Intervention not only halted ethnic cleansing but laid a path to democracy
David N Gibbs suggests that Nato's 1999 aerial campaign in Serbia set an abysmal precedent for future humanitarian interventions, including the current intervention in Libya (A template for disaster, 22 March).
He focuses on common "myths" that have – in his view – distorted the popular understanding of Nato's defence of Kosovo. "The first [myth] is that, in Kosovo, war constituted a morally simple conflict, between aggressive Serbs and victimised Kosovan Albanians." Gibbs cites two comments – attributed to Britain's former prime minister Tony Blair, and former defence secretary George Robertson – which appear to show they both viewed the Kosovo Liberation Army as a threat equal to or greater than that of Serb forces. This is entirely misleading.
Under Milosevic's rule, fundamental rights were denied to Kosovo's Albanians in an effort to secure power for the region's Serbs. The KLA emerged after Kosovo's Albanians had endured forced unemployment and denial of the right to an education for nearly a decade. Its first public appearance came after Serbian police had killed a schoolteacher in 1997 because he taught Kosovo's ethnic Albanian youth in their native language. Nato entered the picture only after images of massacres of ethnic Albanian civilians surfaced and after numerous diplomatic endeavours had failed.
Contrary to Gibbs's contention that "after [the campaign ended] Nato forces in effect put the KLA in charge of Kosovo," administrative control of Kosovo was handed over to the United Nations. No former KLA members gained power in any real sense until democratic elections were introduced several years later.
Gibbs says: "Another myth ... is that bombing improved the human rights situation." Yes, it is a known fact that the ethnic cleansing committed by Serb forces increased after the Nato campaign began. But it is also a fact that Nato's intervention forced Milosevic to pull his forces from Kosovo after 78 days, hence preventing what then had seemed inevitable: the ethnic cleansing of Kosovo.
If Gibbs considers the Nato intervention a disaster, I wonder how he would classify the international community's failures to act in Rwanda and Srebrenica. Had the world again failed to act, Kosovo would probably have become another stain on our collective conscience.
When Gibbs says "it is wrong to remember the Kosovo intervention as being inexpensive or of brief duration", he's correct. The long-term and financial costs of the international community's investment in Kosovo have been high. But a valuable lesson can be learned here. As an international community, we are responsible for the protection of civilians in cases of genocide and ethnic cleansing. But we are not obliged to project our values and ideals on other nations in the state-building process.
Perhaps part of the reason Kosovo has proven so costly is because individual nations and donor organisations have allowed their own interests to take precedence over those of Kosovo's people. And while some aid will be necessary for newly established nations, they should be trusted to carve out their own destiny.