sakser noe fra The NewYork Times, av Daniel Ellsberg (han som kopierte
Pentagon-rapporten i sin tid).
Knut Rognes
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May 21, 1999
Contemplating a Fatal Mistake
By DANIEL ELLSBERG
The war in the Balkans now appears to have led to a war within NATO,
between those who would send in ground troops (notably the British) and
those who would not (notably the Germans). President Clinton has been
caught in the middle, but the pressure for a ground invasion -- an idea
that seemed dead a few weeks ago -- is once again strong.
One of its main proponents, Foreign Minister Robin Cook of Britain, made
the rounds in Washington yesterday, and last week the case for ground
troops was stated in an open letter to the President signed by an
impressive list of former officials, politicians and intellectuals,
including Zbigniew Brzezinski, Frank Carlucci, R. James Woolsey, Geraldine
Ferraro, Saul Bellow and Susan Sontag.
The letter-writers deserve credit for focusing attention on the first goal
they list, "saving the lives of the nearly one million Kosovars now facing
death from starvation and murder within Kosovo." The question is whether a
ground invasion would serve that goal or whether, as I believe, it would be
a death sentence for most Albanians remaining in Kosovo.
By all accounts, it would take weeks to months to deploy an invasion force
to the region once the decision to do so was made, and Slobodan Milosevic
already has troops there fortifying the borders. Wouldn't the prospect of
an invasion lead him to order his forces in Kosovo to kill all the
military-age male Albanians and hold the rest of the population as hostages
rather than continuing to deport them?
We don't know how many male Kosovars of military age -- broadly, from 15 to
60 years old -- have been killed already. But even if the number is in the
tens of thousands (NATO has conservatively estimated 4,600 civilian
deaths), that would mean that most of the men were still alive. Facing
invasion, would Mr. Milosevic allow any more men to leave Kosovo to be
recruited by the K.L.A., or to live to support the invasion? The Serbs
could quickly slaughter 100,000 to 200,000 male Kosovars. (In Rwanda five
years ago, an average of 8,000 civilians a day were killed for 100 days,
mostly with machetes.)
Obviously, Mr. Milosevic and his subordinates are brutal enough to do that.
If they haven't done it already (and there is no testimony that they have
on that scale) it may well be because they fear that annihilation on that
scale would make an invasion inevitable. A commitment now to ground
invasion would remove that deterrent, just as the commitment in March to
begin bombing in support of an ultimatum and the consequent withdrawal of
international monitors removed an implicit deterrent against sweeping
ethnic cleansing and expulsion.
As for the remaining civilians in Kosovo -- women, children and old people
-- tens of thousands of them could be used against the invasion as human
shields, in a way never before seen in warfare. Fighting in built-up areas,
NATO troops would probably be fired on from buildings that were packed on
every floor with Kosovar women and children. Using the traditional means --
explosives, artillery and rockets -- to destroy those buildings would make
NATO the executioners of a very large part of the population we were
fighting to protect.
I believe these reasons alone are enough to rule out the option of a ground
invasion. Merely preparing for such an invasion, which many have urged as a
way to threaten Mr. Milosevic, would give him an urgent incentive to
exterminate remaining male Kosovars in Kosovo. Carrying out the threat
would eliminate most of the women and children. The heading on the recent
letter to the President, "Only Ground Troops Will End Ethnic Cleansing in
Kosovo," might come true, in a ghastly ironic way -- a ground invasion
might end the lives of most remaining Albanians in Kosovo.
Distasteful as it is to bargain with Mr. Milosevic, the fact is that he
holds a million hostages. There is only one acceptable way for NATO to stop
the ethnic cleansing, avert even worse slaughter and permit refugees to
return safely. That is to negotiate as quickly as possible the immediate
unopposed introduction of a large international security force into Kosovo,
capable of protecting the Albanians there as long as needed. Probably
non-NATO forces, including Russians, under United Nations command would
have to predominate in northern Kosovo. To agree on this promptly will
require significant concessions on both sides.
Nothing better will be achieved by bombing indefinitely -- we bombed
Vietnam for seven and a half years in pursuit of goals we refused to
compromise and never secured. Nor will anything better be won by moving
toward ground invasion and destroying the remaining Kosovars in order to
save them.
Daniel Ellsberg, who made the Pentagon Papers public, served in Vietnam and
is a former Defense and State Department official.
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