Humanitarian Intervention in Kosovo: Fact or Fiction?

Humanitarian Intervention in Kosovo: Fact or Fiction? by Peter Russell Dublin European Institute University College Dublin A minor dissertation presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the Degree of Master of Arts in European Studies (National University of Ireland) August 2004 Table of Contents Summary _______________________________________________________________ ii Chapter 1: Introduction ___________________________________________________ 1 1.1 Justification and Literature Review _________________________________________ 1 1.2 Methodology __________________________________________________________ 4 1.3 Structure ______________________________________________________________ 4 Chapter 2: Human Rights __________________________________________________ 7 2.1 A Brief History of Human Rights __________________________________________ 7 2.2 Universal Human Rights: Theory and Practice ________________________________ 9 2.3 Concerns and Difficulties with Human Rights-Based Foreign Policy _____________ 12 2.4 Human Rights and Humanitarian Intervention _______________________________ 13 Chapter 3: Humanitarian Intervention ______________________________________ 15 3.1 A Brief History of Humanitarian Intervention ________________________________ 16 3.2 Defining Humanitarian Intervention _______________________________________ 18 Chapter 4: The Kosovo Intervention ________________________________________ 25 4.1 Kosovo from 1980 to 1999 ______________________________________________ 26 4.2 Situation _____________________________________________________________ 30 4.3 Motivations and Intentions _______________________________________________ 34 4.4 Means _______________________________________________________________ 41 4.5 Outcome _____________________________________________________________ 50 4.6 Summary and Conclusion _______________________________________________ 57 Bibliography ____________________________________________________________ 60 Summary This dissertation will examine the military intervention conducted by NATO in Kosovo in 1999. By examining the pre-existing situation, the justifications given, the methods used, and the results of the intervention, it will be determined whether the characterization of this event as a “humanitarian intervention” is accurate. In the first chapter, the literature on Kosovo, human rights, and humanitarian intervention is examined to assess the current state of the debate on the Kosovo intervention. Following this introduction is a chapter on the idea of human rights. This begins with a brief history of human rights, then assesses the standing of human rights in international law and international relations and the ways in which they apply to the Kosovo intervention. The concept of humanitarian intervention is examined in the next chapter, including a short survey of its history in the post-World War II period, an examination of different definitions of the term, and a determination of what criteria were (or should be) applied in order to evaluate whether or not an intervention qualifies as “humanitarian”. The fourth chapter is a case study of the intervention in Kosovo in the spring and summer of 1999, applying the ideas of human rights and humanitarian intervention to the course of events before, during, and after the NATO bombing campaign. This chapter includes a brief historical background to the conflict, then moves on to an analysis of the motives, behaviour, and interests of the intervening parties, and an assessment of the outcome of the intervention. The final section of this chapter is the conclusion, which summarizes the findings of this thesis and evaluates their significance in both academic and practical terms. ii Chapter 1: Introduction The question asked in this paper is a simple one: was the NATO intervention in Kosovo in March-June 1999 a “humanitarian intervention” or not? The Kosovo intervention has come to be seen by many as a critical event in international politics. Peter Hilpold describes it as ‘a watershed dividing a former ‘Hegelian’, state-centred system of international relations, from an actual ‘Kantian’ model which is far more community-oriented...the protection of (fundamental) human rights has been assigned such an overwhelming importance that state sovereignty should no more stand in the way in order to prevent gross violations of these rights.’1 It ‘marked a high point in the increasing emphasis on human rights and humanitarian issues which has been a striking feature of international relations in the post-1945 era,’2 and was ‘the first time a war was ostensibly fought for human rights.’3 Kosovo is cited by politicians, journalists, and academics as the prototype for humanitarian intervention in the post-Cold War era. It is portrayed as the perfect example of a case where a pure dedication to human rights inspired the international community to take forceful and successful action to end abuses. 1.1 Justification and Literature Review Most of this discourse does not question the assertion that the Kosovo intervention was “humanitarian.” It has not, however, been convincingly demonstrated that it was anything of the kind. Nevertheless, it is repeatedly cited as a precedent-setting event which presages significant changes in the international political and legal system, as Hilpold’s comment illustrates.4 In this proposed new paradigm, exemplified by the intervention in Kosovo, (some) states would have the right to use military force to violate the sovereignty of another state based on claims of the need (and sometimes obligation) to protect the human rights of some portion of the population of said state. The importance attributed to the example of Kosovo makes it 1 Peter Hilpold, ‘Humanitarian Intervention: Is There A Need for Legal Re app raisal?’, European Journal of International Law, Vol.12, No.3 (2001), p.437. 2 Adam Roberts, ‘NAT O’s “Humanitarian War” Ove r Ko sovo ,’ Survival, Vol.41, No.3 (Autumn 1999) 3 Miron R ezun, Europe’s Nightmare: the Struggle for Kosovo (2001), p.10. p.102. 4 See David Chand ler, From Kosovo to K abul: Hu man Rights and Interna tional Intervention (2002), pp.15-17 for a concise summary of the importance of Kosovo to advo cates of humanitarian intervention. 1 critical to evaluate whether what happened there can accurately be described in those terms. A great deal of the literature on humanitarian intervention in general and Kosovo specifically focuses on the legal aspects. Is humanitarian intervention sanctioned by international law? If so, should it require approval from the United Nations, or is unilateral action by single states or groups of states acceptable? What are the criteria which render an intervention legal, or which fail to do so? Where exactly does the Kosovo intervention stand in light of these questions, and what is its meaning?5 Literature in this area tends to be theoretical in its approach, focusing on the legal issues rather than exploring what actually happened in Kosovo. A major preoccupation is with the implications for international law if the intervention in Kosovo is seen to be setting a new precedent. The status of Kosovo as “humanitarian intervention” tends to be taken for granted instead of being a topic for discussion in itself. Of that literature which does focus on what actually happened in Kosovo before, during, and after the intervention, most of it is written by people who are either arguing in favour of the concept of humanitarian intervention or who believe that there is no such thing. It is no surprise that their conclusions about the Kosovo intervention turn out to fit their particular argument. Writers like Nicholas Wheeler and Michael Ignatieff, for example, are prohumanitarian intervention. They therefore contend that the intervention in Kosovo was humanitarian in nature, while admitting that it may have been poorly planned or executed, or that the results are disappointing.6 Others, prominently Noam Chomsky, Edward Herman, and Tariq Ali believe that “humanitarian” intervention is nothing more than a cover for the true, self-interested motivations of the interveners, and so conclude that that is the case for Kosovo.7 David Chandler takes a slightly different approach, being concerned about the ‘destructive 5 See for instance Hilpold; B runo Simm a, ‘NA TO , the UN and the Use of Force : Legal Aspects,’ European Journal of International Law 10 (1999 ), pp.1-22; Daniel H. Joyner, ‘The Kosovo Intervention: Legal Analysis and a More P ersuasive Paradigm,’ Journal of Environmental Law, Vol.13, No.3 (2001), pp.597-619; M. O’C onne ll, ‘The UN , NA TO & International Law After Ko sovo ,’ Hu ma n Rights Q uarterly. v.22 (2000), p.57-89. 6 Nicholas J. W heeler, Sav ing S trang ers: H um anita rian Interven tion in Intern ation al So ciety (2000); Michael Ignatieff, Virtual War: Kosovo and Beyond (2001). 7 Noam Cho msky, The New Military Human ism: Lessons from Kosovo (1999); Edw ard Herman and David Peterson, ‘‘M orality’s Avenging Angels: the New H umanitarian Crusaders,’ in David Chandler (ed.), Rethinking Huma n Rights: Critical Approaches to International Politics (2002); Tariq Ali, Masters of the Universe? NATO’s Balkan Crusade (2000) 2 dynamic of humanitarian intervention.’8 For him Kosovo serves as a negative rather than a positive example, but he still does not seriously question that Kosovo was such an intervention. The problem with this literature is that it does not investigate the Kosovo intervention as an event in its own right. It is instead used as an example to illustrate the more general themes or ideas with which the authors are concerned. This is not to say that this literature is completely unhelpful; with the different foci, different information is highlighted and explored. When their work is combined, these authors make a large contribution towards a more complete and nuanced picture of the course of events concerning Kosovo. There is a small amount of literature which looks at the Kosovo intervention without attempting to make it fit into a larger political, legal, or conceptual schema. These authors often choose a particular topic or angle related to the intervention to investigate in depth. Conclusions about the intervention are based upon the particular aspect under investigation. Eric Herring, for instance, examines the path ‘From Rambouillet to the Kosovo Accords,’ taking the proposal which the Serbs rejected in March 1999 and the terms which they accepted in June 1999 as the start and end points in an attempt to determine whether the use of military force was justifiable at each stage of the process.9 Jim Whitman focuses on the interest of European nations in reducing the flow of refugees to question the depiction of the intervention as truly humanitarian.10 Adam Roberts does an excellent job of not imposing preconceptions on his more general account of the intervention, in which he discusses the relative weights of motives, actions, and outcomes.11 All three of these authors conclude that the intervention is at best questionable as an example of humanitarian intervention, but there is no sense that this was a predetermined outcome of their research. This thesis is an attempt to contribute to this third area of the literature. The question of the nature of the Kosovo intervention will be approached as far as possible from a neutral position, one which does not presuppose that “humanitarian intervention” is either good, bad, or nonexistent. Of course, complete objectivity is impossible, and the author’s bias may be 8 Chandler, p.236. 9 Eric Herring, ‘Fro m Ramb ouillet to the Kosovo A ccords: N AT O’s W ar Against Serbia and Its Afterm ath,’ in Ken B ooth (ed.), The K osovo Trage dy: Th e Hu man Righ ts Dimensions (2001). 10 Jim W hitman, ‘The Kosovo Refugee Crisis: NATO’s Humanitarianism versus Human Rights,’ in Ken Bo oth (ed .), The K osovo Trage dy: Th e Hu man Righ ts Dimensions (2001). 11 See note 2. 3 seen in the fact that the hypothesis upon beginning this work is that the Kosovo intervention will not in fact turn out to be humanitarian. Nonetheless, a conscious effort will be made to make a fair, balanced assessment and to avoid twisting the evidence or using it selectively in order to reach a predetermined conclusion. 1.2 Methodology This paper will adopt a qualitative approach, relying on both primary and secondary sources. There is a large amount of material available on human rights and humanitarian intervention which deals with the origins of the concepts, their legal status, the ethical and moral arguments for and against, their history, and so on. This academic material will be used along with primary sources such as United Nations declarations and conventions to provide the essential background against which the Kosovo intervention must be evaluated. In the case study portion of the thesis, relevant primary sources will be used - principally governmental statements, declarations, speeches, and parliamentary debates - to illustrate the declared motivations and actions of the different participants in the Kosovo war. Reports from the UN and from NGOs such as Human Rights Watch will be drawn on in order to compare the findings of (somewhat neutral) observers to the claims of the participating states. Secondary literature, both academic and journalistic, will be used to examine and evaluate alternative interpretations of the motives and actions of the participants. There is no difficulty in accessing sufficient source material; the Kosovo war was recent enough (but not too recent) and important enough that there is a great deal of material to consult. The difficulty lies in the interpretation of the material; the primary governmental sources in particular tend to be subject to “spin” to put that government’s actions in the best possible light, and much of the secondary literature is written from an ideological standpoint which predisposes the authors to either favour or condemn the intervention. As wide a range as possible of source material will be used in order to attempt to minimize or compensate for ideological or political slants in the material and analysis. 1.3 Structure Chapter 1 is this Introduction. 4 Chapter 2 will examine the concept of universal human rights, which lies at the root of interventions such as Kosovo. To those who favour humanitarian intervention, a state can effectively cede its right to sovereignty if its violations of human rights reach a certain illdefined level. Once this point is reached, other states have both a right and an obligation to intervene. This chapter will show that, in spite of the fact that nearly all states now pay at least lip-service to human rights and are officially committed to upholding them, the theory and practice of human rights are actually still highly disputed. Cultures with non-European roots argue that human rights are merely a form of Western imperialism, an attempt to impose Western cultural norms around the world, and therefore do not accept human rights violations as legitimate grounds for intervention. Even among Western states, there is no agreement on a definitive list of human rights, let alone on how to promote and protect them. Therefore, though it was technically human rights abuses which were the subject of the Kosovo intervention, and which were referred to in attempts to legitimize it, human rights violations per se are not enough to justify military intervention. In Chapter 3, the concept and practice of humanitarian intervention will be explored. The lack of legitimacy of intervention based simply on human rights violations will again be demonstrated, using historical examples. This will show the basic lack of agreement in political, legal, and academic circles on an exact definition of humanitarian intervention, which leads to disagreements over whether or not the term can be applied to any specific case. Therefore, the remainder of this chapter will be devoted to a comparison of a range of definitions of humanitarian intervention in order to determine a set of criteria by which the Kosovo intervention can be analysed. The “classic” definition will be shown to be predominantly legalistic in nature and therefore not directly relevant to the question posed by this paper. Four contemporary definitions will be analysed and compared to yield criteria to serve as the basis for the case study of the Kosovo intervention. The case study itself will form Chapter 4. The criteria which were determined in the previous chapter will be applied sequentially to a study of the intervention in Kosovo. Attention will be drawn to controversial or debatable issues relating to each of these, and to the effect which differing interpretations of each of these criteria has on the analysis of the others. Each section of this chapter will finish with a conclusion on whether the Kosovo intervention 5 did or did not adequately fulfill the particular criterion in question. The final portion of this chapter will be the conclusion, in which the results of the case study will be summarized and an answer to the question asked by this paper will be arrived at. This will be followed by a brief discussion of the importance of this conclusion and its ramifications for the practice of humanitarian intervention and for the future study of both humanitarian intervention in general and the Kosovo intervention in particular. 6 Chapter 2: Human Rights The protection of human rights is theoretically at the root of the Kosovo intervention, and indeed of the concept of humanitarian intervention in general. The degree to which that was actually the case will be discussed below, but it is important to realise how much the course of events was affected by the disputed nature and importance of human rights in the international system. Despite the theoretical agreement of nearly every state on the planet to standards of universal human rights, there is in fact little agreement on what exactly that phrase means or how it should be applied. This had a direct impact on how the crisis in Kosovo was approached and dealt with by the international community. It is beyond the scope of this paper to explore all the complexities of the modern international human rights regime, but some explanation is necessary to place the Kosovo intervention in context. To this end, this chapter will briefly examine the history of human rights, their theoretical and philosophical underpinnings, and their place in international law and in the practice of international relations. It will conclude with an discussion of the practical relationship between human rights and humanitarian intervention, and specifically with the intervention in Kosovo. 2.1 A Brief History of Human Rights There is no single time or event that can be pinpointed as the beginning of the idea of human rights. Its historical pedigree can be traced back to concepts which were first articulated in ancient Greece, and which developed throughout the course of European history.12 The basic foundation of the modern human rights regime was laid in the aftermath of World War II, beginning with the Nuremberg and Tokyo war crimes trials, the mention of human rights in the United Nations Charter in 1945, the Convention of the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR),both in 1948. This beginning was later extended by the completion in1966 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR); these were legally binding instruments, which the UDHR was not, 12 Carol Devine, Carol Rae Hansen, Ralph Wilde, Hum an Rights: The Essential Reference (1999), pp.355; R .J. Vincent, Human Rights and International Relations (1986), pp.20-32. 7 and came into force in 1976.13 About 140 states (out of 185 United Nations members in 1999) had ‘formally adhered to’ the two covenants by the end of the twentieth century.14 Outside the UN structures, the European Convention on Human Rights of 1950 (and its later protocols) was a landmark for its codification of binding international standards on human rights for the members of the Council of Europe. Since the founding of the UN, the role of human rights in international relations has become increasingly prominent. Their status in law has become more detailed and formalized, both in the passage of UN instruments and in national law in many states. However, many states fail to follow through on their legal obligations to support human rights; in 1997, for example, Amnesty International reported that 123 of the 185 sovereign states in the world regularly practised torture.15 Although most Western states show a rhetorical concern for the human rights records of the states to which they supply aid or investment, there are few consequences for the violators beyond a rise in conditionality.16 Nevertheless, states have come to give much more attention, or at least devote more rhetoric, to human rights over the last sixty years. During the Cold War, the high point of this process was the Helsinki Final Act in 1975, in which states on both sides of the ideological divide pledged to abide by internationally agreed standards,17 leaving ‘one global human rights culture.’18 It was only in the post-Cold War period that human rights took on a truly prominent and active role in international relations.19 As George H.W. Bush put it in 1991, it was now ‘a world where the United Nations, freed from Cold War stalemate, is poised to fulfil the historic vision of its founders. A world in which freedom and respect for human rights find a home among all nations.’20 The fall of the Soviet Union and the dismantling of the Soviet empire 13 Devine et al, pp.55, 60-63. 14 David P . Forsythe, Human Rights in International Relations (2000), p.4. 15 Tim Dunne & N icholas J. W heeler, ‘Introduction: hum an rights and the fifty years’ crisis,’ in Tim Dunne & Nicholas J. W heeler (eds.), Hum an Rights in Global Politics (1999), p.2. 16 Michael Ignatieff, Human Righ ts as Politics and Idolatry (2001), pp.23-24. 17 Helsinki Final Act, accessed from www.hri.org/docs/Helsinki75.html on 10 Jun e 2004.. 18 Ignatieff, Human Righ ts as Politics and Idolatry, p.19. 19 Jack Donnelly, ‘The Social Construction of International Human R ights,’ in Dunne & W heeler (eds.), Hum an Rights in Global Politics (1999), pp.88-89. 20 US President George H.W. Bush, Speech to Congress, 6 March 1991, accessed on 11 June 2004 from www.al-bab.com /arab/docs/pal/pal10.htm. 8 freed Western states to take more aggressive positions for the promotion of human rights. In the wake of the end of the East/West standoff, non-governmental organizations (NGOs) such as Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch came to exercise a greater influence on public opinion and on government policies and statements.21 The efforts of the NGOs to publicize human rights violations, coupled with greater media coverage in at least some cases, began to result in increasing public demands for some kind of action. This arguably began to make human rights issues into real interests for many governments, rather than just values; according to Janne Haaland Matlary the potential political costs of ignoring human rights became too great to ignore with impunity. 22 All of these factors must be taken into account when evaluating the Kosovo intervention. It was only in the post-Cold War period that the use of military force to intervene in support of human rights became a realistic option. Although post-communist Russia did not like the idea of intervention in sovereign states on human rights grounds any more than its Soviet predecessor, it was no longer in a position to deter the Western states from doing so if they chose.23 Crucially, this greater freedom of action came at a time when the popular pressures to be at least seen to be doing something were mounting. When combined with the increasing importance being given to human rights, the ability to employ military force could quite easily turn into a perceived obligation or right to use military force. Kosovo was perhaps the first case where all of these factors came into play at once. 2.2 Universal Human Rights: Theory and Practice Universal human rights are supposed to apply to everyone, everywhere, all of the time: that is of course what “universal” means. Article 2 of the UDHR states that Everyone is entitled to all the rights and freedoms set forth in this Declaration, without distinction of any kind, such as race, colour, sex, language, religion, political or other opinion, national or social origin, property, birth or other status. Furthermore, no distinction shall be 21 Ignatieff, Hu ma n Rights a s Politics and Idolatry, p.11. 22 Janne Haaland M atlary, Intervention for Human Rights in Europe (2002), p.190. 23 It was of course still possible for Russia (and China ) to deny UN sanction to humanitarian interventions through the use or threatened use of vetoes on the UN Security Council. The Kosovo intervention was not a UNapp roved op eration. 9 made on the basis of the political, jurisdictional or international status of the country of territory to which a person belongs, whether it be independent, trust, non-self-governing or under any other limitation of sovereignty.24 Supporters of universal human rights argue that they are ‘outside any particular society or culture...and...endure beyond a single generation.’25 However, there is still little consensus on the philosophical basis of universal human rights, and a great deal of ink has been spilled in attempts to justify the concept. Human rights have been described as everything from ‘the contemporary expression for natural rights’26 to ‘monstrous fiction[s]...and...figments of the imagination’, as property rights, as constructions of ‘a political process featuring selfgovernment,’27 and in many other ways.28 The debate over the foundations of human rights is an ongoing process, and demonstrates that the concept is not so universal as its supporters would like to believe. This paper will not attempt to reach a conclusion on the philosophical rationales for human rights. The important point here is that human rights are almost exclusively based on European ideas and concepts.29 John Humphrey admitted that almost all of the sources which he chose to use as the basis of the original outline of the UDHR ‘came from English-speaking sources and all of them from the democratic west...my draft attempted to combine humanitarian liberalism with social democracy.’30 This leaves room for arguments that human rights have questionable relevance and applicability to non-western societies. Cultural relativists argue that rights and rules about morality are encoded in and thus depend on cultural context...no transcendent or transcultural ideas of right can be found or agreed on...[this] necessarily 24 Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Article 2. Accessed from www.un.org/Overview/rights.html on 11 June 2004. 25 R.J. V incent, Human Rights and International Relations (1986), p.36. 26 Vincent, p.32. 27 Forsythe, pp.28-29. 28 For detail on the evolution and theories of human rights, see Forsythe, pp.28-49; Vincent, pp.19-36. 29 “European” in this context should be taken to include cultures and societies which are substa ntially rooted in European societies, in particular (though not limited to) the United States, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. 30 Quoted in Devine et al, p.62. 10 contradicts a basic premise of the human rights movement.31 There are convincing arguments against the cultural relativist position,32 but the point is that human rights are not uncontroversially accepted as valid justifications for foreign policy by states, NGOs, or intergovernmental organisations (IGOs) which may have very different conceptions of rights based on their own histories and culture.33 According to Henry Steiner and Philip Alston, ‘rights are no more determinate in meaning, no less susceptible to varying interpretations and disputes among states, than any other moral, political or legal conception for example, “property”, or “sovereignty”, or “consent”, or “national security”.’34 They are not a universally accepted basis for military intervention, implying as that would an acceptance of the imposition by force of what are perceived by many to be Western standards. Recognizing this difficulty, writers such as Richard Rorty35 and Andrew Hurrell36 advocate ignoring the question of the philosophical roots of human rights altogether as being unnecessary, distracting, and counter-productive. They propose instead an understanding and acceptance of human rights that is based on a pragmatic recognition of the fact that they have, regardless of their roots, effectively become a worldwide normative standard, at least at the level of rhetoric and theoretically binding international agreements. Even states with notoriously poor human rights records ‘accept that their foreign policy must at least pay rhetorical attention to values, as well as interests.’37 This argument holds that it doesn’t matter where they came from originally; they are here now, and must be addressed. The need to justify human rights is thus avoided right from the start; states are to be held to the agreements they have signed, regardless of their reasons for doing so. This paper will adopt Rorty and Hurrell’s perspective on the theoretical basis of human 31 Henry J. Steine r & P hilip Alsto n (eds.). International Human Rights in Context: Law, Politics, Mo rals, 2 nd ed. (2000), pp.366-367. 32 See, for instance, Steiner & Alston, pp.552-553; Vincent, pp.44-57. 33 For a brief outline of African, Chinese, and Islamic perspectives on human rights, see Vincent, pp.39- 34 Steiner & Alston, p.365. 44. 35 Richard Rorty, ‘Human Rights, Rationality, and Sentimentality,’ in Stephen Shute & Susan Hurly (eds.), On Hu man Rights: the Oxford Amnesty Lectures (1993), pp.111-134. 36 Andrew Hurrell, ‘Power, principles and prudence: protecting human rights in a deep ly divided wo rld’, in Dunne & W heeler (eds.), Hum an Rights in Global Politics (1999), pp.277-302. 37 Ignatieff, Human Righ ts as Politics and Idolatry, p.11. 11 rights. It is not necessary to know from whence they came for this analysis. What is important is that human rights have attained a demonstrable importance in foreign policy that allowed and perhaps required - the intervening nations to offer them as a justification for their actions, but not so clearly established or uncontroversial as to serve as an unambiguous justification. 2.3 Concerns and Difficulties with Human Rights-Based Foreign Policy As illustrated by the two UN Covenants, human rights are commonly divided into two “families”: political and civil rights, and economic, social, and cultural rights. The former are often described as negative rights: areas in which governments are obliged not to interfere. They include rights such as freedom of speech, freedom of political association, and freedom of the press. These are rights that may become threatened by government actions - to control the press or to intimidate voters, for example. Social, economic, and cultural rights, on the other hand, are frequently described as positive rights, which require government action in order to secure them. Examples would be the right to clean water, to sufficient food and adequate shelter, to an education.38 Some states, in particular the United States, concentrate on political and civil rights, believing that it is inappropriate for government to engage in the sort of “interference” which may be required to promote other rights. The European Union and most individual European states, along with some other states such as New Zealand and Canada, place a more equal policy emphasis on both categories of rights. There is a reluctance in the West to admit that there are potentially fundamental contradictions involved in using human rights as the basis for foreign policy. Many human rights are at least potentially contradictory: stability vs. self-determination, ‘liberty and equality, freedom and security, private property and distributive justice.’39 There is no agreement on the exact definition or application of human rights, nor of the ‘moral priority’ which should be followed when there is conflict between rights.40 These problems are largely ignored in the evaluation of human rights as justification and motivation for policy decisions. One cannot speak of a human rights-based policy without asking which rights, and why. As 38 Vinc ent, pp.10-11. The distinction between ‘positive’ and ‘negative’ rights, and betwe en po litical/civil and social/economic/cultural, is not clear-cut; see Vincent, pp.11-16. 39 Ignatieff, Human Righ ts as Politics and Idolatry, p.20. 40 Ignatieff, Human Righ ts as Politics and Idolatry, p.20. 12 will be seen, these questions are important in the evaluation of the intervention in Kosovo. 2.4 Human Rights and Humanitarian Intervention There is a school of thought which holds that if the violations of human rights by a state become too extreme and systematic then that state has, or should have, effectively ceded its right to sovereignty over the territory in question.41 Other states are then justified or even obligated to intervene in order to end the abuses. This is most clearly seen in the extreme case of genocide, where ‘the right of states, or collectivities of states, to counter breaches of human rights most likely becomes an obligation,’42 but the right of other states to intervene in cases of less severity is subject to a great deal of debate. Although this highly contentious argument has been used in connection to the intervention in Kosovo, it requires an unambiguous, generally agreed-upon definition of human rights which does not in fact exist, as this chapter has demonstrated. Furthermore, there can never be a clear agreement on when human rights abuses have become sufficiently extreme. If there is not even agreement on what are and are not human rights amongst the Western, European-based states, how can a consensus be reached on when the severity of violations of those rights justifies intervention? Beyond this difficulty, any decision to pursue a human rights-based policy requires a prior decision as to which rights are in question, and which of those are to be given priority. This problem becomes more acute when the use of military force is contemplated. In the case of Kosovo, the intervention was pursued via means which aggravated the level of human rights violations in that province while also widening the crisis to include Serbia as a whole, as will be shown below. The characterization of the intervention as a humanitarian mission is problematic when one recognises that the attempt to promote or guarantee certain human rights in Kosovo resulted in the systematic and large-scale violation of other human rights during and after the intervention. These violations were suffered both by the Kosovo Albanians and by Serbs and other ethnic groups during and after the intervention, and continue in some cases up to the present day. The intervention demonstrated and required a value judgement as to whose 41 Roberts, p.103. 42 Simma, p.2. H e further points out that ‘what the internation al com munity is facing (i.e. at the time of writing, early March 1999 ) are massive violations of human rights and rights o f ethnic minorities, b ut not ac ts of geno cide in the sense of the1 948 Convention.’ 13 human rights and which human rights were more important, and to whom (i.e. to the interveners or to the subjects of the intervention). These judgements were demonstrated in the declared motivations for the intervention and especially in the means used to carry it out, and are still evident in the continuing aftermath. Human rights are in the peculiar position of being an important, even vital, legitimating factor for intervention, while not being sufficient in themselves as a justification for the use of force. Western leaders spoke repeatedly about human rights in Kosovo, which may have stirred up public interest, concern, and support but which did not constitute acceptable grounds for intervention. The next chapter will look at the ways in which humanitarian intervention has been justified and legitimized in the past and establish in more detail the criteria which will be used to assess the intervention in Kosovo. 14 Chapter 3: Humanitarian Intervention Since the question addressed by this paper is whether or not the intervention in Kosovo can accurately be described as a humanitarian intervention, some knowledge of the history of humanitarian intervention before Kosovo will help to place the circumstances and issues in context. Furthermore, when looking at that history it quickly becomes clear that there is no general agreement on what exactly is a humanitarian intervention; therefore, a working definition of the term for use in this paper must be determined and explained. This chapter will begin with a brief survey of humanitarian intervention in the post-World War II period. The rest of the chapter will be devoted to finding a definition of “humanitarian intervention” which can then be used in the case study portion of this paper. The “classic” definition will be shown to be concerned primarily with legal issues which are not relevant here. Therefore, four proposed contemporary definitions will be compared and analysed in order to establish the criteria which will be used in the examination of the Kosovo intervention. The intention is to establish a set of minimum criteria which can be empirically examined in order to reach a conclusion as to whether or not the intervention in Kosovo can be plausibly labelled as “humanitarian”. Peter Hilpold notes that many authors have elaborated lists of criteria ‘which measures of humanitarian intervention should respect to become morally and politically commendable’, and claims that although these lists ‘only slightly differ in their content, applied to Kosovo [they] brought completely different results depending on the personal view taken by the various authors.’43 His points are only partially correct, but they indicate the necessity for the examination to be carried out in this chapter. Firstly, as will be shown below, in fact the lists do not ‘only slightly differ in their content;’ there are significant differences which need to be reconciled and evaluated. He is correct that the conclusions and the criteria chosen usually depend on the view of each author regarding humanitarian intervention; this problem was addressed in Chapter 1. However, he is overly dismissive of criteria which ‘are partly stating generally accepted (or acceptable) principles...which per se are non-contestable...[and which] leave a broad margin of appreciation or their fulfilment is difficult to prove.’44 No definitive 43 Hilpold, p.457. 44 Hilpold, pp.458-459. 15 answer as to whether or not these criteria were fulfilled can ever be reached; they will always be subject to dispute. However, these “generally accepted principles,” once clearly defined, can be applied to historical research which can then at least add to the balance of evidence concerning the larger question asked in this dissertation. 3.1 A Brief History of Humanitarian Intervention Even using the loosest definition of humanitarian intervention (‘forcible action by states across international borders to protect human rights’45), the history of humanitarian intervention is a contentious one, with little agreement on which instances, if any, are legitimate examples of the type. There is little discussion of humanitarian intervention in the pre-World War II period. Most of the literature concentrates on the Cold War period (and now increasingly on the post-Cold War period), which offers many possible cases of humanitarian intervention. Here, however, one falls afoul of the differing definitions of humanitarian intervention. The result, as surveyed by Oliver Ramsbotham and Tom Woodhouse,46 is a situation where the number of potential Cold War interventions ranges from four to eleven or more, or even zero if sufficiently strict criteria are used. The same case may be cited by one author as a particularly clear example while others deny its relevance entirely. This ambivalence over historical cases of humanitarian intervention derives from the tension between the norm of inviolable sovereignty and the legitimacy of intervention. The principle of non-intervention was enshrined in the UN Charter. Strong countries favoured it because it protected them against action by the UN itself, weaker countries because it protected them against interference by the stronger states.47 But there was always a strand of thought which held that human rights abuses were valid grounds for intervention, particularly when ‘violation of human rights by a given state within its borders results in a threat to international peace.’48 For example, the Genocide Convention obliges states by international law to ensure 45 TomW oodhouse, ‘Introduction and Overview,’ in Tom Wo odhouse, Robert Bruce, Malcolm Dando (eds.), Peacekeeping and Peacemaking: Towards Effective Intervention in Post-Cold War Conflicts (1998), p.4. 46 Oliver Ramsbotham and To m W ood house, Hum anitarian Intervention in Contemporary Conflict (1996), pp.45-47. 47 Caroline T hom as, New States, Sovereignty, and Intervention (1985), p.48. 48 René Cassin, quo ted in Ignatieff, Human Righ ts as Politics and Idolatry, p.38. 16 that UN institutions combat genocide, even if it is occurring within the borders of a single state. Many African states maintained that armed intervention against South Africa’s apartheid regime would have been justified,49 and the massacre of Ibos by Nigerian troops in the war over Biafran secession led some scholars to claim ‘that there was a legal right of unilateral humanitarian intervention.’50 Most of these Cold War period incidents have come to be considered as potential humanitarian interventions only in retrospect. Even in those cases where there was a strong human rights argument, humanitarian reasons were seldom either offered or accepted as justification at the time. Nicholas Wheeler looks in detail at three candidates and finds that in each case the primary justification used by the intervening governments was self-defence or security; humanitarian reasons were secondary at best.51 This was in spite of the fact that there were systematic, large-scale atrocities being carried out in all three case studies which were effectively ended by the interventions. The self-defence justifications were shaky at best, and the international reaction was to condemn all three interventions as illegitimate violations of the sovereignty of the target states.52 Purely domestic human rights violations were not seen as grounds for international intervention in this period. The post-Cold War period has seen a marked upswing in the number of interventions which are justified in humanitarian terms. Interventions in Bosnia, Iraq, Somalia, Haiti, Kosovo, Afghanistan, and again Iraq have all prominently featured human rights arguments, along with claims of self-defence or international security. The Rwandan genocide and its aftermath of widespread chaos and attendant humanitarian crises in central Africa resulted in scathing criticisms of the international community and the UN for not intervening. Human rights justifications are considered to be much more legitimate than they were during the Cold War. In spite of this, there is still debate over what exactly constitutes a humanitarian intervention; there is no generally agreed, uncontroversial definition. 49 Thomas, pp.66-67. 50 W heeler, Saving Stran gers, p.42. 51 This is not to say that human rights concerns did not play a role in the decisions to intervene. For example, in the case of the Tanzanian intervention in Uganda, President Nyerere had been vocally attacking Idi Amin’s regime for some time on hum an rights grounds, but he did no t attempt to justify his actions on these grounds. W heeler, Saving Stran gers, pp.60-65, 85-89, 117-122. 52 W heeler, Saving Stran gers, pp.65-71, 90-100, 122-132. 17 3.2 Defining Humanitarian Intervention Humanitarian intervention is a very difficult concept to define. It carries a different meaning depending on who is using it and when: Lori Fischler-Damrosch notes at least seventeen different interpretations which have been put on the term.53 Oliver Ramsbotham and Tom Woodhouse cite Wil Verwey’s definition of humanitarian intervention as the ‘correct usage in international law and state practice:’ [t]he threat or use of force by a state or states abroad, for the sole purpose of preventing or putting a halt to a serious violation of fundamental human rights, in particular the right to life of persons, regardless of their nationality, such protection taking place neither upon authorization by relevant organs of the United Nations nor with permission by the legitimate government of the target state.54 Using John Vincent’s work as a basis, they then describe six features which characterize this classic definition of intervention:55 (a) Purpose: The motivation for the intervention must be purely, or at least overwhelmingly, humanitarian; state interests cannot be significant. Furthermore, “humanitarian” is strictly defined as ‘the protection of fundamental human rights threatened by the host government’. The idea of intervening for other humanitarian purposes is not addressed. (b) Agency: Possible interventionist actors are limited to individual states or groups of states. Organizations like the United Nations are explicitly ruled out as being possible agents of intervention. (c) Target: The intervention is done against the will of the target state. This assumes both that a clearly legitimate government exists, and that intervention is automatically done against that government. This area also brings in concerns about legality of interventions under the UN Charter. (d) Force level: Intervention is equated with the ‘threat or use of force’, ensuring that it is 53 Cited in Ramsbotham & Woodhouse, p.112. 54 Ramsbotham & Woodhouse, p.3. 55 Ramsbotham & Woodhouse, pp.43-44, 109-111. 18 prohibited by UN Charter Article 2(4). Distinctions between intervention and war on the one hand and coercion (but not force) on the other are ignored. (e) Context: It is assumed that the intervention is to protect human rights from threats by the government of the state in question. If that is not the case, it cannot be called humanitarian intervention. (f) Legitimacy: Practically speaking, any action which could be labelled “intervention” was found to be illegitimate under these standards. The question of what actually constituted a legitimate intervention ‘becomes side-tracked by the reluctance...to call a possibly legitimate act “intervention”.’ The most distinctive feature of this definition of intervention is its predominantly legalistic character. It is not so much intended to lay out criteria by which one might determine what is a legitimate humanitarian intervention as it is to lay out standards by which any potential candidate can be ruled out. This is entirely consistent with the primacy given to sovereignty and non-intervention in the international system.56 But as Vincent points out, there is ‘confusion between the use of the word intervention as a description of an event in international relations and its use as a normative expression by international lawyers.’57 For the purposes of this paper, the classic definition is crippled by that confusion. Since the question here is not the legality of the Kosovo intervention, but rather its characterization as a humanitarian intervention in moral and practical terms, it is necessary to turn to other definitions of humanitarian intervention to find usable criteria. The four definitions chosen all date from the post-Cold War period and primarily (though not exclusively) address nonlegal features of humanitarian intervention. The listed features are considered to be the minimum requirements which must be met in order for an intervention to be labelled “humanitarian;” Wheeler goes on to discuss a further four features over and above these threshold requirements which, if present, add further to the legitimacy of an intervention but 56 For an excellent discussion of sovereignty and the non-intervention principle, see Thoma s, especially pp.2 2-51 ; also Ignatieff, Human Righ ts as Politics and Idolatry, pp.37-39. 57 John Vincent, cited in Ramsbotham & Woodhouse, p.44. 19 which are not required.58 A summary of the proffered criteria, broken down into general categories, is shown in the following table: TABLE 1: FEATURES OF HUMANITARIAN INTERVENTION Situation 60 Ramsbotham & W ood house 59 Michael Ignatieff -Humanitarian Cause -Human Rights Abuses Jon Ho lbrook 61 Nicholas Wheeler62 -Just Ca use (‘a supreme humanitarian emergency’) (-Threat to international peace & security) (-Vital interest of powe rful nations) Motivation -Humanitarian End in view (-Vital interest of powe rful nations) -Declared humanitarian objective Means -Humanitarian Approach -Chance o f success via military means -Coercive action -Humanitarian Mea ns -Proportionality of means used to ends -Force m ust be last resort -High probability of success through force Outcome -Humanitarian Outcome Lega lity/ Legitimacy (-Threat to international peace & security) -Lack of indigenous consent As can be seen, there is only marginal consensus on what is necessary for an intervention to qualify as “humanitarian”. Before proceeding with a discussion of these features, it is worth noting that the authors were variously describing what they felt was a newly-emerging standard for humanitarian intervention (Ignatieff), suggesting new normative criteria for humanitarian intervention (Ramsbotham & Woodhouse, Wheeler), or arguing 58 These are: hum anitarian motives, whether humanitarian justifications are used, the legality of an intervention, an d the issue of selectivity of intervention; see W heeler, Saving Stran gers, pp.37-51. 59 Ramsbotham & Woodhouse, pp.73-76. 60 Ignatieff, Human Righ ts as Politics and Idolatry, p.40. 61 Jon Holbrook, ‘Humanitarian Intervention and the Recasting of International Law,’ in David Chandler (ed.), Rethinking Human Rights: critical approaches to international politics (2002), p.137. 62 W heeler, Saving Stran gers, p.34. 20 against what they saw as a dangerous new-found legitimacy for humanitarian intervention in the post-Cold War period (Holbrook). There is general agreement on certain situational requirements for humanitarian intervention, with all the authors except Holbrook listing at least one as a necessary factor. Wheeler cites the need for a ‘supreme humanitarian crisis’ as a just cause for intervention. He does not define this specifically, but it must plausibly require armed, forceful intervention to either stop a humanitarian disaster that is in progress or prevent an imminent disaster from coming about. Ignatieff argues that ‘only in strictly defined cases of necessity - where human life is at risk - can coercive human rights interventions be justified.’63 Ramsbotham and Woodhouse do not go so far as that; they write of ‘[great] human suffering’64 as a justification, but like Wheeler do not attempt a strict definition. Holbrook’s omission of situation should probably not be taken as an argument that a precipitating crisis need not exist, since he implicitly addresses this concern elsewhere. A pre-existing situation of humanitarian crisis, actual or imminent, is the first required feature in a humanitarian intervention. Ignatieff has two other criteria which can be described as situational but which are not relevant to the question at hand. The first, that the situation must be a threat to international peace and security, is actually aimed at the legal requirements for intervention under international law. It is precisely this circumstance which can be (and has been) used to justify intervention under Article 42 of the UN Charter. His other situational stricture is a practical addendum that ‘the region in question must be of vital interest, for cultural, strategic, or geopolitical reasons, to one of the powerful nations in the world and another powerful nation does not oppose the exercise of force.’ This is a partial explanation for why interventions take place in some circumstances but not in others - and perhaps should be seen as a motivational requirement as much as situational - but does not further our understanding of the humanitarian character of an intervention. The next category is motivation, which effectively only appears in two of the four sets of criteria. Ramsbotham and Woodhouse require that ‘humanitarian ends’ be ‘in view.’ Holbrook simply requires a ‘declared humanitarian objective’ (which presumably requires the 63 Ignatieff, Human Righ ts as Politics and Idolatry, p.18. 64 Ramsbotham & Woodhouse, p.73. 21 humanitarian crisis which he did not mention as a situational requirement). Motivation is a vexed question in this context. Ramsbotham and Woodhouse admit that ‘when states are sending troops across borders, it is...unlikely that humanitarian ends can be separated from political ends,’ but argue that a lack of separation between the humanitarian and the political need not invalidate humanitarian ends, and furthermore that disconnecting humanitarian and political ends may in fact hinder a real solution to the underlying problems which led to the crisis in the first place.65 Wheeler takes the same argument - that motivations can never be pure and disinterested - to conclude that they should not be considered at all as a relevant factor, especially since humanitarian outcomes do not necessarily depend on humanitarian motivations.66 Ignatieff’s stance on required motivations is virtually anti-humanitarian: he claims that the interests of powerful nations must be involved, but he does not mention humanitarian concerns at all. On balance, it is reasonable to require humanitarian motivation as a prerequisite for humanitarian intervention, if only so the means and outcome can be properly judged. However, it is not necessary that such motivations are the only, or even the dominant, motivating factor. The only category which is represented on all four lists is means, though the specific details vary widely. Holbrook’s only requirement is that the action taken is “coercive,” which reflects his predominant concern with the legalities of intervention more than it does any interest in the specific actions taken in any particular set of circumstances. Ignatieff says little more, merely stipulating that there must be a reasonable chance of success through the use of military force; this is also on Wheeler’s list. Ramsbotham and Woodhouse require a humanitarian approach, meaning the action was ‘carried out impartially, and...the interests of the interveners at any rate not incompatible with the humanitarian purpose,’67 and humanitarian means. This last point is similar to Wheeler’s requirements that force must be the last resort, and must be proportional to the intended ends. This is an issue which is not addressed at all in the classic definition of humanitarian intervention, and which is in fact key to the accurate evaluation of such actions. Regardless of whether the initial humanitarian crisis is alleviated, the humanitarian nature of an intervention is open to severe question if the means used to 65 Ramsbotham & Woodhouse, p.74. 66 W heeler, Saving Stran gers, pp.37-38. 67 Ramsbotham & Woodhouse, p.73. 22 achieve the goals results in the worsening or widening of other human rights violations, or indeed creates new violations, to a degree which arguably outweighs the benefits in the first case. Furthermore, it is important to judge whether the means chosen, as Ignatieff and Wheeler say, had a reasonable chance of success. The question of appropriate, proportional, wellchosen means is the third criteria which will be used to analyse the Kosovo intervention. Only Ramsbotham and Woodhouse include humanitarian outcome in their criteria. The difficulty with this is that no intervention can be described as humanitarian before the outcome is known. It is only in retrospect that one could make claims on the nature of a given intervention. It also potentially invalidates all the other criteria: an intervention undertaken for humanitarian motives, by humanitarian means, to resolve a humanitarian crisis, which is ultimately unsuccessful would not qualify as a humanitarian intervention. They admit that outcome is ‘notoriously difficult to assess,’ and offer as a possible test the question: ‘does the outcome converge with the wishes of those in whose name it is carried out?’68 Wheeler explicitly rules out consideration of outcome as a criterion, since ‘it can never be known in advance that more lives will be saved by intervention than will be lost by it,’ or that the exigencies of military action will not damage the moral credentials of the interveners.69 The closest that he or Ignatieff come to requiring a positive outcome is in their stipulation that there must be a reasonable chance of success through the use of force.70 However, justification (legal or moral) before an intervention works on a different basis than retrospective examination of an historical event. In the latter case, a negative humanitarian outcome may not disqualify an intervention as humanitarian - the best-laid plans can go wrong, especially in war - but it would certainly weaken the case. Conversely, a positive outcome can reinforce the humanitarian credentials of an intervention, as it would bear out the motivations and means which were given and used for the intervention. In this paper, which is examining a historical event rather than attempting to justify a proposed course of action, the outcome will be considered as a relevant factor in characterizing the intervention. Ignatieff and Holbrook both either implicitly or explicitly address the legality or 68 Ramsbotham & Woodhouse, pp.75, 76. 69 W heeler, Sav ing S trang ers, pp.36-37. 70 I have included these stipulations under the heading of Means, since they have a direct bearing on how an intervention is carried out, but they could also be co nsidered as belonging in the Outcom e category. 23 legitimacy of humanitarian interventions. Ignatieff’s argument that there must exist a threat to international peace and security is discussed above in the section on situation. Holbrook stipulates that the intervention must be done without the consent of the government in the target state. This harks back to the classic definition of intervention, and has no bearing on the question addressed in this paper. Accordingly, the intervention in Kosovo will be examined with regard to the categories discussed above, with the exception of that of legality: (1) Situation: was there a humanitarian/human rights crisis which could justify an intervention, (2) Motivation: was at least part of the intent of the intervention the amelioration of the human rights situation, (3) Means: were the methods used proportional, appropriate, and could they plausibly have led to success, and (4) Outcome: whether or not the intervention resulted in an appreciable improvement in the human rights situation. The concerns with and limitations of human rights with regard to intervention, as discussed in the previous chapter, will be brought in for additional context where appropriate. The case study of the Kosovo intervention in which these criteria are applied is the next chapter of this dissertation. 24 Chapter 4: The Kosovo Intervention In Chapter 2, the history and basis of human rights was discussed. Their role in international relations, their grounding in international law, and their disputed nature were all examined in order to provide a background to the human rights justifications and consequences of the intervention in Kosovo. Chapter 3 performed the same role for humanitarian intervention, beginning with an outline of the history of the concept. A comparison between varying conceptions of humanitarian intervention was then carried out and a set of criteria were determined by which the Kosovo intervention should be examined in order to determine whether or not it is accurate to call it a “humanitarian” intervention. Chapter 4 will apply this structure to a study of the NATO intervention in Kosovo in 1999. It will begin with a brief survey of the relevant historical developments in Kosovo, Serbia, and internationally from approximately 1980 to 1999. Following this, each of the four criteria which were discussed in the previous chapter will be examined in turn, and a conclusion reached for each. Since the four criteria are more or less chronologically ordered, each successive section will refer back to the developments and conclusion of the earlier ones to substantiate the conclusions. The first section will establish what the human rights situation in Kosovo was in the period immediately prior to the intervention. What abuses were occurring? Which group or groups were carrying them out? What role, if any, was the international community playing in either permitting these abuses to take place or in ameliorating them? The characterisation of the state of affairs as a “humanitarian crisis” will be explored, along with the question of whether or not an accurate picture of the situation in Kosovo was either known to Western leaders or accurately communicated in their public statements. The next section will explore the general motivations and specific intentions of the leaders of the intervening states. The justifications and reasoning given by NATO leaders for the intervention will be shown, which will later allow the means and outcome of the intervention to be judged on their own terms. Alternative explanations for the intervention will also be examined in an attempt to determine if the public rhetoric of the NATO leaders was in fact representative of their true motivations. The third criterion is that of the means used in the intervention. The first question 25 which needs to be answered is whether or not the use of force was truly the last resort by 1999. Once this has been determined, the reasons for the choice to rely exclusively on an aerial bombing campaign will be examined, along with the implications and consequences of that choice. This will be done in light of both the declared motivations and intentions and the alternative explanations Fourthly, the outcome of the intervention will be assessed. This section will employ both short- and long-term perspectives. The immediate consequences during the actual period of the intervention from March to June 1999 will be considered first. After this, the outcome in the immediate post-war period will be examined, followed by a longer-term perspective considering developments up to 2004. The state of human rights in Kosovo, and more generally in Serbia, will be considered as well as the overall humanitarian consequences of the intervention. The chapter will end with a summary of the findings regarding each of the four criteria, and will offer a conclusion as to whether or not the Kosovo intervention can therefore be considered to be a humanitarian intervention. Finally, the significance of this conclusion in academic and practical terms will be discussed. 4.1 Kosovo from 1980 to 1999 It was widely recognised long before 1999 that the ethnic situation in Kosovo was potentially the most dangerous in Yugoslavia.71 The population in Kosovo was over 80% ethnic Albanian, but the province was regarded by the Serbs as the historic homeland of their nation. Under the Yugoslav constitution, Kosovo was in legal terms a province of Serbia, a fact which is important in understanding the course of events; this will be discussed below. During the 1980s, Kosovo Serbs felt that they were being marginalised and threatened by the Albanian population; many left the province citing a fear of physical violence and actual ‘institutional and ideological discrimination.’72 In 1986 a notorious memorandum was circulated by a group of intellectuals at the Serbian Academy of Arts and Sciences which 71 See for instance the remarks by Justice Lou ise Arbour in the OSCE rep ort Kosovo/Kosova: As Seen, As Told , p.9, accessed from www.osce.org/documents/mik/1999/11/1620_en.pdf on 15 July 2004. Also see Alex J. Bellamy, Kosovo and Intern ation al So ciety (2002), pp.16-36. 72 Independent International C omm ission on Ko sovo (IICK ), Koso vo Re port (2000), pp.38-39. 26 declared that ‘physical, political, legal and cultural genocide’ was being faced by the Serbs in Kosovo.73 The high birth rate of the Kosovo Albanians was said to be a deliberate policy carried out to dispossess the Serbs in Kosovo,74 and manufactured tales of Albanian rapes of Serb women circulated across the country.75 On the Albanian side, demonstrations in 1981 for either greater status for the Albanian population within the current legal structures or for the establishment of Kosovo as a full Yugoslav republic (i.e. independent of Serbia) were brutally repressed and restrictions were placed on Albanian-language education.76 Government repression and politically-motivated arrests and trials continued throughout the 1980s. The ascent of Slobodan Milosevic to the leadership first of Serbia and then effectively of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (FRY) marked the downturn in the fortunes of the Kosovo Albanians. Milosevic repeatedly used Albanian-Serb clashes in and about Kosovo as a device to stir up Serbian nationalist sentiments to bolster his popularity. Speaking in 1987 at Kosovo Polje, the site of the mythologised 1389 defeat of the Serbs at the hands of the Ottoman Turks, he declared that ‘no one will beat the Serbs again...Yugoslavia does not exist without Kosovo...Yugoslavia and Serbia are not going to give up Kosovo!’77 In June 1989, speaking at the 600th anniversary of the battle, Milosevic commented that ‘six centuries later, again, we are in battles and quarrels. They are not armed battles although such things cannot be excluded.’78 In March 1989 Milosevic removed the autonomous status of Kosovo and illegally dissolved the Kosovo Assembly. The province was placed under military occupation, local media was suppressed, and Albanian-language education was completely eliminated. The situation in Kosovo deteriorated rapidly and dramatically over the course of the next decade. Even before the revocation of autonomy, the Serbian government began pursuing policies to reduce the ethnic Albanian majority in Kosovo; these intensified after the summer of 1990 and ‘spawned an increase in human rights abuses and discriminatory government 73 Quoted in IICK, p.40. 74 Rezun, p.36. 75 In fact, a study of the freque ncy of rape in Y ugoslavia co ncluded that Kosovo had the lowe st rate in the country, and that most of those which did occur were committed by members of the sam e ethnic com munity. See Alex J.Bellamy, ‘H um an W rongs in Kosov o, 19 74 -199 9,' in The Kosovo Tragedy: the H um an R ights Dimensions (2001), pp.110-111. 76 IICK, pp.36-37. 77 Quoted in Rezun, p.35. 78 Quoted in IICK, p.41. 27 policies.’79 Parallel societies evolved in Kosovo, with the Serbs controlling the public sector and the Albanians the private sector; services like education and health care were provided separately. 80 The Kosovo Albanians elected an illegal “shadow government” which even had its own taxes, which were imposed on Albanians on top of the taxes collected by the Serb government. Nevertheless, the impoverished Kosovo Albanian system could not provide the services needed by its population.81 Human rights abuses were relatively constant: deprivation of education and medical care, harassment by police, and so on, and there were some incidents which may have been intended to provoke the Kosovo Albanians into violent confrontations.82 The ethnic Albanian population pursued a policy of peaceful non-cooperation which was advocated by the unofficial President of Kosovo, Ibrahim Rugova They feared that resorting to violence would lose any international sympathy for their cause and give the Serbs an excuse to pursue the same sort of ethnic cleansing policies that had been seen in Bosnia. In the mid-90s, the situation began to deteriorate further. The Dayton Accords ended the fighting in Bosnia-Herzegovina in 1995, but Kosovo was not even mentioned and the Kosovo Albanians were not participants in the negotiations. This convinced many of them that the non-violent route would never bring them success, in spite of apparent new possibilities for a negotiated settlement.83 A severe worsening of the human rights situation was chiefly the result of the interaction between the newly-appearing Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) and the Serb police and military. Initially believed by many to be a front for provocations by the Serb authorities, the KLA targeted Serb police and Albanian “collaborators” with the apparent goal of provoking a violent response from the Serbs and ultimately an international intervention.84 The collapse of Albania into chaos in 1997 enabled the KLA to obtain large amounts of weaponry from that country and to establish secure bases in Albanian territory, both of which allowed them to escalate their attacks in Kosovo. The Serbs responded by increasing police 79 IICK,, pp.41-42; see also Bellamy, ‘Human Wrongs in Kosovo, 1974-1999,' pp.114-116. 80 Bellamy, ‘Human Wrongs in Kosovo, 1974-1999,' pp.116-117. 81 See IICK, pp.42-49. 82 IICK, p.42. 83 IICK, pp.50-51. 84 IICK, p.52 . The KLA was subje ct to de ep factional sp lits and conflicts wh ich makes attribution o f its activities and p olicies d ifficult; see Chom sky, The N ew M ilitary Hum anism , p.29; Tim Judah, Kosovo: War and Revenge (2000), p.147. 28 harassment of the Albanian population, reinforcing their military presence in Kosovo, and resorting to increasingly brutal methods in their counter-insurgency operations. In February 1998, a Serb military operation against a prominent KLA leader resulted in the deaths of at least fifty-eight people, including many women and children. This attack prompted many Albanian communities to form self-defence militias, which although organised independently claimed affiliation with the KLA. Over the next six months, fighting between the Yugoslav National Army (JNA) and the KLA increased in frequency and intensity. Over the summer, the JNA mounted major operations in a largely successful attempt to eliminate or drive out the KLA from large areas of Kosovo which resulted in the deaths of large numbers of civilians.85 The Serbs employed large-scale bombing and shelling of Albanian villages, generating an increasing flow of refugees which began to threaten the stability of neighbouring countries. Abuses against both Serb and Albanian civilians increased, though the Serb abuses greatly outweighed those by the KLA and other Albanians. There were international efforts to restrain the combatants, but they were largely ineffectual until late in the year. In October 1998 NATO issued an Activation Order for an air campaign against Yugoslavia; this gave NATO Commanding General Wesley Clark the authority to launch air strikes without further formal approval. Under the pressure of this threat, Milosevic negotiated the so-called October agreements with NATO, which provided for the withdrawal of large numbers of JNA troops from Kosovo and the deployment of an international Kosovo Verification Mission (KVM) to monitor and confirm the cease-fire and troop withdrawal. The Kosovo Albanians were not invited to participate in the negotiations. The KLA took advantage of the Serbian withdrawal to take over the abandoned JNA positions and continue or resume their military activities. These actions were condemned by the international community, but nothing concrete was done to stop them. By December the UN declared that ‘actions of Kosovo Albanian paramilitary units have only served to provoke the Serbian authorities,’ and that there was ‘a new cycle of major hostilities’ underway in Kosovo.86 At least partly in response to these violations of the agreements, the Serbs moved 85 Human Rights Watch, cited in IICK, p.69. 86 Report of the Secretary General Prepared Pursuant to Re solutio n 11 60 (1 998 ), 1199 (1998) and 1203 (1998) of the S ecurity Co unc il, UN Doc. S/1998/1221, p.3. Accessed on 18 July 2004 from www.un.org/Do cs/sc/rep orts/19 98/sgrep9 8.htm. 29 increasing numbers of troops and heavy equipment back into Kosovo. The well-publicised massacre by Serb forces of 45 civilians at the village of Racak on 15 January 1999 is commonly held to be the immediate trigger for renewed international interest in Kosovo. Pressure was brought to bear on both sides to participate in peace negotiations, which were held at Rambouillet in February. Following a further series of negotiations in Paris in mid-March, a proposal was signed by the Kosovo Albanian delegation which would have restored Kosovo’s autonomy and independent political institutions, but which left the issue of independence undecided. An Implementation Mission led by NATO would have been brought in to enforce the agreement; the Yugoslav government was to allow free movement by those NATO forces throughout all of the FRY.87 The Yugoslav government refused to sign the proposed agreement. Over this period of January to March 1999, the violence in Kosovo continued apace. As many as 200,000 or more refugees were driven from their homes, and the Yugoslav army continued to move troops back into the province. The KVM was withdrawn from Kosovo on 20 March. At 8pm local time on 24 March 1999, NATO launched Operation Allied Force against Serbia. 4.2 Situation As discussed in the previous chapters, the idea of humanitarian intervention is rooted in the concept of universal human rights. So given the course of events narrated above, what exactly was the human rights situation in Kosovo in early 1999? Information was often difficult to come by; access to Kosovo for international observers was frequently hindered by the FRY government and military, and the conditions in the province made it difficult to obtain reliable information even when access could be obtained.88 Even so, there were many international organisations active in Kosovo over the course of the 1990s, and their combined efforts make it possible to assess the general state of affairs. Their reports make it clear that the human rights situation in Kosovo deteriorated severely during the nineties. By 1999 there 87 The full text of the Rambo uillet Interim Agreement for Peace and Self-Gov ernment in K osovo is available from www.usip.org/library/pa/kosovo/kosovo_rambtoc.html, accessed on 18 July 2004. The requirement for free movement and legal immunity for NAT O forces throughout Yugoslavia has been described by some as a deliberate deal-breaker with the Serbs; see Herring, pp.227-228; Herman and Peterson, p.211-212. 88 IICK, pp.8 2-83 ; Mary Ro binson, Situation of Human Rights in Kosovo, Federal Republic of Yug oslav ia, 22 April 1999. Accessed on 16 July 2004 from www.unhchr.ch. 30 were sustained, organised, and deliberate human rights violations taking place throughout Kosovo, largely but not exclusively at the hands of the Serbs. These violations encompassed all types of human rights: political, civil, economic, social, and cultural. Serb violations of the human rights of the Kosovo Albanians were widespread and relatively well-documented. Since the removal of Kosovo’s autonomy in 1989, at the latest, the Albanian population had been denied any voice or method of participation in the government of the country or the province. Albanian-language media was suppressed, and in 1998 the Serb government began imposing restrictions and demands on foreign journalists and broadcasters as well.89 Medical care and education were denied to Kosovo Albanians on the basis of their ethnicity.90 Yugoslav military actions, such as shelling villages and towns to encourage the population to flee and the killing of Albanian livestock were specifically designed to deprive the Kosovo Albanians of adequate food and shelter.91 Arbitrary arrest and detentions, extra-judicial executions, and lack of due legal process were frequently reported, especially in the 1998-1999 period.92 Human Rights Watch claimed that ‘the Yugoslav Army and Serbian Police are fighting a war against civilians,’93 an ‘unrestrained campaign of terror against a civilian population.’94 As had been the case in Bosnia, attacks on the civilian population were not merely a side-effect of the military conflict. Civilians were the deliberate target of military actions. Though it does not excuse such violations, many Serb actions in 1998 and 1999 were taken in response to KLA attacks and provocations.95 Albeit on a much smaller scale, the KLA was also responsible for systematic and deliberate human rights violations. The Humanitarian 89 IICK, p.77; Dana H. Allin, NATO’s Balkan Interventions (2002), p.48. The media was also suppressed and controlled in the rest of Yugoslavia: see Robin Co ok and George Robertson, Joint Press Conference by the UK Defence and Foreign Secretaries, 22 April 1999. Accessed from www.fco.gov.uk on 20 July 2004. 90 See for instance Mary Robinson’s UNHCHR report cited in note 19. Even when medical care was available, many A lbanians were afraid o r poisoning or malpractice if they went to Serb doctors; see Bellamy, ‘Human Wrongs in Kosovo, 1974-1999', p.117. 91 Allin, p.53. 92 IICK , pp.7 2, 77 , 80-8 1; Ro binson Report. 93 Human Rights Watch, ‘Eighteen Civilians Massacred in Kosovo Forest,’ 29 September 1998, accessed from www.hrw.org /press9 8/sep t/kosov92 9.htm on 21 July 2004. 94 Human Rights Watch, ‘Serb Police Attacked Convoy of 250 Vehicles,’ 30 September 1998, accessed from www.hrw.org /press9 8/sep t/kosov93 0.htm on 21 July 2004. 95 IICK, p.79; Allin, p.50. 31 Law Centre reported Albanian responsibility for disappearances, abductions, and the arbitrary detention of Serb civilians in Kosovo.96 UNHCHR Special Rapporteur Jiri Dienstbier reported in August 1998 ‘over 100 abductions of Serb citizens’ by the KLA.97 Although primarily aimed at Serbs, KLA abuses were also sometimes directed at other non-ethnic Albanians and at Albanian “collaborators.”98 The KLA deliberately targeted civilians, either as revenge attacks for Serb actions or in an attempt to provoke Serb atrocities in order to gain international support. In the words of William Walker, head of the KVM, ‘the crisis in Kosovo was largely based on egregious violations of human rights by both parties to the conflict,’99 but nobody denied that there was a crisis. The claims by the intervening states to be acting to rectify gross human rights abuses were to this degree entirely consistent with the situation on the ground in Kosovo, but tended to ignore the abuses by the Kosovo Albanians to concentrate on those by the Serbs. Be that as it may, it was established above that, as Robert Skidelsky puts it, ‘human rights abuse per se is not a ground for intervention.’100 In order to fulfill the first criterion for humanitarian intervention there must be a current or imminent humanitarian crisis, something which plausibly requires military force to remedy and which goes beyond simple abuses of human rights. In Kosovo in early 1999, it was reasonable to argue that a “humanitarian catastrophe” was indeed imminent, if not already in progress. Hundreds of thousands of people had been displaced from their homes and were living either in the woods and mountains of Kosovo or in UN refugee camps in Albania and Macedonia.101 Up to the end of 1998, the KLA was responsible for the deaths of up to 150 Serbian police, perhaps the same number of Serb civilians, and for approximately the same number of kidnappings. Yugoslav forces had 96 IICK, p.72. 97 Statement of the Specia l Rapp orteur , M r. Jiri Dienstbier, of the Commission on Human Rights on the situation of human rights in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, and the F ederal Repu blic of Yug oslav ia, 6 August 1998, accessed from www.unhchr.ch on 19 July 2 004 . 98 IICK, p.69. 99 W illiam Walker, ‘OSCE Verification Experiences in Kosovo, November 1998-June 1999,' in Ken Bo oth (ed .), The Kosovo Tragedy: the human rights dimensions (2001), p.129. 100 Quoted in Ignatieff, Virtual War, p.74. 101 In August 1998, the UNHCR reported more than 1 00,0 00 internally displace d K osovo A lbanians, with more than 10,000 more in Albanian and Macedonia; see the Dienstbier Report. As of 23 March 1999, the UNHCR reported 260,000 internally displaced within Kosovo, another 100,00 0 or more elsewhere in the region, and 100,000 refugees or asylum seekers outside the region; see Roberts, p.113. 32 killed perhaps 2000 people and detained 1200.102 However, the situation was more complex than this picture makes it out to be. The actions of the Serb military in 1998 and 1999 could be attributed to legitimate, if brutal, counterinsurgency combat. According to Edward Herman and David Peterson, charges of preintervention ethnic cleansing were not supported by any official document, including those of the State Department, OSCE, British House of Commons Defence Review, or any of the three indictments of Milosevic. Indeed, prior to the bombing, the German Foreign Office had even denied that the refugee flows constituted a case of ethnic cleansing, contending that: “[The] actions of the security forces [were] not directed against the Kosovo Albanians as an ethnically defined group, but against the military opponent and its actual and alleged supporters”.103 Furthermore, although the fighting in Kosovo did not abate in the first four months of 1999, neither did it get significantly worse, and the KVM ‘reported no serious incidents’ between 15 January and its withdrawal in late March.104 The NATO representation of the situation in Kosovo prior to the intervention is also problematic, for example with regard to the number of Kosovo Albanian deaths. US Defence Secretary William Cohen claimed that 100,000 ‘may have been murdered’; David Scheffer, the US envoy for war crimes, cited a figure of up to 225,000. Geoff Hoon at the British Foreign Office offered the lowest figure, estimating ‘at least 10,000' deaths. In August 2000, the International Criminal Tribunal for Yugoslavia concluded that there had been a total of 23000 deaths, Serb and Albanian, as a result of the conflict.105 This is an extreme discrepancy even allowing for the difficulty of obtaining reliable information, and suggests that the crisis was deliberately exaggerated by Western officials in order to justify the intervention to the public, to their colleagues, and perhaps to themselves. Another apparent misrepresentation of the situation is found in the repeated references made by NATO to “Operation Horseshoe,” a Serb military operation to force the entire Kosovo Albanian population out of the province. This plan was supposedly already in place and ready 102 Herring, p.229. 103 Herman and Peterson, p.209. 104 Herman and Peterson, p.210. 105 Chandler, p.73. 33 for implementation before the intervention began.106 In this version of events, the expansion of the refugee crisis after March 24 was nothing more than a coincidence, the execution of a long-planned move by the Serbs. However, Operation Horseshoe was never mentioned before the bombing, and according to Herman and Peterson ‘has been exploded as a fraud.’ Independent reports did not support the contention that Operation Horseshoe began between the withdrawal of the KVM and the beginning of air strikes, and in any case the Serbs were well aware that the bombing was about to begin.107 Finally, in April 1999 General Clark denied any knowledge of Operation Horseshoe, which would be difficult to credit if NATO truly knew of the existence of such a plan beforehand.108 Despite these misrepresentations on the part of NATO, the human rights and humanitarian situation in Kosovo was such that the first criterion can be held to have been fulfilled. To use Michael Ignatieff’s stricture, human life was certainly directly at risk. The more general criteria of a humanitarian cause or “supreme humanitarian emergency” were plausibly though not definitively met. The situational preconditions for a humanitarian intervention were present, although they were much more complex than they were generally portrayed by Western leaders. 4.3 Motivations and Intentions The second criterion established in Chapter 3 is that of motivation: humanitarian objectives or ends are necessary for an intervention to qualify as being humanitarian. They also provide a useful benchmark for analysing the outcome of an intervention according to the interveners own declared motivations. Motivation is a difficult factor to establish; it is inevitably mixed, and statements cannot necessarily be taken at face value. However, it is at least possible to determine what the interveners claimed they were there to do, which is necessary for the evaluation of the means and the outcome, and to evaluate possible alternative explanations and their impact on the humanitarian objectives. Unsurprisingly, the declarations and statements by NATO leaders overwhelmingly 106 Bellamy, ‘Human Wrongs in Kosovo, 1974-1999,' p.121. 107 Herman and Peterson, p.210. 108 Herring, p.230. 34 emphasised humanitarian motives. In a speech which he gave in Chicago on 22 April 1999, British Prime Minister Tony Blair claimed that the bombing campaign was ‘a just war, based not on any territorial ambitions but on values’ and that ‘we cannot let the evil of ethnic cleansing stand.’109 A German representative of the EU ‘spoke of the “humanitarian tragedy of enormous scale” set off by the gross violations of human rights perpetrated by the government of the FRY.’110 The Canadian ambassador to the UN claimed that ‘[h]umanitarian considerations underpin our action. We cannot simply stand by while innocents are murdered, an entire population is displaced, villages are burned.’111 US President Bill Clinton spoke of ‘upholding our values, protecting our interests, and advancing the cause of peace’ and noted that ‘we cannot respond to such tragedies everywhere, but when ethnic conflict turns into ethnic cleansing where we can make a difference, we must try, and that is clearly the case in Kosovo.’112 Similar statements were made by officials from every country which participated in the intervention. Beyond the obvious, the repeated use of such language also implies another motive which is in no way incompatible with the declared humanitarian motives: shame. The international community had allowed the wars of ethnic cleansing to sweep through the rest of Yugoslavia earlier in the decade, and were perhaps not prepared to sit idly and ineffectually by and see the same events repeated in Kosovo.113 This has added weight when considered in light of the post-Cold War developments discussed in Chapter 2, which made intervention a more feasible option in 1999 than it had been earlier in the decade. In addition to such general references to a humanitarian crisis, many declarations were made of the specific goals or demands which were NATO’s objectives in the intervention. Prime Minister Blair, in the same speech in Chicago, identified five objectives: a verifiable cessation of all combat activities and killings; the withdrawal of Serb military 109 Tony Blair, Do ctrine o f the Interna tiona l Com mu nity, speech given in Chicago, USA, 22 April 1999. The full text of the speech is available from www.fco.gov.uk , accessed on 3 August 2004. 110 A. Cassese, ‘A follow-up: forcible humanitarian countermeasures and opin io necessitatis,’ European Journal of International Law, Vol.10, No.4 (1999), p.793. 111 Quoted in Nicholas J. Wheeler, ‘Reflections on the Legality and Legitimacy of NATO’s Intervention in Ko sovo ,’ in Ken Bo oth (ed .), The Kosovo Tragedy: the human rights dimensions (2001), p.153. 112 Quoted in Cho msky, The N ew M ilitary Hum anism , p.3. 113 Roberts, p .104 ; Ignatieff, Virtual War, pp.178-179. 35 police and paramilitary forces from Kosovo; the deployment of an international military force; the return of all refugees and unimpeded access for humanitarian aid; and a political framework for Kosovo building on the Rambouillet accords. NATO Secretary-General Javier Solana characterised the ‘International Community’s demands’ as being ‘acceptance of the interim political settlement which has been negotiated at Rambouillet; full observance of limits on the Serb Army and Special Police Forces agreed on 25 October; ending of excessive and disproportionate use of force in Kosovo.’114 Again, similar statements can be found from representatives of any NATO country. The specific goals of the intervention in Kosovo were thus apparently clearly defined, though there is evidence that this was not in fact the case.115 Publicly, at least, the demands NATO was making of the FRY government were clear and non-negotiable. There are problems with accepting the declared humanitarian motives for intervention in Kosovo. Firstly, the scale of the crisis increased dramatically after the air war began. The vast majority of the ethnic Albanians displaced from Kosovo were forced out while the NATO bombardment was in progress, not before it. As Noam Chomsky notes, this is only an acceptable result if one accepts the contention that the situation would eventually have gotten even worse, which is a questionable assumption at best.116 The British House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee used exactly this reasoning in 2000: The issue in Kosovo was...whether in the absence of NATO intervention, the Serb campaign would have continued over many years, eventually resulting in more deaths and instability in 117 the region than if NATO had not intervened. We believe that it would. However, this was not how the intervention was sold at the time. In the spring of 1999, the talk was of ending the Serb ethnic cleansing in Kosovo, allowing the refugees to return home, guaranteeing the human rights of the population, and so on. Certainly the ending of ‘all combat activities and killings’ would preclude the continuation of Serbian policies, but the emphasis was on ending current abuses, not preventing hypothetical future ones. Even when 114 NATO Press Release 040, 23 March 1999, accessed from www.nato.int/docu/pr/19 99/p 99-0 40e .htm on 3 August 2004. 115 Chandler, p.81. 116 Noam Chomsky, ‘In Retrospect: A review of NAT O’s war over Ko sovo , part I,’ Z Magazine, April 2000, accessed from www.z mag.org/Zmag/articles/chomskyapril200 0.htm on 3 August 2004. 117 Quoted in Chandler, p.75. 36 the talk was of “an impending humanitarian catastrophe,”118 the context was such that it was clear that this phrase referred to imminent Serb actions, not a long drawn-out continuation of the status quo in Kosovo. It is telling that the justifications changed after a more accurate picture of the pre-intervention situation in Kosovo had been formed. This suggests that the declared motives were to a large extent dependent on what was politically expedient, which in turn presents the possibility that the humanitarian declarations were instead a cover for other motivations. The behaviour of the NATO states in comparable situations elsewhere in the world lends credence to this suspicion. Humanitarian catastrophes and gross human rights abuses in Turkey, Indonesia, and Israel had not resulted in military intervention. These regimes continued to receive funds and military supplies from the West during this period, in contrast to the arms embargo on all sides in Yugoslavia. One can acknowledge that different situations may call for different responses, and while the inconsistencies in Western behaviour in these cases makes the rhetoric of human rights and humanitarianism ring somewhat hollow, it does not necessarily prove that such rhetoric was insincere. Why was the West not appalled and outraged by these other cases? Michael Ignatieff’s response would be a practical one: the major powers had no compelling interests in those regions. In the case of Turkey, a major NATO ally bordering the volatile Middle East, the interest was in actively not addressing the Kurdish issue. This is true as far as it goes, but still does not answer the charge of selectivity and hypocrisy. If anything, it reinforces that charge: human rights abuses were ignored when it was inconvenient to pay attention to them.119 One possible counter-argument was mentioned above: that Kosovo was the first case where the inclination and practical ability to intervene were not countered by other considerations. Kosovo could thus be seen as a valid start of a new standard which places more emphasis on humanitarianism, rather than the cynical continuation of past policies. Other points which suggest that humanitarian motives might not have been sincere include the almost complete lack of preparation on the part of NATO to cope with hundreds of thousands of refugees during the intervention and the lack of interest in follow-up on 118 British Defence Secretary George Ro bertson, quoted in John Pilger, ‘Mo ral Tourism ,’ The Guardian, 15 June 1999. Accessed from www.guardian.co.uk on 19 July 2004. 119 Chandler, pp.85-86. 37 humanitarian issues in the post-war period. Militaries are often ambivalent about dealing with so-called “civilian” issues, but that does not explain the lack of planning and follow-through on the part of NATO governments. These issues will be examined in more detail in the section dealing with the outcome of the intervention. If humanitarian motives were not the primary concern of NATO, what were the reasons for the war in Kosovo? There are several possibilities. Russian leaders, already feeling threatened and isolated by the expansion of NATO and the Partnership for Peace into former Eastern Bloc and Soviet territory, believed that it was simply a cover for an American/NATO desire to increase their military presence and dominance in the Balkans.120 NATO actions in Kosovo ‘must be seen in the context of the expansion of NATO to include the larger, Westernoriented’ states of central Europe, and was designed to marginalise and contain Russia.121 Adam Roberts finds these arguments to be unconvincing, writing that ‘neither Russia nor other critics have adduced any compelling evidence to support their contention that traditional motives of realpolitik explain Operation Allied Force.’122 He is correct; while it would be surprising if NATO planners had not considered the ramifications of intervention with regard to these issues, the allegation that they were the actual motivations does not seem to be borne out by the evidence available thus far. Another suggested motivation was the need for NATO to justify its own existence in the post-Cold War period. The collapse of the Soviet Union, according to this argument, had left the alliance without a true raison d’être, and promoting so-called humanitarian intervention gave it a new lease on life.123 A variant of this theory is that, rather than a need to justify NATO per se, it was an American desire to ensure that NATO remained (or became) the pre-eminent security organisation in Europe which motivated its interventions in Yugoslavia.124 Another factor is that, having threatened to use military force, NATO would have 120 Allin, pp.57-59. 121 Tariq Ali, ‘Springtime for NA TO ,’ New Left Review 234 (March/April 1999), pp.64-67. 122 Roberts, p.267. 123 Ali, ‘Springtime for NATO ,’ pp.67-68. 124 Peter Go wan, ‘T he N AT O P owers and the Balkan T raged y,’ New Left Review 234 (M arch/A pril 1999), pp.96-99. 38 suffered a major loss of face and credibility if it had backed down.125 This suggests that once the threshold of using threats to try to coerce Serbian cooperation had been breached, the importance of preserving NATO’s credibility acted as a new impetus encouraging the eventual use of force. Peter Gowan suggests that the American policy was in fact to deliberately create this crisis of credibility.126 If so, it was a strategy which placed the alliance in a very difficult position. A joint German-British memo on the future of NATO written in late March 1999 stated: ‘At this very moment in Kosovo, the alliance is now damned if it does, and damned if it doesn’t...NATO’s credibility will be destroyed if it dithers indefinitely and fails to deliver on its threats.’ The memo also points out the potential damage if a campaign should go poorly, noting that ‘the military black hole into which [NATO] is heading can just as well devastate that credibility.’127 Jim Whitman argues that the intervention was motivated much less by a humanitarian concern for the refugees and victims of human rights abuses than by the need to limit a refugee problem which was straining the fabric and unity of both the European Union and NATO.128 That is, their concern was not with the conditions of the Kosovo Albanians as such, but was rather over the increasing numbers of refugees who were fleeing the Balkans entirely and claiming sanctuary elsewhere in Europe. A related concern was with the stability of the entire southern Balkan region, as Macedonia and Albania in particular were unable to cope with large numbers of refugees. Tony Blair touched on this when he said that ‘acts of genocide can never be a purely internal matter. When oppression produces massive flows of refugees which unsettle neighbouring countries, then they can properly be described as “threats to international peace and security”.’129 Pro-intervention journalist Thomas Friedman perhaps inadvertently supported this theory when he wrote that ‘once the refugee evictions began, ignoring Kosovo would be wrong,’130 rather than writing that “once the human rights abuses began,” ignoring Kosovo would be wrong. 125 Herring, pp.236-238. 126 Gowan, p.102. 127 Quoted in Judah, p.235. 128 Whitman, pp.164-183. 129 Blair, Doctrine speech. 130 Originally in ‘Foreign Affairs,’ New York Times, 4 July 199 9; quoted in Cho msky, The N ew M ilitary Humanism, p.5. 39 Though, as discussed in chapter 3, motivation does not need to be purely humanitarian, it is necessary that humanitarian motives play at least a significant role in the decision to intervene. Furthermore, any other motives must not be basically incompatible with a positive humanitarian outcome. If the argument is correct that humanitarianism was merely a cover for the real motives for the intervention, it would disqualify the Kosovo war as a humanitarian intervention. This position hinges on the questionable argument that the inconsistent - some would say hypocritical - behaviour of Western governments in intervening in Kosovo while ignoring or even supporting other situations in which the scale of “humanitarian crisis” and human rights abuses were similar, albeit in different contexts, proves that humanitarian motives could not possibly have played a part.131 However, while this selectivity weakens the claims of humanitarian concern, it does not necessarily destroy them. Essentially, those who make this argument are overstating their case. The fact that somewhat comparable situations did not generate comparable reactions is not proof that the stated motivations for the Kosovo intervention were therefore false. One might argue that it was racist or hypocritical to be so concerned over the Kosovo Albanians after virtually ignoring the Rwandans, but that does not mean that the concern expressed over Kosovo was not and could not be real. Lacking the ability to prove that humanitarian motives did not play a role in the decision to intervene in Kosovo, it is reasonable to at least provisionally accept the statements which were made at the time. The past behaviour of the interveners does justify considerable skepticism in judging their motivations, but this can more profitably be employed in examining the means used and the outcome of the war in Kosovo. As for the other potential motives for the Kosovo intervention, the test is not whether they were present, but whether they necessarily conflicted with a humanitarian conduct or outcome for the intervention. That is, did these other putative motivations interfere with the declared humanitarian motivations? As noted above, no use of military force for foreign intervention can ever be free of a mixture of motivations, constraints, and concerns on the part of the intervening states. In this case, even if all of the other suggested motives were correct expansion of military power, stemming of the refugee flows into Europe, providing a new rationale for the existence of NATO, and bolstering NATO’s credibility - none of these are by 131 See Cho msky, The N ew M ilitary Hum anism , pp.38-80. 40 definition incompatible with an improvement in the human rights situation in Kosovo. The possibility that they were in practice incompatible will be addressed below. Clearly, there are many possible motivations for the intervention in Kosovo, and it is difficult, if not impossible, to assign relative weights and importance to them. Public records and statements cannot simply be taken at face value for the simple reason that they were the public justifications which were offered for the intervention. Private records are only partially available at best and are equally subject to possible self-serving distortions, but are the closest approach that can be made to the individual memories and psychologies of the participants. Nevertheless, it would be a mistake to leave motivations out of an analysis of the Kosovo intervention. Although definitive positive answers cannot be reached, it can at least be shown that the evidence does not provide any solid basis for ruling out the declared humanitarian motivations. It also provides reference points against which the means and outcome of the intervention can be assessed. Whether they were sincerely meant or not, the words of NATO’s leaders are valid benchmarks to use for the assessment of their own actions. 4.4 Means The NATO intervention in Kosovo took the form of a seventy-eight day bombing campaign, against a wide variety of targets throughout Kosovo and Serbia proper, from late March to early June 1999. This followed intensive diplomatic efforts during 1998 and 1999 and varying degrees of political engagement between the international community and Yugoslavia throughout the nineties. Ground troops were only employed by NATO following the signing of the Kosovo Accords in June 1999; the military campaign itself was entirely aerial from NATO’s point of view. The evidence indicates that NATO planners and leaders expected the bombing campaign alone to be sufficient to achieve their aims in a fairly short period of time, rendering the use of ground forces superfluous. This failure in planning partially explains the lack of planning for the aftermath which was mentioned above, and led also to the necessity for ad hoc decisions on the conduct of the bombing campaign which ultimately damaged the credibility of the humanitarian claims made for the war. Means are the clearest, least ambiguous indicator of the humanitarian legitimacy of an intervention. They relate to and connect all three of the other criteria. In theory, they are 41 chosen in response to the pre-existing situation in order to carry out the declared motives and intentions of the interveners. They are obviously a huge factor in the ultimate outcome of an intervention. There are thus many points of reference against which to measure them in an analysis such as this one. There are three questions which must be answered with regard to means if an intervention is to qualify as humanitarian. Firstly, had all peaceful means to resolve the crisis truly been exhausted, leaving force as the last resort? Secondly, were the means used proportional and appropriate to the size and nature of the crisis? Thirdly, was there a reasonable chance of success in the declared aims of the intervention through the use of the selected means? In order to determine whether force was a last resort, it is necessary to explain why there were no effective diplomatic efforts to address the problems in Kosovo before they developed into a crisis. The main problem that prevented any serious early attempts to address the situation was the legal status of Kosovo as a province of Serbia rather than a full Yugoslav republic. An argument could be (and was) made that the republics had a legal right to secede from the federation, hence converting internal Yugoslav conflicts into conflicts between independent states. According to the UN Charter, internal conflicts are the business of the state in question; no one was eager to set precedents for internal interference. Once the conflict was internationalised other states were freer to get involved, particularly when one party or another involved in the conflict requested assistance. It was on this basis that Western interventions in the Balkan wars of the mid-nineties could take place. Kosovo, however, had never attained the status of a republic within Yugoslavia, in spite of long-term efforts on the part of the Kosovo Albanians. Under the Yugoslav constitution of 1974, it was an autonomous province of Serbia. It was self-administered and had many but not all of the rights of a full Yugoslav republic. Crucially, it did not have even a notional right of secession. Unlike Croatia or Bosnia-Herzegovina, there was no legal basis to argue that the situation in Kosovo was anything but an internal Serbian concern. This fact effectively crippled observers who predicted a coming explosion in Kosovo but were unable to find a way to intervene beforehand. Of course, sovereignty proved not to be an insuperable impediment to the bombing campaign of 1999, so clearly the West was able to overcome its 42 scruples on this matter when it wished to do so. To some extent, then, it is arguable that a more robust approach could have been taken earlier, had sovereignty not been seen at the time as an insuperable obstacle to such an approach. Since 1999, Kosovo has served as the prime example of how the conflict between non-interference in internal affairs and humanitarian intervention should be resolved, according to advocates of intervention, but it has not decisively settled the question of how these conflicting ideals can be reconciled. Unfortunately, there are far too many variables to definitively say that different approaches much earlier in the decade would have avoided the crisis in 1999. The simple fact is that sovereignty did trump human rights (or any other) concerns in Kosovo over most of the nineties. Under the circumstances of the times, perhaps diplomacy had done as much as possible, but this indicates a striking inability to learn from past experience. The wars in Bosnia-Herzegovina and Croatia had demonstrated the consequences of allowing matters in the former Yugoslavia to proceed along predictably disastrous courses, yet there was little effort to resolve the Kosovo situation by diplomatic means before it became a crisis. More useful is a focus on the period from roughly October 1998 to March 1999. It is during this period that NATO began to seriously threaten the use of military force against Serbia over Kosovo, based on the premise that threats (sometimes assisted by relatively minor military action) had worked in the past. The Rubicon of being willing to violate Serbian sovereignty over Kosovo had clearly been crossed. Therefore it becomes reasonable to ask whether the diplomatic options in this particular period were truly exhausted by the time NATO commenced bombing. There are at least two plausible arguments that not all of the options were explored prior to the intervention. American and British officials acknowledged that, by explicitly and publicly ruling out the use of ground forces, NATO undermined its own threats against Yugoslavia and encouraged Milosevic to believe that he would only face an aerial campaign.132 Given the political and operational difficulties for NATO in sustaining a long bombing campaign against the FRY, Milosevic had reason to expect only a short campaign which he could hope to outlast. Even after more than two months of bombing, it was only the growing 132 ‘March 24: Finally the B omb ing Begins,’ The Observer, 18 July 1999. www.guardian.co.uk on 14 July 2004. 43 Accessed from threat of a ground invasion, as evidenced by NATO troop movements and infrastructure work in Macedonia and Albania, that ultimately convinced him to capitulate.133 This strongly suggests that, had the threats of air strikes been accompanied by credible threats to use ground forces as well, the October agreements and subsequent KVM deployment could have been more successful.134 The argument that continuing diplomacy would only have allowed the Serbs to continue their abuses in Kosovo is not a decisive one. While the intervention did eventually end those abuses, it first resulted in their becoming much more severe, and has allowed significant Albanian abuses to continue for years afterward. The positives and negatives in this case are far from clear. The other issue is the outcome of the Rambouillet negotiations. The question here is whether or not the demands made of the FRY were truly deal-breakers, and hence whether it is credible that the negotiations could have resulted in a viable agreement. While some accounts of the negotiations indicate that Milosevic was simply unwilling to accept the presence of a multinational force in Kosovo to monitor and enforce compliance, this is not accurate.135 There were two main reasons given by the Yugoslav government for rejecting the accords. The first was the insistence on a purely NATO “peacekeeping” force, as opposed to a more genuinely multinational force under UN auspices. In favour of this position is the argument that it would have been months before a UN-sanctioned force could have been placed in Kosovo, and the difficulties only recently experienced by UN forces in BosniaHerzegovina legitimately added to concerns as to the efficacy and safety of such forces. However, the strength of this argument is questionable given that, almost three months later, the war achieved the placement of a UN-sanctioned force consisting primarily of NATO troops in Kosovo, but only after a dramatic worsening of the crisis which was directly attributable to the bombing campaign. 133 W heeler, Saving Stran gers, p.273; Roberts, p.118. 134 This does admittedly beg the question of whether “credible threats” were politically possible for the NATO leade rs, but since they did play a role later in the conflict, this does not seem to be beyond the realm of possibility. 135 Two days later, the Yugoslav parliament passed a resolution condemning the withdrawal of the KVM and calling for an ‘international presence in Kosovo immediately after the sign ing of an acco rd for selfadministration in Kosovo...to be decided by the [UN] Security Council.’ Given the harassment and obstruction of th e K V M , some healthy skepticism is req uired here, b ut it does indicate that it was not an international presence per se in Kosovo which was the issue. This resolution went largely unreported in the West, and was ignored by the NAT O go vernm ents. Quoted in Pilger, ‘Moral T ourism .’ 44 The second reason was the stipulation in Appendix B of the Rambouillet Accords which would have allowed NATO forces to go wherever they wished throughout Yugoslavia (not only in Kosovo) and given them immunity from the Yugoslav legal system.136 Immunity to local law is a standard precondition for the deployment of US forces even in NATO countries, but it was the extension of both these stipulations to the whole of the FRY which was the sticking point. The willingness of the Yugoslav government to accept NATO freedom of movement and legal immunity within Kosovo alone was not explored. Neither of these issues were open to negotiation,137 and an aide to US Secretary of State Madeline Albright was quoted as saying that Rambouillet ‘had only one purpose: to get the war started with the Europeans locked in.’138 Given that both of these requirements were dropped in the June settlement which ended the bombing campaign, it is reasonable to conclude that a diplomatic solution to the crisis was not being sought in good faith by at least some of the NATO states at Rambouillet,139 indicating that force was resorted to before it could truly be described as the last resort. Nonetheless, Javier Solana solemnly declared that, ‘all efforts to achieve a negotiated, political solution to the Kosovo crisis having failed, no alternative is open but to take military action.’140 Having disposed of the question of force as a last resort, the next concern is over the appropriateness and proportionality of the type of force which NATO did employ. In the 78 days of the air campaign, NATO launched 37,465 sorties over Yugoslavia, of which over 14,006 were strike missions. By the end of the campaign, 912 aircraft and 35 warships were involved, over three times the number employed at the start.141 In the early stages, the bombing 136 Simon Chesterma n, Just War or Just Peace? Humanitarian Intervention and International Law (2002), p.179. Wheeler dismisses this argument, writing that ‘the argument that no sovereign state would have accepted the terms of an implementation agreement that gave NATO unprecedented rights of access in the FRY ignores the point that the whole point of Rambo uillet was to limit severely the FR Y’s so vereignty over Ko sovo .’ Kosovo, howe ver, was the location o f the hum an rights a buses which NA TO was alleg edly trying to end ; it is disingenuous to say that access to K osovo is essentially the same as access to all of the FRY . See Sav ing Strang ers, p.283. 137 According to Chesterman, p.211, ‘it was reported that the only matter on which the United States was willing to comp romise was o n the name o f the interna tional force that would police the agreem ent.’ 138 Quoted in Chesterman, p.224. 139 Chesterman, p.224. 140 NATO Press Release 040. 141 Roberts, p.102. 45 was directed against strictly military targets, but quickly expanded to include oil refineries, fuel depots, roads, railways and other infrastructure, government offices, and television studios and transmitters. In the broadest terms, the intervention was supposed to end the human rights abuses in Kosovo and allow the refugees to return home safely. The air campaign was not able to accomplish these goals, and this was known and (to varying degrees) acknowledged before the intervention began. NATO was understandably reluctant to deploy ground forces against a well-trained and well-equipped JNA; but the choice to act anyway, using air power alone, suggests that it was more important to be seen doing something than it was to do something effective but potentially much more costly. Wesley Clark stated bluntly that ‘air power alone cannot stop paramilitary action.’142 The British Select Committee on Defence pointed out that, given the presence of large numbers of Serb troops in and around Kosovo, the commencement of a bombing campaign would give them both the incentive and opportunity to ‘dish out an awful lot of punishment very quickly’ to the Kosovo Albanians. Defence Secretary Robertson was unable to explain how they would be protected, saying only ‘we would clearly take that into account if that was the situation.’143 The course of events after the start of the bombing proved General Clark to be quite correct. Within NATO’s political and military leadership there seem to have been contradictory ideas concerning what exactly the bombing campaign was meant to accomplish in pursuit of the larger goal. Javier Solana stated that ‘military action...will be directed towards disrupting the violent attacks being committed by the Serb Army and Special Police Forces and weakening their ability to cause further humanitarian catastrophe.’144 The commander of the air war, Lieutenant-General Michael Short, commented that ‘at the same time that I am...killing the army in Kosovo...I also need to strike at the leadership and the people around Milosevic to compel them to change their behavior.’145 Speaking just before the war, Defence Secretary George Robertson asserted that 142 Quoted in W heeler, Saving Stran gers, p.270. 143 Roberts, pp.111-112. 144 NATO Press Release 040. 145 Cited in Centre for Peace in the Balkans, Submission to the International Criminal Tribunal for the form er Yu goslavia. Accessed from www.balkanpeace.org/lan/ICTY2.HTM on 3 August 2004. 46 our targets are military and do not involve civilian or urban targets...[military action] will be taken only against military targets with a very clear objective, not to bomb common sense into the mind of President Milosevic, but to reduce the military capacity that is being used against a civilian population...It is not a war.146 But on 22 April 1999, he spoke of his confidence ‘that the air strikes campaign is going to change the behaviour pattern and the way of thinking going on’ in Belgrade.147 And General Clark asserted that the intervention was not designed as a means of blocking Serb ethnic cleansing. It was not designed as a means of waging war against the Serb and MUP [internal police] forces in Kosovo. Not in any way. There was never any intent to do that. That was not the idea.148 The air war was in fact poorly chosen to achieve either the political goal of changing Milosevic’s “way of thinking” or the military goal of “reduc[ing] the military capacity that is being used against a civilian population.” The decision to restrict flights to an altitude of 15,000 feet was made to reduce the risk to NATO pilots, but it also reduced the ability of those pilots to correctly identify and attack their targets. As a result, million-dollar missiles were used to destroy rubber decoy tanks, and convoys of refugees fleeing the country were bombed in error. The raids were more successful against fixed, immovable targets, but this simply encouraged the expansion of the target list to concentrate on infrastructure rather than military targets. The targets were chosen according to political rather than military criteria, and were intended to allow for a carefully controlled phased escalation in the case of continuing intransigence from Belgrade.149 Since the Serbs knew, at least until late in the campaign, that there was no imminent ground attack to worry about, they could conceal and protect their artillery and tanks rather than deploy them defensively.150 In this context, the claims by NATO leaders that the bombing campaign “forced” the Serbs to hide had little relevance; they had no need to do otherwise. It was only when the KLA, filling to some extent the role of NATO’s absent ground component, managed 146 Quoted in Roberts, p.112. 147 Cook and Robertson, Joint Press Conference. 148 Quoted in Cho msky, ‘In R etrosp ect.’ 149 ‘March 2 4: Fina lly the Bo mbing Begins.’ 150 Roberts, p.112. 47 to lure Serb forces into the open that NATO planes were able to kill large numbers of JNA soldiers. The expansion of the bombing to include targets throughout Serbia had two major effects. The first was the strengthening of Milosevic’s popular support in Serbia as the population rallied around the government in the face of NATO’s attack. Rather than weakening his grip on power, the bombing campaign over Serbia reinforced it. Furthermore, there was no way for NATO to know when Milosevic’s “pain threshold” would be reached. As Colin Powell observed, ‘the challenge of just using air power is that you leave it in the hands of your adversary to decide when he’s been punished enough.’151 In the absence of a willingness to use ground troops, all NATO could do was continue and expand the bombing campaign in the hopes that Milosevic would eventually give in. The list of approved targets was hurriedly expanded when it became clear that Milosevic was not going to quickly capitulate, and an increasing number of targets were of questionable military significance. The war became an attempt to pressure Milosevic by inflicting pain and suffering on the people of Serbia, rather than by destroying his military. The aerial bombing campaign was not an appropriate means of intervention in terms either of the general goals claimed for NATO or its more specific operational objectives. The expansion of the target lists made the proportionality of NATO’s campaign increasingly questionable. In modern warfare, plausible military arguments can be made for destroying civilian infrastructure. Nevertheless, bombing bridges, roads, railways, power stations, oil refineries, and television stations effectively made the population of Serbia the target. UNHCR head Mary Robinson criticized this policy: ‘there should be a recognition of the need not only to adhere to the principle of proportionality, but to err on the side of the principle...in order not to cause civilian death, civilian injury or undue civilian suffering through being deprived of water, of life-saving machines in hospital and so on.’152 Her report dated 22 April 1999 included information from the FRY government of the effects of the NATO bombing, including the destruction of schools and hospitals. Among a long list of 151 Quoted in Robert Singh, ‘American Perceptions,’ in Mary B uckley and Sally N. Cumm ings (eds.), Kosovo : Perceptions o f War and Its Afterm ath (2001), p.65. 152 Quoted in Patrick Bishop, ‘UN rights chief warns N AT O o n bombing,’ Telegraph, 5 May 1999. Accessed from www.telegraph.co.uk on 15 July 2004. 48 damages, the report cited Yugoslav claims that ‘to date, over 500 civilians have been reported killed. Over 4000 have sustained severe injuries.’153 The point here is not merely the questionable morality of killing civilians in one location for the ostensible purpose of saving civilians in another. The disproportionate nature of NATO’s actions leaves the whole characterization of the intervention as “humanitarian” questionable at best. It is almost redundant this point to ask whether the intervention had a reasonable chance of success. It was known ahead of time that a bombing campaign could not prevent and would probably accelerate assaults on the Kosovo Albanians. Far from having a real chance of ending the humanitarian crisis, the bombing campaign was expected to aggravate it. The only argument against this point is that it would end the ethnic clashes in Kosovo in the future; a traumatic surgery now, as it were, to allow real healing to begin afterwards. However, as noted above, that was not what NATO claimed to be doing at the time. The ultimate outcome in this respect will be examined below. As for the operational goals changing the thinking in Belgrade and incapacitating the military forces involved in the conflict in Kosovo - the campaign as it was conducted was not well-suited to them either. Save for the speculative long-term results, there does not seem to have been any reasonable expectation of achieving the declared goals of the intervention through the means which NATO chose to employ. Why then did NATO choose to use rely exclusively on air power? One factor was a disinclination to risk the lives of NATO troops in Kosovo. Simon Chesterman points out that ‘[reluctance] to accept casualties...leads to particular modes of operation...that may conflict with the supposed humanitarian aims of the operation.’154 Political factors, especially but not only in the United States, resulted in ground forces being ruled out even before the bombing campaign began. Reinforcing this desire to avoid ground operations was a misinterpretation of the role which the NATO air raids had played in forcing Serbia to sign on to the Dayton Accords in 1995, in which too much credit was given to the air strikes. The fact that Bosnian 153 Robinson Rep ort. Human Rights W atch later conclude d that abou t 500 civilians in Serbia and Kosovo died as a result of NAT O bom bing. ‘A third o f all the incidents and more than half the deaths oc curred as a result of attacks on illegitimate or questionable targets.’ Human Rights Watch, ‘New Figures on C ivilian Deaths in Kosovo W ar,’ Press Release, 7 February 2000, accessed from www.hrw.org /press/2 000 /02/nato207.htm on 24 July 2004. 154 Chesterman, p.110. 49 Serb forces were suffering major reversals on the ground at that time was underplayed, though not completely ignored. It is also important to consider that the NATO interventions in 1995 were in Bosnia, not Serbia itself, which changed the political ramifications of the behaviour of both sides.155 This misinterpretation of the lessons of Bosnia contributed to an unfounded belief that Milosevic would quickly capitulate once the bombing began.156 Only an unlikely quick capitulation by Belgrade would allow the intervention to be at all successful in ameliorating the humanitarian crisis in Kosovo. 4.5 Outcome The last criterion to be evaluated is outcome. This differs from the other three in that it is a factor which can only be considered in retrospect. The first three criteria were all applied at the time of the intervention to justify and explain it; what was known and claimed at the time can be compared with what was learned and said afterwards. The outcome can only be included as part of a historical effort to determine whether or not the intervention can accurately be labelled “humanitarian”. It must be conceded that an intervention which fulfills the first three criteria can still fail to have a positive outcome; there is no such thing as a “sure thing” in war. Therefore, the assessment of the outcome must look not only at the situation on the ground in the wake of the intervention, but also how these results relate to the motivations for the intervention and, crucially, to the means used to intervene. Given the nature and conduct of the aerial intervention in Kosovo, it is useful to consider the outcome in two parts: during the intervention itself, and in the months and years which followed it. As noted in the previous section, it was no surprise that the violence in Kosovo accelerated when the bombing began. The UNHCHR report of 22 April 1999 documented a massive expansion of the ethnic cleansing, with nearly 600,000 refugees in neighbouring countries (not including Serbia, for which information was not available) and an estimated 800,000 internally-displaced persons inside Kosovo; it further predicted that thousands more 155 Chesterma n, p.110. S ee also W heeler, Saving Stran gers, pp.242, 256-257. 156 In general, it seems that the Americans were more confident than the British and other Europeans that it would be a short campaign. See ‘M arch 2 4: Fina lly the Bo mbing Begins.’ Adam Roberts claims that his interviews showed that the belief that Belgrad e would quickly fold was wid espre ad on both sides of the Atlantic; see Roberts, p.111. There were even some arguments that Milosevic would use the b omb ing to ca pitulate q uickly and ‘isolate more hard-line nationalists’; see Ali, ‘Springtime for NATO ,’ p.70. 50 would flee in the near future.157 A Canadian OSCE observer commented that the NATO assault ‘turned an internal hum problem into a disaster.’158 Speaking on 14 June 1999, British Foreign Secretary Robin Cook back-handedly acknowledged that the bombing had been worse than useless in this respect when he listed ‘provid[ing] urgent relief to the hundreds of thousands of displaced persons who have spent the last two months hiding from Serb forces on the hillsides and in the forests inside Kosovo...[and] manag[ing] the return of the masses of refugees who were deported’ as two of the most urgent tasks in the wake of the intervention.159 NATO made minimal efforts to prepare for the expected flood of refugees.160 Clare Short later explained on behalf of the British government that to have been seen preparing for the refugees might have given the public the impression that this was ‘the inevitable effect of NATO’s bombing action.’161 Given the moral propaganda value of the plight of the refugees, it is even possible that NATO was deliberately relying on the situation to bolster support for the intervention.162 They knew perfectly well that it was in fact the “inevitable result” of the campaign; they simply did not wish to admit this in public. As a result, the living conditions which the refugees were faced with in the camps in Albania and Macedonia were appallingly bad until the UN and international NGOs were able to pick up the slack. In addition to greatly worsening the immediate situation in Kosovo, the bombardment of the rest of Serbia in effect spread the crisis across the whole country. The humanitarian issues of targeting infrastructure, buildings, and industry were noted in the previous section. While some might argue that the Serbs deserved what they got for supporting Milosevic, this is very shaky moral ground at best. Denying the Serbian population clean water and medical services may have eventually put more pressure on Milosevic, but to use this argument means accepting that violating the human rights of the Serbs was a legitimate means of securing the 157 Robinson report. 158 Quoted in Herman and Peterson, p.197. 159 Robin Cook, Foreign Secretary’s Comm ons Statement on Kosovo, 14 June 1999. Accessed from www.fco.gov.uk on 20 July 2004. 160 IICK, p.86. 161 Quoted in Ali, ‘Springtime for NATO ,’ p.69. 162 One NA TO amb assad or rep orted ly said ‘Even if we were winning the war militarily, we would have lost the war at home if Milosevic had not started the expulsions and let us win the propaganda war.’ Quoted in Whitman, p.171; see also IICK, p.89. 51 human rights of the Kosovo Albanians. Why then were the violations of Albanian human rights not a legitimate tactic for the Serbs in their attempts to resolve the Kosovo situation in their favour? A major part of the criticism of Milosevic was that his forces were deliberately violating the human rights of the Kosovo Albanians in an effort to force them out of Kosovo. NATO in turn deliberately violated Serb human rights in an effort to force the FRY government and military out of Kosovo. The air war was not terribly effective at destroying Yugoslav military capabilities in Kosovo, notwithstanding George Robertson’s claim that ‘NATO’s air campaign has succeeded in disrupting massively Serbian military operations in Kosovo.’163 It did succeed in doing substantial damage to the FRY air defences and air force, but had relatively little effect on the ground troops in Kosovo which were ostensibly the immediate target. Far from reducing the Serbs’ capacity for repression during the bombing, they were in fact able to intensify their operations. Though most Kosovo Albanians later approved of NATO’s intervention,164 they were also well aware that the sudden onslaught of the Serbs was a direct consequence of NATO’s attack: ‘The Serbs can’t fight NATO, so now they are after us.’165 When the Serb military withdrew from Kosovo in June, more troops left the province than intelligence reports had indicated were there in the first place.166 With regards to changing the thinking in Belgrade, it is certainly true that the Serbs accepted an agreement which obliged them to withdraw from Kosovo. The question of how much of this can be credited directly to the bombardment and how much to the increasing threat of a ground invasion was addressed above. However, the terms which were agreed to were ‘almost identical in principle to those [Milosevic] had agreed at Rambouillet six weeks before the bombing began.’167 The Kosovo Accords refer to ‘UN auspices’ and an ‘international security presence’ rather than a NATO force, although admittedly in practice the force was largely comprised of NATO troops. This force was to be present only in Kosovo, not throughout the rest of the FRY. The question of the ultimate status of Kosovo was left 163 Cook and Robertson, Joint Press Conference. 164 Jonathan Steele, quoted in Roberts, p.114 (originally in The Guardian, 9 July 1999 ). 165 A Kosovo Albanian refugee, quoted in Roberts, p.113. 166 Roberts, p.117. 167 Pilger, ‘Moral T ourism .’ 52 unsettled, though the preamble to UN Security Council Resolution 1244 affirmed the ‘sovereignty and territorial integrity of Yugoslavia.’168 The seventy-eight day bombing campaign ended with NATO backing down from “non-negotiable” demands which it had made back in February and March. In the longer term, the intervention and the consequent withdrawal of Serb forces did allow the Kosovo Albanian refugees to return to their homes. The human rights situation for them unquestionably improved from where it had been during the intervention, and also from the general situation of the mid to late nineties. But NATO failed to ‘ensure the security and safety for all the people of Kosovo, whether Albanian or Serb, or from any other ethnic group’ or to ‘secure...a future for its people, free from fear.’169 The KLA was incorporated into the new Kosovo Protection Corps, thus placing the leaders and members of an organisation which NATO had branded as “terrorist” only the previous year in positions of considerable power.170 According to Jiri Dienstbier, the postwar period saw serious ethnic cleansing carried out by the KLA, which killed over a thousand people and forced more than 300,000 ethnic nonAlbanians to flee Kosovo. He further claimed that ‘what is happening is not some sort of revenge of ordinary ethnic Albanians’ against those Serbs who remained in the province, but was a carefully organised, systematic programme carried out by ‘Albanian extremists’ under the protection, or at least benign neglect, of NATO.171 As Eric Herring points out, if Serbia’s human rights violations ‘forfeited its moral right’ to Kosovo, the KLA’s violations should logically have had the same effect.172 For all the talk of building a Kosovo free of ethnic hostility and fragmentation, the reality is that the intervention paved the way towards an ethnically-pure Kosovo which favoured the Albanians over the Serbs. Five years after the intervention, there are only about 100,000 ethnic Serbs and other non-Albanians remaining in Kosovo. They live either in heavily protected enclaves or in the northern part of the province bordering Serbia proper. As 168 Herring, p.232. 169 Cook, Statement on Kosovo. 170 Herman and Peterson, p.201. To ad d to the irony of this outcome, ‘according to the BB C, this [the designation of the KLA as a terrorist organisation] was the specific go-ahead for M ilosevic to launch his counterinsurgency in March, along with his offer of provincial autonomy;’ see Gowan, pp.100-101. 171 Quoted in Herman and Peterson, pp.198, 214. 172 Herring, p.227. 53 recently as March 2004, Albanian violence in Kosovo led to ‘28 deaths, the ethnic cleansing of 4000 Kosovo Serbs and Roma (gypsies), destruction or damage to 366 houses and attacks on 41 Orthodox churches and monasteries.’173 The talk now is of a possible partition of Kosovo, not of ‘a peaceful, multi-ethnic and democratic Kosovo where all its people can live in security and enjoy universal human rights and freedoms on an equal basis.’174 International involvement in post-war Kosovo has been inconsistent and frequently counter-productive to the improvement of the humanitarian and human rights situation. In contrast to the estimated $4 billion spent on the 78-day bombing campaign, the UN presence in Kosovo since June 1999 has been consistently denied adequate resources to fulfill its mandate.175 Little of the $456 million which were allocated to fund the UN mission in Kosovo for the first year was spent on actual humanitarian needs: ‘the allocation of human rights spending seems to be unrelated to the requirements of those on the ground.’176 UN and NATO forces either avoid getting caught between the ethnic communities or actively work to keep them separated, neither of which contribute to reaching long-term solutions to the continuing tensions.177 Economically, Kosovo remains a shambles, with unemployment of over 50% and only small prospects of any significant economic development.178 Five years after the intervention, there is a real fear that ‘discontent with the UN, Kosovo’s unresolved status and the stalled economy may just win the extremists behind the [recent] violence more support.’179 Political results aside, there were other serious effects from the intervention which are not easily reconciled with a humanitarian designation. The destruction of oil refineries and chemical plants released large amounts of toxic chemicals into the air and water, posing both immediate and long-term dangers. Despite the well-publicized use of “smart” weapons, 173 ‘Field of sorrows,’ The E cono mist, 25 March 2004. www.economist.com/displaystory.cfm?story_id=2545835. Accessed on 25 July 2004 from 174 NATO Press Release S-1(99)62, 23 April 1999. Accessed from www.nato.int/docu/pr/1999/p99062 e.htm on 19 July 2004. 175 Herring, p.236 176 Chandler, p.80. 177 Jasmina Husanovic, ‘ “Po st-Conflict” Kosovo : An Anatomy Lesson in the Ethics/Politics of Human Rights,’ in K en B ooth (ed.), The Kosovo Tragedy: The Human Rights Dimensions (2001), pp.271-272. 178 ‘Gunning for local power,’ The E cono mist, 5 August 2004. Accessed on 8 August 2004 from www.economist.com/World/europe/displayStory.cfm?story_id=3070254. 179 ‘Field of sorrow s’ 54 Kosovo and Serbia are littered with unexploded ordnance from the bombing campaign which is a deadly long-term danger to the population. A year after the bombing, the United States was still refusing to use its troops to remove the thousands of unexploded cluster bombs which NATO had dropped the previous year. The Americans also refused to teach other organisations how to safely defuse the bombs on the grounds that it was a national security issue.180 Another concern is the residue of depleted uranium munitions, which is alleged (though not conclusively proven) to have serious long-term health consequences. The US refuses to acknowledge this concern and contributes nothing to clean-up efforts. NATO’s leaders clearly do not believe that it is their responsibility to deal with these problems even in Kosovo itself, let alone Serbia.181 By a crude measure of the total level of human rights violations in Kosovo, it could be claimed that this outcome is compatible with a humanitarian intervention. Since fewer people in Kosovo are suffering abuses now, by definition it was successful. The fact that (some) Kosovo Albanians are now doing to the Serbs what (some) Serbs did to the Kosovo Albanians before is apparently not relevant. As a result of the intervention, there are fewer systematic, deliberate abuses now than there were beforehand; therefore, it was a good thing. This is the school of thought which believes that, however much damage was done by the bombing campaign, a choice had to be made between ‘watching the further progress of brutal repression or forcibly putting a stop to it, while minimising the human costs.’182 There is some merit to this view, and surely a reduction in the overall level of human rights violations is a good thing. But as David Chandler points out, by starting off with the ‘assumption that genocide is inevitable...short of killing every ethnic-Albanian in Kosovo, NATO’s haphazard bombing campaign was guaranteed to be a success.’183 This view fails to take several salient points into consideration. Firstly, it accepts the argument that the bombing campaign “minimis[ed] human costs.” It certainly did so for NATO, which did not suffer a single casualty, but there were large numbers of military and 180 Jonathan Steele, ‘Death Lu rks in the Field s,’ The Guardian, 14 M arch 2 000 . Acce ssed o n 29 July 2004 from www.guardian.co.uk. 181 See Roberts, p.115. 182 Whitman, p.175. 183 Chandler, pp.74-75. 55 civilian casualties on the Serb side which must be considered. There were huge human costs to the Albanians during the bombing which NATO knew would happen, which a bombing campaign could not prevent, and for which there was little preparation. There are continuing human costs for the non-Albanian residents of Kosovo and for the population of Serbia. Secondly, this view accepts the idea that the alternative to bombing was to do nothing. This argument was explored above, with the conclusion that there were in fact alternatives. Even if military force was ultimately required, bombing was not the appropriate form. Although the use of ground forces might have resulted in greater casualties on both sides, this would have to be balanced against the greater appropriateness of ground forces to the humanitarian issues at stake. Thirdly, it ignores the actual goals which were articulated by NATO in favour of a general, though highly unbalanced, improvement. If one looks at the objectives laid out by Tony Blair in his speech on 22 April 1999, how do they correspond with the actual outcome? Two of them have been achieved: ‘the withdrawal of Serb military, police and paramilitary forces from Kosovo’ and ‘the deployment of an international military force’. As we have seen, there has never been ‘a verifiable cessation of all combat activities and killings’. There has been a cessation of Serbian combat activities and killings, but the role of aggressor has now been taken on by the Albanians. ‘The return of all refugees’ has become the return of Albanian refugees, while hundreds of thousands of Serbs and other non-Albanian residents of Kosovo have fled. ‘Unimpeded access for humanitarian aid’ is not a reality even in 2004, but now it is Albanian extremists who are responsible for attacks on UN soldiers and civilian aid workers. Since the Kosovo Accords, as noted above, were actually less stringent than those which NATO proposed at Rambouillet, it is debatable whether ‘a political framework for Kosovo building on the Rambouillet accords’ has been achieved. The political future of Kosovo remains undecided, and ultimate authority in the province lies with the UN, not with a democratically elected government. These outcomes do not plausibly fulfill the fourth criterion for a humanitarian intervention. If the operation had had clearly defined motivations and goals, and been wellplanned and executed in realistic pursuit of those goals, such a negative outcome might not disqualify the Kosovo intervention. In this case, however, the goals were ill-defined, the 56 specific operational intentions unclear, and the means chosen to intervene were neither appropriate nor proportional to the situation. In these circumstances, the outcome adds to the evidence that the intervention was not truly humanitarian right from the start. 4.6 Summary and Conclusion The question this paper posed was whether or not the intervention in Kosovo can accurately be called a “humanitarian intervention.” Four criteria were established which had to be met before that label could be applied. Two of them were found to have been successfully fulfilled: the situation in Kosovo was arguably bad enough to merit forceful intervention to remedy a “supreme humanitarian crisis,” and there were valid humanitarian motives for intervening, though they were not the only motives. However, the intervention was not found to have fulfilled the other two criteria. The means used failed the tests of appropriateness and proportionality, and possibly that of force being the last resort. Finally, the outcome failed to live up to the declared motivations, resulted in questionable human rights gains overall, and showed a marked lack of concern by NATO for the continuing abuses within a UN-supervised Kosovo. Since these four criteria were the minimum which needed to be met, the evidence strongly suggests that NATO’s intervention in Kosovo cannot accurately be labelled as “humanitarian.” In the worlds of international law and international relations, the importance of correctly reassessing the events in Kosovo are clear. The legal debates based on Kosovo may be addressing relevant and important points, but they are building on a poor foundation by using Kosovo as their example of humanitarian intervention. Ironically, they may need to be even more theoretical than they already are, because the real-world example on which they base their arguments does not appear to be what they think it is. Politically, whenever the concept of humanitarian intervention comes up, Kosovo is the point of reference which is used. It is still the example of a “successful humanitarian intervention.” To use a current example, in an article advocating the need for intervention to end the violence in western Sudan, the Economist notes that ‘there is a precedent...NATO intervened in Kosovo to curb ethnic 57 cleansing.’184 The truth of the intervention and its aftermath, even as reported in their own publication,185 is apparently immaterial. If the arguments in favour of humanitarian intervention have any validity, they can only be weakened by this reliance on the failed and flawed intervention in Kosovo in 1999. The politically and ethically-charged questions surrounding the Kosovo war have made it a difficult subject to study according to its own merits and needs. As Kirsten Sellars put it at the time, ‘the consensus rules that anything done in the name of human rights is right, and any criticism is not just wrong but tantamount to supporting murder, torture and rape.’186 As a result, much of the literature to date on Kosovo rests on questionable foundations. Both those in favour of humanitarian intervention and those who oppose it have been guilty of misrepresenting the Kosovo intervention in order to support their larger concerns. Since Kosovo, as Peter Hilpold notes, ‘the number of writers criticizing the concept of a right to humanitarian intervention - once decisively preponderant - seems to dwindle.’187 It is difficult to argue against the concept of intervening to end gross human rights abuses or to end a humanitarian crisis. But those who hold up Kosovo as an example of such an action can only do so by ignoring significant parts of the story, in particular the misrepresentation of the situation in Kosovo before the intervention, the completely inappropriate means which were used, and especially the blatant and continuing human rights violations against Serbs and other non-ethnic Albanians in Kosovo since 1999. They fail to explain how these circumstances are compatible with humanitarian intervention, either in theory or in practice. They exhibit what Chandler calls ‘degraded universalism,’ in which the lives and rights of some people are more important than those of others, and in which the need to do something, and to be seen to be doing something, replaces a real interest in solving the problems at hand.188 Those who use Kosovo as an example with which to condemn humanitarian 184 ‘Sudan can’t wait,’ The E cono mist, 29 July 2004. Accessed on 3 August 2004 from www.economist.com/world/africa/displayStory.cfm?Story_id=2963177 . 185 For example, see the articles referenced in notes 173 and 178 . 186 Quoted in Chandler, p.15. 187 Hilpold, p.443. 188 Chandler, p.227. 58 intervention in general correctly point out these problems in the pro-intervention literature, but they are guilty of their own distortions. The intervention in Kosovo is made to fit models of Western behaviour which have been derived from other historical events. The need to portray Kosovo as another example of selfish motives, counterproductive actions, and hypocritical behaviour takes precedence over an open-minded approach willing to follow where the evidence leads. These authors may be correct in their assertions, but their argument is damaged by the manner in which they approach it. In writings which are ostensibly about Kosovo, the intervention is in fact displaced from the focus by the writers’ larger political or ideological concerns. It is to be hoped that these problems will be remedied as NATO’s war in Kosovo recedes into the past. There is an obvious need for literature on Kosovo in which the intervention is not merely used as an example to prove or support a more general point. It is the historian’s responsibility to attempt to evaluate all of the available information on a topic, whether or not it agrees with one’s political beliefs. Conclusions must follow evidence, not precede it. The evidence must be followed wherever it leads, not where one wishes it would go. This author began work on this dissertation believing that the Kosovo intervention could not be accurately called “humanitarian.” During the course of researching the topic, that belief changed to one that it was a humanitarian intervention, but one which was very poorly executed and ultimately unsuccessful. In the end, the original hypothesis was returned to, but this conclusion was based on empirical evidence and analysis, not on preconceived ideas. As long as the intervention in Kosovo is first seen as an exemplar of greater ideas or ideals whether moral, legal, political, or ideological - its history will be ill-served. It was unquestionably an event of great significance. It therefore deserves to be studied and recognised for what it truly was, rather than what people wish it to be. 59 Bibliography Ali, Tariq. Masters of the Universe? NATO’s Balkan Crusade (London: Verso, 2000) Ali, Tariq. ‘Springtime for NATO’, New Left Review 234 (March/April 1999) pp.62-72 Allin, Dana H. 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