David Gibbs Responds to Roger Lippman on his article "Was Kosovo the Good War"
September 21, 2009
I now will respond to Roger Lippman's critique of my earlier article. Readers who wish to find documentation for my points here can consult Chapter 7 of my recently published book, First Do No Harm: Humanitarian Intervention and the Destruction of Yugoslavia; or they can contact me directly, dgibbs@arizona.edu.
The main point of my article was that the 1999 NATO war against Serbia did not alleviate the humanitarian emergency in Kosovo, but served mainly to exacerbate it. On this issue, the evidence is straightforward and unambiguous: The intensity of Serb-perpetrated acts of killing, ethnic cleansing, and other atrocities, directed against Kosovar Albanians, all increased dramatically after the onset of the NATO bombing campaign, which began in March 1999.
Let us revisit the chronology: On March 19, 1999 the international observers in Kosovo began to withdraw, a sure sign that NATO bombing was immanent. The next day, March 20, the Serbs began an offensive, producing ugly atrocities. On March 24, the actual NATO bombing of Serbia began, and Serb attacks increased. During the course of the 10-week bombing campaign, some 10,000 Albanians had been killed and 850,000 had been expelled from the country, a toll that was many times higher than the previous toll of victims, prior to the bombing. The huge augmentation of Serb atrocities corresponds closely with the onset of bombing. These basic facts are generally accepted by all studies of the NATO war -- and they constitute a strong indictment of the war's status as a humanitarian intervention.
It is of course true that Serb forces bear the primary moral responsibility for creating this calamity. But these facts do not exonerate NATO commanders for their role in recklessly creating a situation that virtually assured intensified atrocities. The title of my book "First Do No Harm" was a reference to the needless destruction of human life that resulted from this and other purported "humanitarian" interventions.
Defenders of the 1999 NATO war have always found these facts to be problematic for their case, and argue that the spike in violence had been planned in advance, as part of a Serb master plan to ethnically cleanse the province; and that, crucially, these augmented atrocities would have occurred even in the absence of NATO bombing. The problem here is quite simple: To date, there is no evidence of any Serb master plan to engage in a generalized expulsion of the Albanians, or that such expulsion would have occurred even if NATO had not bombed. Mr. Lippman too implies the existence of such a Serb plan, but he supplies no evidence.
At one point, Lippman suggests that Milošević also had a plan to exterminate the Albanians en masse, and he cites court statements by General Klaus Naumann, when Naumann testified as a prosecution witness, against Milošević. In this case Lippman is partly correct: Naumann did make such claims. I should add that a similar testimony was given by Wesley Clark, who recounted a conversation with Milošević, in which Milošević supposedly said that he would solve the Albanian uprising by "killing them all" -- presumably through a generalized extermination of the Albanians.
The existence of such a Serb extermination plan seems very doubtful, however, as I have shown in my book, from which I quote (p. 298):
These [Naumann-Clark] claims are contradicted by the known record of events. In fact the Serbs never attempted a plan of mass extermination, even when they had the opportunity to do so. It is true that the Serbs committed selective atrocities, resulting in many deaths, but there was nothing that could be termed "killing them all." Even during the 1999 air war with NATO -- when Serb atrocities reached horrific levels -- the main technique was not mass murder (as implied by Clark), but mass expulsion.
On this point, Mr. Lippman's position is self-contradictory: On the one hand, Lippman endorses the idea that the Serbs had a longstanding plan to expel all the Albanians. On the other hand, he suggests that the Serbs also had a plan to kill all the Albanians. Surely, both theories cannot be true.
Another point of contention concerns Serb behavior prior to the bombing. In my article, I claimed that Milošević was seeking a diplomatic solution to the Kosovo crisis, and was open to a compromise settlement. I noted for example that the Serbs implemented the October 1998 cease fire arranged by Richard Holbrooke; and that the breakdown of the Holbrooke agreement was caused mostly by Albanian provocations, not Serb ones. Mr. Lippman however disputes my account.
In fact, my claims are well documented: Serb compliance with the Holbrooke agreement has been confirmed by General Naumann, the German officer cited previously, who was actively involved in the diplomacy of the Holbrooke agreement. As a prosecution witness at the Milošević trial, Gen. Naumann stated that "the Yugoslav authorities honored the [Holbrooke] agreement." Naumann's views are supported by the Independent International Commission on Kosovo (IICK), which also confirms that the Serbs implemented the terms of the agreement. Note that Gen. Naumann and the IICK both supported the 1999 NATO war against Serbia.
The Kosovo Liberation Army used the Serb restraint as an opportunity to launch a new offensive, as noted in an interview with General Naumann, which appeared in a BBC documentary:
BBC: "We've obtained confidential minutes of the North Atlantic Council or NAC, NATO's governing body. The talk was of the KLA as the ‘main initiator of the violence ... It launched what appears to be a deliberate campaign of provocation [against the Serbs].' This is how William Walker [head of the Kosovo Verification Mission] himself reported the situation then, in private" (emphasis added).
Naumann: "Ambassador Walker stated in the NAC that the majority of violations [of the Holbrooke agreement] was caused by the KLA."
Thus, the record of evidence is once again clear that it was the Albanians, not the Serbs who initially caused the collapse of the Holbrooke agreement.
These KLA attacks led to a Serb counter-offensive. In his critique, Lippman cites numerous Serb attacks, which were part of this counter-offensive and which violated the Holbrooke agreement. What Lippman neglects to mention, however, is that the Serb violations occurred after the Albanians launched their attacks.
Another indicator that the Serbs were seeking a diplomatic solution was their behavior during the February 1999 Rambouillet peace conference. According to a wide range of sources, the Serbs accepted the main political demands that were placed upon them by the Western powers that directed the conference. This point is acknowledged by Madeleine Albright; Albright's press secretary, James Rubin; and Marc Weller, who served as advisor to the Albanian delegation at the conference.
Lippman seems unhappy with the above facts, but it is difficult to see why. Does he believe that Albright, Rubin, and Weller are lying in this case? Given their hostility toward the Serbs, why would they lie about this?
Despite the cooperative Serb attitude, the Rambouillet conference broke down by late February, and no peace agreement was achieved. The cause of the breakdown was a new Western proposal, brought forth toward the end of the conference, in a section known as the Military Annex or "Annex B." We now know that this Annex called for an extended NATO military occupation, designed to supervise implementation of the peace accord, which would extend not only to Kosovo -- but to all of Serbia as well. It was shortly after Annex B appeared that the Serbs lost all interest in the negotiations.
Mr. Lippman cites repeated examples of Serb belligerence at the conference; but he neglects to mention that these occurred after the advent of Annex B, not before.
As to Western motives in presenting Annex B, we now have testimony from Lord John Gilbert, who was the number two figure at the British Ministry of Defense: "The terms put to Milosevic at Rambouillet were absolutely intolerable. How could he possibly accept them? It was quite deliberate [emphasis added]." Stated simply, the Serbs had good reasons to be suspicious of Western motives at Rambouillet, a point that Mr. Lippman once again neglects to mention.
With regard to the internal aspects of the war, my article argued that both the Serbs and the Albanians committed ugly atrocities. Mr. Lippman is offended by this point, specifically with respect to the Albanian-directed atrocities.
In response to this criticism, let us consider the facts: Key figures in the British government, including Tony Blair himself stated that the KLA were no better than the Serbs. The British Defense Minister George Robertson testified that up until January 1999, the KLA had caused more violence than the Yugoslav/Serb forces. That the KLA used terrorist tactics has been repeatedly acknowledged by Western governments, including at one point the USA. The KLA's use of terror was even conceded by a key prosecution witness at the Milosevic trial, Paddy Ashdown.
Mr. Lippman is clearly displeased with my sources, but he does not challenge their credibility. Surely, Blair, Robertson, and Ashdown were not Serb apologists; they were quite the opposite. By any reasonable standard, these must count as very credible sources.
At various points, Lippman directly challenges my facts. He claims that "Gibbs uses numbers for civilians killed that are not consistent with those of informed sources." My response: I obtained these numbers from BBC correspondent Tim Judah, from his book Kosovo: War and Revenge, a perfectly respectable reference work published by Yale University Press.
Lippman nevertheless challenges my figures regarding the number of Albanian civilians killed, and he cites an article from the London Observer to support his claim. This is a factual error on Lippman's part. I checked the Observer article he cites, and it clearly does not support his claims regarding civilian death tolls in Kosovo. [endnote 1] At another point, Lippman challenges my assertion that the KLA established ties to Al Qaeda. He claims that this is a "slur," without foundation, either in my Tikkun article or in my book. In fact, my book cited a Wall Street Journal article as the source regarding Al Qaeda's role in Kosovo. [2]
Finally, Lippman accuses me of being a pro-Serb propagandist: "Gibbs is merely replicating the Islamophobic propaganda that emanates from Serbian nationalist circles... [Gibbs] seems determined to blame anyone but the Serbian aggressors." There is nothing like this in any of my writings. And as noted, many of the key sources that I quote are anti-Serb in their political leanings.
Overall, I find Mr. Lippman's position on Kosovo a disturbing one. He seems intent on condemning only Serb-perpetrated atrocities, while he denies or dismisses all evidence of KLA atrocities against Serbs. Even the hundreds of thousands of Serbs and Roma who were ethnically cleansed after the KLA victory in 1999 -- crimes that were well documented and widely reported -- elicit no interest on his part. When I check Lippman's web site, Balkan Witness, I once again see this ethnic one-sidedness, on an even larger scale. Lippman's position is not a human rights position in any meaningful sense of that term. It is merely one of ethnic partisanship.
Endnotes:
[1] "Kosovo: The Untold Story," London Observer, July 18, 1999. The article notes that the Serbs had launched "a furious campaign against the KLA and ethnic Albanian civilians which had been raging since the summer and had killed more than 2,000" [emphasis added]. Lippman cites this to support his contention that the Serbs had killed between 2,000 and 3,000 Albanian civilians.
[2] Marcia Christoff Kurop, "European Jihads: Al Qaeda's Balkan Links," Wall Street Journal [European edition], November 1, 2001.
