From Professor Rafu G.C. Thomas Sir: Noel Malcolm's response to
John Laughland on the Kosovo body-count rests strictly on the hearsay evidence of Albani- ans. As far as I can see, Dr Malcolm rou- tinely hobnobs with Croats, Bosnian Mus- lims and Albanians, which ought to disqual- ify all his views and writings.
The figure of 10,000 is a favourite round number for everything. General Satish Nam- biar, the first UN Profor commander until April 1993, told me that in Bosnia he and his deputy, General Lewis MacKenzie, had 28,000 soldiers under them, were in constant contact with UNHCR and IR.0 personnel, and none of them witnessed any genocide.
I recall that in January 1993 'the figure was 17,000 dead in Bosnia, as provided by the New York Times's John Burns. At the end of January it became 20,000 dead. In February, the figure was about 140,000 'dead or missing'. It then increased to 200,000 'dead or missing' in March. And then the words 'and missing' were quietly dropped. It remained 200,000 until Dayton, at which point it became 250,000 dead. However, in his book To End a War Richard Holbrooke's first sentence indicat- ed that 300,000 were killed in Bosnia, pre- sumably all Muslims and Croats, by Serbs. This is impossible. After the Markele Mar- ket massacre in February 1994 (for which Serbs have denied responsibility), the killing of 68 civilians was claimed to be the worst killing of civilians in a single day of the war. But if we take the worst killing of 70 per day and multiply it by 700 days of war, that would add up to less than 50,000.
Nato's military punishment of Serbia, in violation of the UN Charter, preceded the alleged 'genocide', and now Nato countries and their collaborative media are praying that genocide was committed to fit the pun- ishment inflicted. Considering the number of civilian deaths, the destruction of infras- tructure and the elimination of civilian livelihoods inflicted by Nato on the entire Serbian nation, it is not surprising that Nato hopes that the Serbs massacred 10,000 Albanians, although 100,000 dead Albanians, as Defense Secretary William Cohen hoped, would be even more satisfy- ing. There is no logic or morality in this sequence of actions and expectations.
Eaju G.C. Thomas
Professor of Political Science, Marquette University, Wisconsin, USA
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