Operation Kinetic: Stabilizing Kosovo
512
Operation Kinetic: Stabilizing Kosovo
512eBook
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Overview
Operating alongside American, British, French, Norwegian, Finnish, and Swedish forces, these surveillance and response units were instrumental in preventing violence in numerous areas before it could escalate and draw in the Serbian Army, which could have led to further genocide or war in the region.
Sean M. Maloney, a Canadian military historian with extensive field experience in the Balkans, draws on numerous interviews and firsthand accounts of an operation that would later serve as a model in preparing for similar efforts in Afghanistan and provide a blueprint for stabilizing operations around the world.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781640120457 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Potomac Books |
| Publication date: | 07/01/2018 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 512 |
| File size: | 2 MB |
About the Author
Sean M. Maloney is a professor of history at the Royal Military College of Canada and served as the Canadian Army’s historian for the war in Afghanistan from 2003 to 2014. He is the author of several books, including Learning to Love the Bomb: Canada’s Nuclear Weapons during the Cold War (Potomac Books, 2007) and Deconstructing Dr. Strangelove: The Secret History of Nuclear War Films (Potomac Books, 2020).
Sir Mike Jackson is a retired British Army officer and general. In 2003 he was appointed chief of the general staff of the British Army. He is the author of Soldier: The Autobiography.
Read an Excerpt
CHAPTER 1
The Balkans
A Quick and Dirty Primer
The UN, through the Security Council, could not guarantee the peace. ... Collective security could not, in fact, be organized on a basis of world-wide agreement. We knew that this hard fact must lead to changes in our policies. While we actively supported the UN, we had no illusions about its weaknesses, especially about the growing tendency to substitute propaganda for constructive debate and action.
— Lester B. Pearson, Canadian secretary of state for external affairs, on why Canada helped form NATO in 1949
Throughout the 1990s it was commonplace in streets, hockey rinks, and bars to hear Canadians ask in wonderment why Canada maintained such a large military commitment to the pieces of the former Yugoslavia. The most common remark was, "Why do we bother? They've been killing each other for hundreds (or thousands) of years anyway." Such resignation was understandable, particularly when UN forces in the region were hamstrung, or when Canadian soldiers serving as UN military observers were roughed up and handcuffed to poles at Bosnian Serb installations to act as human shields, or even when Canadian soldiers were disarmed and forced to undergo a mock execution.
Yet successive governments deemed it necessary that Canadian soldiers be deployed to these places. The answers to those questioning such measures were of course extremely complex ones, and it is not a stretch to suggest that Canadian decision makers did not and could not have had all of the facts available when committing the Canadian Army to the Balkans. Indeed the decision to participate in KFOR was based on better information than the decision makers had back in 1991, when Canada joined the European Community Monitor Mission (ECMM), the first Balkans peacekeeping operation. Twenty years later we are in a better position to look back at the events that led up to Operation Kinetic. In essence the violent collapse of Yugoslavia produced fragmentation over time. The situation prompted Canada to commit forces at each stage of that fragmentation to contain the violence, to prevent spillover effects on adjacent countries, and to forestall aggressive Russian intervention in the region that would affect NATO and therefore Canada. In 1999 KFOR was the latest step in that process.
Topography of Terror, Crossroads of Empires
Yugoslavia was a European country located next to the Adriatic Sea in the heart of the Balkans. The territory that modern-day Yugoslavia controlled in the twentieth century had historically been an area over which a variety of empires had fought. The Balkans region was the dividing zone between the Roman and Byzantine Empires until parts of it were absorbed by the Ottoman Empire in the 1000s. It was the battleground between the Hapsburgs and the Ottomans and then between their nineteenth-century successor empires — the Austro-Hungarian Empire and the Turkish-controlled Ottoman Empire.
In terms of religion the Balkans region was pagan until around AD 500 and then Christian, both in its Eastern Orthodox and Roman Catholic forms. Once the Ottomans had overrun significant portions of the Balkans in 1300s, some groups occupying what would become Albania and Bosnia-Hercegovina converted to Islam. This is how the region developed its ethnic matrix. The situation was not clear-cut, however, in that the conflicts in the region at that time were not conducted solely on religious grounds: Christian troops fought for the Ottomans, while troops from Islam-oriented societies in the region fought for Christian princes. Christian sold out Christian, as well as their converted Muslim cousins, and the Ottoman Turks took every advantage of these divisions and exerted control through fear and by threatening forcible assimilation of all ethnic and religious groups.
The Balkans region was like a seismic fault zone where the "tectonic plates" of the Eastern world, the Western world, and the Muslim world uneasily encountered each other for the next five hundred years. The nature of the conflicts that erupted involved temporary alliances, proxy wars, and jockeying for position. Given that the Balkans region consists mostly of mountainous terrain and is thus highly defensible, there was a certain utility to dominating the region. Control of the Balkans or key portions of it prevented attack and also provided a secure base from which to attack a rival.
The collapse of the Austro-Hungarian and Ottoman Empires in the wake of World War I permitted a growing Yugoslav nationalist movement to blossom. This movement had started in the mid-1800s among Croatian intellectuals who viewed the French Revolution with interest and saw the economic possibilities of a multiethnic, modern state: this was called the "Yugoslav idea." Similar concepts were generated inside Serbian intellectual circles at the same time. The outside control exerted by the Austro-Hungarian and Ottoman Empires did not, however, allow these ideas to be realized until the 1920s, when the first modern multiethnic state called Yugoslavia was formed. Notably, the formation of the first Yugoslavia at that time had been predicted back in the 1870s, when the Ottoman Empire was having economic difficulties and there was a belief that the bonds holding it together would eventually be loosened.
Two new empires, Nazi Germany and fascist Italy, then took control of the region during World War II and used ethnic division to divide and conquer Yugoslavia, pitting Croatian and Albanian against Serb and Bosnian Muslim. As the Germans and Italians were losing ground in the war, a young communist named Josip Broz changed his name to Tito and led a war of liberation (with Allied help) against the Axis powers. At the same time, however, Tito fought another war against those ethnic-based groups seeking autonomy — groups that had been suppressed by the Yugoslav government in the 1930s. Tito instituted a totalitarian police state that kept the lid on such ethnic-nationalist aspirations throughout the long Cold War.
Prior to its demise in 1991 Yugoslavia consisted of eight administrative divisions: Slovenia, Croatia, Macedonia, Montenegro, Vojvodina, Serbia, and Kosovo. The last three had a slightly different relationship in that Kosovo and Vojvodina were "autonomous provinces," but politically they were appendages of Serbia. All eight had a varied ethnic matrix, though usually one ethnicity was in the majority due to sheer numbers. The ethnic matrix in Yugoslavia by the latter part of the twentieth century included Croatians, Slovenes, Serbians, Albanians, Bosnian Muslims, and Hungarians. These ethnic groups were generally based on religious groupings. The Slovenes, Croatians, and Hungarians were mostly Roman Catholic, while the Serbians were Eastern Orthodox. Albanians and Bogomils or their descendants, the Sandzak Muslims from Bosnia, followed Islam. Over hundreds of years, particularly during Tito's time, ethnic groups were transplanted from one region to another for political reasons so that by 1991 no one region was populated by a single ethnic group.
The concept of the Balkans as the "crossroads of empires" continued into the 1940s. What was Canada's general position on Yugoslavia? Canada displayed little interest in the region until World War II, when Canadian covert operators working with the Special Operations executive supported Tito in his fight against Nazi Germany. These operations supported the main Allied effort on the Italian front, which included I Canadian Corps, by drawing off German and other Axis forces that would otherwise be used against the Allies. The British also had plans to land in Yugoslavia and move north through Hungary and into Germany to cut off the Soviets and thus stop them from seizing control of eastern Europe.
The Cold War emerged out of the smoking ashes of 1945 as the Soviets became more and more expansionistic. Canada joined the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), formed in 1949 to deter communist aggression and if necessary defend western Europe from communist attack. It was assumed for many years, with complete justification, that Yugoslavia was a Soviet ally and thus antagonistic toward the Canadian way of life and interests. In time Tito broke with Stalin and declared Yugoslavia to be nonaligned, though it remained communist. Despite this realignment, NATO remained concerned about Yugoslavia throughout the Cold War, and, since Canada was part of that organization, NATO concerns tended to be Canadian concerns, particularly since Canada had dedicated significant air and land forces to NATO in central Europe.
It was conceivable that the Balkans region might fulfill its traditional role as a crossroads of empires if the Cold War turned hot, though in this case the heat would have been caused by nuclear weapons. The Ljubljana Gap in Slovenia was considered by NATO planners to be a likely point of entry by Soviet forces targeting Italy and Austria; they would then have access to NATO's rear area in West Germany. NATO developed several defense scenarios, some of which had Yugoslavia resisting the Soviet advance and others where they facilitated it. NATO on the whole remained pessimistic about Yugoslavia's ability to remain nonaligned and generally treated it as a potential adversary.
A 1965 NATO intelligence estimate concluded that "despite 17 years of the regime's best efforts to instill a Yugoslav consciousness, most of the population still consider themselves primarily Serbs, Croats, Montenegrins or the like. The practical consequences of this psychology are a reluctance on the part of the more advanced areas of the country[,] such as Slovenia or Croatia, to be forced to contribute to the development of backwards areas in the south and an indifference to problems outside one's constituent republic. In time of war the tensions between the various people called Yugoslavs probably again would be the cause of disunity."
Why Yugoslavia Collapsed
Since the outbreak of hostilities in 1991 and the subsequent deployment of European Community, United Nations, and NATO operations within the former boundaries of Yugoslavia, the media and scholars have expended considerable effort in trying to determine exactly what prompted the country to collapse so violently. There is no single or easy answer: such events always have many causes, and, depending on which side one takes, the reasons will always be controversial with any given opposing group. Professional Balkans observers tend to fall into three groups: journalists, political scientists, and historians. Broadly speaking, journalists blame nasty people, while political scientists blame failed political structures. Historians tend to look at both but also to examine those factors over the long term and then place today's events in that context. Put another way, Yugoslavia collapsed either because it was never structurally sound in the first place, that is, the nineteenth-century "Yugoslav idea" was unrealistic, or it collapsed from a more immediate and malevolent agenda initiated in the 1980s. Finally there is an argument to be made that Yugoslavia collapsed for both reasons. Let us examine each of these views carefully, since all of these reasons have a direct bearing on the place of Kosovo and the need to deploy NATO forces there in 1999.
One argument suggests that the collapse was a victory of aggressive nationalism brought about by conflicting nineteenth-century nationalist identities that were reborn in the 1980s. When Yugoslavia was formed in the 1920s, not all ethnic groups, particularly the Croats, Albanians, and Slovenes, bought into the idea of a federal Yugoslav state. Some members of these groups did buy into the "Yugoslav idea," but those who dissented also covertly kept their dreams of independent states alive. These nationalisms were not fully developed, that is, there was division and argument as to what a Croatian or Slovenian state would look like, how it would work, and so on. Serb nationalism and identity were, however, more developed than other identities before Yugoslavia existed and more resilient when federal authorities crushed nationalist groups in the 1930s. Therefore it was in a better and stronger position when the breakup occurred in the 1990s. Consequently the other groups wanted to balance things out rapidly to right the wrongs of the past that had been inflicted on them by the communist federal Yugoslav system, which they viewed as dominated by Serbs. There was a tendency to overreact to the situation, particularly when communism in other countries collapsed at the end of the Cold War in the early 1990s.
A similar view agrees that the end of the Cold War promoted a revival of nationalism among several ethnic groups in Yugoslavia but that the number of people within each ethnic group demanding their own independent state and identity was much higher, that is, nationalism was more developed all around, not just among the Serbs. The problems in the region therefore were the result of a collision between fully formed cultural and religious values. The values within each ethnic group produced social expectations that in turn affected the interactions between groups.
What does this mean? One group defines itself as not being like the others. The differences are in language, religion, culture, and territory. Part of defining oneself as not being another may lie in the fact that long ago those who are not yours committed some transgression, possibly violent, against yours, which in turn assists in defining the difference between the two groups. Therefore the seeds of hatred in the Balkans were sewn in the very distant past. Historical memory is long in that part of the world, and wounds are carried from one generation to the next. Further atrocities in later years, particularly during World War II, were committed partly because of the situation at the time and partly because of something that occurred decades or even centuries before.
In modern Canada we use television, radio, and the internet to transmit ideas and information. In the medieval Balkans region religion and religious organizations were used to broadcast ideas to populations with limited education. Many Balkan cultures use disturbing, apocalyptic, and violent religious imagery: for example, Ottoman Turks are portrayed as demons in religious artwork. Fairy tales reminiscent of the Grimm brothers' stories depict Serbs as monsters. Atrocity stories from hundreds of years earlier are handed down in an oral tradition. It is not surprising that they serve as fuel for ethnic violence. Revenge is then exacted for perceived as much as for real historical violence. When civilizing controls like representative government are removed, terrorism and anarchy result. One observer believes that the Serbian Orthodox Church "deserves credit for having done much to embitter Serbs against Albanians [and] Croats." Similar remarks could be made about the religious authorities in each ethnic group.
Moving away from religion and ethnicity, one finds another view on the collapse, one arguing that all ethnic groups bought into the "Yugoslav idea" in the 1920s in hopes of external security, the promise of a representative government, and improved economic prosperity. This system worked until it was replaced by Tito's communist system. Communism's institutions and governmental structures just didn't work in the long term, since communism could only compromise so much between the ethnic groups. There was "widespread disillusionment and bureaucratic chaos." It was then undermined by individuals pushing their own nationalistic agendas.
The Yugoslav economy was already in trouble by 1979: economic trouble produces uncertainty among citizens of any country. Tito, the man who had created the communist state and held Yugoslavia together, died in 1980. Competing strongmen then moved onto the scene to exploit the uncertain situation even further, for their own benefit. One observer noted in 1991 that "if we were to judge the six presidents of the former Yugoslav republics by their characters of twenty years ago, then Slovenia would have a Stalinist head of state; Croatia, a raving anti-Semite; Serbia, a blood-thirsty Bolshevik; Montenegro an adolescent; and Macedonia another Stalinist."
Franjo Tudjman was fomenting unrest in Croatia as early as 1984, in part because he told his people that there were more Serbs in power positions throughout the late 1980s than any other ethnic group and that this affected Croatian aspirations. When violence broke out between Kosovo's ethnic Albanian population and the Serbian minority in 1987, Slobodan Miloševic emerged as the Serbian leader after traveling to Kosovo to reassure Serbs that "no one shall dare beat you." The effects of the speech he delivered on that occasion and the role of Kosovo as the "Serbian Jerusalem" will be explored in a later chapter.
In recent years more and more attention has been focused on the roles of the key leaders in the tragedy that followed. Indeed one view is that Yugoslavia didn't fall: it was pushed. The country "was deliberately and systematically killed off by men who had nothing to gain and everything to lose from a peaceful transition from state socialism and one-party rule to free-market democracy." Milan Kucan, a political opportunist in Slovenia, was part of this effort, while Tudjman in Croatia wanted to create a Croatian state at the expense of the Bosnian Serbs and Bosnian Muslims.
(Continues…)
Excerpted from "Operation Kinetic"
by .
Copyright © 2018 Sean M. Maloney.
Excerpted by permission of UNIVERSITY OF NEBRASKA PRESS.
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Table of Contents
List of Illustrations List of Figures Foreword, by Mike Jackson Acknowledgments Introduction List of Abbreviations Part 1. Background Chapter 1. The Balkans: A Quick and Dirty Primer Chapter 2. Kosovo: Cradle of Conflict, 1389–1999 Part 2. Crisis in Kosovo Chapter 3. Clash of the Damned: UҫKs and MUPs in the Land of Kos, 1998 Chapter 4. In NATO’s Vanguard: KFOR and the Canadian Commitment Chapter 5. Into the Breach, Dear Friends: KFOR Enters Kosovo Part 3. Canada and KFOR Operations Chapter 6. Warrior Politics: Multinational Brigade (Center) Operations Chapter 7. The Coyote Howls: Recce Squadron Operations Chapter 8. As the KRWAU Flies: Canadian Griffons over Kosovo Chapter 9. Finger on the Pulse: Battle Group Operations, Part I Chapter 10. Come On Feel the Noise: Battle Group Operations, Part II Chapter 11. Wait for the Wagon, Jimmy: Supporting Operation Kinetic Epilogue Notes Bibliography Index