Benjamin C. Works, Executive Director

--Celebrating Chaos Theory Since 1990--

_

SIT 7-2; Thursday July 2, 1998

- Gen James Wolfe; comment before Quebec, 1759.

Note: In the next issue I hope to get beyond Kosovo to Cyprus, China, India and other important issues that SIRIUS hasn't visited recently. The trouble is that Kosovo keeps getting hotter and embodies the clear and present possibility of US armed forces committed to combat operations. In the meantime I highly recommend William Safire's op-Ed piece in The New York Times, July 2, 1998, entitled "Primakov in Cyprus."

On Tuesday, an Iraqi SAM-3 missile battery's targeting radar briefly illuminated British Tornadoes and at least one US Air Force F-16. Our F-16 responded "automatically" under its rules of engagement and fired an anti-radar HARM missile (for High-speed Anti-Radiation Missile). There were some 36 such incidents between Dec. 1992 and July 1993 in both the Iraqi Northern and Southern No-Fly zones but virtually none since then.

This seems to be a "one-shot" deal. Saddam got a little press at the same time Clinton is basking in the glow of his China trip, as our policy in Israel stumbles and as the Kosovo crisis continues.

During Desert Storm Iraq and Russia figured they needed new strategies for protecting missile radars from our HARM missiles and these techniques and technologies have been instituted in Yugoslavia as well. Suffice it to say that if you want to tease the Air Force, you turn the target radar mode on just long enough to get an F-16's attention, then turn it off before a HARM missile gets an accurate read of the radar's location --it rides the radar beam back to the antenna to destroy it, just as a SAM missile rides a target beam up to the targeted airplane.

I have noticed that when matters get more serious, the US attempts to destroy not just the radar but the missile launchers, command module, generators, etc. by following the HARM missile with two or more cluster bombs. Such bombs were not dropped on Tuesday, indicating the US and Royal Air Forces were not that worried, just content to send a warning. As to whether an Iraqi radar operator was acting randomly and independently, that theory might be credible if the HARM actually had destroyed a radar, but Saddam's missile defenses are very centrally commanded and controlled; independent action is not considered a virtue; it is, rather, a shortcut to a firing squad. Thus, I believe Saddam had this little provocation staged as part of his ongoing campaign to wear down the US and UN over time. In this, he raised the heat a little just after the US cut its forces from 37,000 to 20,000 and rotated its F-117A Stealth Fighters home. In February the US got Iran to end Iraqi oil smuggling by ships through its waters, but in June the administration showed it has turned a blind eye to oil smuggling by truck through Turkey. Score a little point for Iraq in this missile incident and a slightly bigger point in the Turkish oil smuggling. Saddam has control of the initiative and the timing remains his.

The situation on the ground in Kosovo is intensifying. After some two weeks of Serb Police mostly sitting on their haunches in order not to provoke an ill-reasoned air attack upon themselves while Western diplomacy ran its course, they have begun local attacks designed at relieving beleaguered Serb populations trapped in villages besieged by KLA gunmen, who in turn are ringed in by Serb checkpoints.

The Yugoslav police and armed forces are moving now because, 1. Their patience while Richard Holbrooke conducted his diplomacy was rewarded by more KLA aggression --seeking to trigger "Serb atrocities" (which did not happen) and 2. NATO and the "Contact Group" for Kosovo (US, Russia, Britain, Italy, Germany and France) have bogged down on whether NATO can resort to military force to punish Yugoslavia for its alleged "ethnic cleansing," which is really a campaign of restoration of law and order against what a guerrilla war by was until last week an internationally condemned terrorist group --the KLA.

Further, a large open-pit coal mine just outside of Pristina, which provides fuel for the province and national electrical supply was taken over by the KLA a week ago and the Yugoslav police are attempting to liberate that critical operation as well. That appears to have been accomplished on Tuesday.

The Serb populated village of Kijevo, which lies on the main road from the provincial capital of Pristina to the Serb Orthodox See of Pec, has been surrounded by the KLA as part of its efforts to cut that highway and we understand that the Yugoslav police and army are trying to relieve that beleaguered village.

The Manchester Guardian on July 1^st, wrote the clearest report of what is now a concerted effort by the KLA guerrillas to build up an inventory of kidnapped Serb civilian males --men and boys-- as hostages to swap for KLA captives.

The United States, in the persons of envoys Richard Holbrooke and Robert Gelbard, has committed serious diplomatic errors predicated on its persistent misreading and misrepresentation of Yugoslav actions to contain the KLA. But last week, both Holbrooke and Gelbard gave de facto diplomatic recognition to the KLA by meeting directly with local leaders on the ground, in what they explained was an effort to find the real political leadership of the guerilla movement. It is noteworthy that officially the Kosovo Liberation Army is not aligned with Ibrahim Rugova's non-violent political movement, the League for a Democratic Kosovo (LDK).

Holbrooke and Gelbard have placed the United States in the impossible position of diplomatically recognizing a guerilla movement it has recognized as an international terrorist group before even determining if that group has any political, diplomatic or legal cohesion and coherence. In terms of legalisms, the KLA clearly sets as its objective the total ethnic cleansing of Serbs from their own homeland and does not seem to be respecting any of the laws of land warfare. Further, they are associated with drug smuggling, assassination, terror and sexual harassment of nuns, among a longer list of criminal activities and enterprises.

Contrast this with George Mitchell's "Good Friday" agreement with Sinn Fein and the United Kingdom. The guerrilla-terrorists of the Provisional Wing of the IRA were not granted diplomatic stature; rather, Gerry Adams of Sinn Fein --the political arm-- negotiated for the politicians and the guerillas. Holbrooke, with this current example of how to do it, went about extemporaneously recognizing the independence of the KLA from the LDK, thus further complicating his own diplomatic arrangements and negotiations. This is not genius or experience borne of reason, it is either stupid bungling or deliberate sabotage. In either case, it is clearly counter-productive.

Mr. Holbrooke, indeed, all of the interested parties, continue to deny they wish to encourage fighting, yet all US-UK threats (other European parties have increasingly moved away from these threats) have been directed against "the Serbs." If we wish to discourage the KLA's unrestrained "military" campaign --which is more terror against Albanians and Serb civilians than military operations against the police and military-- then, as I have observed repeatedly, NATO's mission would be to seal off the flow of supplies and fighters from the Albanian side of the border, rather than to threaten bombing attacks against the "Serb" forces, which are seeking to restore law and order.

Mercifully, the United States is locked into its Fourth of July holiday and Europe has taken the opportunity to postpone any further meetings until the middle of next week --July 8^th. After that, German Foreign Minister Klaus Kinkel will visit Albania and Macedonia to see what's to be done to prevent the further widening of this Geg conspiracy for its Greater Albania, which could well spark a general Balkan war or a bitter cleansing of Albanians back into that misfortunate and chaotic little hell-hole.

Americans who still believe that there is some general and concerted Serb "oppression" of Albanians are responding emotionally to propaganda, rather than to the facts. I have noted in past issues a number of details that demonstrate that it is really Albanians using provincial government mechanisms, who began to discriminate against Serbs prior to Milosevic's 1989 action to end the province's autonomous status. Yugoslavia has always given Albanians language rights, insisting only on bi-lingualism (which the Albanians now vehemently reject), but documents from the Tito era placed Albanian first, Serbo-Croatian second; so careful of Albanian feelings was the old government.

Albanians are not being discriminated against nor are they being persecuted. Serbs were not running around at night burning Albanian barns, rather, it was the other way around. Albanians discriminated against their neighbors and conspired to rob Serbs of rights, property and of their homeland. Suffice it to say that Rugova started a job action and election boycott in 1990 and Albanians refuse to elect representatives to the National Parliament, refused for 8 years to attend bilingual schools and lost their government jobs through walking away from them. This package of initiatives was then presented as "Serb oppression."

Further, though phone and utility bills aren't being paid, utility services have not been cut off until a siege gets serious around one of these KLA enclaves.

Up in Belgrade, the Albanian populace --a significant minority in the national capital-- is not discriminated against in any way. Rather, their churches and mosques are open and they are generally regarded as industrious and reliable in business.

Though Albanians in Kosovo presently represent 90% of the population there, they represent something like 15-16% of the population of Yugoslavia. Given electoral politics, that would be enough, if they participated in national politics, to form a swing-party in the Parliament between other leading parties and enjoy a role as a power broker. This is what the formerly-oppressed Turkish minority does in Bulgaria and it has worked wonderfully and to their advantage as well as the country's. To refuse this strategy is a further indication that the Albanian population in Kosovo is far from unitary in its view of self-determination, autonomy and independence. In my view, this casts further doubts on the integrity and altruism of Mr. Rugova's allegedly "Ghandi-esque" motives. In my analysis, because the post-Communist government still sits on the entire commercial-industrial-communications asset base, it is clear that Rugova is after economic control of these assets, not after the best interests of the Albanian residents of Kosovo-Metohija.

In a curious bit of information gathering, I was forwarded some documents from bishops in the Orthodox Church in Kosovo-Metohija who confirmed another bit of Albanian bureaucratic skullduggery. Churchmen found that local property registers that include deeds and tax rolls were being rewritten, with ancient churches and monasteries being re-listed as mosques and other Islamic properties by local government clerks. Prior to the 1989 dissolution of the autonomous provincial government of Kosovo-Metohija, the Albanians were conspiring at local and provincial levels to strip the churches and monasteries of all their properties by re-writing history through re-writing legal deeds and titles. One can hardly ascribe good-faith to Rugova's protestations that his Kosovo would respect Serb rights; nor can one hold as credible any Albanian representations that they are the people being deprived of their individual civil rights or collective "human rights." Thus you have the KLA terrorists burning, raping and breaking limbs of Orthodox nuns and clerics while the non-violent LDK was forging deeds in the official records --"force and fraud" strike in concert again.

Those looking over the border into the chaos and disorder evident in northern Albania can only dread the prospects if they actually did achieve independence. But Rugova aspires to his own independent satrapy --he apparently has no ambition to unite with the bandits of Albania. In the last issue I reprinted a piece from the Guardian Weekly which recounted the travails of Kosovo refugees fleeing into northern Albania, where fellow-Gegs greet them at gunpoint and rob them of their worldly possessions. These Albanian highwaymen also cheerfully rob unwary members of the Western Press and any other naïve passers-through.

The more you study Richard Holbrooke, the more you understand he is captive to his ego, rather than disciplined by reason and self-restraint. Not only is he charged as lead diplomatic storm-trooper in Kosovo, he is also in charge of negotiations between the Greek and Turkish sectors of Cyprus. Holbrooke is supposed to be playing the role of "honest broker," and in his actual meetings, tries. But last week, his ego was rewarded by a Greek University bestowing him an honorary doctorate of Laws even as he was on his way to Oslo, to convene a meeting between representatives of Turkish and Greek business leaders as a step in attempting a peaceful reconciliation between the two sides of that strained island. In the diplomatic realm, Honest Brokers do not accept honoraria from "Interested Parties" while such negotiations are underway. More is to come on Cyprus in a special report next week (it's written in draft, but I'm sleeping on some of the tentative conclusions).

We Americans will be enjoying our extended summer holiday and our fireworks, while the Yugoslav police and army take advantage of the international diplomatic impasse and pause to resume the campaign for law and order that was so stupidly interrupted three weeks ago. But Yugoslavia, in being forced to pause to demonstrate to the world that it is not practicing a wanton ethnic cleansing, has suffered by a continuing flow of guerillas and arms into the province from Albania. Further, Albanian Gegs in Macedonia, where these northern tribals are a near-30 percent minority, have only drawn encouragement from the diplomatic chaos inspired by Holbrooke and Gelbard in the last month.

The KLA are sitting in a number of villages, daring the "Serbs" to attack. Such attacks inevitably generate civilian casualties and refugee flows, which the KLA can allege as proof of ethnic cleansing and war crimes. Guerrillas always resort to such tactical manipulations of their civilian populations, setting innocents up to provide atrocities committed by the opposing side, as Vietnam veterans know. Thus, the Yugoslav authorities are faced with an option of difficulties and have a difficult problem spread across a wide geographic area to surmount. Their careful tactics, which seek to minimize unnecessary civilian casualties, allow many KLA guerillas to escape into the woods, where sniping and midnight raids on police checkpoints can continue. Yugoslavia has to improve measures sealing off the border without any cooperation from Albania, NATO, the European Union any other multi-national organization.

The KLA's trained hardcore elements remain small in number and more enthusiastic than militarily capable, but a week is hardly sufficient time for Yugoslavia to bust up the KLA enclaves in villages without extraneous casualties (that contribute to charges of atrocities and war crimes), while sealing the border and chasing guerilla bands around in the backwoods.

© Copyright 1998 Benjamin C. Works-SIRIUS