|
The war in Kosovo, fought over a period of three months in the spring of 1999, carried the title of „the first humanitarian war." Member states of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization fought the war and conducted 78 days of bombing raids against targets in Serbia, Montenegro and Kosovo in order to stop the „ethnic oleansing“ carnpaign that Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic had been conducting in Kosovo for some time and that NATO members expected hirn to accelerate. In order to learn the lessons of the Kosovo war, we must evaluate it on its own terms. We must evaluate to what extent it accomplished its own hurnanitarian objectives or wider hurnanitarian objectives. We must also evaluate how the hurnanitarian agencies themselves performed during and after the conflict. Finally, we must try to analyze what this means for those agencies and for the world-wide humanitarian cause. The military action was, curiously, both a success and a failure in hurnanitarian terms. If one believes, as NATO members did and as some evidence suggests, that Milosevic had decided to conduct a total ethnic deansing in Kosovo, expelling the Kosovo Albanians in order to preserve Kosovo as a Serbian province, the action succeeded. As a result of the war, Kosovo's Albanian majority is firmly in place. Kosovo is unlikely to become a Serbian province in the foreseeable future. Milosevic has withdrawn the Yugoslav army. The refugees displaced by Serbian forces have been permitted te return. Kosovo is now under a cease-fire, at least for major military action. But NATO did not have an unalloyed success. There is at least some evidence that the bombing may have accelerated (and perhaps even precipitated) the Serbian campaign to expel ethnic Albanians from Kosovo. Within days after the bombing began, hundreds of thousands of refugees fled Kosovo. Serbian forces had brutally attacked the Albanians as well as their homes, farms and businesses. Many ethnic Albanians had to flee from Kosovo. Although they could and did return after the bombing ended and the ceasefire began, they had suffered extreme hardships and many had died. NATO's bombing did not prevent a humanitarian tragedy and may, in fact, have deepened it. Moreover, NATO agreed to Milosevic's cease-fire condition that Yugoslavia retain sovereignty over Kosovo. In the original Rambouillet discussions held before the war began, NATO had rejected that condition and had insisted that the Kosovo Albanians be able to conduct a referendum on independence within three years, a condition that Milosevic had then rejected. Therefore, NATO is now under obligation to retain the province tor Belgrade as part of Serbia, which the Albanian majority will almost certainly resist and which NATO rnay thus be unable to meet. NATO also has found itself with a complex set of responsibilities. Kosovo is now a NATO protectorate. But the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA), which had been NATO'S ally during the bombing war, began an ethnic cleansing campaign of its own against the Serbian inhabitants of Kosovo as soon as the Kosovo Albanians returned. Although NATO forces have succeeded in slowing down this campaign, there is little basis for mutual confidence on either side in Kosovo. The KLA has made clear that it wants an independent state free of Serbian sovereignty. In terms of its humanitarian objective, therefore, the bombing carnpaign is at best a rnixed success. lt has stopped some ethnic deansing but not all of it, and there now seems little prospect for a brokered peace that might bring real stability to the Balkans. NATO bombers were never designed as humanitarian instruments and they still do not fully deserve that reputation after the Kosovo war. They may have saved some people from ethnic deansing but more needs to be done. One of the lessons of Kosovo, therefore, is that war is not a useful instrument for humanitarian policy. lt can create or precipitate at least as many problems as it can solve. lf the military are to be used for humanitarian purposes, they must be used in a way that serves those purposes as its first priority. Moreover, if war is to succeed in a hurnanitarian cause, that cause must be seen as a universal purpose and not only as a national or an alliance purpose. The humanitarian agencies thernselves also emerged with a mixed record from Kosovo. At first, as masses of Kosovo Albanian refugees flooded over the border into Macedonia, Montenegro and Albania itselt, the refugee support agencies were not ready for that flood. American officials criticized the United Nations High Commissioner tor Refugees (UNHCR) over the slow arrival of its teams and the even siower arrival of accommodation facilities, food and medicine tor the refugees. The Americans accused United Nations personnel of being too slow, of wanting to take their Easter vacations instead of helping refugees, and of being unprepared. U.N. and UNHCR officials rejected those accusations. They said that they had issued an appeal for U.S. and other Western support even before the bombing had started but that American officials had rejected the appeal and had said that the bombing campaign would be over within a few days and that the agencies need not expect masses ot refugees. UNHCR otficials also said that many of the NATO military teams first sent in to help set up tents and other facilities for the retugees did not have the proper training and needed a lot ot guidance which also took time. While the rnilitary forces had good intentions, they could not function as effectively as experienced non-governwental organizations (NGO‘s). Later, when refugees could return to Kosovo, UNHCR could not help as many of them as it wished because most refugees ignored warnings about mines and other hazards in order to rush back into Kosovo before conditions for their return had been completed. They wanted to get back to their homes and farms in a hurry and wanted to take over whatever the fleeing Serbs might have left. On the other hand, humanitarian assistance after the return has generally proven effective. Many NGO's are now functioning in Kosovo and they have brought the kinds of supplies with which the Kosovo Albanians can rebuild their houses and can hopefully survive through the winter. While conditions are far from perfect, they are probably as good as can be expected under the circumstances. One of the lessons for humanitarian operations, therefore, is that the NATO military, UNHCR and other United Nations personnel, and NGO1s themselves must begin to prepare more carefully and more thoroughly for effective coordinated actions in such cases. And they wust do so on a trans-Atlantic basis. The United Nations, the NATO nations and the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) now have a protectorate in Kosovo and face a puzzle. They must try to devise policies that will promote genuine reconciliation in an atmosphere of longstanding ethnic hatred and after a brutal conflict which has deepened the immense bitterness on all sides. They must try to avoid favoring one or another side- -although they still want to have Milosevic removed--and must try to find a political formula that will facilitate an accommodation between hostile ethnic and political groupings. Perhaps the main lesson ot Kosovo is that NATO and others should try in future to use diplomacy more energetically before a conflict in order to avoid permitting the conflict to arise in the first place. For the war has solved nothing and has, instead, made matters worse.
The United Nations and the UNHCR must begin making their own assessrnents of impending crises when they cannot receive accurate assessments from others. The international organizations and the agencies will be blamed when things go wrong, so they should make sure that they are ready no matter what they may be told. Even if they cannot have a voice at NATO, they may need to begin making closer assessments of what may happen there as elsewhere. The NGOs can also draw some useful lessons. The first would be to react more quickly when a crisis arises. The United Nations lesson also applies to them, for they may have to begin making their own assessments before a crisis explodes on them. Most important, from the standpoint of closer cooperation across the Atlantic1 the NGO's may have to begin consciously to help NATO and perhaps other national armies to learn how to conduct humanitarian operations. Some military forces, such as the U.S. Army, have begun conducting special training in peace-keeping and humanitarian operations. The NGO‘s should let themselves join in that training and should even ask to join. Both they and the military would benefit from it. The military may be wellintentioned but untrained. Many NGO's, offen staffed with conscientious objectors and persons of anti-military sentiment, may resent the military. But in future there may be other situations where they may need to work together, and where NGO's from both sides ot the Atlantic may be drawn in.
In summary, one of the lessons of Kosovo is that a bombing campaign, even if it has a humanitarian objective, is not the ideal instrument for humanitarian operations. lt may leave as rnany problems as it solves. Another more immediate lesson, however, is that the humanitarian community must remain ever alert to changing circumstances and to the prospects for ever new kinds of operations and new kinds of opportunities and responsibilities. And the community should think ahead to those and be prepared to act with speed and imagination. lt must also be prepared to work with ever greater emphasis on international operations and wider-ranging training. |