Kosovo Panelists Encourage NATO to Use Ground Forcew

At "Kosovo, What Do We Do Now?" a panel discussion held last night at the Institute of Politics' (IOP) ARCO forum, the Yugoslav region now at the center of the world's attention was called "a place where nothing is learned, nothing is forgotten."

Many say the current crisis in Kosovo first reared its head in 1989, when Kosovo, an autonomous province since its incorporation into Yugoslavia in 1912, was stripped of its autonomy by Slobodan Milosevic, the current president of Serb-dominated Yugoslavia.

At a speech earlier yesterday, however, Oberlin College Assistant Professor of Sociology Veljko Vujacic argued that the conflict reaches farther back, perhaps as far back as the middle ages. Since that time, ethnic Albanians--who are predominantly Muslims--or ethnic Serbs, primarily orthodox Christians, have alternately held control of the province, usually oppressing the other group.

Panelists last night agreed that there would be no easy solution to the current crisis, but said that NATO should send ground troops into Kosovo to prevent what some panelists called the "genocide" taking place there.

According to the panelists, since NATO first started bombing Yugoslav government installations on Mar. 24, it has become clear that NATO's leaders had made gross miscalculations in their initial approach to the crisis.

"Ordinarily in military involvements, you have a clarity of ends, and you keep your means obscure. In this particular case, the situation has been reversed," said General William Nash, former commander of the U.S. First Armored Division in Bosnia.

Throughout the discussion, panelists bemoaned NATO's public declarations about the extent of force they were willing to use to accomplish their goals.

"How could Washington be so naive that you could win such a thing with an air strike? Impossible! Why did Clinton declare on TV that we would not send in ground troops? Of course we should go in, we are much too late," said Ruud Lubbers, a former prime minister of the Netherlands.

Steven Van Evera, a professor of political science at MIT, said that air campaigns were historically ineffective without accompanying ground forces to prevent enemy troops from scattering.

"The record is stunningly clear. Air forces cannot get at an opponent on the ground unless accompanying troops force [the opponent] to concentrate in a particular area," Van Evera said.

Nash said he would support a ground war, but thought it presented "strategic and operational limitations" because of previous declarations that we would not consider such an option.

"It could take two months to put ground forces in place, with a plan of action," he said.

While other panelists said an initial buildup of ground forces might have led to a less inflamed crisis, perhaps even making Milosevic capitulate on his own under the threat of so much force, Nash had a mild demurral.

"Don't assume that if we had done one thing, everything would have been OK. During the buildup of a NATO ground force, what would Serbs have done given [the atrocities they committed] during the air attack," Nash said.

Jennifer Leaning, assistant professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School and a board member of the group Physicians for Human Rights, denied that NATO was at fault for escalating the human rights crisis in Kosovo. She argued instead that Milosevic was determined to eliminate the Albanian population of Kosovo from the start.

"What Milosevic was doing was patently clear...it was evident to us in October that Milosevic was intent on wiping out that population and that war was necessary," Leaning said.

"There was no way to stop Milosevic from committing atrocities without a force better than the 45 thousand troops at his disposal," she added.

Leaning was extremely critical of NATO for pulling an international observation force out of Kosovo a full four days before bombing began, even though they required only seven hours to leave.

"It was like pulling the control rods out of a nuclear power plant...the delay in bombing allowed [the Serbs] to establish a foothold to obliterate the population in Kosovo," she said.

All of the panelists said the Rambouillet agreement, a proposal signed by Albanians and rejected by Serbs, which called for an autonomous Kosovo still under Serb rule, would have to be abandoned.

"Our whole approach has usually been to put the pieces back together. It's the Rodney King solution--can differences be reconciled," Van Evera said. "In Yugoslavia, we have a marriage that cannot be saved...too much blood has been thrown on the floor."

Van Evera suggested that a ground war was less risky than some people assumed.

"It doesn't present the aspects of war that Americans fear," he argued.

He said American forces would not face a guerrilla army, Serbia did not house a sea of hostile population and the Serbian army had little combat experience.

"They're good at breaking arms and shooting people in the head," Van Evera said.

While there was a general consensus among panelists that ground troops were required in Kosovo, there was little agreement on what could be done after that.

"[Kosovo's] not like Kuwait," said Anna Husarska, a correspondent for the New Republic. "There isn't a government to turn it over to once we liberate it."

Van Evera said he supported the establishment of a protectorate under American control until an Albanian government could be put together.

Lubbers added that he thought the most positive thing to come out of this crisis was what he perceived as a shift in U.S. foreign policy to be more sensitive to humanitarian concerns.

The use of force in Kosovo, he argued, was supported by the American people despite the fact that it was "seen not as a security issue, not as national interest, but as an issue of human rights."

--Alysson R. Ford contributed to the reporting of this story.