DIARY
JAMIE SHEA March 24 will mark the first anniversary of Nato's intervention in Kosovo. I am gird- ing myself for this moment. From what I have seen in the newspapers and on televi- sion of late, I fear that the anniversary will be seized on by all the prophets of doom in our media to claim once more that, because it was not perfect, Nato's air campaign against Yugoslavia last spring was not 'morally cor- rect; and, because nine months later the legacy of conflict is still very much with us in Kosovo, the international community is chas- ing at illusory windmills of peace and democ- racy. Such negativism may help a lot of peo- ple to feel superior but it will not do much for the people of Kosovo or for any future attempts by Nato and others to uphold human rights in Europe. Last June I believed that my role as Nato's spokesman for the Kosovo conflict had ended and that I could go back to business as usual. Vain hope. Whatever I do with the rest of my life, Koso- vo will always stick to me like J.R. to Larry Hagman. I am no less busy explaining the Kosovo conflict now than I was when I had to give daily live television briefings. I have had to come to terms with my new schizophrenic identity as a minor hero in Pristina and a major villain on British univer- sity campuses, where I am pursued by the 24- hour demonstrators of the Socialist Workers' party and by custard-pie throwers.
But I have also had to adjust to the reali- ty that TV celebrity is a fleeting phe- nomenon. In July, Elle magazine made me one of the ten sexiest men of the summer (still my best joke to start a speech), presum- ably because they could only obtain a photo of my face. In the end-of-year edition I was nowhere to be seen — bad for my ego but at least good for my relationship with my wife, who finally stopped laughing. Also at the end of the year a German lady who every week had been sending me DM600 and a gold wedding ring stopped doing so. Perhaps because I always sent them back. No doubt her attention has shifted to another spokesman in the latest crisis or conflict on television. The most brutal return to reality, however, happened to me in New York in January. I was having breakfast in a deli and was being stared at persistently by a man in a Homburg-hat. Finally, he came over to me. `Aha,' I thought, 'someone still recognis- es me.' I know you,' he said, 'you are the person I sold a second-hand car to last week.' When people confuse your TV per- sona with their real-life encounters you know that it is time to give up. But I can't. I still have to go on explaining Nato's air cam- paign. A new development is that private- sector companies are asking me to talk to them about how selling a conflict is the ulti- mate PR challenge. Operation Allied Force was not a per- fect air campaign. Which conflict in human history could ever be described as such? But it did achieve its objectives: to compel the Serb forces to leave Kosovo entirely, to create the conditions for all the 850,000 Kosovar refugees to return, and to secure the deployment of Nato peacekeepers. More importantly, Nato did not only win, but won on its own terms and subject to its own self-imposed restraints. It took 78 days, granted; and that duration has been criticised as a form of failure. The air cam- paign could have been reduced to a few days — but only if the alliance had used all the military means at its disposal and focused its bombing uniquely on cities such as Belgrade. That Nato did not do. It took maximum steps to avoid civilian casualties, even at the risk of a loss in military effec- tiveness. Fifty per cent of the targets on Nato's operational list were never struck because of . a risk of blast damage to sur- rounding civilian buildings. Fifty per cent of the strike missions were terminated because of the very tight rules of engage- ment under which Nato pilots were operat- ing. Government lawyers vetted every tar- get for conformity with international law. If accidental killings of civilians neverthe- less occurred, it was not because of care- lessness by the alliance.
Ihave been to Kosovo many times since Nato first entered there last June. It dis- plays surprisingly few scars of war, particu- larly if compared with Bosnia, where the international community waited four years before using force. But Kosovo does show the scars of history. The Albanian people have been the most brutalised and isolated in Europe this past century. Fifty years of communism and ten years of implacable apartheid even before the present conflict erupted are not the best basis for democ- racy. We are in there for the long haul. And we will find it much more difficult to help the Kosovar Albanians if they are not able to overcome their own urges towards hatred and vengeance. But what is the alternative to the Nato presence: to return Kosovo to Serb rule or hand over to a peo- ple that has not yet experienced a free election and has not yet developed the intellectual and physical means to govern itself? To argue, as some do, that the Kosovar Albanians are the new oppressors is to forget that Milosevic's repression was not spontaneous but state-directed and carried out in a systematic way by an organised army and paramilitary police. It also ignores the many Kosovar leaders who are actively calling for restraint and for the Serbs to remain — in contrast to the passivity of many Serb leaders vis-à-vis Belgrade's actions last year. The UN and Nato are working together to organise a local administration, open schools, de- mine hundreds of square kilometres of farmland and restore energy supplies. If Mitrovica receives so much media atten- tion, it is because it is one of the very few flash-points in Kosovo today, and even there Nato has kept the violence in check. Kosovo, with 70 per cent of its population under the age of 30, may be small but it is too volatile to be ignored, as is the wider region. The Balkans represent 14 per cent of the population of the EU but only 3 per cent of its GDP — less than the Republic of Ireland. Kosovo can only prosper and its peoples be reconciled if efforts in Kosovo are paralleled by a reconstruction programme for the region as a whole. Those who casually dismiss Nato's efforts in Kosovo would do better to find ways to help the Serbs get rid of Milosevic. No other development is so calculated to defeat the real revisionists of this peace: those in Belgrade who thrive on instability, isolation, corruption and eth- nic-separatism.
As for myself, I sleep far more easily with Nato in Kosovo and Bosnia today, with all our problems, than with Nato standing on the sidelines when ethnic cleansing was proceeding apace. At the time of Srebrenica in July 1995 I found it difficult to look at myself in the mirror. Today the Serb general behind that mas- sacre is on trial in The Hague. So perhaps I do not really fear the first anniversary so much after all. Nothing, indeed, will ever be achieved if all possible objections must first be overcome, or if our leaders evade choices simply because there are no perfect outcomes. If it is too early for Nato to claim final victory, it is equally too early for the doomsayers to claim failure. Revisionists watch out. You haven't won yet, and it would be a bad day for human rights if ever you did.
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