FEUILLETON 25 years of NATO bombing of Serbia (35): What were the 'Jedi Knights' preparing in NATO

Written for Kosovo Online by Dragan Bisenic

Martti Ahtisaari brought a new dimension to peace efforts. An extensive network of Scandinavian peace mediators was involved in seeking a solution. At the beginning of May, a meeting of defense ministers from Nordic countries and Russia was held in Stavanger. Marshal Igor Sergeev strongly criticized NATO and behaved with marked coldness towards the Norwegian and Danish ministers, while he was exceptionally cordial with ministers from Sweden and Finland.

President of the World Lutheran Federation, Christian Krause, was in contact with representatives of the Russian Orthodox Church. Ahtisaari noted as a particular curiosity an attempt by Croatian President Franjo Tuđman to resolve the Kosovo crisis. He called representatives from Finland and other Western countries, Russia, China, and the Vatican to a meeting in his office where he presented his proposal. The proposal was based on the division of Kosovo, as Yugoslav forces could withdraw to the northern parts, where Russian peace forces could also be stationed. For the remaining part of Kosovo, international peace forces would be responsible and refugees could return to areas under their control.

Tuđman's main goal, Ahtisaari believes, was to make it clear that the Balkan crisis had been costly for Croatia. According to reports, it had already cost two billion dollars and the costs were continuously rising. Tuđman was not naive enough to think that NATO would openly agree to the division of Kosovo. "He, however, was accustomed to dividing Balkan regions, whether with Serbs or Muslims. According to him, this represented a convenient way to solve ethnic problems. Both Tuđman's and Sergeev's initiatives were left to gather dust in the archives of the involved countries," Ahtisaari stated.

Interestingly, Viktor Chernomyrdin noted that at that time, the division of Kosovo was also a French proposal. "The French leadership, which had its own position regarding the Balkans, proposed, in my view, a contentious solution to the problem – the division of Kosovo into Serbian and Albanian parts. Could we agree with this? Of course not! And the Yugoslav leadership would never agree with it," Chernomyrdin said.

Ahtisaari was visited by American professor of international relations, Charles Kegley. They discussed the definition of a "failed state" and its significance.

Later, on May 24, he met with renowned theologian Hans Küng and Professor Reijo Heinonen from the University of Joensuu, with whom he discussed global ethics and the role of religious communities in conflicts. Küng believed that Serbs and Albanians had had 50 years in Yugoslavia to agree and free themselves from myths. There are no innocent states in Europe. He said that churches and religious groups could be involved in conflict avoidance processes as in Namibia or South Africa.

One of the most important internal political actors, the leader of the Democratic Party of Kosovo, Ibrahim Rugova, was in Rome after being transferred from Belgrade. He informed his Italian hosts that "it was possible to discuss autonomy with Milosevic." According to some agency reports on May 9th in Brussels, he stated that future negotiations should aim for "autonomous Kosovo within Yugoslavia." Leaders of the KLA (Jakup Krasnici) were angry with him for such views and told him from Tirana that he had no mandate to negotiate the future of Kosovo. Rugova responded on May 17th from Bonn with a message that his DSK did not recognize Thaci's government proclaimed in exile. Two days later, world agencies in Bonn recorded his statement that "the separatist KLA should be disarmed" and called on the international community to stop selling arms. In August of the same year, after KFOR troops had already arrived in Kosovo in large numbers, Rugova changed his opinion and told the German "Der Spiegel" that "Serbs no longer had any rights over Kosovo" and that a confederation with Albania was "a matter of the future." Here one could actually talk more about a return to some old thoughts of the leader of the Kosovo Albanians, who had sporadically claimed even before the 1999 war that the secession of Kosovo could be achieved if it was "demilitarized and came under international protection." The first precondition – demilitarization – had obviously not yet been met.

British Prime Minister Tony Blair was undoubtedly, after U.S. President Bill Clinton, the second most important figure in the bombing of the FRY. As he himself wrote in his memoirs, that attack was his first "full-scale military operation." Blair quickly emerged as the most important proponent of a ground operation. "Essentially, Kosovo shows the fundamental, inevitable, and irreparable limitations of a pure air operation against a determined opponent who cares little about the loss of life. It followed what is now known about such operations. Air strikes cause real damage and are visually powerful; they weaken the enemy's infrastructure and demoralize the army, and certainly the civilian population; they can deter, inhibit, and limit – what they cannot do is drive out a truly persistent occupation of the country by an enemy willing to endure losses and wait it out," reasoned Blair.

Blair described that at the beginning of the action, there were many targets. With modern technology and weaponry, they are quickly eliminated. Then the question arises: what now? Targets increasingly become interspersed with civilian areas. "Collateral damage" – a terrible phrase that I tried to ban – grows, and wrong targets are hit. (In this case, not only civilian, but in a terrible accident, the Chinese embassy in Belgrade.) The enemy is damaged, but not defeated. Frustration grows, as does the sense of injustice, at least in Western countries, in a purely air operation," Blair assessed.

The war, "planes against soldiers," is not considered entirely fair, noted Blair, adding that all this increases pressure on political leaders. And most disadvantageously according to his view, "if you're not careful, the aggressor begins to take on the mantle of the victim."

What made the situation even worse, in this case, was that after a few days it became evident that NATO itself had certain serious limitations in conducting such a campaign. We had a hopelessly, almost ridiculously, complicated target approval procedure that often delayed decisions. Blair saw in Clark a "good and brilliant guy," dedicated, but in no way equipped with the necessary media and communication infrastructure required for an operation that dominated global news. "Javier Solana, the NATO Secretary-General, was also first-class, but caught between the differing views (not to mention egos) of his political bosses," explained the British Prime Minister.

After two weeks, he concluded that it couldn't go on like this, as disaster would follow.

"Then I made a clear decision. I had been in power for only eighteen months, but I was already contemplating that I might have to leave. I talked to Alastair Campbell and Jonathan Powell, then convened my closest team. I said: I am willing to lose my job over this, but we will go bankrupt. We will take an even more leading position and invest everything in winning. The response to what had been monstrous and unforgivable wrath had been pathetic. We wanted to try to tackle it and I would use all my chips with President Clinton to get a commitment to ground troops on the agenda," Blair demanded.

His associates unanimously supported these views. Indeed, some found it more than strange that a government committed to changing British public services and reducing unemployment would gamble its survival on a military adventure in the Balkans, but all agreed to achieve it.

Blair immediately spoke with Clark and Solana, who welcomed this kind of support with open arms. He then went to NATO headquarters and took Alastair Campbell with him, one of Blair's most important advisors for creating political mood and directing the public during the attack on Yugoslavia. While sitting with Clark (whom Blair calls "Wes") in the office, Clark's mobile phone rang, and on the other end was a journalist inquiring about the operation. Blair noted this as evidence of Clark's huge desire to be up to date in all aspects of the operation. Blair noticed that NATO's Supreme Allied Commander in Europe was "immensely frustrated by the lack of political cohesion and commitment" and conveyed to Blair that he should not think "that all leaders feel like him." Blair left Alastair Campbell to organize a suitable communication infrastructure for Clark and to "have Clark's back."

But, this was just another step in the alliance of these two men who would henceforth have their own line within the operation. They wanted a change in attack strategy and an inevitable ground operation. Then, in planning, and partially in execution, the American and British lines were formulated, which had different plans, as in World War II.

Clark thought that the differences in opinions on both sides of the Atlantic were a result of a combination of geography and history. Civilians in Washington had never been at war before. It was not an obligation they were eager to accept, and their stance had always caused the most anger, as if it were some annoying distant problem that wouldn't go away. For Europeans, it was more immediate, physically closer, it was a war, and especially for the British, there was a sense of urgency, a sense that the sooner they dealt with the obvious problem, the better the outcome for everyone. Whatever else happened during the NATO summit, Clark thought, the British managed to convince the Americans of the seriousness of the situation and that time was not on their side. Thanks to the summit, the target list was expanded and restrictions on targets in central Belgrade were removed. NATO aviation was used for the first time in full force on targets in the city on May 7th, with what was assessed as "impressive results." This probably does not include the bombing and destruction of the Chinese embassy in Belgrade. Finally, Mike Short told friends, after 45 days, they were allowing him to do the things he wanted from the start, and with the policy change and readiness to attack targets in central Belgrade, the B2s became even more effective. They did things no bomber or bombing program had ever done before.

Every morning, starting on March 23, 1999, precisely at 8:30, in a special bunker beneath the Ministry of Defense building in central London, the most important British ministers, Ministry of Defense officials, intelligence officers, and diplomats gathered to discuss the bombing of Yugoslavia. The bunker, renovated in 1979 by order of Margaret Thatcher, represents a hermetically sealed network of corridors beginning with double red-painted steel doors and two computerized checkpoints.

This is the British Crisis Management Center. Here Alister Campbell sat daily at an ash wood table, a table for 18 people. From this bunker, Tony Blair and Alister Campbell had a constant connection with the British Joint General Staff in Northwood, the Royal Air Force command in Wickham, the Army command in Wilton, and the NATO crisis center in Mons. In Mons, a special team called "Jedi Knights" was constantly sitting, planning a ground operation to conquer all of Serbia and the entry of NATO troops into Belgrade.

Indeed, when it became clear that bombing military targets was not yielding results, NATO launched a new phase of the war against Yugoslavia - the deliberate bombing of civilian targets. Yet, as even this did not automatically lead to a relaxation from Belgrade, a ground invasion of Serbia under the code "Bravo-minus" was also on the list of options.

Only when faced with the possibility of defeat did Clinton and Blair decide they had to win. That was the essence of the dinner before the summit, a sudden awareness that the alternative to victory was unacceptable. What that would do to NATO – an effective sign of its end - and to its countries (it was known, though never spoken, to their own careers and place in history) was also unacceptable, and they forged a joint pact between two men that they would win. There was no going back, they started with this and would finish it. If they had to pay a higher price, they would. "A metaphorical blood oath," Samuel Berger later called it, as one of the few witnesses. There would be no stopping the bombing nor half-hearted negotiations with Milosevic that would allow him to save himself. Instead, they would increase the pressure on him. It was a fateful decision in terms of the war, writes David Halberstam. After a month of bombing, the most significant directive for conducting the war changed, the need to preserve the Alliance for political reasons at any cost. Now the primary goal was victory, and that was a military mandate. Clark was given permission to start with preliminary planning for the use of ground forces. A plan in which about 175,000 NATO troops would begin a ground conquest of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, namely Serbia. The farthest in the planning of ground war went the British, where Tony Blair constantly pressured the White House to accept it. In the operation, more than 50,000 British soldiers and about 100 tanks would participate, essentially the entire British ground army. However, the Pentagon was against a ground invasion, opposed by Defense Secretary Cohen and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Shelton.

Clinton, on the first day of aggression against Yugoslavia, March 24, 1999, addressing the nation on television, stated that he "does not intend to send American soldiers to war in Kosovo." However, NATO's Supreme Commander General Wesley Clark, after just a few weeks of war, began to advocate for a ground assault on Serbia, Tony Blair wholeheartedly supported him, and Campbell media-prepared everything.

However, the Pentagon feared substantial losses in a ground clash with the Yugoslav army in Kosovo. Estimates at NATO's main headquarters in Mons spoke of some 1,500 to 2,000 NATO soldiers killed daily. The Pentagon had information that about 80,000 soldiers of the Yugoslav Third Army were in Kosovo, with 350 tanks, all "fagot" anti-tank missiles there, and all passes to Kosovo were mined.

In Mons, the "Jedi Knights" proposed five options for the "Bravo-minus" plan. The first was a helicopter-parachute drop of several thousand NATO soldiers in the center of Kosovo to cut Yugoslav troops and separate them across the territory. The second option was NATO's entry from Macedonia into the Presevo Valley, then eastward into Kosovo.

The third solution was passage through the Kačanička Gorge, but even in Mons, they knew this was impossible because that route was totally mined. The fourth variant was crossing over the high mountains from the direction of Albania, but roads had to be built first. The fifth option was a combination of the previous four, plus a ground assault from Hungary. And all this with intense bombing of Serbia. The "Jedi Knights" calculated that they would enter Belgrade after 90 days of ground war.

Allies in NATO were skeptical; the problem was the concentration of such large military forces, a NATO division needs at least four months for prior deployment. American forces before "Desert Storm" in 1991 needed a full five months of prior deployment in Saudi Arabia for the war against Iraq. And that was under conditions of unimpeded arrival in Saudi Arabia, on terrain without mud and snow. And in the Balkans, those five months meant entering the war in autumn, even winter, with all the weather adversities that brings.

Over time, Clark showed increasing eagerness towards the use of ground forces. Their enemy, he began to warn, was now the calendar. Nearly a million Albanians forced to leave their homes, thousands living in the hills, all would face a humanitarian disaster of enormous proportions when the harsh Balkan winter arrived. If they intended to help the refugees with a ground operation, the decision probably had to be made by early June to get the troops in before the cold winter hit them. Clark said that preparation would take from 60 to 90 days after an order was given. Better sooner than later, he emphasized. That meant they were already pressed for time. Clark's unofficial deadline for starting to implement such a decision was June 10.

The British therefore intensified intelligence work, Americans began building roads towards the northern border of Albania, Chernomyrdin was manipulating both sides. He convinced and threatened Milosevic that a ground invasion was about to start and that Russia could do nothing about it, and he told the Americans that Milosevic was a "madman" who expected a ground operation to finally inflict NATO casualties that the public opinion of Western countries could not bear, nor tolerate. The bombing began to destroy the very foundations of the Serbian economy, the bombing continued with impunity, the threat of invasion, however much it was a bluff, and the loss of Russian support, all led Milosevic to agree to the Kumanovo Agreement.

Thus, although NATO did not have ready forces for a ground invasion of Serbia in June 1999, it was able to intensify the bombing because the U.S. simply could not afford to lose the war.

By mid-May, the possibility of a NATO ground operation was also considered by the Yugoslav command. The head of the Intelligence Service of the Yugoslav Army, General Branko Krga, assessed that the plans for a ground invasion did not have the support of the U.S. army, and Europe did not have the troops with which it could launch an attack. The only troops they tried to train for combat with the KLA and parts of the Albanian army. They wanted to enter Kosovo and take part of the territory with air support. They had tried this several times by now, but were always beaten back, so they focused on air strikes and the blockade of the country. Stories of a large ground operation of 200,000 soldiers were a form of pressure, General Krga believed. He entirely excluded a large ground attack. Yugoslav officials were confused by such announcements coming from the Russian side. Minister Igor Ivanov then frequently spoke about NATO hurriedly preparing a ground operation. Italian Prime Minister Massimo D'Alema gave an interview to Italy's "Repubblica" on May 16, announcing a ground force attack. But, only the Americans decided about it.