Death, Lies and Videotape

Where else will tears come out than through the eyes?  On Tuesday, April 6, 1999, the mining city of Aleksinac is looking to some people like Guernica at 5 p.m., on April 26, 1937.  According to Tanjug Agency reports, on the previous evening at 9:35 p.m., seven bombs of great destructive power were dropped on this city.  What fell in the center of this small town, completely demolished 16 residential houses, while more than 400 apartments have been made inhabitable, among which number high rises with 80 apartments each.

In the center of Aleksinac, bombs demolished the Health Center, the Ambulance, the Dental Clinic, the Institute for Health Care, "Jugobanka"...  One bomb fell between the trading company "Agrokolonijal" and the factory for light bulbs and lamps "Empa", with damage having been suffered by a factory for electrical posts made of concrete and electricity stations, while one bomb fell close to the Nis-Belgrade highway...

What is left of the poverty which here is attended by tragedy every ten years?  Perhaps only the settlement of miners' pavilions by which a VREME reporter remembers this small town from the time of the mining accident in 1988 when a terrible explosion of coal dust took a hundred lives.  The same reporter remembers how at the nearby mining colony in that mining tragedy widows were caressing their little sons, with appearing to have come to a standstill with grief, but for the little water fountain in the courtyard of the miners' settlement.  The mine was later closed with people looking for work, doing this and that - in short, Aleksinac was struggling to keep afloat.  And during the Bosnian war, the facilities housing miners bachelors were transformed to house refugees from Bosnia.  The miners must have heard of that place before, for this "hotel" used to house miners from Tuzla.

In Bruxelles, the Air Commodore routinely stated that the rocket fell 600 meters short of he military post targeted, that this was caused by a "technical error or antiaircraft fire", and that "perhaps one projectile did hit the residential settlement;" on Wednesday he repeated the same answer to the repeated question, coldly stating that they are making their best efforts, which is evident from two slides in which he proudly demonstrates how a police garage has been hit, but that in this case - "someone simply had bad luck."  This phenomenon is called "amorality of pilots" and marks the phenomenon that from a distance an atomic bomb is only visible as a mushroom cloud.  That "someone" includes twelve killed and thirty wounded.

Dr. Gaja Miladinovic, a doctor in Aleksinac, was on call at the ambulance when a bomb fell on his family home.  Six family members were hiding in the basement which served as a bomb shelter.  His father, the seven-year-old Dragomir and Sister Snezana (40) were killed and were buried on April 7.  His mother Dragica is in critical condition at the Clinical Center in Nis, but is still able to tell how everything fell on them in the blink of an eye, how her daughter and husband were killed on the spot ("without a word they went their way"), and how her daughter-in-law Vukica, a schoolteacher in Nis, dragged two children out of the rubble, Dragica's grandchildren ("may God only let them live").  The schoolteacher Brana Stevanovic, who was on her balcony at the moment of the explosion, tells how she remembers that when they dragged her out of the rubble, all she could see were stars in the sky, and could not move.

The Human Rights Watch has opened the "Aleksinac case", but the list of similar cases is piling up daily.

That same night around 8:35 p.m., eight projectiles fell on Lucani, a city with 4000 residents, where three plants of the chemical plant "Milan Blagojevic" were destroyed, with the "collateral" damage which transformed to rubble every standing house in that small town.  Politika's correspondent in this town reports that firefighters managed to localize the fire and to prevent an environmental catastrophe.  On Thursday morning, planes came back to verify, in true mafia style, this destroyed, ecologically high risk plant.
In the attack on Nis, many civilian buildings were destroyed, the Economics and Law faculties suffered damage, the School of Technology "Neimar", the Historical Institute, with the food warehouse "Fidelinka" having went up in air, with destruction of the Machine Industry, the road network connecting the center of Nis with its northwestern section, with 150 windows being shattered at the bus station, with the tobacco industry having come under target for a second time thus far...  Novi Sad appears to be a center of the aggressors' attention.  What the residents of Novi Sad expected with fear and trepidation, occurred on Tuesday night, a little after 10 p.m.  The NATO air force attacked the third and last civilian bridge on the Danube (Zezelj's Bridge) and the Oil Refinery in its neighborhood.  The attack was continued during the night between Wednesday and Thursday, a little before 3 a.m., when, next to the Naftagas Promet tanks, the bridge in Temerin which is located in the part of the canal of the Hydro System Dunav-Tisa-Dunav which passes through the old part of town - the Settlement of Vidovdan, Podbar, Salajk, the Old Paor Settlement, the broader center of Novi Sad.  The UNICEF goodwill ambassador, the singer Djordje Balasevic, lives there: his street Ulica Jovana Cvijica is there which appears in is lyrics.  Zezelj's Bridge is fairly damaged.  The residents of Novi Sad are now trying to protect this last vital city connection with the Srem side of the Danube by gathering at night and creating a "live shield."  Admittedly, after nearly 50 years, bridge transport has been established across the Danube, in conjunction with the destroyed bridges.  The older resident of Novi Sad remember that after the world war, the small boat "Silni" (meaning "mighty"), used to cross the distance from Novi Sad to Sremska Kamenica, a distance of about 4 kilometers, going upstream with two stops at Becarci and Ribnja, in a little over an hour.  Later the bigger and mightier "Rijeka" and "Cetinje" used to travel faster, and were later only put in use for the May First Parade when the entire population of Novi Sad used to go Kamenicki Park.

Attacks on gasoline tanks and oil refineries caused spectacular fires which were visible in Vojvodina for 50 kilometers all around, but the well organized and concealed crews of firefighters managed to localize the infernos which engulfed refineries and tanks (mostly) of bitumen and oil in both sets of attacks.
Attacks were very powerful so that the rescue chief, who got around from one part of the refinery to the other with his "Yugo", tells how his car would be lifted from the ground as high as a meter with each blast.

The incredible courage and self-awareness of the residents of Novi Sad is reflected in the fact that owners of vineyards and cottages walk for hours in order to take care of their plants on the slopes of Fruska Gora, which is also a constant target where NATO airplanes put out of operation a Serbian Radio Television transmitter on the Crvena Cota peak.  To work one's small bit of land is more important than anything, and there is no danger to which a resident of Vojvodina wont expose himself in order to do this.  This is now politically called - a question of mentality.

The center of Pristina is in ruins, especially the part behind the old Post Office which used to look a bit like the part of Belgrade called Kosancicev Venac, with remains of the wooden houses from the beginning of the century.  On Thursday morning, this image was shown on SKY news as "the hell from NATO bombing."  The reporter said that a man told him "if this is democracy, then my dictionary has no such word in it," and that a woman shouted at him "You are beasts!"  Then a military analyst was brought in to say that sadly such things do in fact happen, and somehow this report was quickly withdrawn.  After a certain period, interpretations were launched that the Serbs did this themselves (creating their own Market of Markale) in order to damage NATO's reputation.

Willby, Her Majesty's Air Commodore stated in Bruxelles that the center of Pristina was not bombed, "supposing that this is a fabrication."  As proof he mentions that they recorded everything they did and that "this" does not appear on their footage.  The whole thing is slightly reminiscent of Odyssey 2001 when computer Hal goes out of control (he went out of control for sentimental reasons because he remembered the old lady who programmed him).  Tim Marshal, SKY correspondent who was on the spot, later tuned into the program to say that it is unquestionable that all the bombs fell from above, and that it was only possible that the Serbs did this if they had been standing on the roof and shot themselves at the foot with something extemely large.

There are rational explanations that the Serbs, hard put as they are, simply had no interest in destroying their own government buildings and communication centers at a time when they are precisely trying to defend such infrastructure from destruction.

Wilby's speculation suggests that the Serbs did the same thing with the Monastery of Gracanica, and with Cuprija, killing a seventy-year-old woman at a crossroads in this small town, her only fault being that she went out to see where the thunder was coming from.

On Tuesday, April 6, beginning at 8 p.m., the Governments of FR Yugoslavia and Serbia proclaimed a unilateral cease fire by all military and police forces in Kosovo and Metohija, and began holding a series of meetings in which the developed the principles of the agreement between Milosevic and Rugova: "The Federal Government and the Government of the Republic of Serbia, assessing that the implementation of these principles and the solution of acute problems must be initiated without further postponement, have unanimously concluded the following:
1.  That on the occasion of the biggest Christian holiday, Easter, all activity by the Army and the Police in Kosovo and Metohija against the terrorist organization "KLA" will be stopped, beginning with 8 p.m. on April 6, 1999, in expectation that such a decision will be understood as a gesture of goodwill and as the desire for a peaceful solution, which represents the unquestionable choice of the majority of the population of Kosovo and Metohija, regardless of nationality or religious belief.  It is also hoped that by respecting the will of the population, extremist elements will also refrain from repeating terrorist actions against civilians and representatives of the government.

2.  That the representatives of Government, in cooperation with representatives of those Albanians represented by Ph.D. Ibrahim Rugova, begin immediately drawing up a political agreement in accordance with items cited under 1., with the desire that a simple, temporary agreement be drawn up which would permit the functioning of self-rule in Kosovo and Metohija by Albanian and Serbian national communities, and other national communities.  After a certain period of time, this agreement would be the basis for a permanent organization of fundamental autonomy of Kosovo and Metohija within Serbia and Jugoslavia.

3.  That together with representatives of Albanians who are represented by Ph.D. Rugova, the return of refugees be organized, with adequate participation by UNHCR and MKCK.

The Federal Government and the Government of the Republic of Serbia believe that in this way all acute questions of Kosovo and Metohija will be dealt with: the stabilization of peace, the return of refugees and the establishment of self-rule, which affirms the equality of citizens and national communities, and establishes a foundation for a permanent solution.

NATO answered that this is not sufficient, Clinton answered that this is not nearly sufficient, Blair stated that this is not sufficient - and bombs blasted the center of Pristina.  That night the border crossing in Djeneral Janovici was closed, while the night before the attack on Pristina, RTS recorded an empty border crossing, with a convoy of cars heading back to Pristina...

"It's not going quite according to plane?" the journalist David Shukman asked recently.  Clark's answer was "we did not calculate on waging a ground war with airplanes," adding that NATO "has a clear initiative from the air."  However, it is not all quite as simple as that, state British pilots who are in charge of destroying armored vehicles on ground with projectiles sent from the Harrier - that is to say, to achieve the fundamental objective of the intervention.  Western agencies reported that on Wednesday it lost one two-engine aircraft...

At the end of last week, the Yugoslav Army announced that it will neutralize the last big stronghold of the KLA in the region of Jablaniaca, near Pec, and on Monday news arrived that this group had been destroyed, with only small band remaining, desperately roaming the territory.

On Thursday afternoon, April 8, the Federal Government announced that peace has been established after all offensives against the terrorist, who have been completely defeated, have stopped.  In the same announcement, the Federal Government emphasized that peace in Kosovo, and initiatives begun on the occasion of the meeting between Slobodan Milosevic and Ibrahim Rugova have opened the way for the return of refugees to their homes.  After returning from Belgrade, the Russian High Deputy, President of the Russian Duma, Genadi Selezniov made a claim in one of his statements that the Belgrade authorities are willing to form a kind of temporary government with Rugova.
David Wilby, Spokesman in Bruxelles, did not conceal his disappointment that "despite favorable weather (NATO) is experiencing difficulties in locating target."  Wilby has bigger problems: he was showing an outline on which supposedly several of our tanks had been hit.  He was asked where this took place.  He stated that it is on the place on the map which he pointed out.  "The enemy is smart," he told journalists.  The battle scenario was developed at the NATO center, but events on ground exceeded the plane, it is written in the report.  The chief of French diplomacy, Hubert Vedrin stated that the West is already working on adapting the draft of the agreement in Rambouillet, which could be used as the basis for a future diplomatic solution to Kosovo.  American Minister of Defense, William Cohen stated that there will be no reduction in NATO air strikes against Yugoslavia.  "This is not a time for taking a break.  NATO objectives are clear and our decisiveness has not diminished.  We are changing to a far more aggressive air campaign," stated Cohen, who stated after speaking to NATO General Secretary Xavier Solana and NATO Chief Commanding Officer Wesley Clark that plans exist for sending Alliance ground troupes to Kosovo into an environment which is in his words - unfriendly.

NATO spokesman have been trying to show in recent days that their side is "winning" on ground, and that battles are still waged on Kosovo.  Journalist Zaracina Tuhina, who left Pristina before the bombing, and was seen in Belgrade while the war machine was heating up, came to a London TV studio to renew stories about how Rugova has been arrested with his three children in his house, how the KLA appears to still be offering resistance in Drenica, but that she is concerned for the civilians who are located there.  Wilby later stated at a briefing that the KLA has "mounted a counteroffensive" and that the Serbian Army "is hiding in ruined houses."

On Thursday morning, the western media story about refugees who had "disappeared" on the previous day from the Macedonian border, focused on unconfirmed suspicions that there are mass graves in Drenica, Malisevo, and elsewhere.  On the previous day, the "mystery" about the refugees lasted the whole day, journalists were giving reports from the already well trodden ground where only yesterday refugees were being filmed on "no man's land" with Macedonian border guards wearing masks as they pass by them.  The footage showed scattered articles, boxes, improvised tents, one showed the red cross emblem, belonging and even family pictures which were left behind.  Then it was reported that in fact they are housed in at the NATO base on the airport of Skopije; then accusations against the Macedonian Government began for having evacuated the refugees on buses to Albania.  Then the Macedonian government was being attacked, just like the Yugoslav one, several days earlier, for evacuating people without their consent, for separating men from women, and women from children.  The State Department issued a warning to Macedonia for its obligation to keep the refugees, while several Balkan experts from large TV networks began to analyze Macedonia, its ethnic makeup and relations, with their analyses invoking sinister associations of Macedonia being the next in line for NATO's humanitarian initiative.

NATO spokesmen could not make up their minds: either civilians fled en mass to neighboring countries in an operation of ethnic cleansing (the NATO spokesman mentioned 412,000 new refugees, with their total number climbing to 912,000), or they are under Serbian artillery fire.  On the previous day General Shea related another extraordinary story - that the Serb houses are untouched because they have been marked with the Cyrillic "S", which greatly contradicts the fact that Serbs massively deserted mixed ethnic villages at a time when the KLA was pillaging, that they went to ethnically clean villages, and that those settlements, especially Klina and Gracanica, have been systematically bombed, with Yugoslav officials stating that a very large number of those Serbs went north to Serbia.

On Wednesday, for a moment it appeared that the separatist Albanians took over the running of the British Ministry of Foreign Affairs.  On Wednesday, Robin Cook appeared at a briefing with several Albanian politicians from Kosovo: Blierim Saljia, editor of "Bujuk" and member of the negotiating team, Baton Hadziu, Chief Editor of "Koha ditore" who came to life, having been declared dead ten days earlier, Bilji Bukurije, translator for Belgrade's British Embassy in Pristina (who was called by some "our Mata Hari"), with all of them saing that what is happening in Kosovo is "Schindler's List", but that there was no Schindler among the Serbs to save them, with a part of a sentence being repeated at the end that from them the NATO bombing is "the song of angels."

On Wednesday evening Belgrade was still pulsating because something like spiteful protest against the bombing alert was extended into the night.  At 11:30 p.m., the first bomb fell into the center of Belgrade.  It hit a building in 9 Nemanjina Street.  The initial rumor in Belgrade was that the Army Headquarters had been hit (in all the confusion, Reuters called this street "Nemanjina Devet Street" - "devet" means 9 in Serbian ), while this bombed building used to be the Ministry of Construction, with old residents of Belgrade having referred to it as a place of reference when giving someone directions - "down by the Ministry of Construction" used to be all that was needed to get your way around.  This building was engineered by architect Gojko Todic during the 40's in this century; it uses a neoclassical style with copies of Corinthian columns which accent the significance of the building.

Literally all the windows in the building were shattered, including the heavy entrance door.  The yard behind the building is full of glass.  There is also glass in the lane ways of the adjoining park.  The "entrance wound" is once again imperceptible, for the bomb is reported to have come from above, hitting the heart of the building in which, according to reports by a Belgrade resident who got a peek inside, there is not a single complete floor standing.  The night guard at the neighboring Association of Yugoslav Railways states that before the explosion, an airplane was heard and that a rocket whizzed by, while he threw himself on the street to save his head.

Otherwise this building was being renovated, and was suppose to house the Ministry of Justice (the place we usually throw eggs on when someone steels an election), and until recently it had a military purpose - invalid war veterans came there to get their pension checks certified.  The sone of a first world war veteran, otherwise a thrifty resident of Pirot (renowned for the scrooge mentality of its residents), stated as a sign of protest, using black humor: "You hit me in the belly, well this means battle to the end..."
The biggest damage is visible in the rear of the building, on the level of the third floor.  There a part of the facade fell off, with the broken ceiling visible through the shattered windows.  The windows on the neighboring public buildings also suffered damage: CIP Traffic Institute (across the street), the Government of Serbia (11 Namanjina Street), Federal Statistics Institute (Knez Milosa Street, behind the bombed building).  In the nearby "Sveti Sava" Hospital, which takes care of serious cardiovascular cases, according to the doctor on call, Dr. Dragan Marajnovic, there was a commotion among the immobile stroke patients who are getting taken care of there.  The machines reading their heart and brain activity must have registered shapes similar to seismographic readings during an earthquake.  On the other side, a hundred meters from the place of the explosion, in the famous Belgrade maternity hospital in Narodnog Fronta St., yet another group of children became war veterans on the first day of their life.

The image, or more precisely the sound of Belgrade at night is strikingly similar to Orwell's description of London in "1984": explosions in one, then another, and then a third part of town...  We quickly understood that negative utopia as "pure literature."  The same way Graham Green did, that is to say in "Our Man in Havana": the constant, destructive bombing of the "Sloboda" vacuum cleaner factory in Cacak appears to have been ordered by an amateur spy who charged the London MI5 center a pretty penny for his blown up drawings of vacuum cleaners.  Finally, even sceptics realized last week that literature can never surpass reality.  The destroyed cemetery in Pristina appears like an image "lifted" from Remark's famous novel "Nothing New in the West".  Truly nothing, except that the other was World War I, and this one we still don't know how to call.  It is a world war, for 19 states, including the "most powerful" ones in the world, are fighting against a single, abandoned state.

Perhaps it is no longer so abandoned.  On London's BBC Radio, the British playwright, Harold Pinter, assesses that the USA has become an uncontrollable, dangerous power, whose slogan boils down to: "Kiss my ass, or I'll brake your head."  Just like Pinter, the article appearing in the London "Guardian" points out that the FRY President Slobodan Milosevic is not willing to go along with that instruction, but that British Prime Minister Tony Blair appears more than happy to comply.  "The NATO action is not only badly thought out and catastrophic, and illegal, probably signifying the last nail in the coffin of the United Nations," warns the British playwright.  Putting forth several crude qualifications of the Government in Belgrade (he said that President Milosevic is "an unscrupulous savage"), but concluded that the US President Bill Clinton is also "a savage" who "with a shy smile is continuing the nasty tradition" of his predecessors Ronald Reagan and George Bush.  The Hungarian writer, Joseph Konrad, a friend of Belgrade's lovers of peace, issued one statement condemning the bombing.

Former Polish President, the legendary leader of "Solidarnost" and recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize, Lech Walesa, states for the weekly "Vprost" that it appears to him "that NATO bombs are not such a good idea," adding that the solidarity of Poland with the allies in this alliance should not free anyone from criticism, nor should it cloud reason.  He does not approve of the NATO aggression for three reasons: first, out of moral reasons, for bombing in the name of human rights appears like "exorcizing the Devil with Satan," which he assesses "can neither be worth of man, nor efficient."  "Second, the NATO action inspires reservations of a legal nature" from the point of view of international law, for it could be interpreted as aggression, so that on the basis of Article 5 of the Washington Agreement (NATO), that would mean that "thanks to it, we are also in a state of war against the Serbs," assessed Walesa.  "The principle one for all, all for one" can prove to be a "double-edged sword", for if holds when NATO actions are concerned, "then we are all at war," observed Wales, while posing the question, "it is of interest who in Poland took on responsibility for this..."  Walesa noted that F-117 attacks "are technically flawless, but are not always politically efficient," expressing concern that "a ground invasion" will occur in Yugoslavia also.  For the Yugoslavs he said that "they appear to be sending their opponents the message - you can conquer us, but you can't occupy us," and that "such an intervention will be difficult, and might even prove hopeless."  According to Lech Walesa, "immorality, illegality and inefficiency" are reasons because of which he is displeased with all of this, and as his fourth reason he states that "this is sufficient for me to be against any kind of war."

Even last week many analysts proclaimed the bombing of Yugoslavia to be a failure, and the ground intervention to be fiction, while French Minister of Foreign Affairs is scampering for French support to the Bulgarian candidacy to the European Union and NATO, because of the need for a concentration of NATO troupes, transportation and safe storage of ammunition.  On Wednesday, April 7, the Canadian Government announced that it is considering the possibility of sending NATO ground troupes to Kosovo, but the Canadian Minister of Defense, Art Eglton, states that there is little likelihood that the Yugoslav authorities will accept the coming of troupes to Kosovo as part of a peace plan, so that military strategists are "investigating other options for eventual engagement of ground forces."  According so some reports, Croatia has placed its army into a state of readiness, while military analysts on Croatian media which can be seen and heard in Vojvodina appear quite enthusiastic about a ground intervention and landings.
On Thursday, the arrival of Cypriot officials to Belgrade in on a mission to rescue the three American soldiers appears to have been compromised by renewed NATO air strikes on Serbian civilians, Cypriot sources report.  The same source stated that the Cypriot Deputy Prime Minister, President of Parliament Spiros Cyprianu continues to hope that he will be able to fry to Belgrade from Athens, but intensified NATO bombing created a "negative climate" for his mission.

On Thursday afternoon, news arrived that Cyprianu landed in Belgrade.  The Beta Agency reported the statement by the UN Special Envoy for Human Rights on the Territories of the Former Yugoslavia, Jirzhi Dinsbir, who assessed that "the bombing of Yugoslavia leads nowhere."  "All this must quickly stop, on both sides."  Yeltsin stated that for this reason Russia is insisting that a meeting of ministers of foreign affairs of the G-8 countries be held.  He assessed the bombing of cities, including Belgrade, as "barbaric."
Team of VREME Reporters