Newspaper Article

A war that can't be won

Geopolitics Editor Ian Bruce

1999

Overview

WHEN US troubleshooter Richard Holbrooke brokered a fragile ceasefire in Kosovo last year, it was meant to be underpinned in equal measure by bad weather and good behaviour. A mild winter, Serb intransigence, and separatist desire to win back lost ground have combined to frustrate that objective. Now Nato is rattling sabres once more and generals and politicians have begun the shuttle between Belgrade and Brussels to try to stave off the inevitable. Left to their own devices, the Kosovo Liberation Army on one side and the Serb police and army on the other seem set for a showdown a few months earlier than anticipated. The Balkans saw a mini-Holocaust during the Second World War, largely unreported because nobody cared. But 700,000 died - Serb, Muslim, and Croat alike - as undisciplined militias vented their spleens on convenient religious and ethnic targets. The Croats were the worst. They committed so many atrocities in the name of Catholicism while allied to the German occupation army that the SS disowned them. They collected heads, severed from living victims of both sexes and all ages. They collected eyes in buckets to help tabulate the body count.

• Publisher: Gannett Media Corp