Where are the bodies?
Report: Few 'mass graves' found thus far in Kosovo
By Jon E. Dougherty
© 1999 WorldNetDaily.com
October 20, 1999
An independent intelligence report issued by a U.S.-based firm says that ethnic Albanians "numbering only in the hundreds" have been found in mass graves after four months of investigation by, among others, the FBI.
The Stratfor report calls into question the validity of claims made by NATO and the Clinton administration as justification for launching an air war against Yugoslavia that ultimately led to renewed political tensions with Russia, and a bombed Chinese embassy.
"During its four-month war against Yugoslavia, NATO argued that Kosovo was a land wracked by mass murder," said the report. "Official estimates indicated that some 10,000 ethnic Albanians were killed in a Serb rampage of ethnic cleansing."
"Yet four months into an international investigation bodies numbering only in the hundreds have been exhumed," the report said, with the FBI having found "fewer than 200."
"Piecing together the evidence, it appears that the number of civilian ethnic Albanians killed is far less than was claimed," said the report.
The report noted that "new evidence could invalidate this view," but so far nowhere near the number of Albanians reported killed by Serb troops has "materialized on the scale used to justify the war." The report concluded the new evidence "could have serious foreign policy and political implications for NATO and alliance governments."
The U.S. State Department did not return phone calls seeking comment on the report. But Dave Miller, a spokesman for European affairs at the FBI, told WorldNetDaily the investigation in Kosovo consisted only of "laboratory support for the International Criminal Tribunal (ICT)."
"They requested that we look at a finite number of locations, and within those locations there were 124 bodies -- 100 of which have been identified" so far, he said. "The FBI was not sent there to conduct mass grave exhumations or to locate and find the missing populace of Kosovo." He added that the FBI's role was to "prove the charges contained in the ICT indictment."
The Stratfor report admitted that "the tribunal's primary aim is not to find all the reported dead. Instead, its investigators are gathering evidence to prosecute war criminals for four offenses: Grave breaches of the Geneva Convention, violations of the laws of war, genocide, and crimes against humanity."
"The tribunal believes that it will, however, be able to produce an accurate death count in the future, although it will not say when," according to Stratfor. However, they noted, "A progress report may be released in late October, according to tribunal spokesman Paul Risley."
Controversy about the actual numbers of ethnic Albanians killed by Serbian troops began on Oct. 11, when the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Republic of Yugoslavia reported that the Trepca mines in Kosovo, where 700 murdered ethnic Albanians were reportedly hidden, contained no bodies. "Three days later," the report said, "the U.S. Defense Department released its review of the Kosovo conflict, saying that NATO's war was a reaction to the ethnic cleansing campaign by Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic." The Defense Department report called Milosevic's campaign "a brutal means to end the crisis on his terms."
However, the tribunal's findings and the Defense Department's assertion served to raise even more concerns about the actual number of "cleansed" Albanians.
"Four months after the war and the introduction of forensic teams from many countries, precisely how many bodies of murdered ethnic Albanians have been found?" Stratfor questioned. "This is not an exercise in the macabre, but a reasonable question, given the explicit aims of NATO in the war, and the claims the alliance made on the magnitude of Serbian war crimes."
"Indeed, the central justification for war was that only intervention would prevent the slaughter of Kosovo's ethnic Albanian population," Stratfor said, echoing policy statements issued by the Clinton administration and NATO.
On March 22, Stratfor reported, "British Prime Minister Tony Blair told the House of Commons, 'We must act to save thousands of innocent men, women and children from humanitarian catastrophe, from death, barbarism and ethnic cleansing by a brutal dictatorship.'" The following day, when the NATO-led air strikes began, President Clinton told reporters, "What we are trying to do is to limit his (Milosevic's) ability to win a military victory and engage in ethnic cleansing and slaughter innocent people and to do everything we can to induce him to take this peace agreement."
In March, State Department spokesman James Rubin told reporters that NATO "did not need to prove that the Serbs were carrying out a policy of genocide because it was clear that crimes against humanity were being committed," said the Stratfor report. In June immediately following the end of the war, Clinton "again invoked the term, saying, 'NATO stopped deliberate, systematic efforts at ethnic cleansing and genocide.'"
Since the war's end, Stratfor said, claims of Albanian dead have "swollen."
Before and during the conflict, though, Yugoslavia repeatedly denied that mass murder was occurring. Instead, Belgrade argued that the Kosovo Liberation Army falsified claims of mass murder in order to justify NATO intervention and the secession of Kosovo from Serbia. But "NATO rejected Belgrade's argument out of hand," said Stratfor.
"The question of the truth or falsehood of the claims of mass murder is much more than a matter of merely historical interest," concluded the report. "It cuts to the heart of the war -- and NATO's current peacekeeping mission in Kosovo."
"Certainly, there was a massive movement of Albanian refugees, but that alone was not the alliance's justification for war," said Stratfor.
In addition to questioning the number of ethnic Albanians allegedly killed by Serb forces, the report calls into dispute the methodology NATO and the U.S. used to determine that some 17,000 people who previously lived in Kosovo are still missing.
"There are undoubtedly many (Kosovar residents) missing," said the report, "but it is unclear whether these people are dead, in Serbian prisons -- official estimates vary widely -- or whether they have taken refuge in other countries."
So far tribunal investigators are a little more than a quarter of the way through investigating some 400 reported mass gravesites.
Jon E. Dougherty is a staff writer for WorldNetDaily.
When President Bill Clinton used the military in Kosovo, his primary justification added up to one thing -- humanitarian reasons. His supporters cheered him on, despite this illegitimate, though humane, use of our military.
The case against Iraq, however, turns on the Iraqi dictator's possession of and willingness to use biological, chemical and possibly nuclear weapons against American allies, American interests and America itself. President Bush does, indeed, underscore the horror inflicted upon the Iraqi people by Saddam Hussein. But those who applauded Clinton's Kosovo mission seem, in the case of Iraq, indifferent as to the "humanitarian angle."
Actor/activist Mike Farrell, for example, says about Iraq, "It is inappropriate for the administration to trump up a case in which we are ballyhooed into war." But back in 1999, about Kosovo, Farrell said, "I think it's appropriate for the international community in situations like this to intervene. I am in favor of an intervention."
Let's go to the videotape:
Clinton (March 24, 1999): "Now (Serbian troops have) started moving from village to village, shelling civilians and torching their houses. We've seen innocent people taken from their homes, forced to kneel in the dirt and sprayed with bullets. Kosovar men dragged from their families, fathers and sons together, lined up and shot in cold blood. This is not a war in the traditional sense; it is an attack by tanks and artillery on a largely defenseless people whose leaders already have agreed to peace. Ending this tragedy is a moral imperative."
Bush (Jan. 28, 2003): "The dictator who is assembling the world's most dangerous weapons has already used them on whole villages, leaving thousands of his own citizens dead, blind or disfigured. Iraqi refugees tell us how forced confessions are obtained by torturing children while their parents are made to watch. International human rights groups have catalogued other methods used in the torture chambers of Iraq, electric shock, burning with hot irons, dripping acid on the skin, mutilation with electric drills, cutting out tongues and rape. If this is not evil, then evil has no meaning."
Clinton (March 24, 1999): "Our mission is clear: to demonstrate the seriousness of NATO's purpose, so that the Serbian leaders understand the imperative of reversing course, to deter an even bloodier offensive against innocent civilians in Kosovo, and if necessary, to seriously damage the Serbian military's capacity to harm the people of Kosovo. In short, if President Milosevic will not make peace, we will limit his ability to make war."
Bush (Sept. 12, 2002): "If the Iraqi regime wishes peace, it will cease persecution of its civilian population, including Shi'a, Sunnis, Kurds, Turkemens and others -- again, as required by Security Council resolutions. . . . The United States has no quarrel with the Iraqi people. They've suffered too long in silent captivity. Liberty for the Iraqi people is a great moral cause and a great strategic goal. The people of Iraq deserve it. The security of all nations requires it. Free societies do not intimidate through cruelty and conquest. And open societies do not threaten the world with mass murder. The United States supports political and economic liberty in a unified Iraq."
Clinton (March 24, 1999): "I am convinced that the dangers of acting are far outweighed by the dangers of not acting, dangers to defenseless people and to our national interests. If we and our allies were to allow this war to continue with no response, President Milosevic would read our hesitation as a license to kill. There would be many more massacres, tens of thousands more refugees, more victims crying out for revenge. Right now, our firmness is the only hope the people of Kosovo have, to be able to live in their own country without having to fear for their own lives."
Bush (Sept. 12, 2002): "We can harbor no illusions, and that's important today to remember. Saddam Hussein attacked Iran in 1980 and Kuwait in 1990. He's fired ballistic missiles at Iran and Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and Israel. His regime once ordered the killing of every person between the ages of 15 and 70 in certain Kurdish villages in northern Iraq. He has gassed many Iranians and 40 Iraqi villages."
Not that his supporters care, but Clinton apparently exaggerated the suffering in Kosovo. In November 1999, the Christian Science Monitor wrote, "U.S. and NATO officials at times implied that as many as 100,000 ethnic Albanians may have been killed, and they used words like 'genocide' to describe the Serbian policy. They later lowered the estimate to 10,000. But preliminary findings from war-crimes investigators indicate that the number of ethnic Albanians killed by Serbian forces during the air strikes was probably closer to 5,000."
But when and if forces enter Iraq, expect the humanitarian charges lodged against Saddam Hussein to prove not only accurate, but understated.
What a difference an administration makes.