Where's the Evidence of Genocide of Kosovar Albanians?
Friday, October 29, 1999
LA Times
bYugoslavia: Uncertainties are immense, but body counts still don't show extermination plan.
Discussion follows below this article.
So, is there serious evidence of a Serbian campaign of genocide in Kosovo? It's an important issue because the NATO powers, fortified by a chorus from the liberal intelligentsia, flourished the charge of genocide as justification for bombing that destroyed much of Serbia's economy and killed about 2,000 civilians.
Whatever horrors they may have been planning, the Serbs were not engaged in genocidal activities in Kosovo before the bombing began. They were fighting a separatist movement, led by the Kosovo Liberation Army, and behaving with the brutality typical of security forces. One common estimate of the number of Kosovar Albanians killed in the year before the bombing is 2,500. With NATO's bombing came the flights and expulsions and charges that the Serbs were accelerating a genocidal plan; in some accounts, as many as 100,000 were already dead. An alternative assessment was that NATO's bombing was largely to blame for the expulsions and killings.
After the war was over, on June 25, President Clinton told a White House news conference that tens of thousands of people had been killed in Kosovo on Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic's orders. A week before came the statement from Geoff Hoon of the British Foreign Office that, according to reports, mostly from refugees, it appeared that about 10,000 Kosovar Albanians had been killed in more than 100 massacres.
Of course, the U.S. and British governments had an obvious motive in painting as horrifying a picture as possible of what the Serbs had been up to, since the bombing had come under increasingly fierce attack, with rifts in the NATO alliance.
The NATO powers had plenty of reasons to rush charges of genocide into the headlines. For one thing, it was becoming embarrassingly clear that the bombing had inflicted no significant damage on the Serbian army. All the more reason, therefore, to propose that the Serbs, civilians as well as soldiers, were collectively guilty of genocide and thus deserved everything they got.
Teams of forensic investigators from 15 nations, including a detachment from the FBI, have been at work since June and have examined about 150 of 400 sites of alleged mass murder.
There's still immense uncertainty, but at this point it's plain that there are not enough bodies to warrant the claim that the Serbs had a program of extermination. The FBI team has made two trips to Kosovo and investigated 30 sites containing nearly 200 bodies.
In early October, the Spanish newspaper El Pais reported what the Spanish forensic team had found in its appointed zone in northern Kosovo. The U.N. figures, said Perez Pujol, director of the Instituto Anatomico Forense de Cartagena, began with 44,000 dead, dropped to 22,000 and now stand at 11,000. He and his fellows were prepared to perform at least 2,000 autopsies in their zone. So far, they've found 187 corpses.
A colleague of Pujol, Juan Lopez Palafox, told El Pais that he had the impression that the Serbs had given families the option of leaving. If they refused or came back, they were killed. Like any murder of civilians, these were war crimes, just as any mass grave, whatever the number of bodies, indicates a massacre. But genocide?
One persistent story held that 700 Kosovars had been dumped in the Trepca lead and zinc mines. On Oct. 12, Kelly Moore, a spokeswoman for the International Criminal Tribunal for Yugoslavia, announced that the investigators had found absolutely nothing. There was a mass grave allegedly containing 350 bodies in Ljubenic that turned out to hold seven. In Pusto Selo, villagers said 106 had been killed by the Serbs, and NATO rushed out satellite photos of mass graves. Nothing to buttress that charge has yet been found. Another 82 Kosovars allegedly were killed in Kraljan. No bodies have been turned up.
Although surely by now investigators would have been pointed to all probable sites, it's conceivable that thousands of Kosovar corpses await discovery. As matters stand, though, the number of bodies turned up by the tribunal's teams is in the hundreds, not thousands, which tends to confirm the view of those who hold that NATO bombing provoked a wave of Serbian killings and expulsions, but that there was and is no hard evidence of a genocidal program.
Count another victory for the Big Lie. Meanwhile, the normally reliable Society for Endangered People in Germany says 90,000 Gypsies have been forced to flee since the Serbs left Kosovo, with the KLA conducting ethnic cleansing on a grand scale. But who cares about Gypsies?
Alexander Cockburn writes for the Nation and others
12:32 AM 10/31/99:
Tom,
I couldn't pass this unanswered.
I don't understand why you have strived to be an advocate for Serbs on Kosovan Genocide? What are you thinking? That there is a big conspiracy worldwide against Serbs? If that's is what you are thinking, let me tell you -as a Turk- that it is nothing as compared to the prejudice in western World against Turks. Mind you, I am not saying "Moslems". Thanks to the dominating cultural imperialism of western powers, and thanks to the stone age minded fundamentalist religion exploiters of Arabic countries, the prototype of a typical Moslem is drawn next to the early primates anyway.!
I am always in favor of peace. The war (if you can call hit-and-hide bombing a war!) USA did was not a solution to get rid of Milosevic, if that was the purpose in the first place. However, two mistakes don't make one right. Similarly, a mistake USA or its allies in NATO did does not make Milosevic a saint or just a victim. The whole world sees that the man is a butcher who gave way to other butchers from both sides.
Obviously, a biased person such as the one who wrote below wouldn't see any evidence even if you dip him into piles of it. Just as a reference, I would like him to consult people of all ethnic backgrounds (including and mostly Serbs) who fled Yugoslavia in the past 10 years.
Regards,
M
Dear M,
I don't "strive to be an advocate for Serbs on Kosovan Genocide." I am highly critical of US war-making policy that takes a morale high ground but keeps our troops out of harm way while be willing to rationalize 2,000 civilian deaths as "collateral damage." Actually, the one good thing that came out of this conflict was that the US for once took sides of an Islamic community in opposition to a Christian one. The Christian and Islamic communities will be in closer contact than ever and I was relieved that we didn't have another mindless example of Crusader mentality.
Regarding your other points, I basically agree with you. However, there was so much hype and injustice on all sides of this conflict and, in my opinion, inadequate scrutiny by Americans of American military actions that I'm willing to take an unpopular stand if only to get people to try to look more objectively at this mess. Please do not misunderstand that the pieces I send out are necessarily my own opinions but rather examples of what I think offer counter perspectives of US military propaganda. I get extremely uncomfortable when there is calls by any side for a "just war." There is no such thing in my opinion - only varying shades of gray and black.
Anyway, that unfortunate piece of real estate has witnessed unspeakable atrocities by done by all parties over time. I don't see the Serbs as being any better - or worse - than the Albanians. Both sides can look back justifiably into history point out monstrosities done by the other side - while conveniently having amnesia of what their own ethnicity has done at other times.
The point is taking ethnic sides - which I have refused to do - on this conflict based on a single point in time can be taking a stand on shifting ground. I don't believe you are actually taking sides either but perhaps you are concerned about the possibility of one side having apologists for barbaric behavior. I continue to advocate peace making and look for examples that debase war-making rationales- which of course includes defending the slaughter of civilians by the Serbs.
Finally, are you sure the writer below article was biased? Have you yourself been to Kosovo in recent months? I have not and I am not so confident in my opinions. Certainly I myself have not seen the piles of evidence but I have seen a lot of propaganda from all sides. Undeniably unspeakable justices were done but before any of us take the morale high ground, let's try to look for hard facts - no matter how justifiably outraged we may feel.
I hope this may answer your concerns.
Peace...Tom
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