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When not incited by irresponsible leaders, the vast majority of people of any ethnic
background can live in practical everyday peaceful coexistence with their ethnic neighbours.
The ancient conflict in Kosovo flared up mainly because the foreign powers wanted
to have obedient governments in the Balkans, and because of the easy availability of arms.
Although I had seen it coming, I was still shocked when the bombing of Yugoslavia actually started on March 24, 1999. I thought that it was stupid to withdraw the Kosovo Verification Mission observers who did a very good job (http://cbcnews.cbc.ca/news/indepth/kosovo/ letters_maisonneuve.html) in trying to keep both sides in the Kosovo civil war apart. Kosovo should have been flooded with TV cameras instead of bombs. NATO bombing actually provided the cover for all kinds of extremists, for whose actions NATO must be held at least partially responsible because the bombing made them possible. NATO should not have taken sides in the Kosovo civil war. Both sides in this conflict were right from their own point of view, and at the same time both were wrong in trying to solve the centuries-old problem by escalating the violence and disregarding the interests of the other side. To achieve real long lasting peace, any foreign intervention into a local conflict should be strictly neutral. All imaginable efforts should be expended to achieve nonviolent solution of a conflict. All this was clear to me from the start. After listening to various debates on the CBC, and visiting the web sites listed below, I realized that we were witnessing not only bad decision making, but also deceit, disinformation, biased reporting, Serb demonization, need to test new "smart" arms in the field (every 10 years or so?), and plain old-fashion empire building (Paix Americana) by taking advantage of local conflicts. I think that I have experienced something similar to what is well described in Paul Miniato's personal odyssey through the information on the war against Yugoslavia. He has also assembled a huge list of the information sources on the Kosovo conflict. You should definitely visit his site, and/or at least some of the links listed at the end of this page. Canada, under the leadership of Foreign Minister Lloyd Axworthy, has recently been engaged in what seemed to be a very sincere effort to put in place a land-mine ban treaty. It seems to be very ironic and smells of hypocrisy that the very same Canadian government with the same Foreign Minister so uncritically, and without asking the Canadian citizens in advance, supported the bombing campaign against Yugoslavia in the course of which cluster bombs were used, that seem to be at least as dangerous as land mines because a certain percentage of their component bomblets remain unexploded on the ground, and so effectively act as land mines. Thus the use of the cluster bombs is definitely against the spirit, if not the letter, of the land-mine ban treaty that Canada and other NATO members signed. The Yugoslav army at least provided maps of the mine fields they planted, but nobody knows where the unexploded cluster bombs are located! And sure enough, two KFOR British soldiers already fell victim to a NATO cluster bomb. Did Canadian planes also use cluster bombs in their raids?
Will we ever hear the full truth about the Kosovo war? For example, in the
unofficial list of NATO losses (http://members.xoom.com/ _XOOM/ggromozeka/aviation/natodowntable.htm),
compiled from Serbian sources, also three Canadian planes are reported to be damaged or destroyed
(among the list of 380+ NATO planes, helicopters and unmanned aerial vehicles).
Is this just Serbian propaganda or is there any truth to it? Will we ever hear
what were the actual cost and losses of the bombing campaign? What about the cost
of the reconstruction of Kosovo and Serbia that awaits us? Not to speak about the
lost lives that nobody can restore. Would not a massive economic help to all
the undeveloped Balkan regions some ten years ago, which could have
prevented all this destruction, cost just a small fraction of all this? Will
the politicians take any lessons from this?
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Added March 11, 2001: Links from the Genocide site
- Tragedy of the war in pictures - note an item somewhere in the middle about unused bombs being dumped into the Adriatic Sea (my first thought was that perhaps some pilots preferred to dump the bombs into the sea rather than onto more civilians, but more likely these were all emergency jettisoned bombs) - there is a link to a rather detailed history of the Balkans at the end
- Paul Miniato's list of 2000 articles on Kosovo
- Diana Johnstone: Seeing Yugoslavia
Through a Dark Glass: Politics, Media, and the Ideology of Globalization
- Canadian
debate on the Kosovo war
- Canadian Paul Watson was writing from Pristina for Los Angeles Times during all the bombing
- Kosovo Online - a dialog of Serbs and Albanians
- Unofficial (Serbian reported) list of NATO losses
- Information pages of Kosovo Albanians
- War against Yugoslavia - information from Belgrade (INET)
- America News - NewsMax.com
- Slovakia helps Yugoslav children
- Problems of orthodox nuns
- June 16.: Agreement on KLA disarmement
- Of all former Yugoslavia, only Serbia remains multi-ethnic! - Human Rights Watch - Kosovo: flashes abuses by KLA 1998 1998 - 2 |
| The world would become a much better place if everybody made it a habit to try to imagine the state of mind of others, including their opponents and enemies. You don’t have to agree with them or condone their acts, just try to understand their motives. In order to avoid making decisions that could further escalate various conflicts. Let’s try to make the transition from the adversarial to a cooperative world. |