Ethnic Cleansing

ZAGREB, Croatia -- From its horrific beginnings in the form of death camps and rape hotels, "ethnic cleansing" in the former Yugoslavia is evolving into a more subtle but still coldly efficient tactic, according to United Nations observers and recent victims.The result remains the same: a gradual, massive realignment of population along ethnic lines, particularly in Bosnia-Herzegovina, practiced without regard for either peace plans or international outrage. And violence, or the threat of violence, is still often involved.

PHILADELPHIA -- Democratic Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr. of Delaware, concerned that the rising tide of sectarian violence has become the biggest threat to Iraq's future, has proposed that the United States facilitate dividing the country into three autonomous regions for Kurds, Shiites and Sunnis. Baghdad would have separate federal status. Mr. Biden is one of the best-informed legislators on Iraq and has made six trips there. So his proposal merits serious attention, especially since more experts are likely to endorse it. I am dubious about the plan, even though it reflects a process of ethnic and religious separation well under way in Iraq.

The Angolan government and UNITA (Union for the Total Independence of Angola) are scheduled to resume their long-delayed direct negotiations tomorrow in Abidjan, Ivory Coast, under the mediation of the United Nations.This will be only the third round of U.N.-mediated talks since last October when UNITA, under its leader Jonas Savimbi (who once enjoyed U.S. and South African support) took up arms following its defeat in elections certified as free and fair by the United Nations and the Bush administration.

A LITTLE MORE than a week ago, I sat with sick and grieving families in Darfur, located in the western part of Sudan. Much of region, roughly the size of Texas, has been devastated by death and destruction carried out by militia forces. The Sudanese government has used old animosities to maintain power by supporting the killing, raping and pillaging of millions of innocent people with government-sponsored militia known as the Janjaweed. We have come to learn, through witness accounts and young children's drawings, that Arab men riding on camels and horseback - the Janjaweed - continue to sweep through black African villages to murder, rape and pillage.

Europe thought it had seen the last, 47 years ago, of exterminating people for their religion. Of kidnapping babies for their ethnicity. Of packing populations off in sealed freight cars to concentration camps. Of torturing and murdering many in those camps.Serbian forces in occupied Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina are committing those excesses, those atrocities, those crimes against humanity.Serbs do not hold the monopoly on brutality. They are not committing the only atrocities in Yugoslavia.

WASHINGTON -- In what is believed to be the most comprehensive U.S. assessment of atrocities in Bosnia, the Central Intelligence Agency has concluded that 90 percent of the acts of "ethnic cleansing" were carried out by Serbs and that leading Serbian politicians almost certainly played a role in the crimes.The CIA report, based on aerial photography and what one senior official called "an enormous amount of precise technical analysis," also concludes that while war crimes were by no means committed exclusively by Serbs, they were the only party involved in a systematic attempt to eliminate all traces of other ethnic groups from their territory.

SARAJEVO, Bosnia-Herzegovina -- Bosnian Serb militiamen stepped up the pace of "ethnic cleansing" in Bijeljina yesterday, driving about 800 Muslims, mostly women, children, and elderly persons, across a battlefront, a Red Cross spokeswoman said."

WASHINGTON -- In what is believed to be the most comprehensive U.S. assessment of atrocities in Bosnia, the Central Intelligence Agency has concluded that 90 percent of the acts of "ethnic cleansing" were carried out by Serbs and that leading Serbian politicians almost certainly played a role in the crimes.The CIA report, based on aerial photography and what one senior official called "an enormous amount of precise technical analysis," also concludes that while war crimes were by no means committed exclusively by Serbs, they were the only party involved in a systematic attempt to eliminate all traces of other ethnic groups from their territory.

BELGRADE, Serbia -- In the turmoil of Yugoslavia's civil war, the term "ethnic cleansing" has become the most popular euphemism for terrorism and atrocities.Advanced for the first time a year ago by the notoriously nationalistic Serb politician Vojislav Seselj, it has come to mean the forcible removal of hundreds of thousands of people from their homes in an effort to establish "ethnically pure" areas.As the people are forced out, symbols of the enemy nationality are systematically erased.

THE NORTH Atlantic Treaty Organization remains a viable alliance. Its three-day summit in Washington, not the celebration of a half-century bloodless triumph in the Cold War that had been planned, showed unity and resolve.What NATO countries agree on is that Serbia will be bombed until its rulers agree to reverse ethnic cleansing of Kosovo. The allies picked up support from small Eastern European nations near the conflict, many of which seek NATO membership.Hungary, the new member geographically most useful and most at risk, agrees to use of its soil for air operations, not for ground troops.

Editors at USA Today now say they forced former star reporter Jack Kelley to resign after he deceived them during an internal inquiry into whether he had fabricated some of his high-profile reports from abroad. Last September, Mark Memmott, the senior reporter assigned to review Kelley's work, grew suspicious of Kelley's account of an interview that served as the basis of a front-page story in July 1999, according to the newspaper. The high-impact story provided seemingly clear-cut evidence that former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic had ordered ethnic cleansing - the strongest connection yet uncovered.

THE INDICTMENT of Slobodan Milosevic for crimes against humanity in Kosovo is being expanded to cover crimes in Croatia and Bosnia, and elevated to the most serious crime, genocide, in the latter. The Hague's case against Serbia's former dictator will be complete. The crimes are systemic -- or they are not the crimes alleged. The pattern covered the wars in Croatia, Bosnia and Kosovo -- or it was not a pattern. Mr. Milosevic was the top figure in the chain of command for all three -- or it was not a chain of command.

It could have been the snow or the dreary subject matter that left several seats empty at Colonial Players' theater in Annapolis on Sunday. Some subscribers could have been put off by the play's focus on ethnic oppression in mid-17th-century Ireland, when Oliver Cromwell's oppressive English colonization policies prevailed. But that would have been unfortunate, because it is precisely this dark history that makes English playwright Helen Edmundson's 1993 play "The Clearing" such an emotionally charged drama.

PARIS -- The war for Kosovo was first described as a triumph of air power, a revolution in warfare and the first humanitarian war. President Clinton, during his trip to the Balkans, seemed to promise more such wars -- proposing what amounts to a Clinton Doctrine of intervention on behalf of the persecuted peoples of the world.More sober voices will be heard before that comes about. The argument can be made that this war was the last, as well as the first, of its kind, at least so far as NATO is concerned.

NOW THAT Slobodan Milosevic has made yet another agreement with NATO, the Clinton administration has declared victory and its media allies have joined the chorus of congratulation. Yet the question must be asked: What is there to celebrate? Who is better off now -- and for how long?It is not nearly as difficult to get Milosevic to sign agreements as it is to get him to live up to them. Now the Russians have become a wild card in the game, creating new problems. We have NATO and Russian troops facing each other on opposite sides of a conflict in the same country.

WASHINGTON -- President Clinton declared "victory for a safer world, for our democratic values and for a stronger America" last night after defeated Yugoslav forces began to withdraw from Kosovo and allied troops prepared to enter the war-torn province beginning as early as tomorrow."

ENDGAME is a term in chess for the final stage of a match when most of the pieces have been removed from the board. But the struggle over Kosovo is no game. Real people are being killed, raped and left dispossessed. NATO can't afford to lose in the endgame the future for Kosovars that it won through military and diplomatic action.This means no bombing pause that allows Serbia's forces to regroup or complete ethnic cleansing while the United Nations Security Council stalls over a resolution.

MORINA PASS, Albania -- Some wept in fear and rage. Others smiled in relief. And still others crossed a border with a deadness in their eyes that matched the desperation of their lives.This was the scene at the Morina Pass, along the Yugoslav-Albanian border, a lonely outpost where deliverance melded with heartbreak for ethnic Albanian refugees fleeing Serbia's war-ravaged province of Kosovo.Yesterday, refugees continued to make a crossing from war to safety, flooding through the Morina Pass on foot, in cars, on flatbed trailers towed by tractors, even a wooden cart pulled by two gray horses.

ENDGAME is a term in chess for the final stage of a match when most of the pieces have been removed from the board. But the struggle over Kosovo is no game. Real people are being killed, raped and left dispossessed. NATO can't afford to lose in the endgame the future for Kosovars that it won through military and diplomatic action.This means no bombing pause that allows Serbia's forces to regroup or complete ethnic cleansing while the United Nations Security Council stalls over a resolution.

THE BOMBING had to stop, and the sooner the better. Serbian acceptance of an international peace plan for Kosovo suggests that the end is near. Nothing is automatic, however. Yugoslav troops have to be seen leaving. Other terms must be met.The purpose of the bombing was to reverse the expulsion of Kosovo's people, which must be accomplished. It was not to drive Slobodan Milosevic from power or to make Kosovo independent.Mr. Milosevic's downfall would enhance NATO's generosity in reconstruction but cannot be a condition of the cease-fire.