On Kosovo

I refer to the Reuters article on Kosovo in the March 22, 2000, edition of The Jakarta Post, titled NATO warns world may tire of Kosovo hatred.

There are many ways in which Western media and government officials (in obvious collusion) distort and misinterpret the facts about NATO's criminal war against Yugoslavia.

When they refer to the casualties this NATO action has caused, they use figures pertinent to Kosovo only and "only" 500 to 600 casualties (called "collateral damage"). By using this half- truth, they manage to effectively hide the real figure (around 2,000 civilian deaths across Yugoslavia caused by NATO's war). Let us remember here that President Milosevic and his team have been accused of war crimes over a mere 74 deaths. This should help put NATO's crime in perspective by simply comparing the numbers.

When they talk about the destruction of Yugoslavia's infrastructure, hospitals, bridges, TV stations, homes, schools, etc., they again use figures for Kosovo to minimize their crimes. To add insult to injury, they then treat this damage as being "caused by ethnic violence", thus completely washing their hands of any responsibility for US$60 billion worth of property destroyed by the NATO "mean machine". For if it was "ethnic violence" that caused the destruction in Kosovo, then what caused the even greater destruction in Serbia proper?

The two above mentioned methods could benevolently be classified as "half-truths". There is another method in use and this one can only be called by its real name: lying. This refers to the claim that NATO started its campaign to stop the ethnic cleansing of hundreds or thousands of Albanians from Kosovo. This lie is constantly repeated in the hope that it will eventually be perceived as the only truth.

It is very easy to check and see that the exodus of Albanians started only after a full week of NATO's around-the-clock bombardment and two weeks after observers from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) left Kosovo in anticipation of the campaign. This can be verified by going back to (even Western) media reports from one year ago, for those of us with poor memories. In this way, by using half-truths and outright lies, Western media and governments (in collusion) are adding to the damage already caused by their actions.

(1) These acts further diminish Western credibility on at least one side in the conflict (the Serbian side, and Serbia still makes up half the territory and Serbs more than half the population of the former Yugoslavia). Without engaging Serbia, it will prove impossible to reach an overall lasting solution for any part of the former Yugoslavia.

(2) It makes reconciliation much more difficult for the concerned parties in the Balkans. Trust and cooperation cannot be based on the false perception that one side is exclusively responsible for all the evils, especially when this perception is openly engineered by the use of half-truths and lies.

The way out is obvious: Western governments should finally start to treat all sides in the troubled Balkans evenhandedly, using the same standards and avoiding cheap propaganda that might help win the day, but seriously hamper long-term stability in the region.

Unless, of course, a continuing low-level conflict in Europe is a desirable surrogate for the long-departed Warsaw Pact and Soviet Union as an excuse for maintaining ever-expanding military spending.

BRANIMIR SALEVIC

Jakarta