Genocide in Kosovo

Genocide in Kosovo Peter Ronayne Introduction The American-led North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) attack on Slobodan Milosevic's Yugoslavia beginning on 24 March 1999, represented the culmination of years of tension, hostility, and growing genocidal fervor in an already violence-wracked region. The Kosovo crisis and subsequent NATO air war against Yugoslavia teemed with issues central to the fields of genocide studies, world politics, and contemporary foreign policy. The Kosovo conflict raises for us today any number of fundamental questions, including but not limited to: 9 Did the actions by Serb forces under the direction of Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic constitute genocide as put forth in the UN Convention? If so, what was the moral obligation/national interest equation that compelled intervention by the U.S. and its allies? 9 Was "humanitarian intervention" justified and legal, particularly given the lack of formal UN sanction? 9 How should humanitarian war be waged? and; 9 What is the state of normative evolution in world politics on the issue of genocide prevention and punishment since the UN Genocide Convention of I948? A Trying History It is impossible to discuss or appreciate the issue of genocide in Kosovo in the late 1990s and the host of topics swirling about it without briefly surveying the region's troubled history. Fortunately, the literature includes a wealth of comprehensive and, in fact, quite readable accounts of Kosovo's past to help us make sense of the history lurking behind more contemporary crises. The seeds of confrontation in Kosovo were sown long ago. In 1389, Serb forces under the leadership of Prince Lazar were defeated by the Ottomans at the battle of Kosovo Polje, or "the Field of Blackbirds," and the area has a special place in Serb history and thinking as a site of ultimately futile Serb/ Christian heroism against Ottoman/Muslim invaders. Popular Serb accounts tend not to note that Kosovo Albanians fought alongside Lazar or that some 57 58 Human Rights Review, July-September 2004 Serb mercenaries supported the Ottoman forces. Kosovo also has a particular significance to ethnic Albanians, who believe they are the region's "original" inhabitants and who have, in fact, long been the majority population and have sporadically flirted with visions of union with greater Albania. In 1913, after the Balkan Wars, Kosovo became part of Serbia, despite the ethnic Albanian majority, and later became part of the new Yugoslav state officially called "The Kingdom of Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes." Later, when communist leader Josip Broz Tito's Yugoslavia emerged from the aftermath of the Second World War, considerable wrangling took place over the form and function of the new Yugoslav Federation, including the fact that great attention focused on how Kosovo would best fit in. The so-called "Autonomous Region of Kosovo and Metohija" was declared a "constituent part" of Serbia, and, at the time, much talk circulated about the creation of a broader "Balkan Federation" to include Albania proper--and thus resolve the Kosovo issue in a much broader geopolitical framework. (Note: "Autonomous," however, was a misnomer, and the Balkan Federation a distant vision at best. Instead, decades of Serb and Montenegrin dominance in the Party and in the State security apparatus followed consigning the Kosovo Albanians to second-class status.) In the late 1960s, Yugoslav policy towards Kosovo changed from being repressive and exclusionary to more liberal while Kosovar Albanians expanded their own demographic influence into the province's economic and cultural life. The overall situation was aided in part by the fact that since its founding, Tito's communist regime emphasized the "Yugoslav" identity and sought to suppress--even destroymtensions among the region's various groups, including both Serbs and Albanians. In 1974, Kosovo's evolution took one more step forward when a new Yugoslav constitution provided the province with additional trappings of independence and republic status, including representation in Yugoslav federal organs, economic decision-making power, and the right to issue its own constitution. While nearly equivalent to other republics, Kosovo nonetheless remained a formal part of Serbia. (Note: For interesting details on the distinction between "nations" and "nationalities" within the Leninist and Yugoslav framework (and its implications for Kosovo's status as part of Serbia), see Malcolm, (1998, 327)). Kosovo in the 1980s and 1990s Following Tito's death in 1980, new fissures appeared in Kosovo's fragile ethnic/nationalist coexistence, including student protests, renewed calls for independence, punitive mass arrests, police repression, and political party purges. Subsequent economic pressures, the growing Albanian birth rate, and Serb emigration patterns further exacerbated the situation, raising the population strength of the Kosovar Albanian majority and heightening the sense of peril and isolation among Kosovar Serbs (by the late 1990s, Kosovar Alba- 59 Ronayne nians would make up some 90 percent of the population), The fears engendered in the Serb enclave took on an inflammatory form in a draft document from the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts known simply as "the Memorandum." Published in a newspaper in 1986, the Memorandum explained that: The expulsion of the Serbian people from Kosovo bears dramatic testimony to their historical defeat. In the spring of 1981, open and total war was declared on the Serbian people. This open war has been going on for almost five years. We are still not looking this war in the face, nor are we calling it by its proper name. The physical, political, legal, and cultural genocide of the Serbian population of Kosovo and Metojija is a worse historical defeat than any experienced in the liberation wars waged by Serbia from the First Serbian Uprising in 1804 to the uprising of 1941 (Mihailovic and Krestic (1995), pp. 127-128). The language of identity and victimization in "the Memorandum" not only built on Serb sensitivity to victimization but also presaged the April 1999 legal action brought by Yugoslavia before the International Court of Justice charging NATO with illegal use of force and genocide against the Serbs. As the 1980s ran their course, Kosovo was increasingly affected by a rise in Serb nationalist sentiment, which approached a new high water mark when Slobodan Milosevic gained power in Serbia in 1987. The Rise and Impact of Milosevic A Milosevic leadership trademark became rallying and rousing supporters with inflammatory references to Serbia's past and to Serb indignities suffered at the hands of others groups. In March 1989, he delivered a now infamous speech on the site of the Field of Blackbirds in commemoration of the 600th anniversary of the Battle of Kosovo. Milosevic's rhetoric played on the themes of Serb victimization and the expulsion of Serbs from their Kosovar homeland, As Joyce Kaufman (2002) notes, "Milosevic's Field of Blackbirds speech is commonly seen as critical, both in fomenting Serb nationalism and also in sending a warning that the Serbs were laying claim to Kosovo, thereby foreshadowing the conflict that would take place in the future" (p. 151). That same month, new Yugoslav legislation gave Serbia control over Kosovo's police, court system, education, and economic policy. The Milosevic regime moved from words to additional action a year later with "a wave of decrees that further limited Kosovo Albanian freedoms, including the suppression of an Albanian-language newspaper, the closing of the Kosovo Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the dismissal of thousands of state employees" (Kaufman, 2002, p. 151). By 1990, the expanded autonomy given to Kosovo in 1974 had disappeared: the Kosovo Provincial Assembly and government were dissolved, Kosovo Albanians were removed from important state posts and a state of emergency was declared. For scholars of genocide, the potent mix of hypernationalism and ethnic identity quite con- 60 Human Rights Review, July-September 2004 sciously fanned at a time of significant economic down turn in post-Cold War Yugoslavia points to much of the "difficult life conditions" thesis of genocide presented by Ervin Staub in his 1989 study The Roots of Evil. The Kosovo Liberation Movement During the 1990s, Kosovo Albanian resistance to rule from Belgrade grew, first in a non-violent form. Led by Dr. Ibrahim Rugova, a literary historian and head of the Democratic League of Kosovo, the "underground Republic of Kosovo" movement sought three main goals: prevent violent rebellion; "internationalize" the Kosovo issue--from diplomatic mediation to UN trusteeship; and deny and resist the legitimacy of Serbian rule and create a de facto independent Kosovo (Malcolm, 1998, p. 348). However, by 1997 a new organization, the so-called Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA), emerged and galvanized support and energy from decades of tension and frustration with Rugova's apparent failure to make meaningful progress as human rights abuses grew and grew. In response to increasingly draconian Serb actions, the KLA pursued a more radical agenda, including violence and terror to achieve its objectives. It began a campaign of attacks against Serbian security forces, who responded with military repression of the population as a whole. Regardless of the regime's nature or the character of its leaders, Yugoslavia nonetheless faced the rather difficult task of dealing with a well motivated, supported and supplied, well-masked terrorist organization seeking at a minimum Kosovo's independence and not excluding visions of the region's entire Albanian population united under some greater Albania. Meanwhile, on the outside, despite Rugova's inspired agitation, the Western world continued to view Kosovo as an integral part of Serbia and not as a potential nation-state seeking independence ?~ la Croatia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, or Slovenia; it was essential and fundamentally an internal Serb issue. (This attitude persisted despite the so-called "Christmas warning" of President George Bush--a letter in December 1992 warning Milosevic that "in the event of conflict in Kosovo caused by Serbian action, the United States will be prepared to employ military force against the Serbs in Kosovo and in Serbia proper" [quoted in Daalder and O'Hanlon, 2001, p. 9]). Diplomatic Intervention in the Kosovo Crisis As a result of Balkan violence earlier in the decade, beginning in late 1997, the United Nations (UN), the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), the European Union (EU), the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) and the Contact Group, comprising France, Germany, Italy, Russia, Great Britain, and the United States, paid growing attention to the escalating ethnic tension in Kosovo. U.S. and European attention spiked in March 1998, Ronayne 61 following the killings by Serbian forces of some fifty-three Kosovo Albanians (half of whom were women and children) in response to a KLA attack near Drenica. Throughout 1998, the Contact Group promoted diplomatic efforts to find a peaceful, negotiated solution in Kosovo. Despite these international efforts, the violence grew and with it the emerging specter of another round of "ethnic cleansing" (basically a 1990s synonym for genocide) in the Balkans. At the end of March, the United Nations Security Council imposed sanctions, but a wary West still continued to hope that, as in the Dayton Accords, which ended the broader Balkan conflict, diplomacy would work without the need for significant use of force. "Ethnic Cleansing" in Kosovo But by mid September 1998, an estimated 250,000 Kosovo Albanians had been driven from their homes and some 50,000 were still in the open as the winter approached. On 23 September, the UN Security Council adopted resolution 1199, which highlighted an impending human catastrophe in Kosovo, and demanded a ceasefire and the start of real political dialogue. The following day, NATO defense ministers meeting in Portugal affirmed their willingness and determination to take action if required. After twenty-one members of an Albanian family were massacred in Gorjne Obrinje, the West applied new pressure. On 13 October, U.S. envoy Richard Holbrooke reported that Slobodan Milosevic had agreed to the deployment of an unarmed OSCE verification mission to Kosovo to monitor, document, and publicly report violations. The agreement also allowed for a NATO aerial verification mission. The Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (FRY) authorities also agreed to reduce the numbers of security forces personnel in Kosovo. On 27 October, NATO agreed to keep compliance of the agreements, which were underpinned by UN Security Council resolution 1203, under continuous review and to remain prepared to carry out air strikes should they be required, given the continuing threat of a humanitarian crisis. Despite some doubts as to whether the Holbrooke agreements would deliver a lasting settlement, the international community recognized the opportunity they provided to allow those who had been forced from their homes to return, and was thus determined to try to make them work. Nineteen-ninety-eight ended with relative calm. Despite the tempered hopes of those involved, a temporary stabilization of the situation, and the withdrawal of some Serb forces, the violence soon returned, as Serbs repositioned and the KLA maneuvered to take advantage of the OSCE monitored cessation of hostilities. On 8 January 1999, KLA forces ambushed and killed three Serb policeman and killed another two days later. The Serbs responded harshly on 15 January at the village of Racak, killing forty-five ethnic Albanians, including a twelve-year-old boy and two women. Nine KLA soldiers were also killed. 62 Human Rights Review, July-September 2004 According to witnesses interviewed by Human Rights Watch (1999), "most of these men were fired upon from close range as they offered no resistance. The men's clothes were bloody, with slashes and holes at the same spots as their bullet entry and exit wounds, which argues against government claims that the victims were KLA soldiers who were dressed in civilian clothes after they had been killed. All of them were wearing rubber boots typical of Kosovo farmers rather than military footwear (quoted in Judah, 2000, p. 193). Racak was a significant turning point. Much like the Serb attack on the Sarajevo marketplace in August 1995, the Racak massacre galvanized Western outrage and energized NATO. In response, NATO issued a "solemn warning" to Milosevic and the Kosovo Albanian leadership, reiterated the airstrikes threat, and moved additional military assets within range. On the diplomatic front, the FRY/Serbian and Kosovo Albanian leadership were summoned to talks at Rambouillet in France. Rambouillet: Preventive Diplomacy As one observer put it, "At the time it seemed almost a foregone conclusion that Rambouillet would succeed. After all, the alternatives were so awful that it just seemed inconceivable that either side would scupper the talks--both were being told: 'Sign or die'" (Judah, 2000, p. 197). Against the backdrop of threatened NATO military action, the negotiations at Rambouillet in February 1999, co-chaired by the UK and France, presented the FRY/Serbian governments and the Kosovo Albanian delegation with proposals for an equitable and balanced agreement on interim self-administration for Kosovo. The proposals, which reflected previous rounds of consultations with the parties, would have protected the rights of all sides. The co-chairs reiterated the international community's commitment to the sovereignty and territorial integrity of the FRY, the provision of a democratic self-government in Kosovo, and specified that amendments would require the consent of all parties. After considerable negotiation, the first round of talks was temporarily halted on 23 February to allow KLA representatives to gain approval from field commanders. Both sides expressed broad agreement to the principle of substantial autonomy for Kosovo. Talks reconvened in Paris on 15 March to discuss implementation which, as discussed at Rambouillet, would include a NATO-led military force on the ground. The Kosovo Albanians accepted the Rambouillet framework and signed the draft accord on 18 March. The FRY/ Serbian side sidestepped actual agreement and instead backed away from earlier commitments. The talks were suspended on 19 March 1999, against a background of intensifying violence on the ground, and evidence of a massive build up of FRY/Serbian forces in and around Kosovo, including 40,000 police and soldiers and over 300 tanks. Renewed fighting in the Drenica area had reportedly displaced some 25,000 people. Ronayne 63 As a safety precaution, OSCE monitors withdrew from Kosovo during the evening of 19 and 20 March, leaving the region without a formal monitoring presence beyond the NGO community and NATO air surveillance. At the instigation of the Allies, U.S. envoy Richard Holbrooke flew to Belgrade on 22 March in a last-ditch effort to persuade Milosevic to back down and prevent further suffering on the part of the Kosovar population and to avoid the risk of military confrontation. Milosevic remained intransigent. As a final ultimatum, Holbrooke told Milosevic flatly of the impending bombing: "It will be swift, it will be severe, it will be sustained." (Kaufman, 2002, p. 185). To which Milosevic succinctly replied, "There is nothing more I can say" (Kaufman, 2002, p. 185). On 23 March 1999, following final consultations with Allies, Javier Solana, NATO's secretary general, directed NATO's Supreme Allied Commander Europe, U.S. general Wesley Clark, to initiate air operations against Yugoslavia, without awaiting approval from the United Nations Security Council. NATO proceeded with its "illegal" intervention, knowing full well that Russia and China would veto any authorization of the alliance's "out of region" action should it be put to a UN Security Council vote. Genocide and Humanitarian War in Kosovo As if on cue as talks collapsed, Yugoslav and irregular Serb forces launched a major offensive in Kosovo, accelerating their "ethnic cleansing" campaign and raising exponentially the fear of genocide. Through terror and violence, Serb forces drove the majority of Kosovo Albanians--some 1.5 million people from their homes. Hundreds of settlements were burned and looted. Massacres led to innumerable mass graves in Kosovo and in Serbia proper. Mosques, religious sites, and schools were systematically destroyed. Rape re-emerged in the Balkans as a tool of organized, deliberate terror. At least 6,000 and as many as 11,000 Kosovar Albanians were murdered, with bodies burned in over 500 mass graves. This was not improvised violence or a mob reaction. A covert Serbian plan, code-named Operation Horseshoe, to expel Kosovo Albanians from their homeland had been drawn up months before and showed that while Milosevic was engaged in political theatre at Rambouillet, his forces had been preparing to destroy the Kosovar Albanians. Thus, whether officially "genocide" or not under the dictates of the United Nations Genocide Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of Genocide (UNCG), Serb actions in Kosovo were fully intentional, planned, and systematic. The West Invokes the "G-Word" In a prime time speech to the nation on 24 March, U.S. President Bill Clinton explained the resort to force and appealed to both "moral imperative" and national interests. Said Clinton, "America has a responsibility to stand with our 64 Human Rights Review, July-September 2004 allies when they are trying to save innocent lives and preserve peace, freedom, and stability in Europe. That is what we are doing in Kosovo." As the pace and scale of Serb violence increased, German defense minister Rudolf Scharping, on 28 March, deployed the "g-word," stating in a television interview that "Information reaching us indicates that a genocide has begun. We must prevent that from happening." The next day, U.S. State Department officials remarked that "genocide is unfolding" in Kosovo and that NATO strikes would end only when Milosevic accepted the U.S.-brokered peace plan. From the U.S. legislative branch, Senate majority leader Bob Dole urged NATO to stay the course and expand targeting in the effort to "end genocide in the Balkans once and for all" (CNN, 29 March 1999, "US: Milosevic Alone Has Power to End Air Strikes." Available through the Internet at: http://www.cnn.com/US/ 9903/29/us.kosovo.04/). Britain's leadership joined the chorus with British defense secretary George Robertson saying, "We are confronting a regime which is intent on genocide" (CNN, 29 March 1999, "NATO, British Leaders Allege 'Genocide' in Kosovo." Available through the Internet at: http://www.cnn.com/WORLD/europe/9903/ 29/refugees.01/). Added NATO spokesman Jamie Shea, "Whether we like it or not, we have to admit that we are on the brink of a major humanitarian disaster in Kosovo, the likes of which have not been seen in Europe since the closing stages of World War II" (CNN, March 29, 1999, "NATO, British Leaders Allege ' G e n o c i d e ' in Kosovo." Available through the Internet at: http:// www.cnn.com/WORLD/europe/9903/29/refugees.01/). Solving Kosovo's humanitarian disaster proved more difficult and lengthy than initially suspected. Armed with a set of faulty assumptions from the Dayton experience (namely that Milosevic would quickly cave in to any sustained show of NATO force), optimistic observers anticipated an air campaign of as little as three days. Instead, it took Operation Allied Force almost three months to compel Serb capitulation. On 10 June, following seventy-eight days of bombing, agreement was finalized under which Serb forces would withdraw and Kosovo would remain part of Serbia but under UN/NATO protection and with significant international oversight and monitoring. Nearly all of the displaced Kosovar Albanians returned to the province following the war. Kosovo has been governed by the UN Interim Administration Mission in Kosovo (UNMIK) since June 1999, under the authority of UN Security Council Resolution 1244. Critical Challenges Facing the Field Today The crisis in Kosovo raised rather than solved a host of pressing challenges for the field of genocide studies and world politics in general. Perhaps the most fundamental and rather complex question at stake is the future legitimacy and legality of such humanitarian interventions, particularly given the Ronayne 65 limits of a fractured UN system that finds itself schizophrenically torn between the mandates of state sovereignty and non-interference and the rising concern over protection of individual sovereignty and human rights. Serious concerns remain about the UN, specifically about the Security Council's future ability to navigate these clashing norms in world politics. British prime minister Tony Blair and U.S. president Bill Clinton put their individual stamps on the issue--Blair with his "Doctrine of International Community" laid out in a speech to the Economic Club of Chicago on 22 April 1999 and Clinton in a June 1999 press conference during which the president proclaimed, "While there may well be a great deal of ethnic and religious conflict in the world, whether within or beyond the borders of a country, if the world community has the power to stop it, we ought to stop genocide and ethnic cleansing" (White House Office of the Press Secretary, 20 June 1999, Interview of the President by Wolf Blitzer, CNN Late Edition. Available through the Internet at: http://clinton2.nara.gov/WH/New/Europe 9906/html/Speeches/ 990620a.html). UN Secretary General Kofi Annan eloquently and quite sharply addressed the "macro issues" of Kosovo in his annual report to the UN General Assembly in September 1999. The secretary general's own words bear repeating because they aptly capture the challenges facing the field of academic study and the profession of policymaking brought to the fore by this Balkan crisis. Speaking about Kosovo, Annan explained quite acutely that: It has cast in stark relief the dilemma of what has been called humanitarian intervention: on one side, the question of the legitimacy of an action taken by a regional organization without a United Nations mandate; on the other, the universally recognized imperative of effectively halting gross and systematic violations of human rights with grave humanitarian consequences. It has revealed the core challenge to the Security Council and to the United Nations as a whole in the next century: to forge unity behind the principle that massive and systematic violations of human rights--wherever they may take place-should not be allowed to stand. To those for whom the greatest threat to the future of international order is the use of force in the absence of a Security Council mandate, one might ask--not in the context of Kosovo--but in the context of Rwanda: If, in those dark days and hours leading up to the genocide, a coalition of States had been prepared to act in defence of the Tutsi population, but did not receive prompt Council authorization, should such a coalition have stood aside and allowed the horror to unfold? To those for whom the Kosovo action heralded a new era when States and groups of States can take military action outside the established mechanisms for enforcing international law, one might ask: Is there not a danger of such interventions undermining the imperfect, yet resilient, security system created after the Second World War, and of setting dangerous precedents for future interventions without a clear criterion to decide who might invoke these precedents, and in what circumstances? (United Nations, 1999, p. 2). Annan's questions remain pressing for citizens, scholars, and policymakers alike. The NATO action is further complicated by the fact that not only was the Security Council not "able" to authorize intervention in the face of horrible 66 Human Rights Review, July-September 2004 crimes, but the subsequent intervention that was taken was not, in fact, unilateral, but was a collective, multilateral action which included three of the five permanent members (United States, United Kingdom, France) of the Security Council. The ultimate legality and morality of NATO's action has significant implications for the future of a global community equipped to deal with mass slaughter that occurs entirely within and with the support of the domestic jurisdiction of a state. For scholars in the field of genocide studies, the Kosovo crisis raised a second, fundamental point of debate: did the violence and violations there constitute genocide as laid out in the 1948 UN convention? While one does not want to get trapped in endless definitional debates and semantic wranglings, it remains an important issue because words matter, especially words with specific international legal ramifications. The issue has an added politically charged dimension because opponents of the intervention alleged that NATO exaggerated the case and inflated death tolls to justify the war. In addition, the very same Western allies had quite consciously avoided using the term "genocide" to refer to the Rwandan tragedy in 1994. As of this writing (February 2004), Milosevic stands trial for charges filed in three indictments related to crimes committed in Kosovo, Croatia, and Bosnia. However, only the Bosnia indictment includes the specific charge of genocide. For his role and responsibility for actions in Kosovo in 1999, Milosevic faces charges for crimes against humanity and violations of the customs of war. The genocide charge is curiously absent despite the fact that the arc of crime and atrocity in Kosovo seems to fit the Convention's legal definition quite neatly, including: (1) killing members of a national, ethnic, racial or religious group; (2) causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; and (3) deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part. Consistent application of the UN Genocide Convention in the pursuit of justice, especially given the emerging International Criminal Court (ICC), is of utmost importance, and the Kosovo issue is a critical case in this unfolding process. From a military intervention and genocide prevention perspective, the lessons of Kosovo are equally important but also elusive. To be sure, NATO's air war ultimately proved successful--the crisis was resolved without resort to ground forces, without Allied combat casualty, and with almost all Kosovo Albanian refugees returning home. But that simple summation obscures and omits several relevant issues. First, the resort to high-tech air power had significant limitations and problems. It proved far more punitive than preventive. While air power could effectively destroy armored targets and infrastructure assets, it was and is far less useful against foot soldiers and scattered irregular paramilitaries. As Ivo Daadler and Michael O'Hanlon (1999) note, "A B-52 bomber is simply not a very effective instrument to stop genocide committed largely with machetes or even machine guns. That task calls for ground troops and usually more than less" (p. 4). Ronayne 67 But in the Kosovo crisis, the United States, in particular, was quite hesitant to commit ground tbrces. President Clinton, in fact, likely made a tactical blunder when he quite publicly and forcefully ruled out the use of ground troops in order to minimize domestic criticism and concern over the intervention. Ultimately, the combination of NATO's air power, combined with actual KLA advances on the ground (?a la the Croatian offensive in late summer 1995) and the threat of NATO's own ground attack finally pushed Milosevic to concede. While it is tempting to laud NATO's intervention as a sea change event, as a powerfully important and first-ever "pre-emptive humanitarian intervention," it only constitutes partial change. The unwillingness to use ground forces and the insistence that Allied planes fly at 15,000 feet--reducing both their vulnerability and their accuracy---calls into question the actual depth of commitment to genocide prevention demonstrated by the U.S. and its NATO allies. Indeed, the lack of Allied ground forces initially allowed the Serbs to continue, and even accelerate, their brutal campaign of ethnic cleansing in Kosovo despite the high-tech armada flying overhead. Still, NATO's low-risk air campaign was a step forward in the evolution of both humanitarian policy and of the genocide prevention and punishment norms embedded in the United Nations Genocide Convention. Conclusion That Kosovo exploded with genocidal violence in 1999 and ultimately prompted outside intervention surprised few--it was a long-festering hotspot but one that fell low on the world politics priority lists, despite the brutal "wars of Yugoslav" succession that engulfed Serbia, Bosnia, and Croatia. But for a relatively small scale conflict in a rather unknown corner of the world, Kosovo's crisis of 1998-1999 brought with it a host of complex issues that challenge the international community to this day. As with any issue or case in the area of genocide studies, attention and understanding must first go to the dramatic human suffering inflicted upon one group by another. The macro-level political, legal, and ethical discussion and debates swirling about Kosovo should not and must not obscure the powerful and provocative human element at play. First and foremost, the Kosovo issue revolves around how best to save lives following an explosion of genocidal violence. Simultaneously, however, Kosovo in 1999 exploded with ramifications for the future of state sovereignty, the United Nations, and understanding the causes of genocide, nation building, and humanitarianism in the twenty-first century. References Daalder, Ivo, and O'Hanlon, Michael (Fall 1999). Unlearning the lessons of Kosovo. Foreign Policy, 116, 128-140. 68 Human Rights Review, July-September 2004 Daalder, Ivo, and O'Hanlon, Michael (2000). Winning Ugly: NATO's War to Save Kosovo. Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press. Judah, Tim (2002). Kosovo: War and Revenge. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Kaufman, Joyce R (2002). NATO and the Former Yugoslavia: Crisis, Conflict, and the Atlantic Alliance. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield. Malcolm, Noel (1998). Kosovo: A Short History. New York: New York University Press. Mihailovic, Kosta and Krestic, Vasilije (1995). Memorandum of the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts: Answers to Criticisms. Belgrade: Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts Presidency. Available through the Intemet at: http://www.rastko.org.yu/istorija/iii/memorandum.pdf Staub, Ervin (1989). The Roots of Evil: The Origins of Genocide and Other Group Violence. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. United Nations (1999). Secretary-General Presents His Annual Report to the General Assembly. Press Release, September 20, UN Doc. SG/SM/7136 GA/9596. Annotated Bibliography Abrams, Jason (2001). The atrocities in Cambodia and Kosovo: Observations on the codification of genocide. New England Law Review, 35(2), 303-309. A short response piece to Schabas (2001). (See the annotation of Schabas' piece below.) Abrams draws attention to the distinction between intent and motive vis-h-vis genocide and describes a scenario under which genocide is in essence a tool for a larger motive of ethnic cleansing. American Bar Association. Central and East European Law Initiative and American Association for the Advancement of Science. Science and Human Rights Program (2000). Political Killings in Kosova/ Kosovo, March-June t999. Washington, DC: American Bar Association. 51 pp. A systematic and carefully statistical analysis of the casualties resulting from the Serb attack on Kosovo's Albanian population. The report documents in detail not just the total killings but also their timing and geography using data shared between the American Bar Association and Physicians for Human Rights and Human Rights Watch. Their findings support NATO claims at the time, and conclude that just over 10,000 Kosovar Albanians were killed during the period in question. American Society of International Law (1999). Editorial comments: NATO's Kosovo intervention. American Journal of International Law, 73(4), 824-878. A group of prominent scholars including Louis Henkin, Ruth Wedgewood, Richard A. Falk, and Thomas Franck provides various insights on the ultimate "meaning" of Kosovo. The extensively footnoted editorials provide focused insight even if they ultimately raise more questions than they answer. Clark, Wesley K. (2001). Waging Modern War: Bosnia, Kosovo, and the Future of Combat. New York: Public Affairs. 479 pp. A combination personal memoir and analysis from the retired general who served as Supreme Allied Commander, Europe during Operation Allied Force. Clark synthesizes his own experience, reflections, and provides an analysis of the larger questions into a must-read book that tackles the necessity and challenge of multilateralism, human rights as a national interest, "combatant immunity," and a transformed Army for the twenty-first century. Daalder, Ivo H., and O'Hanlon, Michael E. (2001). Winning Ugly: NATO's War to Save Kosovo. Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press. 362 pp. From two Clinton administration foreign policy insiders comes a detailed account of the Kosovo crisis, from diplomacy to the use of force. It is organized into two main sections "Losing the War" (exploring why it took the world's most powerful alliance almost three months to defeat third-tier Yugoslavia) and "Winning the War." Daalder and O'Hanlon ultimately argue that NATO did the right thing in the wrong way militarily. Danner, Mark (1999). Kosovo: The meaning of victory. New York Review of Books, 46 (12), 53-54. Danner draws on his earlier and excellent coverage of U.S. foreign policy and the Bosnia conflict to frame the issue of the United States' role as it relates to Kosovo in this short opinion essay. Ronayne 69 Fromkin, David (1999). Kosovo Crossing: American Ideals Meet Reality on the Balkan Battlefields. New York: Free Press. 210 pp. A slim volume that was published very quickly after the end of the Kosovo crisis, this book lacks the depth and detail of other works covering the crisis--and of Fromkin's usual forays into global history. This is at root a conceptual piece about Wilsonian American foreign policy in the late twentieth century with Kosovo as one prism. Human Rights Watch (1999). Under Orders: War Crimes in Kosovo. New York: Human Rights Watch. 593 pp. Available through the Internet at: http://www.hrw.org/reports/2001/kosovo/. A very useful and succinct chronology of events from March to June 1999, with a clear focus on linking the crimes on the ground in Kosovo up the chain of command to Belgrade. Ignatieff, Michael (2000). Virtual War: Kosovo and Beyond. New York: Metropolitan Books/Harry Holt. 246 pp. Another installmentin Ignatieff's thoughtful exploration of nationalismand ethnic tension in the modern world, here he turns his attention to the tension between Western ideals and the West's willingness to sacrifice to make those ideals reality in other corners of the globe. The "virtual" component explores the high tech/Iow casualty (ultimately no Allied casualties) NATO approach. Includes thoughtful, critical commentary on the "staying power" of the West to bring actual stability to areas like Kosovo and keeps the narrative compelling with focus on central players like Richard Holbrooke in the diplomatic arena, Wesley Clark on the military side, Aleksa Djilas from the Serb perspective, and Louise Arbour in the international law camp. Independent International Commission on Kosovo (2000). The Kosovo Report: Conflict, h~temational Response, Lessons Learned. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 372 pp. A collection of essays with a broad focus on the motivations of NATO members in the Kosovo crisis, with an emphasis on the gray area between legality and legitimacy in Operation Allied Force and the gray area of "sovereignty" for Kosovo after the war. Jones, Adam (2000). Kosovo: Orders of magnitude. Idea, 5(1), IOn-line]. Available through the Internet at: http://www.ideajournal.com/jones-kosovo.html. Useful overview of the debate and discussion surrounding the number of victims in Kosovo-generally supportive of the claims made by the United States and NATO at the time Judah, Tim (2002). Kosovo: War and Revenge. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. 349 pp. With a distinctly accessible journalistic tone and style, Judah melds research, interviews, and his own experience living in Belgrade into a compelling and insightful account of the Serb-Kosovo issue and how it exploded violently in 1998-1999. His account of early history Kosovo isn't as deep as Noel Malcolm's Kosovo: A Short History, but it's also much shorter and compact. Kaufman, Joyce E (2002). NATO and the Former Yugoslavia: Crisis, Conflict, and the Atlantic Alliance. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield. 249 pp. A detailed analysis and case study of the alliance's involvementin Balkan affairs in the postCold War world. Helpful insight on the inner workings and wrangling of NATO as it struggled with policy and solidarity. Malcolm, Noel (1998). Kosovo: A Short History. New York: New York University Press. 492 pp. Obviously mistitled, Malcolm's book is more magisterial than "short." A very readable account with concise analytical flourishes, it is a whirlwind tour through Kosovo's past, beginningin the seventh century. Published in 1998, the book ends with questions about Kosovo's future which astutely, if broadly, presage the violence of 1999. Martin, Pierre, and Brawley, Mark R. (Eds.) (2001). Alliance Politics, Kosovo, andNATO's War: Allied Force or Forced Allies? New York: Palgrave. 246 pp. An essay collection which, as the title suggests, concentrates more on the NATO issues than on the overall crisis. Several contributors bring international relations theory into the mix, including the realist/constructivist paradigms and the related clash of such. McGwire, Michael (2000). Why did we bomb Belgrade? International Affairs, 76(1), 1-23. An interpretive look at the motives behind Operation Allied Force that emphasizes NATO's own interest as opposed to lofty humanitarian values. Mertus, Julie A. (1999). Kosovo: How Myths and Truths Started a War. Berkeley: University of California Press. 378 pp. Delivers stinging indictments of Slobodan Milosevic for his instrumental and calculated use of myth and nationalism to incite violence and garner power and of the Western powers for missing 70 Human Rights Review, July-September 2004 the opportunity to build on the initially peaceful efforts at resolving Kosovo's status put forth by Ibrahim Rugova and others. Mills, Nicolaus, and Brunner, Kira (Eds.) (2002). The New Killings Fields: Massacre and the Politics of Intervention. New York: Basic Books. 276 pp. An all-star cast of writers assembles to tackle morality, human rights, and intervention the world over. Contributors include Michael Walzer, William Shawcross, David Rieff, Samantha Power, and Michael Ignatieff. Rieff, Peter Maas, and Kira Brunner tackle the issues surrounding interventionin the Balkans. For each area covered, the writers also give important consideration to the post-violence situation. Moorman, William (2002). Humanitarian interventionand international law in the case of Kosovo. New England Journal of International Law, 36(4), 775-784. This piece by Moorman, who at the time of writing was the judge advocate general of the United States Air Force, appeals to what he calls "fact based analysis" which reveals the unique environmentthat compelled an "exceptional" (as in not the rule), albeit problematic, intervention by NATO. Power, Samantha (2002). "A Problem from Hell: "America and the Age of Genocide. New York: Basic Books. 610 pp. A comprehensive account of America's response to prominent instances of genocide beginning with the Armenian crisis in which Kosovo is only the most recent episode. Power squarely places Kosovo under the heading of "genocide" and while overall critical in tone, she sees reason for tempered optimism in NATO's action. Schabas, William A. (2001). Problems of international codification--Were the atrocities in Cambodia and Kosovo genocide? New England Law Review, 35(2), 287-302. Schabas argues forcefully that the crimes in Kosovo should not be minimized but were not genocide. He also marks a careful, if ultimately unconvincing,distinction between "genocide" and "ethnic cleansing" and notes the relationship to "cultural genocide." Followed by a companion/ response piece by Jason Abrams (see above). Schabas, WilliamA. (2003). National courts finally begin to prosecute genocide, the "crime of crimes." Journal of h~ternational Criminal Justice, 1(1), 39-63. The focus is on national-level courts getting involved in application of the Genocide Convention, but it includes a succinct and interesting section that encapsulates his 2001 perspective on whether what happened in Kosovo qualifies as genocide. Schnabel, Albrecht, and Tbakur, Ramesh (Eds.) (2000). Kosovo and the Challenge of Humanitarian Intervention: Selective Indignation, Collective Intervention, and International Citizenship. Tokyo: United Nations University Press. 536 pp. This thick volume is a sampler that in most instances will leave you wanting more: thirty different essays and contributors includingG. John Ikenberry, James Mayall, Felice Gaer, Lawrence Freedman, and George C. Herring. Overall, the book identifies Kosovo as symbolic of the struggle for a new architecture and code(s) of conduct for the post-Cold War era, but so far Kosovo has not become such an "order-building moment." Shawcross, William (2000). Deliver Us from Evil: Peacekeepers, Warlords and a World of Endless Conflict. New York: Simon & Schuster. 447 pp. Shawcross steps away from his previous focus on Cambodian issues (although commentary on Cambodia is included in this work) and provides a wide perspective on the challenges of humanitarian intervention and "nation building." The book includes his insights into Bosnia, and the situations in Kosovo and East Timor serve as the two most recent case studies. Simma, Bruno (1999). NATO, the UN, and the use of force: Legal aspects. European Journal of International Law, 10(1), 1-22. Expresses grave concern for internationallaw if the Allied Force exception (illegal action for just cause) becomes the rule, although doesn't make a compelling case that this is likely to happen. Staub, Ervin (1989). The Roots of Evil: The Origins of Genocide and Other Group Violence. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 336 pp. While not a book about Kosovo specifically (it obviously predates all of the Balkan crises of the 1990s), the overlay of his approach to understanding genocide (psychological, cultural, economic factors) onto the Kosovo crisis is enlightening and provocative. Ronayne 71 United Nations (1999). Secretary-General Presents His Annual Report to the General Assembly. New York: UN Department of Public Information. Press Release UN Doc, SG/SM/7136 GA/9596.6 pp. Available through the Internet at: http://www.un.org/News/Press/docs/1999/ 19990920.sgsm7136.html. A wide-ranging, highly conceptual ,speech delivered by Kofi Annan to the final meeting of the UN General Assembly in the twentieth century. Very strong emphasis on the challenges of resolving the UN's persistent schizophrenia--a foundation of state sovereignty coupled with constant evolution in the direction of individual/humanrights and intervention to stop massive violations of those rights. Vickers, Miranda (1998). Bem~een Serb and Albanian: A History of Kosovo, New York: Columbia University Press. 328 pp, From one of Britain's leading authorities on the Kosovo issue, this book makes its mark with emphasis on the parallel history of difficulty between Kosovo Albanians and the Albanians in Albania proper and tracing the evoIution of the Kosovar Albanian independence movement. Woodward, Susan L (1995). Balkan Tragedy: Chaos and Dissolution after the Cold Win: Washington, DC: Brookings Institulion. 536 pp, Detailed descnption and analysis of the broader Balkan breakdown in the early to mid 1990s. Provides relevant background/context for later events in Kosovo, Zimmermann, Warren (1996). Origins of a Catastrophe: Yugoslavia and its Destroyers--America's Last Ambassador Tells What Happened and Why. New York: Times Books. 269 pp. An insider perspective on Milosevic and his hypernationalist leadership style related from the perspective of the last U.S. ambassador to Yugoslavia,