By Tahir Mirza
DawnLahore -- If President Clinton and NATO had said they were going to kill Slobodan Milosevic, the Yugoslav federation president, many of us would have said: "The sooner the better."
The present Yugoslav leadership is one of the most blood-thirsty and cruel regimes of the century. What it has done in Bosnia and Croatia and is now doing in Kosovo is appalling. The recent massacre of ethnic Albanians in Pristina was horrifying in its sheer brutality.
If Milosevic had not been stopped, we would have seen ethnic cleansing in Kosovo on a scale far worse than the wretched Balkans region has suffered since the break up of the old Yugoslavia. Therefore, Wednesday's NATO air strikes against Serbia have been generally welcomed. The Atlantic alliance has acted after a year of dithering and when everyone had come to the conclusion that Milosevic would continue to get a reprieve because the whites were finding it difficult to bomb fellow whites. Not since the Second World War has a sovereign European state been attacked by another European state or a combination of European states (discounting the Soviet interventions in the then Soviet satellites in East Europe).
The outcome of the bombings on Milosevic's defence facilities remains uncertain. If the Yugoslav leader does not give in and refuses to accept the accords hammered out in France earlier this month, how long will NATO continue with its punitive air strikes? Will it persist in its attacks till the Yugoslav leadership resigns or is dislodged by its military or by its people? In between, will there not be an ever fiercer determination on the part of the Serbs to wipe out ethnic Albanians from the face of the earth? Russia, which opposes the military action, has warned of a war in Europe. China has also refused to give its sanction to the NATO move. Since the outcome is uncertain, enthusiasm over the NATO offensive must be tempered with caution. There are other, perhaps weightier reasons as well for doing so.
NATO has acted outside the United Nations framework. Only a few days ago, on March 19 to be precise, Secretary-General Kofi Annan had pointed out that NATO was not above the UN. The precedent which has now been set may have far-reaching repercussions for the future, and make the world's powerful countries act in an even more unbridled fashion than they have done so far.
It will also surely be used to silence those voices which have been protesting against the daily Anglo-US sorties in the unilaterally (without UN approval) imposed no-fly zones in Iraq and the attacks on Iraqi installations. US and British war planes have been flying from bases in Turkey, and Ankara indeed was reported to have told the Americans that unless they acted against Yugoslavia to protect ethnic Albanians, it would withdraw the facility of letting its bases be used against Iraq. So there is already a roundabout sort of link between Iraq and Yugoslavia. The attacks on Milosevic will now be exploited to justify the continuing aggression against Iraq.
And who will dare protest if the Americans now fire off further cruise missile through the territory of a sovereign country to attack targets in a third country? Many other issues might be affected: the Americans will now be in a stronger position to protect their Israeli stooges and increase pressure on Yasser Arafat to put off declaring an independent Palestine state in May as planned.
One by one our defences against the arrogance of the superpower are crumbling. It will not be easy for us to say to the Americans, you are right in Kosovo, but wrong in Iraq. This should be clearly realized by all of us who are now gloating with pleasure over the NATO action.
The United Nations, however imperfect, remains the only hope for a legally acceptable resolution of crises, and it should continue to be at the centre-stage in all attempts to curb murderous regimes like Milosevic's or protect people from being starved and bombed as in Iraq.
