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| November 11, 1999 |
| November 11, 1999 |
EDITOR'S NOTE: Our European Security analyst, Tomas Valasek, recently spent 14 days traveling in Kosovo, Yugoslavia, Bulgaria and Macedonia. "All Quiet On the Balkan Front?" is the first in a series of reports he wrote during his visit. See the photo gallery which accompanies this report.
All Quiet On the Balkan Front?
By Tomas Valasek, Research Analyst, tvalasek@cdi.org
"Traffic is the worst thing. I'm more worried about getting into an accident than being shot at," says Sergeant Brewer sitting behind the wheel of a Military Police Humvee. We are in Kosovo, near Gniljane, about 10 miles south of Camp Bondsteel which houses the bulk of the 7,000 U.S. personnel in the international Kosovo Force, or KFOR.
The camp is miles behind us as the two-car detachment of 127th squadron, 793rd Military Police Battalion from Bamberg, Germany heads toward its first checkpoint of the day. Local drivers - Kosovar Albanians as well as scores of white four-wheel drive vehicles belonging to international relief organizations - drive with reckless abandon. Mistimed passing routinely forces cars to squeeze three-wide on a narrow, two-lane country road where speeds exceed 70 miles per hour. No wonder that car accidents are the prime cause of casualties among peacekeepers. The KFOR mission has had its share of losses, including a highly-publicized incident in which a Scandinavian KFOR vehicle struck a car carrying a Macedonian cabinet minister, killing him instantly.
The most common sight along the road is house construction. Kosovo is being rebuilt at an astonishing rate. What damaged houses are not yet under repair already have piles of new brick waiting in front yards for the crew to arrive. There's plenty of work; the war and its aftermath left at least a handful of houses in virtually every village without roofs or parts of the wall, with charred remains of furniture strewn all over the neighborhood. It is impossible to say whether the damage was caused by Serbian police, NATO bombs, or Kosovo Albanians looting Serbian houses in revenge. "When we first deployed [in June], houses were being burned every day," says Sgt. Brewer. "At 2100, as if on command, the roofs would light up. And if the roof did not collapse that night, they [Kosovo Albanians] would come back and finish the job next day."
The fires have nearly stopped in recent days; none were to occur on our watch. The new KFOR commander, German general Klaus Reinhard, declared proudly when he assumed the post in October that the level of violence in Kosovo is now below that of Washington DC, Pretoria or Moscow. But the silence in Kosovo deceives. Fewer houses are being burned not only because of expanding police presence but also because few Serbs remain in the province. Most of those who stayed behind live in fear in isolated enclaves heavily guarded by NATO.
A day earlier we visited the monastery in Gracanica, currently the seat of Bishop Artemije, the head of the Serbian Orthodox Church in Kosovo. The road to the village was barred by a heavy armored personnel carrier; the first of two KFOR checkpoints. Our cab driver, an Albanian from Pristina, refused to enter the Serbian enclave, leaving us to walk the last mile to the monastery. Patrons at the "1389" pub, named for the year Serbia lost its independence to the Ottoman Turks, nurse their beer in silence - a stark contrast to the jubilant atmosphere that reigns among Albanians in Pristina each evening. The door to the Bishop's seat, a beautiful medieval complex with a church, monastery, and office buildings, is guarded by Swedish KFOR soldiers in battle attire, flack jackets and heavy machine guns. The courtyard is full of armored personnel vehicles. "We are lucky - this is one of the safest areas for the Serbs in Kosovo today," said Father Sava, whose relentless e-mail campaign against the NATO air war won him the nickname "Cybermonk" in the Western media. The walls of the monastery are adorned with pictures of Orthodox churches in Kosovo destroyed by the Kosovo Albanians since the end of the war.
The violence is not limited to attacks against Serbs. Our two-car Military Police convoy pulls up at a large family house. "This used to belong to an Albanian, a sympathizer with the Serbian government," explains Sergeant Brewer. The meaning of his words is not immediately clear; the house looks untouched, even if unfinished, from the outside. But a look in the basement shows a different picture -- a powerful explosion obliterated most interior walls as well as chunks of support pillars. That the house above it is still standing seems a miracle. "Three KLA [Kosovo Liberation Army] guys came here four days ago to blow it up," says Sgt. Brewer. "They had an anti-tank mine and some plastic explosives to set the mine off. But something went wrong and the bomb went off in their hands." Blood stains cover the floor and the walls are peppered with pieces of shrapnel. "One of the guys was a local KLA leader. There was a huge funeral procession for him the other day."
A few miles down the road our Humvees lurch to a halt again - time to set up a checkpoint. We are only a few miles north of the border with Macedonia, amidst sites of some of the heaviest fighting during the war. The place is quiet now save for the chirping of the nearby creek and the humming of wind in the trees. The autumn foliage flashes a breath-taking variety of colors; rural Kosovo is a magnificent sight. But the war left its marks - maps issued to the troops show landscape littered with vaguely-marked minefields and unexploded cluster bomb ordinance. We resist the urge to venture in the woods and stick close to our cars.
A car rounds a tight curve and drives straight in to the hands of our patrol lurking on the other end. Our Albanian interpreter, dressed in U.S. Army fatigues, translates Sgt. Brewer's order for the occupants to step out of the car. The rest of the patrol searches the seats and the trunk for weapons. The car has no license plates - there are none to be had. The Albanians stripped their cars of the hated Yugoslav plates and the United Nations Interim Administration in Kosovo (UNMIK), the designated authority in the province, has yet to come up with a replacement. The same goes for passports or personal identification cards. Half the vehicles sport German license plates. Their owners swear the cars are gifts from their relatives, part of the over 300,000 strong Albanian diaspora in Germany, Switzerland and the United States. But Kosovo has also gained a reputation as a haven for stolen cars. The number of unmarked luxury BMWs, Mercedes and Jaguars in Kosovo attest either to the prosperity of the Kosovar emigrants or the ingenuity of its car thieves.
We find no weapons during our patrol. A man in farmer's attire with a card identifying him as a policeman in the shadow government set up by the KLA arouses the interest of Sgt. Brewer, who calls the Military Intelligence headquarters back at Camp Bondsteel. After a long three-way conversation with the suspect he released, minus his dubious identification card. There are more car searches but nothing to report and after two hours on the checkpoint we head back to Camp Bondsteel.
The view of the camp as it emerges on the horizon is staggering It is perched over two hilltops with rows of tents and SEA-Huts spanning the valley between the hills. A wide security perimeter with barb wire, guard towers and flood lights tells of security worries in the province that until recently was a battlefield. A tiny airstrip beyond the main entrance is too short for fixed-wing aircraft but houses a number of UH-60 Blackhawk utility helicopters and AH-64 Apache gunships.
Everybody gets out of the car as our convoy stops at the main gate. The soldiers walk straight to a large open sandbag, eject the ammunition magazines from their rifles, aim at the sand and pull the trigger to make sure the chamber is cleared as well. Camp regulations call for all military personnel to carry their weapons even inside the camp but all ammunition is unloaded to prevent deadly accidents. We part with our guides at the tent housing the headquarters of the 793d Military Police Battalion - it's the end of the road for us but the squadron heads back out for the second part of their ten hour shift. "With preparations and debriefings we figure we work about 14 hour shifts every day of the week," say Sgt. Brewer, adding "but nobody complains. What else is there to do?" The camp has a gym and a tent for film viewing but there is little else by the way of recreation and no alcohol.
The two Humvees head back out to what promises to be another quiet night in Kosovo. Quieter than during the war perhaps, but by no means peaceful.
When Numbers Fall Short
Colonel Daniel Smith, USA (Ret.), Chief of Research, dsmith@cdi.org
Almost from the moment the bombs stopped falling in Kosovo the media have been questioning the figures of the "massacred" as well as the claims of widespread and systematic destruction of homes and villages by the Serb forces. Estimates of the carnage from both the State and Defense Departments during the bombing campaign had ranged as high as 100,000 ethnic Albanians killed, largely on the basis of extrapolating from refugee debriefings and, most likely, figures from the Kosovo Liberation Army. The latest confirmed number of dead is 2,108 recovered from 195 of 529 grave sites, and the war crimes prosecutor told the U.N. last this week that her office has reports of 11,334 civilians killed.
Organizations such as Physicians for Human Rights, Human Rights Watch, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, and the International Committee of the Red Cross seem to be converging on this 11,000 plus figure, although there are still some areas that have been inadequately canvassed and charges not fully investigated. Still, even should this figure be doubled, it is a far cry from the 100,000 claimed deaths from a systematic effort to cleanse Kosovo of most of its ethnic Albanian population.
I have not been to Kosovo. Nonetheless, the weight of evidence from some who have been there points to the conclusion that the killing and destruction, which seem to have occurred in pockets rather than to have been spread across the entire province, was systematic and therefore planned. The heaviest carnage was in the western and southern parts, nearest the Albanian and Macedonian borders. What this suggests is that Milosevic may not have been confident that his plan would succeed, so he hedged his bets; if he could not maintain control over all of Kosovo, he would settle for the areas nearest the rest of Serbia. These happened to be areas with the best economic prospects and which could be repopulated with ethnic Serbs driven from Bosnia (some 250,000 are still refugees). Control of northern Kosovo also would help maintain land routes into the increasingly restive Montenegro which Serbia could not afford to lose as Montenegro is Serbia's link to the sea.
As in Kosovo, the estimates of East Timorese killed during the rampage by Indonesian troops and military-backed militias after the independence referendum now seem highly exaggerated. Physical destruction in East Timor was apparently more widespread than in Kosovo but seemed to have been equally systematic. In terms of deaths, and allowing that East Timor is smaller than Kosovo, accurate, early estimates of the number killed were slowed by the ability of the much smaller Intervention Force in East Timor (7,500 versus 50,000 in Kosovo) to bring the area under international control.
What can be substantiated in each case are the huge numbers of people systematically driven from their homes, and forced to live in the open or in makeshift shelters, whether as internally displaced persons -- estimated at 500,000 in Kosovo and 120,000 in East Timor -- or as a population physically expelled from their native land. In this latter category were some 800,000 Kosovars and 200,000 East Timorese. And while nations contributed money and goods to build refugee camps for the expelled Kosovars, the East Timorese are in camps in West Timor set up by the Indonesian army and now patrolled by pro-Indonesian militias who are preventing the return of many refugees to their homes.
Unlike genocidal ethnic cleansing, internal displacement and exile are reversible if the international community has the will to act, as it finally did in Kosovo and East Timor. But the fact that the controlling state authorities in each case were intent on what has been called "politicide" -- systematically eradicating political opposition to the ruling regime or dominant group -- they violated the basic rights of a significant segment of their population as enumerated in numerous articles of the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights:
Most significantly, Article 30 declares that "Nothing in this Declaration may be interpreted as implying for any State, group or person any right to engage in any activity or to perform any act aimed at the destruction of any of the rights and freedoms set forth herein."
Given the above, is there still a question whether it matters if reports of deaths are grossly exaggerated? To the extent that such distortions erode the credibility of the governments and organizations that make them, they are harmful -- especially if their main purpose is simply to arouse or maintain support for intervention. Genocide -- engineering the deaths of a substantial portion of a communal group, whether 2,000 or 10,000 or 6 million -- is unquestionably the worst violation of human rights, but it is not the only one that calls for redress by the international community. But because other cases for intervention may be less clear-cut than genocide, accuracy in estimating is all the more critical. If the principle of protecting the broader range of human rights against repressive rulers is to become co-equal with the principle of state sovereignty, it will be necessary to build and sustain public support even if the principle is applied selectively. This support cannot be built or maintained if a public distrusts its government.
Governments often inflate the horrors perpetrated by the enemy for domestic propaganda purposes. But government has less and less influence, let alone control, over the means of mass communication. In the heat of battle, estimates are always inaccurate and must be carefully tempered. Equally, waiting for irrefutable evidence invites a wait forever. Neither option is worthy of a democracy.
U.S. Share of World Military Spending Growing
Christopher Hellman, Senior Analyst, chellman@cdi.org
The London-based Institute for International and Strategic Studies (IISS) recently released the 1999 issue of the "the World Military Balance." It shows that while U.S. military spending is increasing, global military spending continues to decline.
World military spending, which was $1.2 trillion in 1985, stood at $785 billion in 1998, down more than $20 billion from 1997. Meanwhile, the U.S. share of global military spending continued to increase, going from 30% in 1985 to 36% in 1998, up two percent over the previous year.
Some facts about U.S. military spending:
The U.S. military budget is more than nineteen times as large as the combined spending of the seven countries traditionally identified by the Pentagon as our most likely adversaries -- Cuba, Iran, Iraq, Libya, North Korea, Sudan and Syria -- which together spend just over $15 billion annually.
The United States and its close allies -- the NATO nations and South Korea and Japan -- spend more than the rest of the world combined. Together they spend thirty times more than the seven rogue states.
The seven rogue nations, along with Russia and China, together spend $106 billion, less than one-half the U.S. military budget.
While spending in most regions of the world, including among NATO countries, declines, spending by Pacific rim countries is on the rise, reversing a recent trend. Although the region's economic woes forced many nations to dramatically cut their military budgets, disturbing events in North Korea and rising tensions between Taiwan and mainland China have caused South Korea, Taiwan and Japan to consider significant military funding increases in the near term. Meanwhile, a slowing economy has blunted China's efforts to modernize the People's Liberation Army. After several years of gradual increases, China's military budget appeared to have plateaued, although recent reports indicate that the government may have plans to make substantial increases in military spending in response to the situation with Taiwan and continued U.S. efforts to develop a national missile defense.
Estimating Russian military spending remains as imprecise a science as was determining that of the Soviet Union, albeit for different reasons. For instance, while IISS places Russian military spending at $55 billion, the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) estimates current Russian military spending at roughly $15 billion. However, even using the more generous IISS figure, the United States outspends Russia by more than five to one. Further, a wealth of anecdotal evidence indicates that the collapse of the Russian economy has made it impossible for the government to hit its spending targets for the military.
For additional information on military spending for selected countries, see CDI's factsheet "Military Spending: U.S. vs. the World, FY'00 Updated."
US-New Zealand Military Ties Still On Hold -- Officials on both sides say that military relations under ANZUS are not likely to be restored no matter who wins New Zealand's November 27 elections. New Zealand will not change its law banning nuclear-armed or -propelled ships from entering its ports. That law, passed in the 1980s, has become a symbol of NZ nationalism. It caused the United States to "suspend" most military relations, especially joint exercises, although military cooperation continued when both militaries were engaged in combat (Desert Storm) or peacekeeping operations (INTERFET in East Timor). In contrast, US-Australian ties under ANZUS remain one of the closest of any alliance relations.
Senate Ratifies Child Labor Treaty -- The Senate adopted by voice vote an international child labor treaty focusing on the worst forms of child labor, including slavery, prostitution, and drug trafficking. The treaty also targets "the forced or compulsory recruitment of children for use in armed conflict." This provision is consistent with U.S. law, which allows 17 year-olds to enlist in the military with parental consent. The United States is one of the first countries of the 174 members of the International Labor Organization to ratify the treaty.
Apaches Grounded -- The U.S. Army announced Monday that it has grounded its fleet of AH-64 "Apache" helicopters until they can be inspected for trouble with the aircraft's tail rotor bearing. The faulty part is believed to have caused at least one crash, as well as other mechanical failures. More than half of the Army's fleet of 645 Apaches are believed to have the faulty part, which will have to be replaced. Army officials have indicated that Apaches will continue flying in support of critical missions such as Kosovo and Kuwait.
JROTC Riflery Program Canceled -- The Chicago public school system has announced that riflery training and competition, part of the Junior Reserve Officers' Training Corps program, will end immediately. The program was canceled because of recent school shootings and the school system's efforts not to appear hypocritical in allowing weapons training while condemning the use of firearms. Chicago has approximately 9,000 JROTC students in 41 public high schools. About 1,000 students take part in the riflery program taught at 33 of the city's schools.
U.S. Attacks on Iraq Increasingly Risky -- In a recent story, the Boston Globe quoted unnamed U.S. officials as saying that the pace and duration of U.S. air operations enforcing the Nothern and Southern "No-Fly" zones over Iraq are taking a toll on both pilots and aircraft. Air Force officials are reportedly concerned that the number of sorties, over 6,000 this year alone, have increased wear and tear on U.S. aircraft and placed excessive strains on pilots, thus increasing the risk that pilots may be lost to either Iraqi anti-aircraft fire or mechanical failure.
A-10s To Get Upgrade -- Almost ten years after announcing plans to retire it, the U.S. Air Force is considering a major upgrade to its fleet of A-10 Thunderbolt ground attack aircraft, more commonly known as the "Warthog." The project, estimated at $180 million, would extend the A-10s service life by 30 years, more than doubling it. The idea is to keep the fleet operational until they can be replaced by the Joint Strike Fighter.
This week on America's Defense Monitor: "Why is Military Spending Going Up?"
At $280 billion, U.S. military spending dwarfs that of any other nation. Yet the White House, the Pentagon, and the Congress are on the verge of increasing military spending by more than $100 billion. Although the Cold War ended almost a decade ago, the United States is about to return to Cold War budgets. At a time when military spending worldwide continues to drop and with no significant threat to U.S. national security, is such a major funding increase necessary?
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