The sound was like no other. Hundreds of blackbirds were perched in trees throughout the park in central Belgrade where our bus stopped, and their loud and raucous cries startled me. I had never seen so many blackbirds in one place. Our host, Nikola Moraca, and his son were there to greet us. When asked about the blackbirds, Nikola replied, "We never had these before. They are from Kosovo. They migrated here because the bombing in Kosovo was too intense." The birds' piercing cries were unsettling, and seemed a harbinger of all of the pain and suffering we would come to witness during our stay in Yugoslavia. We were a delegation of peace activists and concerned individuals, organized and led by Barry Lituchy, a specialist on European history. Our mission was to bring medical aid to the people of Yugoslavia, and we would spend the first two weeks of August 1999, in gathering evidence of NATO war crimes for former U.S. Attorney General Ramsey Clark's Independent Commission of Inquiry.

Years of hardship had taken their toll on Yugoslav society. Burdened by sanctions, a massive influx of refugees, and NATO's destruction of factories and workplaces, the unemployment rate has soared. All along Revolution Boulevard, sidewalks were jammed with street vendors selling paltry goods. It was an important means of survival for many people in Belgrade. I saw two very elderly women sitting behind a card table, on which the only goods were stones, hand painted with designs and affectionate sayings. Gasoline is strictly rationed, and stations were usually closed. We frequently saw people standing by roadsides, plastic bottles of gasoline for sale. Gasoline smuggled across the border from Bosnia-Herzegovina and Hungary was another means of survival for the destitute. Buses and streetcars were densely crowded. Windows were sealed in some streetcars, a sign of air conditioning in better times. Now, the closed windows served to trap the oppressive summer heat, as people crowded and pressed against each, soaked with sweat. "The burden of imposed sanctions is felt in nearly every situation on a daily basis," Danka Moraca, Nikola's wife, informed us. "Sanctions have changed our lives tremendously, if not totally. Now we are all used to shortages of everyday necessities such as basic food, cleaning products and personal items. If you are fortunate enough to be able to afford them, you must wait in long lines." Sanctions, she added, have resulted in a "decline of salaries, pensions and a general impoverishment of ordinary people." According to the Yugoslav Red Cross, approximately 100,000 people, primarily pensioners and welfare recipients, rely on soup kitchens, but the need outstrips the supply of available meals. Eight years of sanctions have taken their toll, and the war compounded the effect, nearly doubling the poverty rate.

On our first morning in Belgrade, we met with Bratislava Morina, Federal Minister for Refugees, Displaced Persons and Humanitarian Aid. It was Morina's ministry that was responsible for coping with Europe's largest refugee population. Already burdened with 700,000 refugees from wars in Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina, more than 200,000 people had fled from Kosovo by the time of our visit, a number that would soon grow to over 350,000. Morina, whose husband is Albanian, listed several prominent political positions held by Albanians in Yugoslavia, "until they were given orders to leave office" by secessionists "and become part of the parallel world." - a reference to the secessionist's boycott of institutions. Calm and dignified, Morina spoke eloquently of the destruction wrought by NATO, but concluded that these were "not the worst crimes committed" by President Clinton. "When we hear claims that they want to create a multiethnic society in Kosovo, this is ironic," she said, "because we have witnessed one of the most radical ethnic cleansing campaigns" since the arrival of NATO troops.

We next met with officials of the Yugoslav Red Cross. We gave them several bags of medicines that were donated by American doctors and individuals. Dr. Miodrag Starcevic talked of the refugee crisis, pointing out that "our needs are very urgent," and that they lacked food, shelter, clothes and medicines for refugees. Officials there felt that the level of need for humanitarian aid greatly exceeded what international organizations were providing. Another serious problem for the organization is that it cannot operate freely in Kosovo. "We cannot go there," Dr. Starcevic said. "Even when we send humanitarian relief, we must provide in advance for some kind of escort by KFOR [NATO's Kosovo Force], because it is impossible to go there. It is too dangerous." Medical officer Ljubisa Dragisic told us that local production met most of the nation's needs for drugs and medical supplies, but that sanctions caused shortages in imported medicines. "It's especially a problem with some services," she said. "For example, the transfusion service, because we import the bags and blood tests, and some drugs...oncology drugs, and some programs for example, the dialysis program, and a part of the program for treatment of diabetics." Suture material and anesthetic drugs were also in short supply.

Poisoning an Entire Nation and People

We were particularly interested in learning more about the environmental aspect of NATO bombing. The systematic destruction of chemical, petrochemical, fertilizer plants, and oil refineries seriously poisoned the local environment. In the early morning hours of April 18, 1999, NATO missiles rained down on the industrial town of Pancevo, just northeast of Belgrade. A petrochemical plant was hit, sending into the atmosphere 900 tons of vinyl chloride monomers (VCM), an extremely dangerous carcinogen. By sunrise, clouds of VCM poured through the town, at levels exceeding 10,600 times the permissible limit for human safety. Burning VCM released phosgene gas, a substance that was used as a poison gas during the First World War. Chlorine gas - also used as a poison gas during World War I - was also discharged by fires a the plant, as were other dangerous chemicals, such as naptha, ethylene dichloride and hydrochloric acid. A poison rain spattered the region, and hundreds of tons of oil and chemicals soaked into the soil and poured into the Danube River. Pools of mercury formed on the grounds of the plant. After a missile narrowly missed striking a tank of liquid ammonia, panicked workers dumped the liquid ammonia into the Danube in order to avert a terrible tragedy. The entire population of Pancevo was evacuated immediately, but they have since returned to live in the town. Doctors there advise women to avoid pregnancy for the next two years, and many residents are coming down with red rashes and blisters. Although we were only in Pancevo for a few hours, some of us, myself included, found rashes appearing on our legs before the end of the day. My lower legs were covered with rashes, and it was two weeks before they would finally disappear. According to one worker we talked with, eighty percent of the petrochemical plant was destroyed. Another worker told us that "vast quantities of ammonia and VCM spilled into the river," and that he could "see an immediate effect because one meter above the river the bank appears burned. All the plants look as if they had been burned by fire." Several people expressed fears for their health and that of their families.

Serious environmental hazards also resulted from the destruction of power plants in Bor and Kragujevac. Transformers there relied on transformer oil containing polychlorinated biphenyles (PCB) pyralene, as a coolant. According to the Regional Environmental Centre for Central and Eastern Europe, "one liter of the PCB pyralene pollutes one billion liters of water." We visited an oil refinery in Novi Sad. One resident of Novi Sad, whose home was located a mere three blocks from the refinery, later told me that the refinery was bombed on virtually a daily basis and that his neighborhood was constantly enveloped in smoke. Outside the refinery, we saw a struggling bird soaked in oil, near death

Perhaps the deadliest weapon in NATO's arsenal was depleted uranium (DU) tipped missiles and bombs. Depleted uranium's high density enables projectiles to easily penetrate armor and concrete targets. When DU weapons impact on their target, thousands of radioactive particles are released into the atmosphere, and may be borne for miles by the wind. When people ingest these particles, serious bodily damage can result. Following the 1991 Gulf War, rates of birth defects and leukemia rose dramatically in southern Iraq.

Barry and I talked with Dr. Radoje Lausevic, an environmental specialist and assistant professor at the University of Belgrade. Dr. Lausevic's appearance and manner of speech reminded me of my best friend, Jorge, so he made an immediately favorable impression. While driving us in his car, he commented on the ecological impact of the war, and it wasn't until we arrived at our destination that I realized that his talk was so interesting that I forgot to record him or take notes. We arrived at the office of the Regional Environmental Center for Central and Eastern Europe, where we briefly finished our discussion of the environmental damage. Barry asked about depleted uranium (DU) weapons. My impression was that use of depleted uranium weapons was limited to Kosovo, but Dr. Lausevic told us that Russian sources determined that 30 tons of DU was used outside of Kosovo. The entire territory of Yugoslavia was exposed to these weapons. One particle of DU in the lungs, he said, is equivalent to a daily chest x-ray for life.

The delegation also met with Dusan Vasiljevic, president of Green Table, a Belgrade-based environmental non-governmental organization. A man with an elegant manner of speech, he also acted as our guide and translator when we visited Pancevo. Vasiljevic told us that 135,000 tons of toxic chemicals spilled into the environment as a result of NATO bombing. Speaking of Pancevo, he pointed out that VCM "is one of the most dangerous toxic chemicals that ever existed. It's gastro organic in the first place, and disrupts the cells inside," the consequences of which are "liver disease, kidney disease and of course cancer itself." Vasiljevic also confirmed Dr. Lausevic's report of widespread use of DU weapons. Vasiljevic explained that as DU particles spread over an area, it "enters the food chain, as well as to water, soil, even in the air. Once you get these depleted uranium particles in your body, they stay there. You can't get rid of them. And they move in your body...mostly they go to the kidneys, and also to the liver." Vasiljevic's comments on Kosovo were sobering. "Kosovo itself is a nuclear desert now. I wouldn't go there myself...because the level of radiation in Kosovo is over any tolerable level." Depleted uranium emits primarily alpha radiation, which is 20 times more deadly than gamma radiation, he said. The United Nations Balkan Task Force, as well as other Western investigators "did not find any increased radiation. How could they say so? Because they did not have the proper equipment for that....They had just a Geiger counter." A Geiger counter is worthless for measuring DU because it measures primarily gamma radiation, not alpha.

Exhaust from NATO overflights, Vasiljevic claimed, severely damaged the ozone layer above Yugoslavia. Immediately following NATO's bombing campaign, Yugoslavia was ravaged by a series of floods and severe rainstorms. By the time of our visit, the temperature was searing, unbearable at times. People speculated that the heat, floods and rains were a result of the thinning of the ozone. The damaged ozone layer would soon drift over Western Europe, Vasiljevic said. It is difficult to determine a correlation, but on December 2, 1999, the European Space Agency reported that the lowest ever levels of ozone, "nearly as low as those found in the Antarctic," were measured over northwest Europe during November. Everyone was concerned about the food supply. Danka worried that "all that we have on the green markets or in the shops nowadays has been contaminated, either by the destroyed chemical industry or by the new weapons dropped on our heads. I can't even think about the possible consequences of consuming such food."

A City Crippled by Bombs

In the northern city of Novi Sad, we viewed three bridges across the Danube River. All three were severed by NATO missiles. The Varadin Bridge carried a main water pipe, and when the bridge was destroyed on April 1, the Petrovaradin section of the city lost its water supply. Similarly, destruction of the Zezelj Bridge on April 26 eliminated water in the suburbs. Water had to be trucked in until service could be restored. At the Executive Council Building in Novi Sad, we met Dr. Zivorad Smiljanic, president of the Assembly of the Autonomous Province of Vojvodina, and an interesting and knowledgeable man. Smiljanic pointed out, as did many others during our visit, that Yugoslavia has 26 nationalities and is a multiethnic society. "Even the smallest nationalities have education in their own mother tongue," he said. "Now you can see for yourselves what NATO did." NATO leaders "constantly talk about democracy, but we could see that democracy in action here: democracy that bombed and destroyed bridges, schools and hospitals....all these aims were actually false, because the real truth and their real aim was to conquer everything and put everything under one system." Smiljanic was asked to name their most urgent need. "The thing that we would like most of all is for the international community to leave us alone;" he exclaimed, "to lift blockades and sanctions, and stop 'helping' us in the way that they are doing."

Following the meeting, one official walked up to Barry. His eyes were moist. "It was such a difficult time for those of us with children," he said. "We didn't know what to do: take both children in one cellar, or put them in separate cellars." A terrible dilemma, whether to keep the family together and risk losing everyone in a single moment; or split the family apart, thus increasing the chances of losing someone.

We were scheduled to tour and view bomb damage at the Executive Council building later in the day. When we returned, our bus pulled to a stop in front of the building and our delegation began to disembark. A woman walked up to our bus, and asked us through an open window, "Are you a delegation?" Receiving an affirmative answer, she spoke in an angry and outraged tone, "We're a delegation from Germany. We've been here one week already. We've seen such terrible things, you can't imagine. People here have a system like no one in the world. It's a true multiethnic society. Back in Germany, all we hear are lies. There is no way to get the truth out." We soon came to share her reaction and her outrage. The portrayal of Yugoslavia in Western media is bizarre for anyone who troubles himself to actually visit the place. A multiethnic society where peoples of many nationalities work and live together is painted as racist. A society in which women walk calmly and unafraid in a park at midnight, as we regularly saw, is portrayed as crime-ridden. Knowledgeable and worldly people are represented as ignorant and irrational. How often had I read in the Western press of President Slobodan Milosevic's 1989 speech at Kosovo Polje, in which it was claimed that he whipped the crowd into a nationalist frenzy with a language of hate? Western reporters can get away with such monstrous lies because they know no one will bother to check the text of that speech. I couldn't believe the accusation because it ran counter to those speeches I was familiar with. When I found a copy of the speech, my suspicions were confirmed. There was not one nationalist phrase and not one phrase of hatred. What I found instead were phrases such as, "Serbia has never had only Serbs living in it. Today, more than in the past, members of other peoples and nationalities also live in it. This is not a disadvantage for Serbia. I am truly convinced that it is its advantage." Or these examples: "Socialism in particular, being a progressive and just democratic society, should not allow people to be divided in the national and religious respect," and "Yugoslavia is a multiethnic community and it can survive only under the conditions of full equality for all nations that live in it." These are the phrases the Western media would have one believe are filled with hate and racism. When I returned to the United States, it was weeks before I could bear to listen to the news, and its spewing of lies and focusing on trivial issues.

Whatever else would happen during our stay in Yugoslavia, it was clear that we would be well fed. Every morning and evening, Nikola and Danka prepared a spectacular banquet for us. We were continually delighted by a dazzling array of delicious dishes. Their extraordinary hospitality and kindness made me feel like part of their family, and Nikola's impish sense of humor brought daily merriment. The importance of family and friends was paramount in this society. Friends, family, and neighbors often visited. On the street, we often saw family members holding hands. Displays of affection were open. Due to sanctions, their lives were materially impoverished compared to earlier times, but still they lead rich lives. As one man in Novi Sad told me, "We have a different philosophy here than in the West. We have a saying, 'The man is rich who has many friends."

NATO did not ignore Vidovdan Skonaselje, a suburb of Novi Sad. People were living in the ruins of their homes, simply because they had no where else to go. The home of Rajko and Gordana Matic was severely damaged. Rajko and his wife Gordana fled Zagreb in 1992 and built their new home here. Now NATO had bombed their new house. Heavy plastic covered the windows. With the exception of the frame and base, nothing remained of the roof. The explosion had dented and twisted their car. They allowed us inside to view their home. Holes in the walls, a result of the bomb blast, allowed chickens to enter and wander about. On the second floor, one of the interior walls, broken and cracked, was bowed to an alarming degree, like the letter 'C'. Light streamed in through a ruptured wall, and mounds of rubble filled the rooms. It didn't seem safe, but they had no where else to go, nor money to repair the damage. Previous Western visitors had promised them help, which never came. To the left of the Matic's house stood an empty shell of another home. Only the brick walls still stood. Everything else was blown away in the bombing. Farther to the left, the roof of a demolished home angled down to the ground. Behind it stood more homes with blasted roofs, damaged walls and seared interiors. The house to the right was missing the second floor. Only remnants of the front and back wall remained. Hammering sounds told us that the owners had begun the arduous task of rebuilding. Across the street, the roof of one home was a mass of twisted wreckage. Between these buildings, a roadside sign listed at a drunken angle, punctured neatly by shrapnel from a NATO bomb. It was a "welcome" sign.

NATO also left its calling card at another suburb of Novi Sad, Detelinara. On May 6, a powerful bomb landed at the juncture of two apartment buildings and the Svetozar Markovic elementary school. By the time of our visit, the huge crater had been filled in, and all 20 of the demolished automobiles removed. The buildings were severely damaged, and many apartments were devastated. Seven people were wounded in the attack, and the site followed a pattern that we would witness repeatedly during our two weeks in Yugoslavia. Residential areas with no military value were targeted on a regular basis.

Belgrade Bombarded

In New Belgrade, the more recently built section of the city, we stopped at Hotel Yugoslavia. On May 7, just before midnight, two NATO missiles struck the hotel near the main entrance. One person was killed, and four wounded. It was impossible to view the extensive destruction without contemplating the mentality that could order missiles to be fired at a hotel. As we stood before the Chinese embassy, only a few blocks away, NATO's excuses seemed absurd. Architecturally distinctive, the embassy's unique beauty could not possibly be mistaken for the nearby Federal Directorate of Supply, nor any other building in the vicinity. Similarly difficult to swallow was the claim that the embassy was bombed because the CIA had relied on an old map. The embassy building was built during 1992-93, and an old map would have shown an empty field. One would have to believe that NATO intended to bomb an empty field. Certainly, the CIA would have closely monitored the Chinese embassy in Belgrade, particularly as NATO prepared to wage war on Yugoslavia. Three satellite-guided missiles struck the embassy, just twenty minutes after the bombing of Hotel Yugoslavia. The missile that did the most damage penetrated through the roof, burrowing down to the basement. Three people were killed, and 20 wounded. Fire and smoke poured through the building. The stairways were demolished, and people trapped on the top three floors tied bedsheets together, hanging them out of windows as a means of escape. We saw that one rope of bedsheets still hung from a fourth story window. Two days before my departure for Yugoslavia, I obtained a copy of an article from the July 2 issue of Kai Fang, published in Hong Kong. The article's author, Su Lan, wrote that embassy personnel electronically monitored NATO's military operations, and that NATO feared that the downing of its F-117 Stealth fighter-bomber may have been a result of information passed along by them to Yugoslav officials. The October 17 issue of The Observer, and follow-up story a few weeks later, confirmed that the embassy was deliberately targeted. A NATO flight controller based in Naples told The Observer, "The Chinese embassy had an electronic profile, which NATO located and pinpointed." "The aim," said another NATO officer, "was to send a clear message to Milosevic that he should not use outside help in the shape of the Chinese."

Not far away, the ruins of another beautiful building stood, the 23-story Uzce Business Center, the target of four missiles on April 21. Much of the building's exterior was blackened by fire, and many windows were a mass of twisted metal. I remembered seeing dramatic photographs of this building engulfed in flames. NATO planners anticipated high "collateral damage." Their plans anticipated that up to 100 government officials and 250 civilians residing in nearby apartments in the "expected blast radius" would be killed in the attack. Unfazed at the prospect of murdering up to 350 people, President Clinton and British Prime Minister Tony Blair gave their approval for the building's destruction. The Uzce Business Center housed offices of a variety of businesses and political organizations. The rationale for the building's destruction was that some of the offices belonged to the Serbian Socialist Party and the closely allied Yugoslav United Left. Only evacuation of the building averted a terrible tragedy, and no one perished in the attack.

NATO's bland assertions seemed obscene. Bombing the Chinese embassy was an "accident," and therefore excusable. This carried with it an unspoken assumption, that bombing another building and killing Yugoslav civilians would be acceptable. The destruction of Hotel Yugoslavia and the Uzce Business Center was also acceptable, because these somehow fell into the all-inclusive category of "military targets." Many people in the West were completely indifferent to the death and destruction carried out in their names. All of NATO's claims were accepted without examination or questioning. The United States, it is assumed, has an inherent right to invade or bomb another country and to trample international law underfoot. In this context, I found it poignant when we saw a billboard in Belgrade, which read: "They believe in bombs. We believe in God."

That night, in the Moraca's home, delegation member Ken Freeland interviewed Nenad Gudjic, a Serbian refugee from Kosovo. Gudjic said he felt that "Albanians suppressed me, especially when I started to date my present wife, who is Albanian." His wife also felt strong pressure from Albanian extremists, prompting them to leave Kosovo. "Something very interesting is happening now," Gudjic said. "I lived in Pristina for 33 years. Now, on the streets of Belgrade, I saw a few of my Albanian friends who escaped, as I escaped, from Pristina. They are living now in Belgrade without any problems. These are ethnic Albanians of my generation who escaped that chaos."

Every Federal building in downtown Belgrade bore the scars of bombing. Almost every day we passed these buildings, and each day the sight was as painful as the day before. Late one night during the war, kept awake by an air raid, Nikola was on his balcony talking to his neighbor across the street on her balcony. The sound of flying missiles interrupted their conversation. Nikola shouted at his neighbor, "Get down. This one will hit us. His shoulders rose as a chill travelled down the back of his neck and then two explosions roared. Only a few short blocks away, one missile smashed a house on Maxim Gorky Street, also damaging an adjoining apartment building and a restaurant. The other missile struck a street nearby. Four people were injured; one of whom, 23-year old Sofija Jovanovic, died of her wounds two days later. On my last day in Belgrade, I walked down to view the site. Nothing remained but a mound of concrete, bricks, broken boards, and upturned earth. As a sort of memorial, someone had scrawled graffiti on the remnants of an adjacent building: "Bombed April 30." With fatalistic humor, graffiti on another house read, "Sorry. You missed us." Danka described life during the bombing. "We were bombed constantly for 78 days and nights, without any break or pause. We were without water or electricity for days. We had to throw away everything from the refrigerator, including all medicaments essential for our family, because of the high temperatures in May. The bombing was awful, cruel and savage. We were all afraid, staying in the dark lobby for hours, listening to the scary sounds of the low-flying warplanes, detonations, children crying, car alarms, and people screaming who simply couldn't stand it anymore." Later in the war, "NATO changed its tactics, and by the end they were bombing us every two hours. That was part of their psychological war, I suppose." The effects of the bombardment were widespread. "There was no bread. The bakeries couldn't produce bread without electricity. The smell of spoiled food spread from nearby supermarkets. There was no milk for children." Her children were upset, asking, "Why are those people bombing us? Why do they hate us so much when we didn't do anything wrong to them?" Danka revealed that every time she kissed her children goodnight "during the bombing campaign, deep inside me I was praying for God to see them healthy and alive the next morning. During those long bombing nights, they were awakened so many times by strong nearby explosions, annoyed and panicked."

The Belgrade 5 transformer station of the Serbian Electric Company is located at Bezanijska Kosa in New Belgrade. It was bombed, as were many other electrical power and transformer stations. Several Tomahawk missiles struck here, as well as a new weapon, the CBU-94, a cluster bomb which releases a web of carbon-graphite threads, resulting in electrical short-circuits, and burnt components. At one point, seventy percent of Yugoslavia's power supply was knocked out, which also adversely affected water supplies that depended on electrical pumps. About 50,000 hospital patients, including those on dialysis and babies in incubators, also suffered from the power outages. When workers proved adept at restoring power rapidly, NATO then targeted the plants with cruise missiles and conventional bombs. By the end of the war, one third of the electricity transmission systems were damaged or destroyed. During our visit to Belgrade 5, workers were busily repairing the damage. We talked with one of the workers, who said that most of the Belgrade suburb of Zemun was without electricity. He worried about the onset of winter, when people would have to rely on alternative sources of heat, such as coal and small heaters. He pointed out that the coolant for the plant's transformers contained PCBs, and that consequently, "when the fuel burns, it is toxic, so [NATO] poisoned nature around here also. It went into the ground, so it will reach our water supplies." One of our delegation members, Jeff Goldberg, asked him if this was the most expensive damage inflicted on Yugoslavia, and the worker immediately responded, "The most expensive damage is that they killed a lot of people." When asked about the length of time required for repair, the worker answered. "We need equipment. We need spare parts...without foreign aid we are dead. We have a factory that makes spare parts, converters, but...they can make only one switch per month. It's a low capacity factory." The previous day, due to bomb damage, virtually all of Serbia's steam power plants shut down, and much of the country was left without power. On the day of our visit, a breakdown at the power line at the Djerdap-Bor hydroelectric plant caused a chain-reaction of breakdowns in other power lines, resulting in more blackouts. It was expected that hundreds of thousands of people would freeze during winter, with sanctions blocking the import of much-needed parts, but prospects improved due to a remarkable program of reconstruction and improvisation. Electricity is severely rationed, with frequent power cuts. But what seemed an inevitable humanitarian disaster has been averted through the ingenuity and heroic efforts of workers in overcoming seemingly insurmountable obstacles. The electrical worker we talked with summed up the war: "We were bombed because we refuse to be slaves. We are a proud people and we don't want to be enslaved. Rich people want slaves. They want obedient people."

Our meeting with the Belgrade-based Committee for Compiling Data on Crimes against Humanity and International Law was of particular interest for me. I had read several articles about the work of the committee as well as interviews with its president, Dr. Zoran Stankovic, so I was familiar with the meticulous and significant work they had done in Bosnia-Herzegovina and Croatia. All nine members of the committee work on a volunteer basis, constrained by severely limited resources, outmoded personal computers and only one copy machine. The committee was tasked to investigate NATO war crimes, and that was the main focus of our discussion. A point of frustration for the committee was that they had submitted eight files of documentation with The Hague War Crimes Tribunal, which treated their reports with complete disinterest.

Albanian Refugees and Civil War: Behind the Media Screen

NATO officials accused the Yugoslav government of expelling its Albanian population and committing genocide. The flood of refugees pouring into Albania and Macedonia was trumpeted as justification for bombing Yugoslavia. Few dwelled on the logical fallacy of NATO's claim that a refugee crisis which occurred subsequent to bombing was itself the motivation for that bombing. Western leaders presented a simple picture, one easily grasped. Reality is seldom as simple as a Hollywood action movie, though, and Western leaders intentionally distorted events for an uncritical public.

Every nationality can be found in the membership of the Serbian Socialist Party, including Albanian, and the party has long prided itself on a commitment to a multiethnic society. This commitment is evident in its program and in virtually every document and every speech. Toward the end of 1998, during the period of the OSCE Mission in Kosovo, the Yugoslav government set up 14 centers throughout Kosovo, where people could come and take free lumber and building supplies for reconstruction of homes damaged in the civil war. These supplies were open to every person of every nationality. There were no restrictions. It was impossible for me to believe that the Serbian Socialist Party metamorphosed overnight into a racist organization, bent on national exclusivity. It did not fit, so I dug into the matter, trying to ascertain the truth among a torrent of lies. A more subtle picture emerged, still with suffering on a mass scale, but this time with NATO as the central catalyst. According to an intelligence report from the German Foreign Office, dated January 12, 1999, "Even in Kosovo an explicit political persecution linked to Albanian ethnicity is not verifiable...actions of the security forces [are] not directed against the Kosovo Albanians as an ethnically defined group, but against the military opponent and its actual or alleged supporters." A civil war was raging in the province of Kosovo between the Albanian secessionist Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) and Yugoslav security forces. This internal document presented a very different message than Western leaders' public statements.

Concomitant with NATO's bombing campaign, hundreds of thousands of people of all nationalities fled their homes. When the first bombs fell, extremists became enraged and blamed Albanians for the bombing. Many of these extremists formed paramilitary groups and criminal gangs, and vented their rage on the local Albanian population. NATO's bombs created an environment of anarchy and chaos that allowed thugs, paramilitary gangs, and renegade police to operate freely. One Serbian official was reported as saying, "It was a catastrophe. Podujevo was emptied in about three hours. There were a lot of vile and angry people, maddened, who were out of control." In Kosovo's capital city of Pristina, the first wave of refugees departed when threatened by thugs during the week and a half following NATO's first bombs on March 24. The second wave left when the center of the city was bombed on April 6 and 7, and the third wave left later, out of a panic that something may happen. Zoran Andjelkovic, president of the then governing Provisional Executive Council for Kosovo, pointed out that the first ten days or so of chaos included fierce clashes among angry civilians. Criminal gangs ran wild, ordering people to leave so that their homes could be robbed. Both Albanian and Serbian criminal gangs roamed the region. Adrian Gillan, in an article in the London Review of Books, talked with Ben Ward, a researcher for Human Rights Watch. Ward told him, "There doesn't appear to be anything to support allegations of mass killings. It is generally paramilitaries who are responsible. It doesn't seem organized. There appear to be individual acts of sadism rather than anything else. There seems not to be any policy or instruction, but that isn't to say that people have not been given the latitude to kill. However, I don't think at this stage we have anything that adds up to the systematic killing of civilians." Restoring order was an extremely difficult task for the Yugoslav Army and security forces because they were under constant NATO bombardment. Yet, by the third week of the war they had succeeded in restoring order in much of the region, and in the latter half of April, Yugoslav police began escorting refugees back to their homes. By the time Yugoslav troops and security forces withdrew from Kosovo in early June, they had arrested over 800 thugs and paramilitaries for crimes against civilians.

At the beginning of the war, Yugoslav troops evacuated villages along the border with Albania where KLA bunkers and arms depots where found, but they were under orders not to harm civilians in the process. An invasion by NATO troops was anticipated, and as one Yugoslav soldier explained, "You can't be waiting for the American army and at the same time have armed Albanians behind your back." In an interview for UPI conducted during the war, Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic said, "Our regular forces are highly disciplined. The paramilitary irregular forces are a different story. Bad things happened, as they did with both sides during the Vietnam war, or any other war for that matter. We have arrested those irregular self-appointed leaders. Some have already been tried and sentenced to 20 years in prison."

People fled for other reasons as well. There was a clear pattern of people fleeing areas subjected to intensive bombardment. Some of the refugees Ben Ward talked with said they had fled from NATO bombs. Other refugees fled to escape being caught in battles between Yugoslav and KLA forces. Thousands more fled to avoid forcible conscription into KLA ranks. Every Albanian man KLA soldiers encountered was forced to enlist. Those who refused were either savagely beaten or killed.

Refugee flight, though, was never as thorough as painted by NATO propaganda, and hundreds of thousands of Albanians remained in Kosovo. Paramilitary rage swept through portions of the western region, while much of the remainder of the province was unscathed. Even during the period of bombing, many thousands of Albanian refugees returned to their homes.

The web of lies spun by the NATO propaganda machine started to unravel once KFOR entered the province. Claiming that there would be half a million internally displaced people inside the province, KFOR instead found only small isolated pockets of refugees. "We planned for what we thought was a potential disaster...and we just haven't found it," admitted Lt. General Mike McDuffie. Lurid tales of mass genocide fell apart, as forensic specialists investigated suspected mass graves. Up to 700 bodies were said to be hidden in the Trepca lead and zinc mines. Not one body was found there. About 350 were buried in a mass grave in Ljubenic, the public was told. A thorough examination of the site found only seven. The leader of the Spanish Forensic team, Emilio Perez Pujo, was told that his team would go to the "worst zone of Kosovo," and to "prepare ourselves to perform more than 2,000 autopsies." But, "the result is very different. We only found 187 cadavers." "There were no mass graves" in his team's area, he said. "For the most part the Serbs are not as bad as they have been painted." Faced with increasingly embarrassing questions about the lack of evidence for NATO's justification for military aggression, The Hague war crimes tribunal scrambled to release a statement asserting that they had indeed found 2,108 bodies. Far short of genocide, but certainly more than individual reports of excavations would indicate. Significantly, the tribunal neglected to categorize these deaths. We are not told how many bodies of each nationality were found, how many died from executions, how many were KLA or Yugoslav soldiers killed in combat, how many died from NATO bombs, and how many died from natural causes.

NATO claimed that its intervention was necessary to quell the civil war in Kosovo, while neglecting to reveal its role in creating and escalating the conflict. A September 24, 1998 report on the Monitor television program on German ARD Television Network, revealed that the German Federal Intelligence Service [BND] was engaged in "several illegal arms supplies" to Albania, in cooperation with the Military Counter Intelligence Service [MAD], and that "via these channels" military equipment was supplied to the KLA. An ex-MAD official claimed that orders for the illegal arms shipments were issued "from the very top." Several monitors from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) patrolling Kosovo during 1998-99 were CIA officers, revealed The Times on March 12, 2000. Their function was to provide advice and training manuals to the KLA. The same article reports that Shaban Shala, a KLA commander, met British, American and Swiss intelligence agents in northern Albanian as early as 1996. According to Belgrade's Politika Ekspres, "a leak from well-informed circles in the [secessionist] Democratic League of Kosovo" disclosed that during a meeting between US envoy Richard Holbrooke and KLA officers at Junik on June 26, 1998, Holbrooke promised the KLA $10 million for the purchase of U.S. arms. One week later, Albanian media reported mysterious flights of U.S. C-130 cargo planes landing at Gjadar airport in northern Albania, a region under the control of the KLA. None of the flights were reported to Albanian air traffic controllers, causing alarm over potential collisions. Paul Beaver, an editor at Jane's Defence Weekly was told by a Pentagon source, "Even before the air strikes seemed inevitable, a [Military Professional Resources - MPRI] team was there [in Kosovo] giving basic military training in tactics to the KLA field commanders." MPRI is an organization of ex-US military officers that is contracted by the Pentagon to provide training to foreign armed forces when it is politically awkward for the U.S. government to be seen as directly involved. KLA bunkers captured by Yugoslav forces often turned up sophisticated Western weapons and U.S. food tins and medical packs.

The Fate of the Roma (Gypsy) People in Kosovo

On August 6, we visited Zemun and met with Jovan Damjanovic, president of the Federal Association of Roma (Gypsy) People in Yugoslavia. A passionate man, Damjanovic described the horrors visited upon his community by the KLA following the occupation of the province by KFOR. Once Yugoslav forces withdrew, there was nothing to restrain the KLA from pursuing its policy of murdering and driving out every non-Albanian ethnic group, and every non-secessionist Albanian. Under the protective umbrella of KFOR, the KLA went on a murderous rampage, killing or expelling virtually everyone who opposed it and leaving in its wake a trail of burning homes.

Damjanovic told us that the European Union had issued a list of 300 Yugoslav citizens who it banned from travel outside of Yugoslavia. The United States and several other nations also joined in imposing the travel restrictions. Individuals whose names are on the list and who have investments or accounts outside of Yugoslavia had those assets seized. U.S. intelligence agents visited many of the people on the list, implying that their names could be removed from the list if they cooperated with Western attempts to overthrow the democratically elected government of Yugoslavia. There were also hints that uncooperative individuals would face trumped-up war crimes charges. Right-wing opposition leader Vuk Draskovic is not on the list, but he also was told he would face war crimes charges if he did not join the U.S. effort to topple the government, an assignment he readily accepted. Almost the entire government of Yugoslavia is on the list, as well as many prominent people in the society. On December 6, 1999, the list was expanded to 590 names, and more than two months later, on February 28, an additional 180 names were added. Looking over the list of names, I recognized several people we had met, such as Commissioner for Refugees, Displaced Persons and Humanitarian Aid Bratislava Morina and President of the Vojvodina Assembly Zivorad Smiljanic. In Smiljanic's case, Western officials supposedly knew enough about him to add him to the list, but not enough to spell his name correctly. Only a full reading of the list can bring a full understanding of its vindictive nature. Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic's daughter-in-law is on the list. The Minister of Sport, apparently, also bears guilt, as do the Minister of Tourism and the Minister of Family Care. Also punished is the owner of a fashion-clothing store, the owner of a watch company, bankers, family members of a banker, and the Secretary of the Red Cross. In short, anyone of any prominence who has not lent himself or herself to the Western project to impose a puppet government is treated as a criminal. On September 17, 1999, Damjanovic issued a statement condemning the KLA's pogrom against non-Albanians in Kosovo. "This state of affairs calls into question the justification for the foreign presence," the statement declared, and "the exodus of Serbs, Montenegrins, and the Romanies continues on the lines of the Nazi scenario of fifty years ago, while the world looks on." It was a strong statement, but also a cry from the heart. Damjanovic's organization faced the daunting task of providing housing and aid for the mass exodus of Roma people from Kosovo. His plea did not go unnoticed in the West. On December 6, he too, was added to the EU's travel ban list. Now the president of the Roma people in Yugoslavia, too, is a criminal.

We were driven to a Roma settlement in Zemun Polje, on the outskirts of Zemun. Romany residents here and in Zemun itself had taken into their homes over 5,000 refugees. Coping with this influx placed a considerable strain on the local population. Those who had little still opened their arms to help their fellow human beings. It said much for the people, and I was deeply impressed. This was a poor neighborhood, and several of the homes demonstrated an ingenuity for improvised construction with found materials that reminded me of a similar resourcefulness found among poor residents of Bangkok. One home in particular fascinated me, with what appeared to be a fur-covered roof, and a fur tail waving aloft from a pole protruding from the roof. The moment our cars pulled to a stop, a crowd gathered. We interviewed several Roma and Egyptian refugees; people who had lost everything. Krasnic Tefiq brought his family here from Obilic after KLA soldiers came to his house and threatened to kill him and his family. For two months they had nowhere to sleep until a family here took them in, but life was still hard. "We have no food," he told us, "We are starving. We are begging in the streets for food." Puco Rezeza's experience was similar. His brother was killed by the KLA, and KLA soldiers threatened to kill him and his family if they did not leave. He too told us he was starving. We interviewed several more people, but when emotions flared, Damjanovic decided to cut short the interviews. As our cars departed, children ran excitedly behind us, enveloped in the dust kicked up by our cars. We passed two boys standing by the side of the road, who pumped their fists in the air, and chanted, "Yugoslavia! Yugoslavia!"

We resumed our interviews the next day in Zemun. We were surrounded and pressed on all sides by a crowd of refugees, all anxious to tell us their stories and to hear each other's. The heat was sweltering, and sweat poured down my back. Estrep Ramadanovic, vice president of the Roma association, told us that 120,000 out of 150,000 Roma people had been expelled from Kosovo. Ramadanovic himself had taken 20 refugees into his home. "The KLA soldiers don't want any other ethnic group to be in Kosovo," he told us, "Only Albanians." Bajrosha Dulaj was angry. "My daughter, Anesi Akmeti, was raped by KLA soldiers. At night we were sleeping in our house, and KLA soldiers broke in and dragged my daughter out and raped her." Her family's only remaining possessions were the clothes they wore on the day they were driven from Kosovo. "I am sleeping on the street," she said, "I have nowhere to stay. I have no food. I have no clothes." The period of bombing was nightmarish for them. "The children have been afraid since the NATO bombing. They are afraid of airplanes....every night they wake up every two or three hours and they are crying."

Adan Berisha survived KLA torture. He showed us his wife, who was also tortured by KLA soldiers. It appeared as if acid had been poured on her face and arm. The KLA killed their 12-year-old son, Idis, as well as Adan's father and two of his uncles. "A KLA soldier gave us only three hours to leave our home," Adan said, "or he would kill us." His voice was filled with anguish as he concluded, "Sorrow. A world of sorrow."

"KLA soldiers took everything, all my furniture from my home," Rakmani Elis told us, "and then they burned down my house." Rakmani expressed himself with a passion that swept all before it. "I'm not against the American people," he exclaimed, "but this decision they made strikes me as lunatic. The rights of every people, the Serb, the Montenegrin and the Gypsy, have been annulled. People are going out to kill, but you, as an army," - referring to KFOR - "just sit there. Did you come here to help or to watch this circus going on? Events now are making history. It is not acceptable what the American people are doing to us. If they came to help, let me see them help. But if they did not come here to help, then everyone, Serbs and Gypsies, will be stamped out."

KLA solders had dragged Aysha Shatili and her children from her home, and started removing her furniture. "I called three British KFOR soldiers for help. They came, but did nothing," she said. Her son was stabbed in the back when he attempted to stop the KLA soldiers from looting their home. Her two houses were then burned down. Like most of the refugees, she too owned only the clothes she wore on the day she was driven from her home.

Five KLA soldiers visited Hasim Berisha, looking for his brother. "They told me I have just five minutes to produce my brother or they will kill my entire family." He left immediately and went to his sister's house. His sister reported the incident to British KFOR headquarters, where they told her to go wherever she wants to go, just so she won't be killed. Hasim checked on his house the following day, and saw that it had been burned down. His brother was caught by the KLA and severely beaten, and he too was forced to flee the province.

Abdullah Shefik was fleeing from Urosevac in his van when KLA soldiers stopped him and ordered him to leave his van with them. "American KFOR soldiers stood nearby when my van was hijacked," he said, "but they did nothing." All of his belongings were in the van.

Becet Kotesi told us that when British and French KFOR troops entered Gnjilane, KLA soldiers "attacked Serbian and Roma people. KFOR did nothing because they were on the other side of town, but the town is not very big, so they had to know what was happening." Kotesi was in a pharmacy when the shooting began, and promptly left to ride his bicycle home. "Three hundred meters behind me was another man riding a bicycle, and KLA soldiers threw a grenade at him and killed him." Kotesi fled the province because "KLA soldiers searched for my compatriots, to beat and kill them, because many fought against them as members of the Yugoslav Army."

A Humanist Scholar, Driven from his Home

The Provisional Executive Council, which governed Kosovo up until the entry of NATO troops, represented every ethnic group in the province. On August 8 we interviewed Bajram Haliti, one of the Council's members. Haliti, a Roma, also serves as Secretary for Development of Information on the Languages of National Minorities. Always well-dressed and dignified, he was gentle and soft-spoken, and I took an immediate liking to this scholarly man who described himself as a humanist. Two years before, he published a book, "The Roma: a People's Terrible Destiny," concerning the genocide against the Roma people during the Second World War, and he kindly gave us each a copy of his book. In his personal library were over 500 books in many languages and from many countries on the subject of the Roma and the genocide against them. Both of his homes were burned down by KLA soldiers, including the library that Haliti had spent a lifetime collecting. "I can't set a price on that library," he told us. At the beginning of May 1999, Haliti sent an open letter to President Clinton, protesting the bombing of his country. In the letter, he wrote, "Everyone who cares for peace supports Yugoslavia, its leadership and people, who are fighting for freedom, independence and territorial integrity." Calling for an end to the bombing, his letter pointed out that "only peaceful means can lead to a just settlement for all national communities which live in Kosovo and Metohija." The letter made an impression. Haliti was on the first travel ban list.

Addressing the issue of the rights of the Albanian people in Kosovo, Haliti mentioned that a Yugoslav delegation arranged 17 meetings with secessionists prior to NATO's bombardment. "In those negotiations," he said, "we wanted to offer the Albanian people maximum legal, cultural and political autonomy," but the secessionist delegation refused to meet with them. "Every ethnic group was guaranteed all political, cultural and legal rights," but secessionist Albanians boycotted institutions. "People outside of Yugoslavia did not know that Albanians refused to exercise their rights. For example, Albanians boycotted schools in their own language, and told the world that they can't receive an education in their own language." There were 65 newspapers in the Albanian language in Kosovo, he added. "Many of these newspapers advocated secession, to sever ties. Not one newspaper was forbidden. In America, if a group put out a newspaper advocating secession and terrorism, would that newspaper be allowed to publish?"

"Why doesn't NATO challenge [KLA leader] Hasim Thaci? Why don't they bomb Hasim Thaci," he asked, "as he carries out massive ethnic cleansing? In Kosmet [Kosovo-Metohija] now, few Serbs remain, few Roma remain and few Gorans remain.... The Roma people are in a very hard situation. It is the same situation Jewish people faced in 1939. At that time, Hitler persecuted every Jew in his territory. And now we have Hasim Thaci. Now Roma houses are burned down. Roma are expelled by the KLA."

"The hostility toward Roma people is because we want a normal life together with other ethnic groups, we oppose division of our country, and we give our political support to the government."

One of our delegation members, Ken Freeland, a pacifist and anti-war activist from Houston, was keenly interested in a journal edited by Haliti, Ahimsa, the title of which was taken from Gandhi's term for non-violence. "Roma people are a peaceful people," Haliti explained. "The Roma are a cosmopolitan people. Roma do not have a country. The exodus of the Roma people has brought them to every country, where they are loyal citizens who live a normal life. The Roma people have earned the right to give this name to the journal."

Haliti told us that in a few months "we will have our own radio and television frequencies, and a station" called Romany National Television, and that he would be the station's chief editor. I wondered in how many other countries Romas held government positions. How many other countries had a Romany radio and television station, in the Romany language? Were there any, besides Yugoslavia? NATO propaganda had turned reality completely on its head, painting the most multiethnic society in the Balkans, in which every nationality was represented in the Kosovo government, as nationalist and racist.

Haliti and I shared a passion for music, and following our interview, we had a very interesting discussion of Roma culture, and the contribution of the Roma people to the world of music. Haliti told us the flamenco music originated among Roma people, and also talked of several prominent Roma musicians, such as jazz guitarist Django Reinhardt and flamenco musician Camaron De La Isla.

Twelve days later, Haliti was again interviewed, this time by Tanjug, the Yugoslav news agency. "It is useless to talk about the position and the rights of Romanies, as the UN peace mission is unable to protect any inhabitants of the province, including ethnic Albanians who do not accept the terror of their extremist fellows," he declared. KLA leaders "reject the fundamental democratic and humane principles on which contemporary civilization rests and without which there can be no peace or stability in multiethnic communities." It will be a long time before Bajram Haliti's name is removed from the travel ban "enemies list."

War on Belgrade

One of NATO's innovations was a rather novel form of censorship. On April 23, missiles slammed into Radio Television Serbia (RTS) in downtown Belgrade, killing 16. The studio, NATO claimed, was a "legitimate military target" because it broadcast "propaganda," meaning, of course, that it was reporting the effects of NATO's bombing. RTS Belgrade was passing footage of destruction to Western media, a practice that evidently had to be stopped. CNN had a studio there, but was warned of the attack beforehand and pulled out its equipment and personnel. CNN invited Serbian Minister of Information Aleksandar Vucic to the studio for a live broadcast interview. Vucic was asked to arrive for makeup at 2:00 AM sharp on April 23, for an interview scheduled to take place half an hour later. At 2:20, RTS was no more. Sava Andjelkovic, who worked in the station, was reported to have said, "A wall behind me virtually vanished, and then the entire wing of the building. We heard screams of wounded people." Several people were trapped in the rubble, and it was some time before all of the survivors could be rescued. Vucic was more fortunate. His tardiness spared his life, foiling the attempted assassination.

By the time of our visit, the rubble had been cleared, but the building still stood with one wing sheared away, the multi-floor building standing with each floor exposed. Nearby, missing railings and smashed windows at the Dusko Radovic Children's Theater hinted at greater damage within.

RTS was not alone. Radio and television stations and towers throughout Yugoslavia were targeted. Out host Nikola demonstrated what was on his television. Only static could be found on the state channel. Untouched were opposition channels, as well as music video and fashion channels, and always there was access to Western cable. Western media stories about the so-called "media dictatorship" in Yugoslavia, like all Western media stories about Yugoslavia, are less believable for those who visit there. We stopped at the Tanjug Press Center, housed in an aged and unprepossessing building. As we climbed the stairs, delegation member Michael Parenti pointed to several steps that were missing chunks of concrete and quipped, "So this is the well-oiled Milosevic propaganda machine we hear so much about." Not far away, an opposition-owned television station, housed in a tall gleaming modern building, towered above surrounding buildings. The U.S. and European Union have funnelled millions of dollars to opposition media in Yugoslavia. One wonders what the reaction would be in the United States were a hostile foreign government to fund American media advocating the overthrow of the government. In Yugoslavia, this media, bought and paid for, operated freely. Newsstands were everywhere, and perusal revealed that a flood of opposition newspapers and magazines vastly outnumbered pro-government publications such as Politika, Borba, and Vecernje Novosti. It presented an interesting study in semantics. A media dictatorship is where state television cannot be viewed, but opposition television can; where there are three pro-government papers and dozens of opposition papers. In the United States, freedom of the press is lauded. One can pick up any newspaper in any city with the confident expectation that it will have essentially the same content as any other newspaper in any other city. Alternative publications, often tepid and predictable, are marginalized and often difficult to find, virtually to the point of irrelevance.

NATO's media war against Yugoslavia continues unabated. In place of bombs, more subtle methods are implemented, outside the perception of the American public. As state television returns to the air, transmitters based in neighboring countries jam it. Such stations as Voice of America, BBC, Radio Free Europe and USA Radio broadcast on Yugoslav state radio and television frequencies. While we were in Yugoslavia, on August 11, RTS issued a statement condemning this "media occupation," and pointing out that these "frequencies were awarded to our country by international conventions" and that this "violates all international standards in the sphere of telecommunications." Appeals to international law fell on deaf ears.

From RTS, a long trolley ride took us to the Belgrade suburb of Rakovica. There we viewed the 21st of May Industrial Complex, which manufactured automobile engines, and like many factories throughout Yugoslavia, it lay in ruins. Now it was merely a mass of twisted wreckage; steel pipes, girders and concrete jumbled together. The deliberate targeting of factories was an extension of sanctions, an attempt at economic strangulation. Over 600,000 people lost their jobs during the period of bombing, raising the number of unemployed to over two million. About $100 billion damage was inflicted on Yugoslavia, president of the Trade Union Association Radoslav Ilic announced during the war. "This aggression has all the characteristics of a dirty war," he said, "in which workers are the biggest sufferers. Workers and the products of their work have become military targets, and the international progressive public is too slow in awakening." Much of the Western progressive public still slumbers.

While in Rakovica, we met a refugee from Bosnia-Herzegovina who had earlier worked in Germany for seven years. He wanted to show us his child's school, the France Presern elementary school, one of dozens of schools targeted by NATO. Virtually every window was broken and several window frames were damaged. The doors were locked, so we were unable to view interior damage. He told us that the school year would begin in two weeks, and wondered where his child would go to school.

Kosovo's Other Albanians

Later that afternoon we met with three Albanian refugees from Kosovo. All three, Faik Jasari, Corin Ismali and Fatmir Seholi, were members of the Kosovo Democratic Initiative, an Albanian political party that favored a multiethnic Kosovo within Yugoslavia and opposed the KLA's policy of secession and racial exclusion. Jasari is president of the Kosovo Democratic Initiative, as well as a member of the Provisional Executive Council, which governed Kosovo prior to NATO's occupation of the province. Jasari said he was forced to flee from his home in Gnjilane on June 18th because "members of the KLA were showing photos of my family and me to people, trying to find us. I am now at the top of the list of people the KLA is looking for." Jasari lost everything. "My wife and I worked for 34 years, and now we have nothing. Nothing." Barry asked him if he was afraid for his life. "Yes. I am afraid.....If they find me, they will kill me." He had good reason to be afraid. The KLA had already killed several hundred pro-Yugoslav Albanians. Many more were beaten and tortured. In all, Jasari said, the KLA had expelled over 150,000 Albanians from Kosovo, both before and after the entry of KFOR. He could not stand idly by, and sent a letter to UN Special Representative for Kosovo Bernard Kouchner, asking "to visit with him and discuss the situation in Kosovo and with my party." Predictably, his letter went unanswered. "Where is democracy and pluralism in Kosovo? I can't go there," he told us. I can't take part in the political process. Where is democracy?" All of NATO's pretty-sounding phrases about democracy and human rights, aimed at the Western domestic audience, rang hollow for him.

When asked about reports of Serbian oppression of Albanians, Jasari responded firmly, "It is not true. It is not true. I am Albanian and I have all the same rights as any Serbian."

Corin Ismali, Under-Secretary for National Social Questions in the Provisional Executive Council, also attempted to meet with Kouchner, and he too was rebuffed. Ismali was forced from his home by threats from KLA soldiers, he explained, "because I supported Yugoslavia and I opposed secession....We want to live with other ethnic groups in Yugoslavia. We do not want to live in a country that has only one ethnic group."

Fatmir Seholi worked in public relations for the Kosovo Democratic Initiative, and was chief editor at Radio Television Pristina. "I must point out," he said, "that the Albanian people had more media than did the Serbian people" in Kosovo. "You could find only one newspaper in the Serbian language, but you could find about 65 newspapers in the Albanian language." That one Serbian newspaper was closed down shortly after the arrival of KFOR in Kosovo. Seholi studied at Pristina University, and pointed out that Albanian people were able to study in their own language. "I think that America did not have the right information about Albanian people in Kosovo, or did not want to get the correct information about the rights of Albanian people in Kosovo."

The tragedy that befell Seholi's country had disillusioned him. "Until the NATO bombing, I loved and sympathized with democracy in the United States. After studying some facts about democracy in the United States and about negotiations, I've learned that there is no democracy in the United States." The U.S., he said, "supported and still supports KLA terrorism in Kosovo. Two years ago, on a night in January 1997, the KLA killed my father. He was called a traitor and killed only because he supported Yugoslavia and the Serbian government, not the KLA regime. He loved living with all ethnic groups in Kosovo." KLA soldiers tortured two of Seholi's brothers. One day before Seholi left Kosovo, a woman from the KLA visited him and "said that if I told people that my father was killed by Serbs, I could have a high-ranking position in the KLA."

Seholi and his colleagues at Radio Television Pristina were tricked into abandoning the station when KFOR concocted a phony story about a planted bomb on the premises. KFOR then escorted Seholi to the border. After the station was turned over to the KLA, it ceased broadcasting in multiple languages. All programs now are solely in the Albanian language.

Seholi spoke eloquently of those killed by NATO bombs. Two convoys of Albanian refugees returning to Kosovo were massacred, at Djakovica and Korisa. "In every case, Albanians get hurt from all sides, but mainly from NATO bombing....The man who could command NATO to bomb people is not human. He is an animal. After the bombing at Djakovica, I saw decapitated bodies. I have pictures of that. It is horrible, terrible. I saw people without arms, without feet." Later, I saw disturbing photographs of these victims. I could not view photos of the charred and mutilated victims without becoming enraged. It is impossible to forget such images. "Who is the evil man here?" asked Seholi. "Milosevic, who is protecting the territory of Yugoslavia and protecting the people of Kosovo, or Clinton, who bombs us?"

"Now we can see that the United States does not care about any ethnic minority," Jasari added. "Before NATO started bombing us, they said they are protecting the Albanians. You can see Albanians were the victims. If they were protecting the Albanians as they said they were, they wouldn't be bombing them.... The United States used the Albanian people as the excuse for their aggression." Jasari wondered, "What kind of democracy is it which kills people, kills innocent victims, bombs schools, bombs bridges, buses full of people, and people living in their homes?"

All three rejected NATO's propaganda line concerning Yugoslav forces. "The KLA is a terrorist group," Seholi explained, "and the Yugoslav Army is our state's army. We do not think that our army killed villagers." Jasari firmly stated, "Our Yugoslav Army exists to protect people, not kill them. It's propaganda. The Yugoslav Army never attacked anyone in Kosovo. They only defended themselves."

Preparation for War Masquerading as Peace Talks

Jasari was a member of the Yugoslav delegation during peace negotiations in Rambouillet and Paris. Despite daily requests by the Yugoslav delegation for face-to-face meetings, Western mediators would not permit direct negotiations with the secessionist delegation. The Yugoslav delegation could only meet with Western officials, who, Jasari pointed out, "would not listen to anyone." Madeleine Albright was particularly obstructionist. "She had her task, and she saw only that task," Jasari said. "You couldn't say anything to her. She didn't want to talk with us because she didn't want to listen to our arguments."

The composition of the two delegations reflected differing attitudes regarding a multiethnic society. The secessionist delegation was comprised solely of Albanians, whereas all of Kosovo's major nationalities were represented on the Yugoslav delegation. Only a minority of the Yugoslav delegation was Serbian. Western officials "were shocked," Jasari told us, when they saw "not only Serbs, but also Roma, Albanian and Egyptian," as well as Turkish, Gorani and Slavic Muslim representatives.

By the end of 17 days of negotiations at Rambouillet, the Yugoslav delegation accepted the political proposals put forth, while the secessionist delegation had not. Hours before the conclusion of the talks at Rambouillet, the U.S. delegation unilaterally submitted 56 pages of new proposals, bypassing the procedure for submission through the five-nation Contact Group. The new plan was intended to thwart any possibility of a peaceful settlement and thereby provide a pretext for bombing. It called for occupation of Kosovo by NATO troops. A NATO-appointed Chief of the Implementation could "recommend to the appropriate authorities the removal and appointment of officials," and if elected officials were not removed from office on demand, then the "Joint Commission may decide to take the recommended action." If the Joint Commission failed to carry out its orders, the plan specified that the Joint Commission could be supplemented by NATO personnel when "needed for its implementation." "All facilities and services," including "use of airports, roads, rails and ports," utilized by NATO would be supplied "at no cost" to NATO. Furthermore, NATO would enjoy "unrestricted use of the entire electromagnetic spectrum." Censorship would be imposed on the region, as the NATO-appointed Chief of the Implementation would be responsible for "allocation of radio and television frequencies." The plan granted to NATO personnel, "under all circumstances at all times" complete immunity "in respect of any civil, administrative, criminal, or disciplinary offenses which may be committed by them." Perhaps the most crucial clause was in Appendix B, stating that "NATO personnel shall enjoy, together with their vehicles, vessels, aircraft, and equipment, free and unrestricted passage and unimpeded access throughout the FRY [Federal Republic of Yugoslavia] including associated airspace and territorial waters." Acceptance of this clause would have brought NATO troops swarming over the entire territory of Yugoslavia, interfering in every aspect of society and every institution. NATO was determined to occupy and colonize not only the province of Kosovo, but also the entire territory of Yugoslavia.

When peace talks later resumed in Paris, Western officials told the Yugoslav delegation that no discussion would be permitted of the proposals they submitted on the last day at Rambouillet. Only discussion relating to implementation of the proposals was allowed. Western officials begged the secessionist delegation to sign the plan, and behind the scenes they assured them that disarmament of the KLA would be merely symbolic. Once Western officials obtained the requisite signatures of the secessionist delegation, they aborted the Paris conference and prepared to launch their war of aggression against Yugoslavia. The entire peace process was a ruse, designed to fail.

The Tortured South

It was time for us to travel to southern Serbia. Money was starting to run low for some members of our team. After much effort, Barry was able to find a travel company with a startlingly low rate that most could afford. In time, though, the truth of the adage, "you get what you pay for," would be reaffirmed. Within three minutes of our departure our driver drove us into a dead end. "He's already lost," commented Ken. Our driver's solution was direct, and indicative of things to come. Rather than back up, he drove the van up onto and across a walkway. We travelled south along E-75, the main highway linking Belgrade with Nis, Yugoslavia's third largest city. The highway and bridges along the way were bombed at several points, necessitating numerous detours, and our path was circuitous and time-consuming. After an hour or so, our driver turned on the radio. Whenever he tuned to a station playing wonderful Yugoslav music, he had the annoying habit of instantly moving past it until he could alight on a station broadcasting insipid American and Yugoslav rock music.

We arrived at Aleksinac shortly before noon. A small mining town with a strong socialist local government, Aleksinac was targeted with a special ferocity. Four times it was bombed. Local officials provided us with statistics that were disturbing for such a small town: 767 houses and 908 apartment flats were bombed, as well as 302 public buildings. Dragoljub Todorovic, a 74-year-old retired teacher, was at the opening meeting. Metal braces encased his left leg and he walked with crutches. His home had been obliterated in one of the attacks. "I had been told for 40 to 50 years that Americans were our friends," he said. "Americans, with Russians, destroyed fascism together. I survived the Second World War. I was a Partisan during the war." Now war had again visited Todorovic. "The bombs dropped about 15 meters from my house," he told us. We were later to see the site of his house. Nothing remained but blasted concrete and bricks strewn about. "When I regained consciousness, I saw that only a small part of skin connected my leg with my body," he said. Todorovic's leg was saved through surgery, but he will remain crippled for the remainder of his life. He was in the hospital for 14 weeks and suffered a heart attack during his recovery. Enduring constant pain during his hospital stay, he asked himself, "Is this American fascism? The worst way possible - that was the way America chose." When we were at the site of the ruins of Todorovic's home, a man approached to listen to our interviews. He interjected that in World War II, "the Partisans saved American pilots whose planes crashed here. And now they don't say thanks." Indicating the rubble, Barry replied, "This is their thanks."

We strolled down Dusan Trivunac Street. Almost an entire city block on this street was wiped out. Several houses were destroyed, and many killed and wounded. Survivors reported hearing screams and cries for help immediately following the blasts. Despite the staggering scale of destruction here, all of the rubble had been entirely cleared away by the time of our visit. The site was now a construction area. Neatly stacked bricks and building materials bordered the area, and a dump truck and towering crane stood ready, as workers were just departing for lunch. The only sign of the block's fate was a neighboring apartment building, scarred and pock-marked by shrapnel from the blast. Further down the street, at the site of another explosion, the foundation for a new building had already been laid.

We turned down Vuk Karadzic Street, and entered a charming neighborhood of two story homes with red tile roofs and flowers lining the balconies. On the night of April 5, several people lost their lives when bombs fell at the end of the street. In a deposition taken two weeks later, Srboljub Stojanovic described that night. "There was a terrific explosion," he reported. "The windowpanes burst, the ceiling fell down on us, and the walls collapsed, and this practically buried us. After that I could only hear the screams and crying of my family members. My whole body was injured." He and his family managed to dig their way out from under the rubble. "There were heaps of various construction material, glass, destroyed vehicles, and people coming out and trying to help those who were buried. I could hear cries for help, crying, screams, calls, and all this was horrific." The president of the Socialist Youth in Aleksinac, a charming woman, acted as our translator and guide. She told us that she still has frequent nightmares, dreaming that she hears an air raid siren, and awakes thinking she is going to be bombed. Resident Zago Militic told us that her entire family was injured in the attack. She cried as she told us, "We have been friends [with Americans] until now. This is something none of us expected. We always thought they were our friends. I am 65 years old, and now I must think about finding a new home." Photographs taken on the day of the bombing showed a massive amount of destruction. Like other sites in Aleksinac, this neighborhood was largely cleared of rubble. A power shovel had scooped out most of the debris, and the ground was freshly dug. Adjoining the area, one house had lost most of its roof. Two apartment buildings stood in back of the area. Shrapnel had sprayed them, leaving dozens of gaping holes and twisted windows. Standing alone before them was a single wall, with a stairway leading nowhere; all that remained of someone's home.

Missiles also struck the firm of Angrokolonijal on April 5. A night watchman, Velimir Stankovic, was killed instantly. At the time of our visit, the main storage building was locked and idle. We peered through a hole, and saw that the interior was devastated. A construction inspector had concluded that the building would have to be torn down. We were told that this was a food-processing firm, supplying much of the food for Aleksinac. The registration office near the gate was a ruin. Across the street, much of the roof was torn from the commercial department auxiliary building. A fence, twisted and bent, prevented us from going inside, but what we were able to see from one end of the building hinted at massive destruction inside. The construction inspection determined that these buildings, too, would have to be demolished.

A very short walk led us to Empa, a worker cooperative that manufactured streetlights and lights for factories and homes. On the periphery of the blast radius at Angrokolonijal on April 5, it was again bombed on May 28. In all, the plant sustained more than $300,000 damage. The plant's director, Slobodan Todorovic, told us that one worker was killed and another wounded. Air raid sirens were virtually a daily occurrence here during the war, and workers stayed at their posts during the bombing as a form of resistance to NATO.

We visited another neighborhood scarred by bombs and missiles. The walls of several brick houses stood eerily unscathed, while nothing remained of the roofs and interiors. One house appeared to have taken a direct hit. Only a few walls remained, surrounded by piles of rubble. Houses farther away were missing their roofs. Someone had placed a memorial to one of the victims on a wall. We saw these memorials everywhere we went in Yugoslavia. Single sheets of paper or cloth, posted on walls and trees and telephone poles, with a photograph and name of the person killed, along with a few comments. The victims were not forgotten. In a communal society, every person killed was seen as a loss for the whole community, not only for friends and family. One woman approached us and spoke of those killed. One neighbor killed was Dusana Savic, a technical manager in the local confectionary factory, which sustained damage during the attack. "She was a very good neighbor," she said. "She regretted that she never had children." I couldn't help dwelling on this woman with her failed dream of parenthood. What other dreams did she have? How could she know that one day all of those dreams would instantly vanish, along with her life and all of its joys and struggles and everyday pleasures? Our witness had a message for President Clinton: "I am not guilty and my children are not guilty." Another woman spoke of a man named Predrag Nideljkovic, killed when an explosion caused a wall to fall on him. He built his home here only the year before. "He worked very hard in the hospital to help people," the woman said. "He was not ashamed to do anything. He did everything, from cleaning to managing the hospital. He always had time to talk with people." He was a man of kind and gentle disposition, she added. "We came out of hell," but NATO leaders will not. She paused, as emotions welled up within her. "Predrag is here in my heart," she whispered. A moment of silence fell, and then she broke into tears.

Local officials of the Socialist Party took us to lunch at a restaurant on the outskirts of Aleksinac. Even here, one couldn't escape reminders of the horror that had visited the town. Across the street, a gas station showed a fair amount of bomb damage. At my end of the table sat Zoran Babovic, President of the Socialist Party in the Aleksinac municipality, as well as other Socialist Party officials. Zoran's English was very good, and Ken and I discussed the Yugoslav economy with him. Social property plays a significant role in Yugoslavia. Large-scale industry is state-owned, while most mid-sized firms are worker cooperatives. Most farms are privately owned, but larger agricultural operations are worker cooperatives. Following lunch, we decided to donate money to the town's reconstruction fund. Our rapidly shrinking resources placed a severe limitation on our contribution, but we gave what we could. They needed hundreds of millions of dollars. We fell rather short of that figure.

We arrived in Nis at 6:00 PM. Our hotel overlooked the Nisava River and an impressive Ottoman fortress built in the early 18th century. One of our delegation members, Jaime Mendiata, accidentally got off the elevator on a wrong floor and discovered that the second and third floors were given to Roma refugee families. This was common throughout the entire territory of Yugoslavia. Refugees were placed in hotels and the homes of volunteers, and I couldn't help but think how much more humane this approach was than placing people in tents.

The next morning, our van departed for Surdulica, well south of Nis. Along the route, we passed through some of the most gorgeous scenery I've ever seen. Rolling hills gave way to steeper hills and deep ravines. Charming villages nestled on verdant hillsides. The road curved and suddenly we were confronted with a scene that was all the more shocking amidst this beauty. We were at Grdelica gorge. An imposing concrete highway bridge was severed at two points. Passing under the highway bridge at a nearly perpendicular angle, ran railroad tracks atop an incline. Some distance down the track stood a steel railroad bridge, its girders and tracks deformed by explosions. Underneath the highway bridge were strewn four incinerated passenger train cars, reddened from intense heat. At the bottom of the incline one car lay, collapsed like an accordion. Two cars, still coupled, lay on their sides a few feet from the track. The fourth car, directly under the highway bridge, was split in two pieces. The end of the car was on one side of the track; a partial frame and little else among the wreckage. The remainder of the car lay on the opposite side of the track, collapsed and fragmented. Emotions flared within me as I viewed the scene. No one inside these cars could have survived. I glanced down at a dirt road at the base of the incline. An elderly man was walking with a cane. He spotted us, and it was apparent he felt compelled to tell me something. With great difficulty, he struggled with his cane to climb the hill. When he reached the top, he walked over to me. "This was murder," he said, simply and directly. "Four missiles struck here, and 17 people were killed." He reminded me that a Yugoslav delegation had attempted to meet secessionists for negotiations 17 times prior to the war. "We tried hard to find a peaceful solution. We are a peaceful people." He talked of Yugoslavia's 26 nationalities, adding that we could see for ourselves how they live among each other. It was true. We had seen.

Seventeen bodies were found, but three additional people are listed as "missing." The heat from the blasts was so intense that literally nothing remained of those three. In autopsy photographs, the victims appear to be little more than sticks of charcoal. Once seen, these photographs are impossible to forget. Impossible, too, to forgive what was done. The autopsy report for one unidentified man is typical. "The carbonization of the head and neck transformed these parts of the body into a brittle, black, and amorphous mass," it reads. Most of the body was carbonized, and several body parts were missing. Similar descriptions can be found in autopsy reports for the other victims.

The train was bombed on April 12, 11:40 AM, just three minutes after it departed from the station in Grdelica. In a deposition taken three days later, Bora Kostic described events that day. During the attack, he and his family were in their house, located just 40 meters from the railroad bridge. Sitting down to enjoy lunch, they heard the "extremely loud noise" of a low flying jet aircraft. "I heard a tremendously loud explosion quite near my house," he said, and "all doors and windows on the south wall of my kitchen were dislocated by the blast and blown into the kitchen together with their frames and broken glass." He and his family were thrown against the northern wall of their kitchen, and Bora's wife "sustained serious injuries." Bora and his son brought his wife, who was "unconscious and heavily bleeding," outside, in order to take her to his cousin's house, located at a safer distance. Bora saw the passenger train, and "several people falling from the carriage down into the River Juzna Morava." They were "not jumping off the train, but were falling uncontrollably." The NATO jet wheeled around and made a second run at the train. Some thirty seconds after the first explosion, "another extremely loud explosion was heard. The impact was again on the two burning carriages at the very exit of the bridge," and "the new explosion further intensified the fire." The blast sent "small metal pieces" flying, as well as "human tissue, organs and parts." Bora and his son were climbing a hill with his wife when "we heard a third extremely loud explosion. I saw a missile hitting the middle section of the right side of the highway bridge." The force of the blast knocked them down, and when they got up and continued on their way, a fourth missile struck the highway bridge. After leaving his wife at his cousin's, Bora and his son returned to help the victims. Ten minutes had passed, and ambulances and cars had already arrived at the scene. When Bora returned to his home, he saw that his yard was littered with "small pieces of human organs, tissue, blood, small metal train parts and missile fragments."

Our van pulled in Surdulica, a small town of 13,000, at 10:30 AM. We met with officials at Zastava Pes, an automotive electrical parts factory that once employed 500. Annual exports from the plant at one time amounted to $8 million. Sanctions not only interrupted export contracts, but also prevented the import of materials, causing a 70 percent reduction in the workforce. The staff at Zastava Pes told us that during the war, bombs and missiles rained down on their town almost every day.

We were first taken to a sanatorium, located atop a heavily wooded hill that overlooked the town. This sanatorium provided care for patients with lung diseases and also served as a retirement home. Refugees were also housed in two of the buildings. Shortly after midnight on the morning of May 31, four missiles struck the sanatorium complex. Two missiles hit the building housing refugees and patients, and one hit the nursing home. At least nineteen people were killed: 16 refugees and three nursing home residents. The actual number of victims cannot be ascertained, because several of the body parts found were unrelated to the 19 identified bodies. Thirty-eight people were wounded. We were told that the force of the explosions was so powerful that body parts were thrown as far as one kilometer away. Following the attack, body parts were hanging in tree branches, and blood was dripping from the trees. By the time of our visit, they had cleaned up, but we could still see clothes hanging from many trees. Although only one missile struck the nursing home, it caused enormous damage. We walked around to the back, on the building's southwestern side. A section of the second floor was collapsed, and the entire southwestern face showed extensive damage. Mounds of rubble lay at the base of the building. On the northeast side of the complex, the refugee and patient building bore a gaping hole in its faade, from which a river of rubble had poured, like blood from a wound. We entered the building and walked through its rooms. Debris littered the hallways, and in several rooms we found scorched mattresses, clothes, and damaged personal belongings jumbled together in disarray. Bricks and chunks of concrete lay scattered around one room, along with an upturned sink. Shoes and clothes were strewn among the rubble, and a loaf of bread rested against a child's shirt. According to the on-site investigation report on June 3, it took two to three days to dig the bodies from the rubble. An area near the building, the report states, "was covered with parts of human bodies, torn heads, arms and hands as well as bodies partly covered with rubble material, dust, broken bricks, material from roof structure, broken roof tiles, laths, doors and windows blown out." Farther away from the building, several dismembered bodies were found.

We next visited a neighborhood obliterated by NATO bombs. As in Aleksinac, a remarkable reconstruction was taking place. Every trace of rubble was removed, and the earth smoothed over. A bulldozer and a grader were parked nearby, and construction of two new homes had already begun. Local residents came out and talked to us, showing us photographs taken in the aftermath of the bombing. The extent of destruction was appalling. We visited another neighborhood wiped out by NATO bombs. Here too, an energetic rebuilding effort was underway. Smashed automobiles and partially roofless homes were the only physical reminders of the tragedy. Eleven people, including five children, died here on April 27. When air raid sirens sounded that day, they took refuge in the strongest basement on their street. That was the house the missile hit. I vividly recall seeing a photograph on the Internet the next day. It showed the back of an ambulance, doors thrown open. Inside were piled chunks of shapeless human flesh, still smoking - all that remained of those 11 victims, the youngest of which was 4 years old. A "humanitarian" war, NATO propagandists called this. One man in the neighborhood told us that the house was hit as a result of an errant missile. "They were trying to hit the water supply plant nearby, with two missiles," he said. Another man, Zoran Savic, told us, "The sirens sounded everyday. Every day they bombed Surdulica. The bombs were very powerful." Some distance away was another of NATO's targets, an Army barracks, abandoned during the war. I climbed atop a mound of dirt and saw that it too was bombed. But NATO sprayed its bombs and missiles liberally throughout Surdulica. The destruction of an empty barracks was of doubtful military utility. The targeting of a water supply plant was inhuman. There are no words to define the destruction of entire neighborhoods. Fifty homes were destroyed on April 27, and 600 damaged.

We were invited to lunch, and followed our hosts to Vlasinska Lake, located on a plateau near the Bulgarian border. Our vehicles climbed up a winding road through stunningly beautiful mountains. My admiration of the beauty was leavened by apprehension, as the sheer cliffs reminded me that I lacked confidence in the ability of our driver. We ate a building not far from the lakeside, where our hosts displayed the generous and warm hospitality typical of this country.

We planned to stop at Vladicin Han on our return trip to Nis. The combined effects of excellent food and wine soon meant that all of the passengers fell into a slumber. I was tired too, but wanted to enjoy the scenery. As we approached Vladicin Han, I reminded our driver to stop there. "Nishta!" he exclaimed. By now we were driving by the town. "Nothing?" I thought, "What does he mean 'nothing'?" There's a bombed building and bridge right before our eyes. Again I urged him to stop. "Nishta!" he repeated, pushing his foot down hard on the gas pedal and accelerating rapidly. He understood me. The exchange awoke our translator. We had already passed Vladicin Han, so I asked our translator to talk our driver into turning around. Despite his best and determined effort, our translator was unable to persuade our driver to stop, and eventually he shrugged his shoulders and went back to sleep, while I sat and stewed. About thirty minutes later, Barry awoke and asked me, "Are we almost to Vladicin Han yet?" "We've passed it," I replied. Later that night, Barry read a document put out by the Yugoslav Ministry for Foreign Affairs. "It says here, " Barry told me, "that in Vladicin Han, over fifty percent of housing facilities and state buildings have been destroyed or damaged." He just shook his head.

Terror Bombing of Nis

We returned to Nis, a beautiful old city, carpeted with trees. On our first night in Nis, we had met with university professor Jovan Zlatic. During the war, Dr. Zlatic served as commander of the city's Civil Defense Headquarters. He discussed with us the bombardment of his city, with particular emphasis on the use of cluster bombs. The widely used U.S.-made CBU-87/B cluster bomb is designed to open at a predetermined height, releasing 202 bomblets over a wide area. As these bomblets explode in the air, an area up to the size of a football field is sprayed with thousands of pieces of shrapnel. Generally, cluster bombs do limited damage to structures. They are anti-personnel weapons. Flying sharp metal fragments are intended to tear human beings apart. Dr. Zlatic showed us a collection of photographs of cluster bomb victims in Nis. Page after page of civilians, lying in pools of blood, and then, worse, autopsy photographs. What cluster bomb shrapnel does to soft human flesh is beyond imagining, and an anguished silence fell over the room as Dr. Zlatic flipped through the photographs. Viewing them was unbearable. Finally, Dr. Zlatic looked up at us and softly said, "Western democracy."

Now we would have the opportunity to visit these scenes. On three separate occasions, we walked down Anete Andrejevic Street and talked with residents. In the early afternoon on May 7, several cluster bombs were dropped on this and surrounding streets. Nine people died here that day, and dozens were wounded. At one end of Anete Andrejevic Street is a marketplace, and the street was crowded with shoppers when cluster bombs burst over the neighborhood. The street was narrow, the buildings old and appealing. Evidence of the explosions could be seen everywhere. Shrapnel had left virtually every house pockmarked, and the walls of some homes were gouged by hundreds of steel fragments. There was no place for pedestrians to hide that day. One parked car hadn't moved since then. It was still there, riddled with holes, it's tires flat, and glass covered by plastic. A memorial to each victim was posted at the spot where each was killed. At the corner of Jelene Dimitrijevic and Sumatovacka Streets, a memorial was posted on a brick wall, commemorating Ljiljana Spasic, 28 years old when she was killed, and almost nine months pregnant. Shrapnel killed not only her, but also her unborn child. Two memorials to Pordani Seklic hung on the windows of the front door of the restaurant where she worked. She was a cook there, and shrapnel tore through the restaurant's roof that day and killed her while she worked. Only a few blocks away, a yawning rupture marred a bridge over the Nisava River. It was another act of malevolent vandalism on NATO's part. Our hotel, across the Nisava, overlooked the neighborhood around Anete Andrejevic Street, and we walked extensively throughout the area. It was completely residential. There was nothing that could be remotely construed as a military target.

Repeatedly, we were struck by the warm and friendly attitudes people everywhere displayed towards us. Many people told us, "We don't blame the American people for this. We know they didn't support this. It's the government that did this." A rare instance of resentment occurred while we filmed the smashed ruins of the office building of So Produkt, a distributor of salt products. As a man walked by, he stopped and with controlled anger told me, "America is our enemy." I glanced at the ruins of So Produkt. It did not seem a controversial point. Another occasion occurred we visited the Jugopetrol fuel depot in Nis. Despite an appointment, we were unable to tour the facility. I wasn't a participant in the discussion, but my impression was that a few of the workers were not disposed to watch Americans parading through their demolished workplace.

The Clinical Center in Nis was another target of cluster bombs. Hundreds of pieces of shrapnel shot through the hospital, causing the roof of one section to collapse. When we arrived, workers on scaffolding were laying bricks. They were in the final stages of reconstruction of the hospital's exterior. The parking lot presented a disturbing site. There were several burned hulks of automobiles. The interiors were blackened and empty. Incendiary cluster bombs here created a fireball, engulfing the parking lot. Five people died immediately, and nine more later died from their wounds. Cluster bombs wounded a total of 70 people here and in the area of the marketplace. We talked with a man who lived nearby. He told us that in addition to the hospital, 20 houses were also damaged. The incendiary effect brought to mind Djakovica, where NATO bombed a column of Albanian refugees who were returning to Kosovo. NATO was anxious to introduce the newly developed CBU-97 cluster bomb, designed to spray shrapnel heated to intense temperatures, and ignite everything it hits. Djakovica was one of the sites that served as a testing ground for the CBU-97. It proved a success. Seventy-three were killed, with several victims charred beyond recognition.

The state-owned DIN cigarette factory in Nis was bombed on four occasions. One of the largest factories in Yugoslavia, it employed 2,500 workers. The factory's deputy managing director, Milivoje Apostolovic, told us that among the munitions dropped on the factory were cluster bombs. Workers found two cluster bomb fragments with messages scrawled on them: "Do you still want to be Serbs?" and "Run faster." Apostolovic estimated the damage to his factory at $35 million. There was a deliberate attempt to smash this and other factories as part of a larger policy to destroy Yugoslavia as an industrial economy. Nothing remained of the tobacco storehouse. It was completely flattened. Two of the larger buildings were substantially demolished. Merely to clear the rubble appeared to be an imposing task. Several of the smaller buildings sustained major damage. Bricklayers were busy reconstructing one of the smaller buildings. Across the lane, the faade of a large building bore the marks of a cluster bomb, hundreds of gouged holes spread across its face.

One of our last stops in Nis was at the Elektrotehna warehouse. We were told that this warehouse stored primarily electronic kitchen appliances. It was destroyed by one missile on April 7. Virtually nothing remained but the cement slab on which it was built. Rubble was strewn everywhere, and most of the roof of a neighboring house was blown away. While we walked through the debris, Jaime stepped on a board and a nail impaled his foot. He was bleeding profusely, so our driver took him to a local clinic. There they wrote prescriptions for a tetanus antitoxin and penicillin. We soon joined Jaime at the clinic and when he emerged, he and two others went to the dispensary to fill the prescription. Jaime inquired about the charge, and was told there was none. Wanting to help, Jaime insisted on paying for the medicine. He asked them to name a price, so they told him four dollars. His final stop was at the hospital, to receive the injection. In addition to treating Jaime's foot, the doctor also gave him a brief checkup. There was no charge for any service. People are placed first, including those from a nation that had just dropped bombs here.

Targeting the Economy

We arrived in the central Serbian city of Kragujevac several hours later than planned, due to an overly ambitious schedule and the delay caused by Jaime's injury. Despite our belated arrival at Zastava factory in Kragujevac, management staff had waited patiently and was there to greet us. Zastava was the largest factory in the Balkans, and certainly the largest I've seen. Primarily a manufacturer of automobiles and trucks, Zastava supplied 95 percent of automobiles operating in Yugoslavia. This diverse factory also produced tools, machinery and hunting rifles.

It was far too tempting a target for NATO. Shortly after the inception of NATO's war, workers at Zastava organized human shields to protect the plants. Zastava workers sent an open letter to the public of NATO countries and email messages to Western leaders and NATO, notifying them of their action. Their letter proclaimed that "we, the employees of Zastava and citizens of freedom-loving Kragujevac, made a live shield," and that workers would remain in the factory "to protect with their bodies what provides for their and their families' living." In the early hours of April 9, NATO sent its reply to the workers' letter, in the form of bombs and missiles. Miraculously, no one was killed, but 140 workers were wounded, 30 of them seriously. One woman lying on a stretcher, her head bandaged, said, "I can only tell Clinton, we will will build a new factory. He cannot destroy everything." Three days later, Zastava endured another onslaught. The six largest plants at Zastava lay in ruins.

According to Dragan Stankovic, export director for Zastava, the factory complex in Kragujevac employed 28,000, and an additional 8,000 in associated Zastava factories throughout Yugoslavia, most of which were also bombed. Stankovic pointed out, "Of all the catastrophes that befell us, we consider the humanitarian catastrophe to be the biggest." One of the components of this catastrophe, he felt, was that workers in many factories depended on Zastava, and with its destruction they and their families, 200,000 people in all, were left without a means of livelihood. Zastava's director, Milosav Djordjevic, ruefully concluded, "On the nights of the 9th and 12th of April, all our dreams were destroyed in a mere 15 minutes of bombing." It was difficult for him to understand the mentality that could inflict death and destruction. "We couldn't believe that some people exist who would kill other people." It was all too easy for me to believe, after months of exposure to the ranting of Madeleine Albright, Bill Clinton, Tony Blair and Jamie Shea. Stankovic personally witnessed the attacks on April 9th. He was in his apartment during the first detonations at 1:40 AM, which felt "like an earthquake." Approximately eight hours later, he was on the grounds of Zastava when the second assault came. "I saw a series of mushroom clouds," he said, "a series of mushroom clouds, strong light and fire, like an atomic bomb." Strangely, he could hear neither the aircraft nor the explosions. "You could see the explosion and big fires only. You couldn't hear anything."

The power plant at Zastava supplied electricity, compressed air, hot water and steam for production throughout Zastava. The destruction of the power plant had a wider impact, though, as it also provided heat and energy for the city of Kragujevac. Stankovic told us that "about 15,000 flats, schools, hospitals and other institutions depend on the Zastava power plant for their heat." One massive bomb exploded about 20 to 30 meters over the plant, ripping the roof from the building. "Smashed," a power plant worker said, "Everything was smashed. We have removed everything to be repaired." The resumption of production at the power plant was an urgent task, and they had cleared all of the rubble. Two of the eight turbo-compressors had already been repaired. The plant's transformers were damaged, and two tons of highly toxic pyralene had soaked into the ground and a nearby river. Adding to the ecological woes, depleted uranium weapons exploded here.

Four bombs left the forging plant in ruins. Here components for automobiles were forged, as well as agricultural machinery and railways. Gone entirely was the roof. Mounds of rubble, damaged machinery, and twisted girders confronted us. Scraps of metal debris hung in clumps from isolated and deformed steel bars. The three-story office section of the forging plant had also taken a direct hit, and a large section was blown away. What remained of the upper floors sagged severely. The old forging factory was adjacent, and it presented a stark appearance. Built in 1936, its heavy concrete walls bore the scars of explosions, and its roof was largely missing. When a missile exploded here, concrete columns fell on the heat treatment area, and chunks of concrete and steel were sent flying, injuring several workers.

Djordjevic felt that the paint shop was the pride of Zastava, containing modern robotic production lines. Here the devastation was, if anything, even more extreme than in the other plants. The awesome level of destruction was shocking. Four bombs left the plant roofless and buried in a carpet of rubble. Mountains of twisted and jumbled wreckage rose above the rubble, as if they were abstract sculptures. Djordjevic lovingly described the advanced technology used in this plant, adding, "They hit this directly, as you would hit a man in the heart."

The automobile assembly plant was hit with depleted uranium weapons. "Only depleted uranium can do this," Djordjevic told us, and he showed us thick steel supports that were burned through by DU, "as if cut by welding." Here too, the level of destruction was beyond imagination. Merely to clear away the rubble would be a monumental task. Fifty-four workers in the plant were injured by the blast and from the collapsing roof. The plant, Djordjevic said, "was very beautiful to see when it was functioning. Now look at it. It's a sorrow to see."

It was nearing 9:00 PM, and it was too dark to see the truck plant and tools factory, both of which were completely demolished. We were instead taken to the computer center, and they projected vehicle headlights onto the building. It was completely smashed. The force from two bombs was so massive that it raised the building from its foundation, before it collapsed. Two IBM computers, costing $10 million, were lost. The total destruction at Zastava is estimated at $1 billion. The Yugoslav government is financing its reconstruction, and negotiations were recently undertaken with South Korea's Daewoo for a joint venture in car manufacturing. In order to meet the society's immediate needs for automobiles, the import of used cars has been liberalized.

It was an exhausting day, and we had a long drive back to Belgrade. Not long after our departure, I fell asleep. Some time later, I was jolted awake by panicked screams, "Watch out! Watch out! Watch out!" It was not the best way to wake up. I opened my eyes and the impetus for the cries was immediately evident. We were in the right lane of a two-lane road. Directly ahead of us in our lane was a stalled van, with two people standing nearby. A bus, on our left and slightly behind, was starting to pass us. A good driver would have applied the brakes, let the bus pass, and then change lanes. Our driver maintained his fast speed, barrelling toward the stalled van at an alarming rate. "So this is it," I thought. "This is how I die." My next thought was that all of the documentation we had collected would never make it the United States; then that people back home won't know what became of me. No more than ten seconds remained in my life, and time stretched, every second seeming an eternity. I had time to reflect. I recalled a pleasant cruise on the San Francisco Bay and the seagulls' calls above me. My last thoughts were of my loved ones. Time had slowed down in a remarkable way. I no longer heard the cries of my friends. Either they had fallen into silent contemplation, or I simply no longer heard them. We were closing in on the van, and the bus was directly beside us. Our driver tried to shove the bus off the road. The only sound I heard was a long sustained blast of the horn by the bus driver, as he was pushed half off the road. Now it appeared that only the right half of our van would collide with the stalled van. The side I was sitting on. Only a moment before impact, our driver pushed the bus further off the road, but collision still seemed unavoidable. Blam! The sound was deafening. I was still alive. Our van had managed to squeeze between the two vehicles, but the rear view mirror was torn violently away. I could only wonder what damage was done to the stalled van, as our driver failed to stop, still maintaining the same speed. I hoped that the two people were uninjured. About an hour later, Barry asked me to collect a tip from everyone for our driver. I raised my eyebrow. When I went to the back of the van and asked for tips, Ken was aghast. "Are you out of your mind?" he asked me. "He almost killed us!" Long after the incident, my heart was still pounding uncontrollably. We only lived through several seconds of terror. What then, must it have been like for people here to live through 78 days of terror? At the end of the night, my roommates Jaime and Ken and I were preparing for bed. Ken playfully suggested, "We ought to have awards, best dressed and so on." Jaime quickly nominated our van driver for the kamikaze award.

We are all Human Beings

Earlier in the week, I contacted Jela Jovanovic, general secretary of the National Solidarity Committee, and she arranged for us to meet Serbian refugees from Kosovo housed at Hotel Belgrade, on Mt. Avala, not far from Belgrade. We met at her home, and then we walked to the home of Ileana Cosic, who would act as our translator. Ms. Cosic is a playwright, critic and interpreter, and we found her to be warm and delightful company. She was a marvelous storyteller, and I enjoyed her stories during the taxi ride to Mt. Avala.

When we entered Hotel Belgrade, the misery was immediately apparent. Children were crying and conditions were overcrowded. We were shown all three floors, and the anger among the refugees was palpable. Virtually everyone had a loved one who was killed by the KLA. All of them had lost their homes and everything they owned. At first, many refugees refused to talk with us, and one refugee demanded of me in an accusing tone, "Can you get my home back?" It wasn't until much later that we discovered that there was a misunderstanding. We had been introduced as collecting evidence for Ramsey Clark, and the refugees thought we were from NATO General Wesley Clark. Once the misunderstanding was cleared up, we were able to conduct interviews, although there was residual reluctance based on their three prior experiences with Western visitors, all of whom treated them with arrogance and contempt. Several of the refugees were too upset to talk. At one point I asked to interview a young girl whose father was killed by the KLA, and the girl ran from the room in tears. The eyes of one woman and her son still haunt me. The woman told me that the KLA murdered her husband. She didn't need to tell me. I could see it in her eyes and her son's eyes. I could see everything in their eyes, all that they had suffered. Every refugee in this hotel was from the Suva Reka municipality, and by the time of our visit, the KLA had driven out or killed virtually every Serb in Suva Reka.

In one room on the third floor, eight family members resided in one room, their mattresses laying side by side from one end of the room to the other. An 80-year old man reclined on a mattress, his cane nearby. His silence conveyed an aura of sorrow. Mitra Dragutinovic wondered, "Why did the Americans and the Germans come? Why did they come? Did they come to protect us, or did they come to massacre us, to drive us from our homes, to violate our women, and to kill our children?" She pointedly remarked, "I can't believe that someone who had first bombed you for three months, every day and for 24 hours, that after that he will come to protect you. I wonder how Clinton can't be sorry for the children, at least. Are there children in your country? Does he know what it means to be a child?"

Nikola Ceko had an expressive manner when he spoke. "No one is taking care of us. KFOR. Nothing! They couldn't care less for poor Serbs," he told us. "It's a shame for KFOR, for the United States, for Great Britain, for France, for Germany, and all the big powers of the world. We are all human beings. We have the right to live. The nationality, the race and the religion are not important at all. A human being should first be a human being. A true human being is the one who is ready to help the victim in need."

The KLA had kidnapped two of Biljana Lazic's brothers and eight of her cousins. Over one year had passed, and still there was no word of their fate. "We were afraid of the KLA," she told us, "and we wouldn't allow our kids to leave our houses. They were all locked inside. We didn't allow the children to play outside at all. We were particularly afraid for the children. The situation was unbearable. We had to flee, to save the children at least."

Before the war, during the period when the OSCE Kosovo Mission was present, Stana Antic's 13 year old son was kidnapped by the KLA while he was on his way to visit an aunt and uncle. When Antic asked OSCE Kosovo mission head William Walker to intervene, he told her that in order for her son to be freed, she would have to replace him as a hostage of the KLA. Shortly thereafter, the boy was murdered by his captors.

When Dostena Filipovic fled from her home, she and her family went to another village, but saw that people there were also fleeing. The roads were packed with refugees, and she was trapped in Prizren for some time. While in Prizren, KLA soldiers fired on her column of refugees, but KFOR troops there did nothing. Later, the refugees stayed overnight in a village, where KFOR disarmed them and handed their guns over to KLA soldiers.

The KLA had decimated Boze Antic's family and circle of friends. Several friends and family members were ambushed on their way to do repair work at the 14th century Holy Trinity Monastery. After KLA soldiers killed their driver, they pushed the car down a cliff. Then they climbed down and pumped several bullets into the survivors. Not long afterwards, KLA soldiers looted the Holy Trinity Monastery, then burned it. One month later, they dynamited the remains of the monastery, one of over 75 historic churches and monasteries in Kosovo demolished by the KLA. Several date back to the Middle Ages, and some are UNESCO-designated world historic sites. "If someone is human, he should at least be sorry for the little children who have been murdered," pleaded Antic. "Because all of the children of this world are children in the first place, regardless of their religion, race and ethnic origin. What is the future of our children now? They have no homes."

Sava Jovanovic showed us photographs of his demolished home. Scrawled on one wall was 'UCK', the Albanian initials for 'KLA.' Another message read, "Return of Serbs prohibited." He and his four brothers lived in houses next to each other. Now, nothing remained of their farm. Sava's father stayed behind to protect their property, but there was no word of his fate. One month after I returned to the United States, I read a report from Tanjug about the refugees in Hotel Belgrade. Sava had finally received news of his father. Albanian criminals had lynched him..

Following the interviews, we returned to the home of Ileana Cosic, and she kindly gave me a copy of her play, "Requiem for Destroyed Destinies." Later I read the play, and was struck by a passage in which the protagonist says, "When I think of my foster parents, their intellectual refinement and dignity, I can't say how lucky they were to have died in time..." I remembered my cousin Rob expressing similar sentiments about his father; glad that he didn't live long enough to see the dissolution of his country. Perhaps Westerners can't understand the depth of pain Yugoslavs carry in their hearts because of the dismemberment of their country. My grandparents on my father's side left Bosnia-Herzegovina for the United States in 1912, just four years after the province was annexed by Austria-Hungary. My grandfather emigrated in order to avoid being drafted into the army of the oppressor. Two years later, Austria-Hungary invaded Serbia, and ultimately one quarter of the entire population of Serbia would perish in the world war. All my life, I dreamt of visiting Yugoslavia, but it was beyond my financial means until the old Yugoslavia was no more. This was my first trip, and it felt like a return home. This communal society was a vivid reminder of what matters in life: family and friends. My imagination, though, never conjured such circumstances for my visit: a nation choked by sanctions and pummelled by thousands of bombs and missiles. The spirit of the people was undiminished, however. In conversation with one man in Novi Sad, I mentioned that NATO's invasion plan called for a two-pronged attack: one advance from the south, through Kosovo, and the second thrust from the north, through Vojvodina. His city lay squarely in the path of the planned invasion. He responded that the entire nation was determined to resist a NATO invasion. "Ordinary people, without arms," he said, "would have fought NATO with their bare teeth." I interpreted our frequent encounters with posters of Che Guevara in Belgrade as another manifestation of the spirit of resistance. At the beginning of the war, people formed human chains, their arms linked together, to defend their bridges. There was a widespread commitment to a multiethnic society, in defiance of NATO's attempts to carve up the region into small mono-ethnic colonies. There was a determination to resist domination by NATO. These were the people who struggled for five centuries to free themselves from occupation by the Ottoman Empire, and they knew something NATO didn't. History is long, and occupation and colonization cannot be permanently imposed.

War's End

After the end of the war, Western reporters expressed surprise that after 78 days of bombing, NATO had succeeded in destroying only 13 Yugoslav tanks. Yugoslav troops withdrawing from Kosovo appeared untouched. NATO's grandiose claims of military success fell like a house of cards. Camouflaged weaponry eluded NATO bombs, while dummy tanks, bridges and missile emplacements were repeatedly hit. Microwave ovens with open doors and burning automobile tires attracted Tomahawk missiles. Rolls of black plastic sheeting were unfurled to mimic highways, indistinguishable from the real thing for high-flying aircraft. Before the war, the Yugoslav Air Force quickly and efficiently redeployed 50,000 tons of materiel over a total of 6 million miles. NATO was outsmarted. Perplexed commentators in the West wondered why Yugoslavia agreed to withdraw from Kosovo, given NATO's abject failure. The most powerful military force ever assembled failed to defeat the army of a small nation. It seemed a mystery.

It wasn't a mystery for people in Yugoslavia. Surely aware of its failure, NATO almost immediately resorted to a campaign of terror bombing. Every town and every city in Yugoslavia was a target, and the entire territory was saturated with bombs. The evidence was everywhere we went, and what we saw constituted only a small fraction of the total destruction. It would have taken months to witness it all. Terror bombing prepared the way for final negotiations, when European Union mediator Martti Ahtisaari, accompanied by Russian envoy Viktor Chernomyrdin, visited President Milosevic on June 2. According to Ahtisaari, "at the cost of a major effort," prior to the meeting, "we achieved a final communiquÈ, signed by both the Russians and by the Americans." Russian acquiescence, he felt, placed Milosevic "in a corner."

Ljubisa Ristic, director of the Yugoslav United Left, described the final negotiations in an interview for the June 7, 1999 issue of Il Giornale. A close colleague of President Milosevic, Ristic's party is a coalition partner with the Socialist Party. On the evening of June 2, Ahtisaari opened the meeting by declaring, "We are not here to discuss or negotiate," and he and Chernomyrdin read the text of the plan. Milosevic accepted the papers, and inquired, "What will happen if I do not sign?" Ahtisaari swept his arm across the table that separated them, pushing aside a vase of flowers. "Belgrade will be like this table," he declared. "We will immediately begin carpet-bombing Belgrade. This is what we will do to Belgrade," and he repeated the gesture. A moment of silence passed, and then Ahtisaari added, "There will be half a million dead within a week." According to Ahtisaari, when Milosevic then asked about modifications to the plan, he told him, "No. This is the best that Viktor and I have managed to do. You have to agree to it in every part." Chernomyrdin's silence confirmed that the Russian government would do nothing to oppose carpet-bombing. President Milosevic met with leaders of the governing coalition, and they agreed that Yugoslavia had no alternative. Three weeks later, in a speech delivered before both chambers of the Assembly, Yugoslav Prime Minister Momir Bulatovic announced that "diplomatic mediators....spoke of future targets to be bombed, including civilian victims counted in the hundreds of thousands." Contrary to Western leaders' demonization of President Milosevic, their terrorist threat revealed that they expected him to possess more humanity than they themselves did, and to accept the plan in order to avoid a bloodbath.

Occupation

It wasn't long before NATO violated the peace agreement. While NATO dawdled over entering Kosovo, the KLA went on a rampage, looting and burning homes, murdering and expelling thousands of Serbs, Roma, Turks, Muslims, Gorans, Egyptians, and pro-Yugoslav Albanians. Milosevic was livid, and shortly after midnight on June 17, he phoned Ahtisaari and complained that NATO's delay in entering Kosovo allowed the KLA to threaten the population. "This is not what we agreed," he argued. It hardly mattered. Once NATO troops entered Kosovo, they did nothing to deter KLA attacks against the populace. The KLA was free to carry out its pogrom against all non-Albanians and pro-Yugoslav Albanians. Several refugees testified to us that many attacks took place in the presence of KFOR. Arrests are rarely made, and those arrested are usually released within hours. Yugoslav security forces, under constant bombardment, were castigated in the Western media when it took a few weeks for them to restore order in most of Kosovo. No one is dropping bombs on KFOR, yet after several months they have not even attempted to restore order. NATO Lt. General Mike Jackson excused this inaction with the comment, "It is a reality that KFOR cannot be everywhere all the time." Disarmament of the KLA was a farce. Russian military and diplomatic sources report that this was "a mere decorative step." Fewer than 5,000 weapons, mainly obsolete, were turned in by the September 19, 1999 deadline, although KLA forces numbered at least twice that. "A larger part of their armaments is actually kept in the KLA's depots," the sources said. Meanwhile, police have discovered KLA arms caches hidden in the hills of Macedonia. KLA soldiers openly carry automatic rifles. KFOR's response to disorder was to create a new police force, comprised almost entirely of members of the KLA. Other KLA members have also joined the newly created Kosovo Protection Corps, an organization of vague purpose, lightly armed but permitted to keep its heavy weaponry in storage. UN and NATO officials are fully cognizant of the nature of their creation. A United Nations internal confidential report, dated February 29, 2000, admitted that the Kosovo Protection Corps engages in "criminal activities - killings, ill-treatment/torture, illegal policing, abuse of authority, intimidation, breaches of political neutrality and hate-speech." NATO has seized a multiethnic province, and turned it into a mono-ethnic and racist state, policed by criminals.

For all the rhetoric, the war was never about "human rights," that amorphous term that never seems to apply to U.S. client states. One man I talked with was closer to the truth when he told me, "I think our President Milosevic is more of a problem for imperialism than for us." This truth slipped out during a speech President Clinton delivered on the day before he started bombing. Buried in the bombast about human rights, he declared, "If we're going to have a strong economic relationship that includes our ability to sell around the world, Europe has got to be a key.... Now, that's what this Kosovo thing is all about." The war was merely an extension of long-standing policy. During the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe in early 1992, Vladimir Pavicevic, chief of the Yugoslav delegation, was confronted by aggressive Western demands. Some Western diplomats told him that "additional pressure must be exerted to achieve the goal, regardless of the consequences." Western diplomats, Pavicevic claimed, were applying "pressure for us to fit into the new European order. The United States wants Yugoslavia within the framework of the new international order, and certainly not opposed to it. It has been saying this both publicly and in conversation." And now they say it with bombs. On June 10, 1999, the Western-sponsored Stability Pact for Southeastern Europe issued a declaration calling for "creating vibrant market economies" in the Balkans, and "markets open to greatly expanded foreign trade and private sector investment." An independent and socialist Yugoslavia in the heart of the Balkans is impeding the grand scheme to integrate the entire region within the new economic model, in which the region's interests would be subordinated to those of Western corporations.

No opportunity is missed. Chapter 4a of the notorious Rambouillet plan stipulated that "the economy of Kosovo shall function in accordance with free market principles," and allow for the free movement of international capital. Having seized Kosovo, Western forces have set about the task of dismantling the social economy and ensuring secession. Installing a new monetary regime is seen as a linchpin of the effort, and Western administrators recently opened the Micro Enterprises Bank, chiefly financed by Germany and the Netherlands. On September 3, 1999, Bernard Kouchner, head of the U.N. mission in Kosovo, decreed that the German mark would replace the Yugoslav dinar as the official currency in the province. Anyone using the dinar would be required to pay a penalty fee with each transaction. The largest lead and zinc mines in all of Europe are located at Kosovoska Mitrovica. Owned by the Yugoslav firm Trepca, the mines, as well as its silver and gold mines and factories throughout the province, will be operated under the U.N. Kosovo administration. NATO soldiers dismissed management officials at every state enterprise in Kosovo, replacing them with secessionists. On July 6, 1999, armed NATO and KLA soldiers expelled the entire workforce from Jugopetrol in Kosovo Polje. Coal reserves in Kosovo are estimated at 15 billion tons, the largest in the Balkans. These mines, too, were seized. Discussions on privatization are underway, and corporations are positioning themselves to pick up the spoils. U.S. Metals Research Group Corp. signed a contract on July 30, 1999, for a concession on four copper mines in Albania. The firm's president, Robert Papalia, commented, "Our hope is that starting from Albania, we can also in the near future see what is available and what we can do in the surrounding areas such as Macedonia, Kosovo and Montenegro."

A People Unbowed

The war ended only two months before our visit, yet we witnessed a miracle. A remarkable reconstruction was taking place. Damage to the Beska Bridge, on the highway linking Belgrade with Novi Sad, had already been repaired. There was no sign of damage. Rubble had been removed at Aleksinac and Surdulica, and construction of new houses begun. Responsibility for reconstruction was assigned to the Serbian Directorate for National Recovery when it was formed just ten days after the war's inception, and they immediately launched an energetic program. By the end of the year, 27 highway bridges and four railway bridges were rebuilt, including the railway bridge at Grdelica. Over 300 housing units were reconstructed, as well as four heating plants and four schools. An additional 121 construction sites were opened, and work started on 600 more housing units. People who lost their homes in the bombing were given keys to their fully furnished, newly built homes. The oil refinery at Novi Sad, devastated by repeated attacks, already resumed production only two weeks after our visit. By March 1, 2000, all plants but one at the Azotara fertilizer complex in Pancevo were reopened. In Novi Sad, a new Varadin Bridge is scheduled to be completed by November 1, 2000. The most astounding news, though, was the resumption of production at Zastava. Given the awesome level of destruction we witnessed, this news was almost beyond my comprehension. I can only assume that production was shifted to the less damaged and smaller plants. That would still entail reconstruction of machinery on a heroic level, overcoming a sanctions-induced lack of spare parts. By January 2000, eighty percent of the rubble was cleared at Zastava. The following month, Zastava manufactured over 1,200 automobiles, 750 of them for export, and resumed limited production of commercial trucks. The entire nation has thrown itself into the task of rebuilding. We saw only the beginnings of this effort, but even those first efforts deeply impressed me. It was singularly inspiring, as nothing else I've ever seen. This is a people that will not be defeated.

For 78 days, tiny Yugoslavia held out against an onslaught by 19 of the most powerful nations in the world. The world has descended into an ugly barbarism. During an era when the world trembles before Western power, forced to follow its dictates, Yugoslavia gave an example of independence to the world. A portion of its territory was torn away and occupied, but it defeated NATO's attempt to destroy and seize the entire nation. The brutality of the West and its quest for economic domination, and the example of Yugoslavia defending its independence and sovereignty, alone and isolated, has opened the eyes of hundreds of millions of people throughout the world. Many have been compelled to cast aside old illusions about Western democracy. If only a few of the world's nations and peoples are inspired to defend their own independence and sovereignty, then Yugoslavia will have done the entire world and all of humanity a great service.

On our last day in Belgrade, Danka gave us a message. "I hope this will be the last time that someone is bombed just for some uncertain dirty political goals. The real victims of bombing are just ordinary people, mothers, children, and elderly people. I do not wish for anyone to go through what we went through. None should suffer for the foolishness, self-admiration or vanity of politicians."