Monday, October 11, 2004
War crimes against Yugoslavia
A discussion has broken out in the comments to the post below about the Milosevic trial about whether or not the U.S. (NATO) committed war crimes in that war. Since there's a lot to say about this, I'm providing an answer here rather than in those comments.
During the war against Yugoslavia, water systems, power and heating plants, hospitals, universities, schools, apartment complexes, senior citizens' homes, bridges, factories, trains, buses, radio and TV stations, the telephone system, oil refineries, embassies, marketplaces and more were deliberately destroyed by U.S./NATO planes in a ruthless 10-week bombing campaign, highlighted (or should that be low-lighted) by the quite deliberate bombing (not that the other things just mentioned were not deliberate, but this one was vigorously defended by US/NATO) of a Belgrade television station killing 16 people - camera technicians, makeup people, sound technicians and copyeditors. None of those people was military. None was a government employee tied to either Slobodan Milosovic or the Yugoslav military. They were average citizens of Belgrade simply making a living, killed because the U.S. government claimed they were spouting "propaganda" as if that were a crime punishable by death (it is most definitely not, as much as one might wish otherwise when watching Fox News).
You'll find a long list of the targets of U.S. bombing here. The fact is that there was a deliberate campaign to destroy the economic capacity of Yugoslavia, not just bombing weapons factories, but factories of all kinds. This didn't "just happen." The US/NATO plan was not to invade Yugoslavia on the ground, but to simply bomb it for weeks on end and cause suffering to the Yugoslavian people so that they would overthrow their government. That was the plan, not an accidental side result.
With specific regard to the bombing of the Belgrade television station, it's interesting to note that there was a post-facto claim that this station was "hardened dual-use facility." Interesting because British Prime Minister Tony Blair was reported as saying in The Times that the media "is the apparatus that keeps [Milosevic] in power and we are entirely justified as NATO allies in damaging and taking on those targets" (24 April, 1999). In a statement of 8 April 1999, NATO also indicated that the TV studios would be targeted unless they broadcast 6 hours per day of Western media reports: "If President Milosevic would provide equal time for Western news broadcasts in its programmes without censorship 3 hours a day between noon and 1800 and 3 hours a day between 1800 and midnight, then his TV could be an acceptable instrument of public information." These statements make clear that it was the alleged "propaganda" being broadcast by Serbian television that was the reason these civilian facilities were bombed.
It is a war crime to "attack civilian targets or to destroy or render useless objects indispensable to the survival of the civilian population." Bombing the infrastructure of a country-the waterworks, electricity plants, bridges, factories and so on is barred under international law. Bombing chemical plants and using radioactive weapons also violate international conventions. All of these things were done during the war against Yugoslavia.
Some (but definitely not all, such as the bombing of the TV station) of the bombings were called "accidents" by NATO, but when you bomb a cigarette factory (one of many things that happened) that is nowhere near a military target, this claim is specious in the extreme. And, of course, when essentially the entire war was conducted from 50,000 feet (or however high planes fly), there are no such thing as an accident. If you know, and you do, that 10% of your bombs will miss their targets, and you drop 10000 bombs, then for all intents and purposes you are deliberately, knowingly, dropping 1000 bombs on civilian targets. Whether you know the name of the person on whose head you are "accidentally" dropping the bomb or not isn't relevant, not in my book.
It is a fact that a UN Commission decided not to prosecute (or even seriously investigate) NATO for these war crimes. Of course Harry Truman wasn't charged with war crimes for dropping atomic bombs on Japan and killing hundreds of thousands of people; victors in war never are. It's actually instructive to read the "Recommendations" paragraph of the U.N. report to understand on what flimsy grounds they decided not to press charges (emphasis added):
"The committee has conducted its review relying essentially upon public documents, including statements made by NATO and NATO countries at press conferences and public documents produced by the FRY. It has tended to assume that the NATO and NATO countries' press statements are generally reliable and that explanations have been honestly given. The committee must note, however, that when the OTP requested NATO to answer specific questions about specific incidents, the NATO reply was couched in general terms and failed to address the specific incidents. The committee has not spoken to those involved in directing or carrying out the bombing campaign. The committee has also assigned substantial weight to the factual assertions made by Human Rights Watch as its investigators did spend a limited amount of time on the ground in the FRY. Further, the committee has noted that Human Rights Watch found the two volume compilation of the FRY Ministry of Foreign Affairs entitled NATO Crimes in Yugoslavia generally reliable and the committee has tended to rely on the casualty figures for specific incidents in this compilation. If one accepts the figures in this compilation of approximately 495 civilians killed and 820 civilians wounded in documented instances, there is simply no evidence of the necessary crime base for charges of genocide or crimes against humanity. Further, in the particular incidents reviewed by the committee with particular care (see paras. 9, and 48-76) the committee has not assessed any particular incidents as justifying the commencement of an investigation by the OTP. NATO has admitted that mistakes did occur during the bombing campaign; errors of judgment may also have occurred. Selection of certain objectives for attack may be subject to legal debate. On the basis of the information reviewed, however, the committee is of the opinion that neither an in-depth investigation related to the bombing campaign as a whole nor investigations related to specific incidents are justified. In all cases, either the law is not sufficiently clear or investigations are unlikely to result in the acquisition of sufficient evidence to substantiate charges against high level accused or against lower accused for particularly heinous offences."
