at The Wayback Machine.
Terrorism is a tactic usually resorted to by entities which feel they
lack other means of bringing about their goals. Terrorist groups feel
themselves too weak to battle militaries and so battle civilians
instead. States, however, may also find themselves unable to defeat a
military force and respond with a shift to targeting civilians. One such
example, of states battling civilians rather than a military, was
NATO's bombing [in 1990] of FR Yugoslavia in the course of the Kosovo War.
For its own political reasons NATO was unwilling to risk its forces
incurring any losses. For this reason it conducted all of its bombing
from heights above 5,000 metres, which was beyond the effective range of
most anti-aircraft systems in possession of Army of Yugoslavia (VJ).
Unwilling to descend below 5,000 metres, however, NATO was likewise
unable to degrade the military of its enemy. Of the some 550 VJ soldiers
and officers killed in the course of the bombing only a little over a
third were inflicted by NATO aircraft. The rest of the fatalities were
sustained in battles with the KLA.
These battles were relatively bloody, but did not affect the overall
Serbian strategic position. As soon as the bombing campaign commenced
the vast majority of KLA fighters withdrew from Kosovo. The remainder
was broken up into small bands that were without ability to coordinate
among themselves. Offensives launched from Albanian territory into
direction of Kosovo-Metohija by KLA fighters supported by Albanian
artillery and NATO aviation were stopped in their tracks by relatively
small forces that were not highly vulnerable to air attack.
Neither NATO attacks from the air nor the KLA attacks on the ground
proved capable of endangering VJ control of the province, or of
diminishing its strength. It was probably within NATO's capability to
damage the Serbian military from the air, but this would have entailed
risking significant casualties of its own. Unwilling to do what it would
take to battle the military of the defending country NATO turned to
battling its civilians.
It is possible to identify two methods by which NATO waged its one-sided
war on the civilians of Serbia. Firstly, it took steps to degrade their
quality of life and impose immediate hardships on the them. Hardships
that were becoming greater as the bombing dragged on, but which would be
ended quickly if the war was to end. Secondly, it threatened to
intensify and continue the bombing until the whole of Serbian economy
lay in ruins for the long term and took steps to convince Serbians it
was willing to act upon its threat. Both methods presumed destruction of
civilian targets. Both were employed for the purpose of coercing the
general population to pressure for termination of war on NATO's terms.
As such they were straightforward examples of terrorism.
In contrast to the near negligible effect the bombing had on the
military, the effect on civilians was considerable. Serbian population
found their quality of life degraded in a variety of ways. In the course
of the 78 day bombing campaign Belgrade lived through 146 air raid
alerts, for a combined duration of 774 hours - an average of 9 hours and
55 minutes per day. Schools had to be shut down, payments to retirees
were halved. Oil, sugar, washing soap, diapers, cigarettes and other
basic necessities became scarce. Traveling became difficult, trips that
would before take an hour or two could now take nine or ten. People had
trouble checking on their relations since telephone lines were being cut
in addition to power, at a time when they had every reason to worry for
their safety as "collateral damage" mounted. The bombing destroyed
fifty highway and railway bridges along with radio and television
installations and even heat plants. Attacks on electric power targets
produced mayor power disruptions, causing electrical blackouts and a
lack of running water in many cities, towns, and villages.
A study from Air Force Project - a "think tank" funded by the US government and managed by US Department of Defence - The Conflict over Kosovo: Why Milosevic Decided to Settle When He Did states:
"Attacks on Serbia's electric generating system caused particularly severe hardships, as the resulting power shutdowns often denied the public both electricity and water. While contending that the strikes on infrastructure targets had legitimate military-related purposes, NATO officials also acknowledged that the attacks were aimed in part at damaging the quality of life so that suffering citizens would start questioning the intransigence of their political leadership. Lieutenant General Short, the NATO air component commander, hoped that the distress of the Yugoslav public would undermine the support for authorities in Belgrade."With the reference to General Short, the then commander of NATO's air component the following statement of his is meant:
"If you wake up in the morning and you have no power to your house and no gas to your stove and the bridge you take to work is down and will be lying in the Danube for the next 20 years, I think you begin to ask, “Hey, Slobo, what’s this all about? How much more of this do we have to withstand?” And at some point, you make the transition from applauding Serb machismo against the world to thinking what your country is going to look like if this continues."At one point during the bombing NATO spokesman Jamie Shea likewise made it known:
"If President Milošević really wants all of his population to have water and electricity all he has to do is accept NATO's five conditions and we will stop this campaign."
In a butchery of logic NATO had designated civilian targets "dual-use" on the proposition that they held some utility for the military, but was bombing them for the effect their destruction would have on the civilians.
The attacks on civilian infrastructure visibly intensified in the last four weeks of bombing, with a view to piece by piece transform the country's infrastructure into rubble. It was an attempt to torment its populace and degrade its quality of life, to exact collective punishment for the purpose of coercion.
For every soldier it killed NATO slew about ten civilians. More than 2000 civilians were killed and at least 6000 injured. Simultaneously hospitals regularly struggled with power blackouts. Transportation of the injured was made difficult by scarcity of fuel, collapsed bridges and periodical air raid alerts.
NATO claimed it was doing everything it could to avoid killing civilians, at the same time it was killing two dozen a day and was doing its utmost to dehumanise them as "collateral damage". There is no doubt that NATO knew a certain number of civilian deaths would follow from its actions, and found that acceptable. In one instance, when planning for the strikes on Belgrade's Ušće tower, believing the tower would be felled, it estimated 250 civilians may be killed in the attack but went forward with it anyway.
It is likely NATO found a certain level of civilian casualties not just acceptable but also welcome, as a way to intensify its pressure on the Serbian population by making them fearful for the lives of their loved ones.
This is a reasonable hypothesis to put forth about an entity which employed the targeting of civilian infrastructure as the corner stone of its conduct of war and which openly stated it saw legitimate targets in radio-television workers (Radio-Television building bombing) and employees of the Socialist Party of Serbia (Ušće tower bombing).
NATO permitted an incident like the Grdelica train bombing to take place the details of which it then attempted to cover up and misrepresent. Here a crew of a US strike plane circled over a railway bridge waiting for a moment when the passenger train moving in its direction would be on it, to only then start its attack, ostensibly against the bridge. After the first attack which immobilised the train, the aircraft returned launching a repeat attack. NATO claimed the destruction of the train and the killing of twelve people and the wounding of sixteen was not intended by the crew. It produced a video tape allegedly showing the crew simply had no time to abort their attack, but which was quickly shown to have been crudely falsified by having been sped up 4.7 times.
A similar incident happened in Varvarin, a tiny provincial town in central Serbia where missiles were launched against a bridge during daylight on a church holiday and a market day while several people were crossing either by foot or by car. This attack killed three people, severely wounded four more and partially collapsed the bridge. The strike aircraft made an overpass striking the bridge once more four or five minutes later, after a great many people had rushed onto the ruins of the bridge to try to help the wounded, killing a further seven and wounding severely a further dozen people.
At this time Thomas Friedman, an opinion writer with good connections to the corridors of power and a shill for the US government was from the pages of the New York Times calling for the bombing to kill more civilians:
"Twelve days of surgical bombing was never going to turn Serbia around. Let's see what 12 weeks of less than surgical bombing does. Give war a chance."According to David Gibbs (First Do No Harm, 2009) Friedman at the time of the bombing was in his editorials likely speaking on behalf of elements within the Clinton administration.
Certainly if it was a hope of NATO that fear could be instilled in the civilian population then bombs killing civilians on buses, trains, on bridges, in hospitals, in retirement homes, in the marketplaces and in their homes would be welcome as they would help terrorize and pressure the populace further by demonstrating that as long as the war was going on they were everywhere less than safe.
Parallely Serbian economy, already diminished by the post-socialistic restructuring, the corruption that went along with it, the hyperinflation of the early nineties, and the economic sanctions of the 1990s now found itself under assault of an enemy that by the end of the conflict was flying over 650 sorties every night.
Almost the entire oil refining capacity of the country was destroyed, along with many factories employing directly 100,000 people and indirectly providing work for many more. Among them were factories producing textiles, cigarettes, shoes, medicines, home appliances, and fertilizer. The number of people out of work increased from an already high 850,000 to a staggering 2,050,000. Lack of fuel threatened agriculture as farmers agonised over getting sufficient quantities of fuel for the oncoming harvest. Power generating facilities and electric transmission towers were being destroyed in a systematic manner.
As a relatively well-developed country with substantial industry Serbia had plenty of targets to offer and much to lose by their destruction. Severity of the destruction already incurred and of potential future destruction was being magnified by the the imposed isolation of the sanctions regime. With only the meagre capital on hand within the country itself, and without ability to trade any economic capacity lost could only be rebuilt at a painstakingly slow pace. From The Conflict over Kosovo:
"According to some estimates, it was going to take Yugoslavia some 15 years just to recover to the economic level that existed prior to the start of the bombing."German General Klaus Naumann, a former Chief of Staff of the German army and the then Chairman of the NATO Military Committee inadvertently admitted that NATO was consciously holding Serbia's civilian economy hostage. On April 27th 1999 he voiced concern that there may be a flaw in NATO's strategy in assuming that Milošević was "reasonable" and "responsible" and would not let his country "be bombed into rubble".
NATO bombers were holding the Serbian people hostage threatening its future existence on a material level of a civilised people. In an attempt to compel the populace to press for capitulation NATO took steps to demonstrate its willingness to destroy the means of production that provided them jobs and which every people requires if it is to live a non-primitive lifestyle. As any other terrorists the NATO aggressors were labouring to create a situation where their victim would be convinced it was better off yielding than having the hostage taker carry out its threat.
Judgements pronounced on the effectiveness of NATO's strategy have varied. Conflict Over Kosovo of Air Force Project predictably finds that attacks on "dual-use" targets were effective. That through imposition of hardships on common citizens they affected the Serbian public opinion and created pressures for termination of war. A view which Barry Posen in The War for Kosovo: Serbia's Political-Military Strategy bluntly dismisses as there being no evidence for it. For Posen the decisive factor that led to the war's termination was instead the threat to visit damage upon Serbian economy of proportion that would be horrendous for the Serbian populace. Still differently, British general Michael Jackson, has stated it was rather Russian diplomacy and Russian pressure on Belgrade which had the decisive influence, rather than anything NATO did.
A pronouncement on the effectiveness of NATO's campaign of state terrorism against Serbians can perhaps be made by examining the terms under which the war was concluded. The terms put before Belgrade in February at Rambouillet and the agreement hammered out in Kumanovo in June were substantially different. The demands of NATO most unacceptable to Belgrade had been dropped. The final agreement was still unfavourable for Yugoslavia, however it was substantially less so.
Most crucially the Kumanovo agreement did not include the provision that the future status of Kosovo would be decided by a referendum to be held within three years, a provision which guaranteed a speedy detachment of Kosovo from Serbia with Belgrade's formal blessings. Also importantly, a provision granting NATO access to all of Yugoslavia - included at Rambouillet specifically to make a diplomatic settlement impossible and to make sure NATO would have the pretext to go to war - was scrapped. Furthermore the occupying force would at least in theory be a UN force, not a NATO force, and the UN Security Council resolution 1244 reaffirmed sovereignty of Yugoslavia in Kosovo. The June Military Technical Agreement was less favourable than Rambouillet in that it envisioned the withdrawal of all Serb forces, however this was offset by a provision ensuring the presence of Russian forces, additionally the 1244 resolution envisioned the eventual return of some Serbian forces.
If the terms offered at Ramboillet are understood as NATO's war aims it has to be concluded that NATO failed to achieve all of its objectives with which it went to war. It had been denied a way by which to sever Kosovo from Yugoslavia legally.
On the face of it the extent of the concessions made by Yugoslavia at Kumanovo were quite limited. It may be possible to argue that Milošević could have been persuaded to agree to similar terms even before the bombing, naturally if he thought NATO was intending to abide by them. This raises the question whether NATO gained anything by going to war and if NATO's campaign of terrorism was effective at extracting concessions at all.
However there is a catch in that the United States and its clique habitually disregard their end of any deal, which is something Milošević could be expected to understand. Not the least because the US and her allies had wasted no time in subverting the Dayton Agreement he had signed in 1995.
Since the only way it could win was by the use of terrorism however it would had been, morally speaking, better off losing.
The many articles by Marko Markanovic (on Serbia, Croatia, Russia, Ukraine, Western Interventionism, Libertarianism and History) are archived on the Wayback Machine. Links to them are given at the archived page Crappy Town, including What Worth Kosovo?
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