2 sides to every tale of hatred
These days, coverage in the mainstream media of the Kosovo crisis has been extremely short on background, simplifying the Yugoslav conflict into good guys and bad guys. As each day of the air strikes continues, report after report of atrocities committed by Serbians against Kosovo Albanians claim newspaper front pages. It's easy to believe these tales of Serbian transgressions against Albanians are the whole story but it's just not that simple.
The New York Times, reporting on the conflict back in 1987, described how the Albanian population of Yugoslavia was pushing for a "Greater Albania" by carrying out violent acts against Serbs. This included attacks on Serb Orthodox churches, crop burning and well poisonings. Apparently, young Albanian men were told by their elders to rape Serbian women. Fadil Hoxha, the leading politician of the ethnic Albanians at that time, stated so publicly and was promptly expelled from the Communist party.
By that time, Albanians made up 90% of the population in Kosovo.
Two years after this report, Milosevic, fearing Kosovo's secession, rescinded the region's autonomous status.
Soon afterwards, the Berlin Wall fell, and the Soviet Union ceased to exist. Tensions heated up between Bosnia, Croatia and Serbia. A horrible war raged among the three regions, exacerbated by each region's outside alliances (Croatia with Germany, Bosnia with the U.S. and Serbia with Russia).
In the end, the U.S.- brokered peace deal was signed in Dayton, Ohio. But conspicuously missing from the agreement was any resolution to the Kosovo conflict, which at that time had already been brewing for more than seven years.
The Kosovar Albanians continued to push for independence and possible union with Macedonian Albanians in hopes of forming a "Greater Albania." For several years they conducted peaceful demonstrations and acts of civil disobedience. The Serbs also responded in measured terms.
The conflict really began to escalate, however, when the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) began to wage a terrorist war against the Serbian government - this was in early 1998. The Serbian government responded with its own atrocious behavior.
The conflict continued to escalate and then NATO chose to intervene. What follows should be familiar to anyone who has been watching the news: NATO wanted to put ground troops (observers) in Kosovo and Milosevic refused. Then NATO bombed Serbia. And bombed and bombed.
The Albanians fled to Macedonia.
The point in all this is that, given the history of the situation, media reports have been distorted. The idea that NATO had to bomb Serbia to get Milosevic to stop brutalizing the Albanians is short-sighted. Both sides have been involved in violent behavior for many years. By choosing a side in this conflict, NATO has squelched any possible peaceful solution to this problem.
Had the issue been addressed at Dayton in the first place, of course, we might not be facing the disaster we are witnessing today.
Additionally, it is clear from recent reports that the NATO bombings have done nothing to stop Serb atrocities in Kosovo. To the contrary, we are now witnessing a full-scale meltdown in the Balkans, with hundreds of thousands of refugees spilling into neighboring areas. This was a clearly predictable outcome of the bombing, and one the U.S. leaders surely considered. By deciding to act anyway, it is easy to see how cynical this "humanitarian" mission really is. Clearly, bombing Serbia has more to do with increasing NATO's sphere of influence and testing U.S. weapons than it does with alleviating actual human suffering.
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