Through it all, Washington gave off an impression of disarray. The White House engaged in semantic jujitsu: Was this war, was it not? Was this genocide, was this not? Clinton worked hard to project the image of a resolute leader, but confidence was no substitute for answers.
Perhaps the most astonishing reality to confront was that the largest NATO military action in the alliance's 50-year history offered scant relief for the crude savaging of Kosovo. Officials doggedly insisted the "cumulative effect" of NATO's bombardment was starting to tell on the Serb war machine. They also said the late-week strikes against Belgrade itself were only a beginning. Even though many in NATO were nervous about bombing a European capital, the images of Belgrade buildings on fire was the first p.r. victory for the allies--and it made them hungry for more. As planners unleashed a broader weekend bombing campaign, they still believed air power could keep Milosevic from sweeping the province clean of ethnic Albanians. But as the human tide continued to flood out of Kosovo, the alliance could offer little but grim hope that anything they were doing could stop it.
The Nightmare Scenario
Before a conflict, the military's job is to plan for the worst case. Yet obviously the minds behind Operation Allied Force didn't really think it would be as bad as this. After more than a week of NATO air raids, Kosovo was still hemorrhaging victims of horror. Ordered out of their homes at gunpoint, often separated from husbands and sons, ethnic Albanian women, children and old people were marched, bused, packed into trains. As the long columns stumbled into neighboring states, Serb soldiers stripped the refugees of passports, identity papers, even license plates to eradicate any trace of their claim to the province. No one knows how many have died or been killed, but every refugee had a tale of terror to tell. Milosevic seemed intent on emptying not just the historically sacred (and mineral-rich) north and central zones dear to Serb hearts and pocketbooks but every square inch of the Connecticut-size province. Even without confirmation of the widespread stories of atrocity or war crimes, the brutal outflow told a clear enough tale. A systematic expulsion was under way that, NATO predicted, could empty the province of its 1.8 million ethnic Albanians in 10 to 20 days.
Contingency planners and intelligence officials in Washington insist they warned their political bosses all along that Milosevic would "cleanse" Kosovo. "We are not surprised," Secretary of Defense William Cohen reiterated on Thursday. He and others say it was the very knowledge that Milosevic was marshaling his forces for just such an onslaught that helped precipitate NATO's decision to start bombing March 24. "By the time our first planes took off," said NATO spokesman Jamie Shea, "thousands of ethnic Albanians were already fleeing toward the borders."
But just as many officials quietly admit that no one predicted Milosevic would be so ferocious so fast. The CIA knew as far back as last autumn that Belgrade was planning Operation Horseshoe: when spring melted the snows, the Serbs would move in their tanks and artillery to destroy the Kosovo Liberation Army and drive many ethnic Albanians over the southern and western borders. At a village a day--the rate Milosevic calculated the West would tolerate--Serbia could methodically eliminate the Kosovar population over a number of months. Analysts knew Milosevic would intensify his purge if bombing started. But they believed his intent was to crush the K.L.A. and then gradually drive out the entire ethnic Albanian population. Among political decision makers at NATO and at the White House, conventional wisdom also said Milosevic would cave after a few days of bombing. That scenario seemed so convincing that they settled on an air campaign of gradual escalation, beginning with limited attacks and building in sufficient pauses for Belgrade to capitulate. U.S. intelligence had no qualms about the military plan: even if Milosevic stepped up Operation Horseshoe, they believed, he couldn't empty Kosovo in a week.
But though the blitzkrieg Milosevic launched didn't quite accomplish that, it has already remade the face of Kosovo. Some 40,000 regular Serb troops, special police, paramilitary units and ultranationalist gangs tore through Kosovo "with complete ferocity," says a NATO official. "The intensity was not anticipated." And now NATO is scrambling to revise its war plan in a race against time. "He's working very, very fast," said NATO commanding General Wesley Clark, "trying to present the world with a fait accompli."
The New Battle Plan
NATO and Serbia are fighting very different wars. While NATO was attempting to grind down Belgrade's air defenses, Milosevic was fighting the only war he really cares about. He refused to fire spasms of SAMs into the swarming skies over Yugoslavia. That kept NATO's low-and-slow tank- and troop-killing warplanes away and confined vaunted alliance firepower to Everest-high altitudes. In Belgrade government officials chortled that the damage to their air-defense systems was "minimal" despite a NATO expenditure of "230 grams of high explosives per head" of every Yugoslav. Meanwhile, Yugoslavia's well-armed infantry stormed through Kosovo virtually untouched. "It is difficult to say," admitted Pentagon spokesman Ken Bacon, "that we have prevented one act of brutality."
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