Visit our website: HTTP://WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK ---------------------------------------------
Gary Dempsey
The first wave of 3,500 NATO troops has poured
into Macedonia to begin a 30-day mission to "disarm" ethnic Albanian guerrillas
as part of Operation Essential Harvest. But Essential Harvest is just the latest
move NATO has made that gets it wrong in the
Balkans.
First, look at the numbers. The
Macedonian government estimates that ethnic Albanian rebels have 70,000 weapons,
roughly 23 times more than the 3,000 that rebel leaders say they'll turn over to
NATO weapons collectors. NATO officials, meanwhile, barely disagree with the
rebels, and say 3,300 weapons is a "credible, accurate, and non-negotiable"
estimate of what should be turned in before the alliance declares the
disarmament a success.
Macedonian Prime
Minister Ljubco Georgievski, however, says, "We used to seize that quantity in a
single raid.... I think it is laughable to speak about 3,300 pieces six months
after the outbreak of crisis."
If NATO's
involvement in neighboring Kosovo is any guide, Mr. Georgievski has a right to
be incredulous. After the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) turned in roughly 10,000
guns -- many of them broken or antiquated -- NATO officials declared that the
rebel group was disarmed. What NATO officials failed to mention was that a few
days earlier, German soldiers stumbled on a secret cache of 10 tons of
ammunition. And that was only the
beginning.
British troops later found two
concrete bunkers dug into a hillside in a forested area of central Kosovo
containing 67 tons of weapons and explosives, including 20,000 grenades,
thousands of mines, and half a million bullets. A NATO spokesperson said the
weapons were enough to eliminate the entire population of Kosovo's capital,
Pristina, or to destroy 900 to 1,000
tanks.
NATO units have since discovered dozens
of hidden weapons stockpiles scattered throughout Kosovo. One included sniper
rifles, machine guns, more than 80 mines, 100 pounds of TNT and paraphernalia to
detonate bombs remotely -- "clear indications of a terrorist capability,"
explained a prepared NATO statement on the
find.
In another incident, NATO soldiers in
Kosovo discovered a complex of bunkers and fighting positions only 12 miles from
the Kosovo-Macedonia border.
What's more, even
if Macedonia's rebels turn in 3,300 weapons as NATO wants, it really won't make
much difference militarily. According to a top NATO commander, the rebels can
easily and quickly replace the weapons they turn in. Indeed, over the past six
months, NATO's Kosovo force has intercepted as many weapons destined for
Macedonia as the rebels now claim to have in their possession, and what NATO
intercepted is probably a drop in the bucket compared to the total number of
weapons that made it across Kosovo's mountainous
border.
Macedonia's rebels could also replenish
the few weapons they turn in by smuggling others in from neighboring Albania. In
1997, the central government in Albania collapsed. In the ensuing chaos, the
government's arms depots were thrown open. Between 650,000 and 1 million light
weapons and 1.5 billion rounds of ammunition were stolen. An estimated 3.5
million hand grenades, 1 million anti-personnel mines, 840,000 mortar shells,
and 3,600 tons of explosives also went missing. Many of the plundered weapons
headed straight into the hands of the region's gun traffickers and ethnic
Albanian militants.
Lastly, Macedonia's rebels
could turn to drug trafficking to resupply whatever arms they turn over to
NATO.
Indeed, as early as June 1994, the
Paris-based Geopolitical Drug Watch (GDW) issued a bulletin that concluded
narcotics smuggling had become a prime source of financing for civil wars
already under way -- or rapidly brewing -- in southeastern
Europe.
The GDW bulletin went on to identify
Albanian nationalists in Kosovo and Macedonia as key players in the region's
accelerating drugs-for-arms traffic and noted they were transporting up to $2
billion worth of heroin annually into Central and Western Europe "in order to
finance large purchases of weapons" from black-market arms dealers in
Switzerland.
At the time the report was
written, more than 500 Albanians from Kosovo and Macedonia were in prison in
Switzerland for drug- or arms-trafficking offenses, and more than 1,000 others
were under indictment.
Ultimately, Operation
Essential Harvest is based on two fictions: that Macedonia's ethnic Albanian
rebels have only 3,300 weapons, and that their objective isn't to keep NATO in
Macedonia indefinitely. Neither belief is true. The rebels have far more weapons
and easy access to resupplies. They are also served by NATO's presence because
it keeps Macedonia's government forces out of their occupied
territory.
What remains to be seen is how the
rebels keep NATO in Macedonia or how they will make the alliance return when
Operation Essential Harvest comes to an end.
Gary Dempsey, a foreign policy analyst at the Cato Institute, is the lead author of the newly published book, "Fool's Errands: America's Recent Encounters with Nation-Building."
http://www.washtimes.com/commentary/20010909-30515384.htm
------------------------------------------------- This Discussion List is the follow-up for the old stopnato @listbot.com that has been shut down
==^================================================================ EASY UNSUBSCRIBE click here: http://topica.com/u/?a84x2u.a9spWA Or send an email To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] This email was sent to: archive@jab.org T O P I C A -- Register now to manage your mail! http://www.topica.com/partner/tag02/register ==^================================================================