First of all - I hope Stratfor's skepticism is justified - that is, that the official estimate of 10,000 dead is an order of magnitude too high.
>Stratfor's analysis is superficial and uninformed. Bodies appear to
>have been: buried, exhumed, transported and reburied; or
>transported to Serbia; or cremated; or mixed with animal corpses
>and rubble and destroyed with explosives (most frequently in
>wells). Thus the "10000 claimed" will probably never be found.
>Although it is not possible to know exactly how many victims
>suffered this additional trauma, there is evidence of considerable
>organsiation of the disposal process, including the involvement of
>civilian enterprises such as waste disposal firms in the movement
>of bodies. Existing graves in cemeteries were also used to conceal
>corpses. Such an amount of preparation appears to reflect lessons
>learned from Bosnia and Croatia and a particularly disgusting
>contempt for human life.
I haven't heard this before. If true, it would be especially terrible.
>The piece speaks of a line between oppression and mass murder,
>yet admits that hundreds of people, if not thousands, may have
>been killed. What is a "large number of dead"? Why is that, or a
>reported second-hand comparison with Rwanda, relevant to a
>situation where, the evidence suggests, a State directed the full
>official and unofficial power of its various armed forces against
>civilians?
I don't agree. There are several reasons to figure out how many people died:
1) NATO seemed to think the number of dead was important, and used them when it argued that the Serbs were committing genocide. It goes to NATO's credibility, and indirectly of its motives.
2) The number of dead speaks to the nature of the Serbs intervention. If the death toll were an order of magnitude greater, say 100,000, this would be strong evidence of genocidal intent. A thousand dead, on the other hand, might be explained merely by skirmishes between the KLA and the Serb army, mixed in with random (and officially unsanctioned) killings on the part of overzealous troops.
3) To inform the affected relatives of anybody who is found dead, and of course to determine how they were killed (by the Serbs or something else).
4) To get at the truth
Certainly every person who is responsible for a murder should be held accountable, but in my mind, at least, the scale is important to judging Serbian motives and intent and in fully understanding what went on in Kosovo.
On a related point - where is the outrage over the ethnic Serbs who have been killed by the Albanians since the Serb army withdrew from Kosovo? According to this author, even a few dead people is too many (which I agree with) and presumably sufficient justification for NATO's military intervention (which I do not agree with). So where is the agitation for further military action against the KLA? Where is the demand for protection of the ethnic Serbs still living in Kosovo?
And finally, the Rwanda reference is taken out of context. The Stratfor article merely brought it up to support their point that mass murder is difficult to hide, but you wouldn't know that if you had only seen this response.
>It is, moreover, a fallacy to focus on the scale of killing as the
>being the primary determinant for intervention in Kosovo. Genocide,
>crimes against humanity and war crimes do not depend on
>numbers for their commission, nor on murder. There are villages in
>Kosovo where not a single structure has a roof, towns where whole
>suburbs have been demolished. Large areas of the province remain
>inaccessible as potential minefields. The water system was
>poisoned, fields spoiled. More than one million people were
>expelled in under twelve weeks. Perhaps, therefore, the analysis
>could more usefully have highlighted that mass murder appears to
>have been but one component of terror.
I agree on one thing. You don't need to kill somebody (or lots of sombodies) to be a war criminal. What the Serbs did during the period of NATO bombardment was despicable and those responsible deserve to be brought to justice.
However, most of the things this author talks about occurred AFTER the air war started, and therefore can not be a justification for the bombings.
Brett