I confess to being somewhat mystified by some of the latest developments in the ongoing war in K-M. In particular, why is His Excellency now preventing wannabe refugees from crossing the borders? A few possible explanations:
1) PR. Those border messes look awful for his side, especially that one at Blace on the border with Macedonia. I have seen some commentators pompously declaring that Macedonia should take all those people in, while at the same time seeing no problem with the US sending 20,000 of them to Gitmo so that they won't have to come to the precious mainland of US soil where they might (gasp!) actually stay. In any case, apparently Blace is now all cleared out and looking neat for the Orthodox Easter.
2) Can't win for trying. This is less clear, but I think that His Excellency may have realized that he actually cannot ultimately succeed without making things worse in the long run. Based on the numbers I have seen there were about 1.6 million ethnic Albanians in K-M with about 200,000 Serbs, or thereabouts. To really overcome his problem he would have needed to get a majority of the K-M population being Serb. Well, he has gotten possibly up to half the ethnic Albanians out. But even at that and even if he could get all the Serb refugees from Krajina, Slavonia, and Bosnia now in Serbia (300,000-400,000) to move to K-M, which is doubtful, the Serbs would still not be a majority. The easy clearing of big numbers is over (Pec, Pristina). To get enough Albanians out to guarantee a Serb majority, well, not so easy after all...
3) Hostages. This has been suggested and may be possible. But that suggests that he might really threaten to commit full blown genocide ("Look at me, I'm going to gun down several hundred thousand people in cold blood, if you don't.... "). Maybe, but I don't think so. One does not need that many people to stand in front of tanks firing at KLA holdouts. Plus, there are still several hundred thousand Albanians in K-M who could be used as hostages without slowing the outflow of refugees very much.
4) KLA. Most reports suggest that the KLA is nearly finished on the ground in K-M for now. But, the sudden increase in humongous refugee camps just over the borders, especially in Albania itself, offers the greatest possible breeding ground for the growth of an intensely radicalized KLA that will be undestroyable. After all, where did the PLO come from?
5) In the meantime, I really wonder what is happening with all those people turned back at the borders.... Yikes!
Further observations:
I think that of the ongoing cases that have been put forward, that of the impact of sanctions on Iraq looks the most plausible as an example of ongoing genocide (Rwanda is over, but was clearly also). The Turks are being pretty nasty to the Kurds, but I don't see them as at the level of genocide, yet, although they certainly got there with the Armenians back in 1915. It should give listmembers pause that the Iraqi sanctions are actually approved of by the UN.
I am really wondering what form the exit from this nightmare will take. I certainly hope there is no ground troop invasion as I see that as pure quagmire, another black wall or monument on the mall in Washington. His Excellency will not succeed in purging K-M totally of Albanians or even getting them down to a minority, short of a genocide/massacre that would justify a ground invasion to arrest him for war crimes, although clearly he has sharply reduced Albanian numbers and probably in the short run, activity by the KLA, although probably not in the long run. Just as US/NATO should have foreseen his reaction to bombing, so he should see the Albanian reaction to ethnic cleansing. Indeed, he apparently is now backtracking to what he should have done before, namely cut some kind of autonomy deal with Rugova.
Clearly any solution must involve some guarantee of the preservation of the rights of both the Albanian and the Serb Kosovars. I have noted that the Rambouillet Accords attempted to do that, although one might judge it as inappropriate. His Excellency's loudest objection to the Rambouillet Accords was due to the stationing of NATO troops. Fine. So, let us have some minor variation of them (autonomy with real guarantees for the Serb minority) with somebody else doing the enforcing. Russians and Ukrainians are involved in the peacekeeping in Bosnia-Herzegovina. Bring them or the UN in along with assorted NATO members, and make a deal. Barkley Rosser