Another article from the Globe and Mail, Canada's leading conservative newspaper.
Should NATO -- and Canada -- have gone
to war in Kosovo?
GORDON GIBSON
Tuesday, July 20, 1999
IN VANCOUVER -- Rollie Keith lives in Chilliwack, a town about an
hour's drive up the Fraser Valley from Vancouver. He was a 32-year
member of the Canadian Forces, serving in armoured units and the
Canadian Airborne. He retired when the last army base in this province,
CFB Chilliwack, was closed down a couple of years ago. Now if
British Columbia ever decides to secede, unlike Quebec we will have no
standing army to start with. This is one more example of discrimination
against the West -- but I digress.
Mr. Keith is a solid citizen. He holds a position on the regional health
board, and has run as a New Democrat in a couple of elections. His
military record will attest that he is no pacifist, and no stranger to the
necessary use of force. His recent experience as one of 64 Canadian
observers on the Kosovo observer group of the Organization for
Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) is our local contact with
the Kosovo tragedy. His account -- he has been making speeches on
the issue -- is a disturbing one.
In a telephone interview, Mr. Keith comes across as a straight-talking,
fair-minded man who does not say more than he knows. He was posted
to the observer group in January. The group had grown to 1,300
members (it was authorized to have 2,000) when it was pulled out on
March 20. NATO's bombs began to fall on March 24.
The question was, and remains: Was there a viable alternative to the
bombing?
Our former ambassador to Yugoslavia, James Bissett, has raised the
question, citing NATO figures that show that, up to March 24, only
about 2,000 people had died as a result of internal skirmishes, with few
external refugees and little property damage. By the end of the bombing,
tens of thousands were dead, 600,000 were internally displaced and
one million were refugees; there was tens of billions of dollars worth of
property damage and untold human misery. The Balkans have not been
stabilized. What's more, the credibility of the United Nations was
seriously damaged by NATO's ignoring of its rules, and relations with
Russia will not be the same for a generation.
Such a tragedy can be justified only if it is clear the bombing was the
only way to save human life on a major scale. Mr. Keith's witness says
otherwise.
As director of field services in an area close to Pristina, he travelled
extensively. He describes a situation that was nasty but sustainable, in
spite of constant destabilization attempts by the Kosovo Liberation
Army (KLA) -- the classic technique of revolutionaries everywhere.
An official Foreign Affairs chronology paints a different picture: It says
that deteriorating conditions for the observers required their withdrawal
for their own safety. NATO also claims that "ethnic cleansing" was
already under way. (How few users of that charged phrase remember
that it applies more impressively to the displacement of North American
Indians by Europeans?)
Which picture is correct?
"On March 20, general stability existed within Kosovo, " said Mr. Keith,
though tensions and a midscale insurrection continued. When he arrived,
"the bulk of the population had settled down after the previous year's
hostilities, but the KLA was building its strength in preparation for a
military solution, hopeful of NATO or Western military support."
He said there was "provocation from both belligerents. The KLA
initiated most terrorist acts, and the security forces countered with
harassment and intimidation and the employment of force. But during my
presence in Kosovo I did not witness, nor did I have knowledge or a
sense of, any directed state policy of so-called ethnic cleansing or other
mass humanitarian or human-rights abuses being applied prior to the
withdrawal of the international monitors on March 20."
The OSCE observers had small successes. The 700-person village of
Donje Grabovac had been depopulated by fighting. The observers
intervened, and "after our lengthy series of negotiations all participants
agreed not to provoke their opponents, and we were about to escort
former village delegations back to commence resettlement." Then came
the order to leave.
In common with many other observers, Mr. Keith believes that the
Rambouillet accords, whose rejection led to the bombing, were
impossible for any Yugoslav government to accept. (And of course
Belgrade improved on those terms in the eventual settlement -- though
at a huge cost in lives and property.) He thinks there had to have been a
better, if less macho, solution than war. His candidate would have been
an inducement to Belgrade (by lifting economic sanctions in exchange
for human-rights guarantees) to allow a much larger continuing observer
corps in Kosovo, backed up by UN troops.
These are crucial questions. If Mr. Keith's perspective is right, the
atrocities that followed the start of bombing would otherwise not have
happened.
A parliamentary committee should hold hearings on this. This is not an
indictment of the Canadian government; it was under terrible pressure.
But we must learn from this horror whatever we can.
E-mail: ggibson at bc-home.com
During the course of the war, I met two Canadians who were with the Kosovo Observer group of OSCE. They both categorically state that prior to the war,
there was no ethnic cleansing and that they were suprised by the low key response the Yugoslaves had against the KLA. One of them was a police officer, and still is I think, who argues that if the activities of the KLA were to happen in Canada, the response of the Canadian Armed Forces would have been far more devastating than that of the Yugoslave state against the KLA.
elias