By Allen Myers
Having bombed Serbia into what amounts to surrender, the United States and its NATO accomplices will now be looking to establish their direct control over Kosova.
The intentions of the US and other Western governments are evident from the way they took control of Bosnia following the 1995 Dayton accords. There, a representative appointed by the US and the European Union was given the power to veto legislation passed by either half of the Bosnian federation; an international police force was set up under the UN Security Council; the IMF was given total control over Bosnian banking; and the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development took over the body that supervises Bosnian public corporations.
Bosnia remains nominally independent. Kosova will not have even that flimsy protection from its "protectors".
The plan to which the Serbian parliament has agreed will retain Yugoslav "sovereignty" over an "autonomous" Kosova, while actual control will be in the hands of a "provisional administration" to be established by the Security Council.
Thus the UN/US administration, backed by NATO troops, will be the only force standing between Kosovars and the Serbian government of their oppressors, making it virtually impossible for Kosovars to oppose anything the administration proposes.
And, to keep Kosovars reminded of how much the UN/US is "needed", it appears that NATO has agreed to the stationing of up to several thousand Serbian government personnel not only at international borders but also at sites of Serb historical, religious or cultural significance within Kosova.
One thing that the US and Slobodan Milosevic's government have agreed on throughout the war is that the protection of Kosovars cannot be left in the hands of the Kosovars themselves. A commitment to disarming the Kosova Liberation Army (KLA) has been a constant in NATO's war aims.
US secretary of state Madeleine Albright repeated this commitment at a June 1 press conference, with more sincerity than logic. "The refugees cannot return if they don't feel secure", Albright said. "They will not feel secure if the Serb forces are not out and if there is not a force that has NATO at its core and the United States as a part of it, and that the KLA is demilitarised."
Albright did not even attempt to justify the absurd claim that disarmament of the KLA would make Kosovar refugees feel more secure.
Disarming the KLA was also one of the points of the"principles" for an end to the war adopted by the G8 (US, Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Canada, Japan and Russia) foreign ministers on May 6.
"Our goal has never been to empower the KLA to create more fighting", Pentagon spokesperson Kenneth H. Bacon said on May 27, rebutting suggestions that NATO was trying to rebuild the KLA. "Our goal has been to end the fighting in Kosovo."
However, the US/NATO hierarchy has shown a little nervousness as to how smoothly disarmament of the KLA might proceed, especially because the KLA has grown considerably as Kosovars seek to resist ethnic cleansing.
At the daily NATO press conference in Brussels on June 3, a reporter who clearly understood the plot asked: "Could you tell me what preparations have been put in hand among the [NATO] troops waiting to go into Kosovo to carry out one of the first jobs, which will be to disarm the KLA?"
NATO spokesperson Jamie Shea gave a long and rambling answer about the nearly 16,000 troops poised to enter Kosova, the tanks and armoured personnel carriers they are equipped with and the training they have received. It was "a very strong enabling force once it is given the order to deploy, fully able to carry out the essential tasks while waiting of course for the other forces to be deployed too": in other words, if 16,000 troops aren't enough to disarm the KLA, more are on the way.
Getting to the central point, the reporter asked: "Have you received any indications from the KLA that they are, in the wake of an agreement such as this, prepared to be disarmed by those forces?"
"Well, we will have to wait and see, won't we?", Shea replied, with completely untypical brevity.
At this point, Colonel Konrad Freytag, from NATO military headquarters, felt the need to add to Shea's answer some evidence of NATO's ability to compel the KLA to disarm. His English was a bit convoluted, but it made NATO's attitude all the clearer:
"I could add one aspect. General Jackson, who as a major-general was in Bosnia one of our multinational division commanders, and his troops did an excellent job in disarming troops we did not like but they carried weapons."
The NATO hierarchy is confident of its ability to confiscate the weapons of armed troops it doesn't "like". The KLA and the Kosovar refugees may soon learn some sad truths about the self-proclaimed US/NATO "humanitarians".