"Where Are Kosovo's Killing Fields?"

[Chris Burford]

At 12:58 18/10/99 EDT, you wrote:
>[I know many on the list receive Statfor's weekly bulletins, but I thought 
>I'd post their latest anyway since the war remains such a hot topic here.]
>
>STRATFOR.COM
>Global Intelligence Update
>Weekly Analysis October 18, 1999
>
>Where Are Kosovo's Killing Fields?

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