Thanks to Carl for posting this. I think a serious debate after the war is important.
I had previously assumed that Stratfor was a semi-official agency. That is clearly not the case. Could you please sketch its identity, location, orientation, membership, funding - or some of this.
I think there are interesting parallels between the lack of bodies in East Timor and the lack of bodies in Kosovo.
It is true that NATO was greatly aided by reports from refugees of ruthless and arbitrary deaths. It is true that there appeared to be a considerable gender difference in the flood of expelees coming over the border raising anxiety about what had happened to the young men.
It is true that the fear of massacres rapidly became a major source of justification of the NATO attack.
Yet that was not the original justification of the NATO attack, which was based on the population of Kosovo being deprived of its right to self determination (within Yugoslavia - interestingly).
Clearly the points in the Stratfor analysis should be answered officially. This confusion and these crimes occurred because the Serb authorities had suspended normal democratic rights in Kosovo including freedom for journalists to circulate. They then used planned visits by journalists to present a one sided view of the picture.
The Stratfor analysis seems to be right that the reports of mass deaths derived mainly from refugee sources. Certainly some reports seemed very credible, about men being rounded up in the woods, herded into a house and grenades thrown in on them, then straw thrown in on top and set alight. I do not doubt that such incidents occurred.
It is not reasonable however to put down the magnitude of these reports to the KLA media machine. Certainly it could not have competed in size with that of NATO and the Serbs.
The point that the Stratfor analysis overlooks is the role of terror in state policy. Engels and Lenin discussed this frankly.
Clearly the volume of expelled people which surprised NATO, was only achieved through terror. Terror is a way of enforcing your will that may on balance actually reduce the number of deaths.
It seems likely that the worst of the atrocities occurred in the week after the NATO raids started. Nevertheless it is absolutely clear that the Yugoslav forces were going from village to village working systematically with fascist paramilitary gangs who enforced open terror.
This coupled with the murder of lawyers and the suspension of reporting was what characterised the Serb attack on the population of Albania as fascist.
The size of the expected deaths was probably influenced by the figure of 200,000 in Bosnia. Perhaps we can see with more perspective now that that size was partly the result of the interpenetration of communities and the uncertain outcome.
War and terror are means of resolving conflict. The entry into Kosovo of 30,000 Serb troops willing to work with fascist paramilitaries may have ironically been a factor ensuring that the death toll was much less.
I would in many ways have preferred the Americans to keep out of it. But as a European I do not find the forced expulsion of a million people on my continent acceptable. I do not regard it as by definition imperialist to try to stop that although there were many imperialist features in how NATO did it.
I do expect the EU to maintain economic sanctions on Serbia until it respects the democratic rights of all people of the former Yugoslavia, (including the right in the Yugoslav constitution for cities not to be expelled from the country).
I do not question the seriousness of the Stratfor report, but I would like more details about the organisation.
Chris Burford
London