Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, June 1999, pages 7-14, 20

Five Lessons

Fallout From Ethnic Cleansing in Kosovo and Six Weeks of NATO Bombing of Serbia

By Richard H. Curtiss

Lesson 1:

In Kosovo, Victims’ Religion Didn’t Matter

For the first two weeks after NATO bombing of Serbia began, Americans, like people almost everywhere in the world except Serbia—and perhaps Russia and China—watched a televised procession of hundreds of thousands of bedraggled Kosovar refugees arriving in Albania and at the Macedonian border. Some were being carried on improvised stretchers, pushed in wheelchairs, or walking barefoot in snow and icy mud.

The result was one of the swiftest public opinion shifts in American history. U.S. President Bill Clinton, who faces no more elections but still gives the impression that he remains ever ready to modify decisions according to public opinion polls, started the NATO air strikes by insisting that no consideration was being given to sending ground troops into Kosovo. So did British Prime Minister Tony Blair and other European leaders.

Within two weeks of the beginning of the bombing campaign, however, public opinion polls revealed that 55 percent of Americans supported sending in ground troops if that was necessary to get the by-then nearly 400,000 ethnic Albanian refugees back into their shelled and burned homes in Kosovo. Sentiment shifted so swiftly that initially it followed no discernible party or religious lines. Middle-of-the-road Democrats, who had supported Clinton’s belated intervention in Bosnia and also in Haiti, urged their more liberal colleagues to abandon the pacifism that characterized the party during the Vietnam war and support their president’s venture into international statesmanship.

The schism among Republicans was even more apparent. Moderate Republicans, who had supported former President George Bush’s successful intervention in the Gulf in 1991 and considerably less successful venture into Somalia in late 1992, and who had helped then-Sen. Robert Dole shame Clinton into intervening in Bosnia, also closed ranks to support Clinton’s bombing of Serbia.

But leaders of the extremely conservative wing of the Republican Party initially expressed bitter, isolationist opposition to the bombing. They then left Washington for a two-week Easter recess with their constituents. After they returned to Washington in mid-April their rhetoric had modified somewhat, but the split remained. The confusion was best expressed in April 28 votes in which some of the same conservative Republican House members voted not to support what they were trying to label “Clinton’s War,” but also to increase the Pentagon’s emergency funding for the war from the $6 billion Clinton had requested to $11 billion.

Happily, there was no negative American comment about U.S. willingness to provide temporary refuge to 20,000 Kosovar refugees, joining Germany, Turkey, Sweden, Britain, France, Greece and Canada, all of which have offered temporary shelter to varying numbers of Kosovars.

Although it took some three years to mount the successful U.S.-led NATO effort to halt the war in Bosnia, whose primary victims were Bosnian Muslims, and close to a year to start NATO military action after Serbian murders of ethnic Albanian citizens of Kosovo were confirmed by international monitors, the two related developments have made one thing clear.

It is that the predicted “clash of civilizations,” between Islam and the West, proponents of which in American academia also are strong backers of Israel, is not going to involve the United States. Despite tireless efforts of American apologists for Israel to portray all Muslims as “terrorists,” the religious issue simply has not arisen in serious congressional or media discussions of either Kosovo or Bosnia.

Instead, Americans have looked upon the Serb actions as unwarranted persecution of minorities. U.S. support therefore went almost automatically to the underdog victims who, in both cases, happened to be Muslims.

It is readily apparent, therefore, that the only “clash of civilizations” that the future is likely to hold for the Muslim world will be along the already existing fault line running between the Islamic world and the Orthodox Christian Slavs, Armenians and Greeks. It is along this fault line that in the final third of this century Armenians fought Azeris, Russians fought Chechens, Turks and Greeks clashed in Cyprus, and Serbs are fighting Bosnians and Albanians. Neither the United States nor the Christian countries of Western Europe have allowed themselves to be drawn into any of these wars on the side of the predominantly Christian Orthodox states involved.

The Americans most directly affected by the Kosovo crisis, of course, are the huge Serbian-American and Albanian-American communities. The Serbian Americans already were well-organized as a result of the ethnic lobbying that took place concerning Bosnia, and even have a think tank to provide highly partisan “experts” for television discussions.

Since Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic prudently deported foreign journalists from Kosovo as he mobilized troops to start the ethnic cleansing, initially this gave Serbian Americans almost undisputed access to the nation’s television screens to protest the bombing. But after the horrifying television footage from the Albanian and Macedonian borders began arriving, day after day, U.S. public opinion solidified rapidly.

Ironically, a year ago this writer covered a midnight-to-dawn candlelight vigil at the White House on behalf of Kosovo by protesters who, it turned out, were nearly all returned American Peace Corps volunteers from Albania.

Now, with mass “ethnic cleansing” underway, Albanian Americans are getting themselves organized. Their first demonstrations were in the tri-state greater New York City area where, they claim, there are about half as many Albanians as there were in Kosovo. Features of the New York demonstrations were the appearance of several hundred Albanian-American volunteers, already wearing camouflage uniforms, who had signed up for immediate flights to Albania to join the Kosovo Liberation Army. Subsequently Albanian Americans, supplemented by various other Muslim and human rights groups, also demonstrated at the White House and in various cities across America.

The experienced Serb and novice Albanian ethnic lobbies each might be expected to find champions in the U.S. Congress from areas where one or the other community is strong. But the atrocities in Kosovo have rendered the Serbs’ previously well-organized congressional mentors voiceless and given the Albanians some new friends.

With each lobby potentially offsetting the other, therefore, America’s poll-oriented president remains free to pursue whatever he decides is in the American national interest.

Lesson 2:

U.S. Muslim and Jewish Leaders Support NATO Action

After three weeks of NATO aerial attacks to halt Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic’s “ethnic cleansing” of Albanians from the province of Kosovo, a slight majority of Americans had unified around a military policy of providing “whatever it takes to win the war” against the Serbs and a political policy insisting that the Albanian Kosovars be allowed to return to their homes rather than become a permanent population of refugees.

Therefore if NATO states eventually agree on introducing ground troops, either to force their way into Kosovo or to peacefully escort the refugees back to their homes, it is possible that the mostly Muslim Kosovars eventually will achieve not just autonomy similar to that taken from them by Milosevic in 1989, but perhaps even independence or partition of the province between Serbia and Albania.

In the United States, most leaders of Jewish-American and Muslim-American organizations issued strong statements in support of NATO military action against the Serbs to stop their expulsion of Albanians from Kosovo, and statements by some Arab-American leaders were almost as strong. However, there also were some rare exceptions to the consensus for support in all three organizational categories.

Among American-Muslim groups this writer was able to find only one, the Islamist Minaret of Freedom Institute headquartered in the U.S. national capital area, that criticized the NATO action. Said its chairman, Imad A. Ahmad: “I do not believe that the American policy in Yugoslavia reflects the humanitarianism professed by its designers. The NATO bombings have done nothing to ease the plight of the Kosovars. On the contrary, their state is more dire than ever. The embargo against sending arms to the Kosovars must be lifted so that they can defend themselves.”

By contrast, the largest U.S. Muslim organization by far, the Indiana-based Islamic Society of North America (ISNA) stated: “The U.S. and NATO should have stopped Milosevic before he butchered hundreds of thousands of Bosnians and scores of Kosovars. Enough people have suffered at the hands of Milosevic’s forces. It is time the U.S. takes decisive actions and provides leadership in the face of genocide and ethnic cleansing.”

The second largest U.S. Muslim organization, the New York-based Islamic Circle of North America (ICNA), urged its members to write the president and members of Congress “in support of aerial bombing of Yugoslavia...and arming Kosovars for self defense [and] independent Kosovo.” The statement explained: “We Muslims have our Islamic responsibility and duty to stand against genocide taking place in a Muslim country. It would be unconscionable for us to once again stand still while genocide in Europe claims victims for the second time in less than a decade.”

A newer national organization, the Islamic Supreme Council of America, a Sufi group based in Washington, DC, said: “In making this very difficult decision, putting Americans in harm’s way on the moral grounds of protecting the safety and right to life of the Muslim Albanian people threatened by genocide, the administration and President Clinton have taken a courageous step indeed. It is for the people and for the overall security of this area of Europe.”

Leaders of all four major national Muslim political organizations, the American Muslim Council (AMC), the American Muslim Alliance (AMA), the Council for American Islamic Relations (CAIR), and the Muslim Political Action Council (MPAC), were uniformly supportive of the NATO air strikes. Said Dr. Agha Saeed, executive secretary of the Northern California-based American Muslim Alliance, “We support President Clinton’s policy and actions to ‘persist’ until the international community ‘prevails’ in stopping the genocide that is being perpetrated by the fanatical Serb regime.”

In a letter to President Clinton, executive director Aly Abuzaakouk of the Washington, DC-based American Muslim Council, wrote that his organization “would like to salute your leadership and decisive action in dealing with this tragedy of the Kosovars…We urge you to introduce ground troops in this conflict and to arm the KLA that they may defend their own.”

CAIR president Nihad Awad told the Washington Report, “We support the NATO efforts to slow and stop the killing machine of Slobodan Milosevic. What we see is that Milosevic has taken Kosovo and NATO has taken the Kosovars. Milosevic has been given the wrong message that there will be no ground troops. For NATO to avoid defeat, it has to commit ground troops. What we’re witnessing is another Palestine.”

Jewish-American Near-Unanimity

There was similar near-unanimity among U.S. Jewish organizations. Press spokesman Barry Jacobs of the American Jewish Committee said that a conference call among major American Jewish organizations took only seven minutes to agree on the outlines of positions supporting the military action and calling upon supporters to give generously in support of the refugees. He noted that right after his organization donated $25,000 from its own funds for humanitarian relief for the Kosovars, an additional $250,000 came in for the same purpose from individual members.

American Jewish Committee president Bruce Ramer noted that “we cannot sit silently while a human tragedy unfolds in Kosovo.” A quarter-page advertisement prepared by his organization for The New York Times and The Washington Post is headlined: “When History Asks Who Stood Up to Evil in Kosovo, the Answer Will Be: NATO.”

An exception to this near-unanimity among Jewish-American leaders was provided by Middle East Quarterly editor Daniel Pipes, who mirrored reservations being expressed by Foreign Minister Ariel Sharon in Israel, when Pipes told the New York Jewish weekly Forward: “Attacking the Serbs can cause serious problems with Russia...I worry about our effectively aiding some very radical Islamic forces that would like nothing better than an outpost in Europe.”

In other comments supportive of Clinton administration and NATO military action, American Jewish Congress president Jack Rosen and executive director Phil Baum said, “We are prepared to support use of land troops if NATO believes they are necessary to prevent the spread of carnage in Yugoslavia.”

In addition to inviting contributions for the Kosovo refugees, president Richard Heideman of B’nai B’rith International, which has members in 57 countries, said, “B’nai B’rith supports military action by the United States and its NATO allies to halt the ‘ethnic cleansing’ of civilians in Kosovo. Ever mindful of the abandonment of the Jewish people by the nations of the world during the Holocaust, we must oppose the brutal abuse of minorities by majorities.”

National director Abraham Foxman of B’nai B’rith’s Anti-Defamation League said: “We support President Clinton and NATO in their efforts to prevent Mr. Milosevic from having his way. We urge them to see this moral and strategic challenge through to the end and to keep open all options, including the use of ground forces, to achieve success.”

The American Israel Public Affairs Committee, the principal lobby for Israel in the U.S. national capital, did not issue a political statement. However, it urged that donations for Kosovo refugees be made to the Joint Distribution Committee, a Jewish humanitarian relief organization.

Arab-American Ambiguity

In contrast to the firm positions adopted by most Muslim and Jewish leaders, ambiguities were expressed by some Arab-American leaders, whose organizations may include more Christian than Muslim members. Hala Maksoud, Muslim president of the largest Arab-American membership group, the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC), declined to take a position. She described Kosovo as not a strictly Arab issue, although under previous leadership seven years ago the ADC gave strong support to the Muslim-led legitimate government of Bosnia against the Serbs.

President James Zogby of the Arab American Institute (AAI) said he is “supportive of the goals” of the Clinton administration “but very conflicted over how the issue has evolved. At Rambouillet the Kosovars agreed and the Serbs didn’t, but the Kosovars paid the price… The inhumanity of the Serbs toward the Kosovars is unacceptable.”

President Khalil Jahshan of the National Association of Arab Americans (NAAA) told the Washington Report his organization supports the NATO action against the Serbs and hopes it will lead to the end of ethnic cleansing, the return of the Kosovars to their homes, and a political settlement.

Almost immediately after NATO bombing began, at a Palestinian Heritage Foundation dinner in New Jersey, former Arab League Ambassador to the U.N. Dr. Clovis Maksoud condemned both the Serbian atrocities and the NATO bombing. In the course of the evening, however, several U.S.-born Arab Americans privately expressed surprise at Professor Maksoud’s ambivalent stand and told the Washington Report that they strongly supported the NATO action.

Palestinian Heritage Foundation co-founder Hanan Munayyer, a Muslim Palestinian who grew up in Israel, told the Washington Report that Serb actions in Kosovo reminded her of Israeli actions in Palestine. “If NATO allows the Serbs to get away with this,” she said, “the Israelis will do exactly the same thing to the Palestinians remaining in Israel and in the occupied areas.”

Added a Palestine-born U.S. Muslim businessman, “This is the first time I’ve been able to support anything President Clinton has done overseas. We Arab Americans should not be criticizing him now.”

Normally outspoken Metropolitan Philip Saliba, archbishop of some half a million Antiochan Orthodox Christians in America, a majority of whom are of Arab extraction, chose a middle course. “War does not solve problems,” he told the Washington Report. “It only creates them. The political negotiations should have continued longer. But now that the war has begun, any settlement should permit the ethnic Albanians to return to their homes in an autonomous Kosovo. But at the same time Kosovo must remain a part of Serbia.”

Samir Kouttab, a recently retired Palestinian-born U.S. foreign service officer and former head of the United Palestine Appeal, summed it up succinctly. Although he, like the Serbs, is Christian Orthodox, he told the Washington Report he strongly supports the bombing of Serbia. “It’s not a religious issue, it’s a humanitarian issue,” he explained. “What the Serbs are doing to the Muslims in Kosovo is wrong. Someone has to stop them.” X

Lesson 3:

Kosovo Pits Israeli Government Against Its U.S. Supporters

Leaders of one of the world’s smallest countries, Israel, have always demonstrated lightning-fast reactions to world events, thus helping to fashion the media agenda to their liking. Kosovo was no exception.

Israel’s most important supporters, the leaders of U.S. Jewish organizations, have been almost equally quick. “We don’t have to meet and discuss things,” the American Jewish leaders explain. “We already know what we have to do.”

This time, however, there has been a problem. Some Israeli Likud leaders, notably Foreign Minister Ariel Sharon, took a position diametrically opposed to that adopted by the American Jewish leaders. To Sharon, the fact that the NATO countries were bombing Serbia to halt its expulsion of Kosovar Muslims, and were considering sending in ground troops if necessary to escort the Kosovars back to their bombed and burned-out homes, rang warning bells.

If the bombing restores refugees to their homeland, Sharon told his closest advisers, NATO aircraft might someday bomb Israel to force it to re-admit the Palestinians driven from their homeland. “If Israel supports the type of action that’s going on in Kosovo, it risks becoming the next victim,” Sharon said, according to Israel’s largest newspaper, Yediot Ahronot. “Brutal intervention must not be legitimized as a way to try to impose a solution in regional conflicts.”

American Jewish leaders, who from the beginning had identified with Serbia’s victims and some of whose organizations have placed advertisements in mainstream U.S. newspapers both to support the NATO military action and to raise relief funds for the Kosovar refugees, were appalled, first with Sharon’s remarks and second with Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s reluctance to denounce them.

The differing reactions illustrate the divergences in public discourse between most Israelis, who can hardly overlook the fact that their soldier sons and daughters routinely harass, oppress and occasionally shoot Palestinians in the occupied territories, and American Jews, most of whom prefer to view Israelis as beleaguered defenders of civilized values against vengeful “Arab terrorists.”

The dichotomy was summarized by Israeli journalist Gideon Samet in Ha’aretz, another leading Israeli daily, who asked: “Why did an Israeli government not instinctively identify with the victims of the Kosovo atrocities?...Because, despite the differences between the two nations, Israel is like Yugoslavia, swimming against powerful world trends while retaining the precarious status of international pariah...Foreign Minister Ariel Sharon did not shoot from the hip. He reacted sincerely in initially comparing the Albanians to Israeli Arabs and speaking of an independent Kosovo being annexed by an Albanian terrorist state. In an unusual confession, he expressed the fear that the West could one day attack Israel...Reluctantly, almost inaudibly, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu criticized Sharon. Even after Washington’s stormy protest, we still do not know Netanyahu’s real views, nor the government’s true stand on Kosovo.”

American Jews, some of whom have achieved both financial security and political power but still, more than a half-century after the European holocaust, instill in their children a self-image as perpetual victims, were truly shocked at the callous reaction of Israel’s incumbent Likud leaders. But leaders of major American Jewish organizations also had very practical reasons for their angry concern.

Wrote Doug Bloomfield, whose weekly political column appears in many of the Jewish weeklies that bind America’s far-flung Jewish community:

“Sharon and Netanyahu...risk doing costly damage to their already troubled relations with Washington. Even their Clinton-hating supporters in the Republican Congress won’t be very happy with Israel’s sudden reluctance to support America when it goes to war.”

Bloomfield’s remarks were prompted by concern that the Israeli divergence from U.S. policy might undermine the Israel lobby’s carefully cultivated image of the Jewish state as America’s “strategic ally.” One of the most useful arguments of Israel’s American media apologists is that in the United Nations Israel demonstrates that it is America’s most faithful friend by voting more frequently with the United States than any other country. They don’t explain that this has occurred solely because generally only the United States joins Israel in voting against Security Council and General Assembly resolutions condemning Israeli actions against the Palestinians.

This fear that Israel’s current stand on Kosovo might puncture the myth of Israel as America’s faithful sidekick on the world stage, along with real indignation at Israel’s easy identification with the Serbian bad guys, is reflected in editorials in two of America’s major Jewish community weeklies.

In its April 15 editorial the Washington Jewish Week wrote: “Differences are understandable. Israel and the United States, after all, must be guided by their individual geopolitical and diplomatic concerns. But it wouldn’t hurt to tone down some of the rhetoric attributed to a few highly placed Israeli officials, among them Foreign Minister Ariel Sharon. Suggestions that Israel—because of its relations with the Palestinians—might be next on NATO’s international hit list are out of bounds and needlessly rankle U.S. officialdom, including members of Congress who are strong supporters of the Jewish state.”

In an April 16 editorial entitled “Israel’s Muffled Voice,” The Jewish Week of New York wrote: “There is something disturbing about the clumsy, counterproductive way Israel responded to the U.S.-led NATO effort to stop ethnic cleansing by Serb forces in Kosovo...Netanyahu belatedly issued a statement supporting the NATO air campaign and suggested Sharon was speaking for himself, but this week his (Netanyahu’s) government continued to give the impression that diplomatic and political considerations, including Sharon’s new diplomatic initiative with Russia, were more important than standing up against the practitioners of ethnic cleansing...We urge Netanyahu to move swiftly to reinforce his message of support for the NATO and sharpen his condemnation of Serb ethnic cleansing no matter what diplomatic considerations Israel brings to the region.”

Stoking concerns of America’s Jewish leaders is their realization that President Bill Clinton’s stand on Kosovo, and what it will take to repatriate the refugees, may no longer be governed by the polls, or even varying degrees of conviction among the other 18 NATO allies. History has played tricks on this two-term president who came into office with an extensive domestic agenda and virtually no personal interest in foreign affairs.

Because his self-inflicted personal problems consumed so much of his time and dissipated so much of his political support, he will have to share credit with his Republican rivals for what little of his domestic agenda was enacted. Meanwhile, the Somalia, Iraq and Israel-Palestine policies bequeathed him by the administration of President George Bush all have turned into fiascos on Clinton’s watch. Even the rapprochement with Russia has fallen apart.

Clinton’s only foreign policy success, the Bosnia settlement, came 200,000 lives too late and only after prodding by his Republican rival, Sen. Bob Dole. Kosovo, therefore, is Clinton’s very last chance for any unqualified foreign policy accomplishment for the history books. After Kosovo, there will be no time left in his second and last term for anything else, either foreign or domestic.

Happily for Clinton, his Republican opponents are divided over the issue, with the party’s isolationist wing, personified by presidential candidates Pat Buchanan and Dan Quayle, arguing that the U.S. should not be involved at all, and the party’s moderate wing, led by former Naval aviator, POW and presidential candidate Sen. John McCain, criticizing Clinton only for not preparing adequately in advance and not committing “whatever it takes to win.”

Accordingly, there is little doubt that Clinton will bomb for as long as required. Also, although the confident and outspoken British Prime Minister Tony Blair may have to provide the leadership, it is likely that Clinton will join some other NATO allies in sending in ground troops when they are ready and if they are needed.

What is equally likely is that Clinton, and Americans of both parties, will not forget who stood with them and who did not in this second, unprecedented U.S.-led effort by Europe’s Christian powers to rescue a victimized Muslim minority.

Middle Eastern states, who have been as slow to react politically as the Israelis were quick, might profitably take note. It could even be a first step in turning Sharon’s nightmare into reality. X

Lesson 4:

Kosovo Tragedy Contains Challenges for Arab Nations

Muslim diplomats in Washington received some temporary relief from media questioners during the fourth week of NATO bombing in late April when the ethnic cleansing in Kosovo and NATO attacks on Serbia were temporarily eclipsed in the U.S. media after a rampage by two heavily armed students killed 13 persons plus the two perpetrators in a Colorado high school.

In the brief pause the diplomats could watch Democratic members of Congress blame the Colorado tragedy on the easy availability of guns (their Republican competitors get campaign contributions from the gun lobby) and Republican legislators put the blame on violent films and video games (Democrats get campaign contributions from the Hollywood entertainment industry).

But when the last heart-wrenching funeral was completed in Colorado on April 29, full U.S. media scrutiny of Balkan events resumed and phones starting ringing again in Washington’s Middle Eastern embassies. The Arab embassies, particularly those with well-organized press and information operations, welcomed questions about the aid their governments were sending the more than 700,000 refugees who by that date had been driven at gunpoint into neighboring Albania, Macedonia, and Montenegro.

Egypt was among the first countries to send medical teams and foodstuffs to the refugees, the Egyptian minister for press and information explained. Jordan has sent tents, medical equipment, medicine and food donated by private and public organizations including pharmaceutical firms, the Jordan Information Bureau in Washington was able to announce as early as April 3. A few days later it added that Queen Rania’s first trip abroad since she was proclaimed queen on March 21 would be to Macedonia, accompanying relief supplies for the country’s overflowing refugee camps.

The press officer of the UAE Embassy in Washington supplied a whole catalog of support ordered by UAE President Sheikh Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan, starting with a 200-bed field hospital complete with a surgical ward and surgeons, and eventually planned to include conversion of the local airport in Kukes, Albania, near the Kosovo border, into an international air terminal capable of handling the influx of relief aircraft, all at UAE expense.

Already, however, two to four cargo planes were arriving daily in the Tirana airport from the UAE bringing in tons of medicines, food, blankets, tents and even emergency vehicles, and many of these supplies were being ferried to the refugees in four UAE-supplied Puma helicopters.

The Saudi press office in Washington reported as early as April 3 that King Fahd had ordered two aircraft to fly to Tirana, the Albanian capital, with relief supplies that included 120 tons of blankets and rice, flour, sugar, cooking oil and milk. By April 22 the Saudi press attaché was able to add that 95 million Saudi Riyals (U.S. $25.3 million) had been raised by the Saudi Red Crescent Society and the Jeddah-based International Islamic Relief Organization and the Mecca-based Muslim World League, and that King Fahd had ordered the shipping of 2,000 tons of dates packaged in the Al-Hasa date factory.

Another press release reported that the Saudi Red Crescent was sending doctors and nurses and establishing field hospitals and health centers. By April 28 the Saudi Embassy press officers were so swamped with reports of shipments to the refugees from the Kingdom of cash, relief supplies and volunteers that they said frankly they could no longer supply accurate cumulative totals.

There were similar upbeat reports from the Kuwait press office in Washington. It reported that in addition to air shipments of supplies, the collection of funds for the refugees began with a gift from the ruler, Sheikh Jaber Al Ahmad, of one million U.S. dollars on behalf of the ruling Sabah family, and continued with the collection by Kuwait television of $10 million in donations from individuals and businesses. There were similar press reports of shipments of supplies from Qatar, Bahrain, and even distant Pakistan, with funds being collected from private individuals in public places in all of these states.

It was no fault of these embassies that very little about refugee relief activity from Muslim countries found its way into the U.S. press. While most Americans learned immediately of Israeli relief activities, a question-and-answer session at the University of Virginia revealed that few of even the Arab students there were aware of Arab relief efforts at all.

Off the Record

For example, The New York Times, America’s national “newspaper of record,” printed an article with a photo about the delivery of relief supplies to Albania by an Israeli aircraft very shortly after the ethnic cleansing began. Incredibly, the only allusion in the same newspaper to the fact that Muslim nations were doing the same thing, on a vastly larger scale, was one sentence in that lengthy article noting that as the Israeli relief aircraft unloaded supplies at Albania’s Tirana airport, it was dwarfed by a nearby Saudi Arabian aircraft delivering “blankets and rugs” to the refugees.

Equally demeaning was an article by the Associated Press describing Turkish participation both in the NATO military campaign and relief efforts. In the article AP included the gratuitous comment that “the plight of the displaced has not energized the Arab world, where many countries are wary of NATO’s effort to force a sovereign state to accept a peace plan it has rejected.”

The AP story also included a comment by columnist Bekir Coskun in the Turkish daily Hurriyet that “while the Christian forces send their children into the fire to protect the Muslim minority, the Islamic world does not even budge. Turkey is the only Muslim country that has sent its brave ones to this war of honor.”

A few Arab embassies were equally well-prepared with government statements condemning the ethnic cleansing. Saudi Arabia reiterated “its support for the people of Kosovo, who have been facing the worst forms of repression, subjugation and expulsion at the hands of the Serb aggressors.” Saudi Minister of Defense Prince Sultan bin Abdul Aziz also was quoted on April 3 urging that “there should not be silence about this either in the Islamic world or among the international community,” and adding that “it is first and foremost a humanitarian issue before it is defined by religion or by any other aspect.” He added that he “prayed God that this evil war would end and that the Muslims would be able to return to their homes.”

An Egyptian statement said “there should be a peaceful settlement” and placed “particular emphasis on the necessity of the return of all Albanians to Kosovo,” adding that “there should be no compromise in this regard.” The Jordanian Information Office reported that “the Jordanian government condemned on Thursday [April 1] ethnic cleansing operations, genocide crimes and displacement campaigns being carried out by Serbian forces in Kosovo [and] affirms full support to the people of Kosovo and the termination of their suffering soon.”

The problem, of course, was that reports of generous outpourings of aid for the Kosovars, and clear condemnations of Serb atrocities and ethnic cleansing did not address one question persistently posed by U.S. reporters, including the Washington Report:

“Does your government support the NATO bombing of Serbia?”

U.S. newspapers had announced that both Iraqi President Saddam Hussain and Libyan leader Muammar Qaddafi had condemned the bombing, thus aligning themselves with Slobodan’s ethnic cleansing of their co-religionists. Weren’t there any Arab countries prepared to align themselves with NATO?

Arab diplomats ruefully chose a variety of answers. Said one press officer, “I’ll have to get back to you on that.” But he didn’t.

Said another, “I think my government is waiting for a clear statement from the Arab League or the Organization of Islamic Conference on the matter.” But the Washington Report ascertained that as of April 30 the Arab League had made no statement.

OIC press releases issued from Jeddah and made available from its United Nations mission in New York started with a March 31 statement that “in view of the failure of all diplomatic efforts, due to the intransigence of the Belgrade authorities, a decisive international action was necessary to prevent humanitarian catastrophe and further violations of human rights in Kosovo.” It also noted that it was regrettable that the Security Council “has been unable to discharge its responsibility in this case” and “expressed its serious concern about the fact that the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia has unleashed its war machine against its own civilians.”

The OIC also said that “the mandate of the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia covers the crimes committed on the territory of Kosova.” The OIC has consistently called for humanitarian assistance for the refugees and their return to their homes, but its releases have become increasingly Delphic about the means to accomplish this, with no mention, postitive or negative, of the NATO military action.

Asked about that action, another Arab diplomat in Washington responded, “May I go off the record to answer that?” Then he explained that his government and people, who were part of the 35-nation Gulf war coalition that expelled the Iraqis from Kuwait, now are strongly opposed to the U.S. and British bombing of Iraq. So they fear that support for NATO bombing of Belgrade might be misused later to justify continuing U.S. abuse of the Iraqi people.

An Arab ambassador told the Washington Report on an off-the-record basis that while Arab governments were not publicly supporting the NATO action, Arab diplomats had worked successfully at the United Nations to thwart Russian efforts to get the U.N. to condemn the U.S.-led action. The Washington Report’s U.N. correspondent confirms this.

It’s all perfectly understandable. But after the “fog of war” lifts, enemies of the Arabs, and honestly perplexed Americans and Europeans as well, are going to ask a hard question. “Why, when all of the NATO powers, only one of which, Turkey, is predominantly Muslim, and all the rest of which are predominantly Christian, took military action for the second time after Bosnia to halt ‘ethnic cleansing,’ as Serbs call it, of Muslims in Kosovo, was there no Muslim nation other than Turkey, anywhere in the world, offering political or military support?”

And in the absence of such support, will Western leaders like U.S. President Bill Clinton and British Prime Minister Tony Blair be willing to lower their domestic approval ratings again to do the right thing on behalf of Muslims anywhere?”

Some, this writer included, take matters a bit further. If Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic gets away with what he tried to do in Kosovo, and if Binyamin Netanyahu is reelected prime minister of Israel this spring, very likely Netanyahu will try to do the same thing to the Palestinian Arabs, both in the occupied territories and in Israel itself. Therefore the precedent that NATO is setting to reverse the tide in Kosovo is vital to the future of Jerusalem in the heart of the Arab world.

Major U.S. Muslim groups sensed this immediately and issued public statements endorsing the airstrikes on Serbia, the use of ground troops if necessary, and the arming of the Kosovo Liberation Army. The Saudi Embassy in Washington also took some pains to make sure the writer had seen the statement by Prince Khaled bin Sultan Al Saud, former co-commander with U.S. Gen. Norman Schwarzkopf of coalition forces in the 1991 Gulf war.

Prince Khaled, who now publishes the London-based Al Hayat newspaper and has no official position in the Saudi government, said the U.S. and NATO need to be encouraged to “stay the course” and “not allow the Serbian leader to come out of this battle a winner.” The prince also noted that “to say that the U.S. is right in this instance is not to give blanket approval to all its policies.” He affirmed that “Arab countries should continue to show displeasure with U.S. partiality toward Israel.”

Prince Khaled is dead right on both counts. My guess is that a good many Arab ambassadors in the U.S. wish leaders in their own governments back home would say something similar.

Lesson 5:

Lukewarm Muslim World Support for NATO Action Is A Wakeup Call For the U.S.

On Oct. 29, 1956, Israeli paratroops dropped into Egypt’s Sinai peninsula, launching the tripartite Israeli-French-British invasion of Egypt now known as the Suez War. When it began, Hungary was aflame with a popular rebellion which soon forced Soviet occupation troops to withdraw.

But, as the West fell into deep disarray while U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower literally sent in the U.S. Sixth Fleet to halt the last-ever manifestation of European gunboat diplomacy in Egypt, Soviet forces regrouped. On Nov. 4 they launched a major tank assault that killed 25,000 Hungarian rebels. The Soviets then seized and executed Hungary’s prime minister and, by the end of the year, 150,000 Hungarians had fled their country. Thus ended a chain reaction of anti-Soviet unrest that had been sweeping the captive nations of Eastern Europe. Had it succeeded, with Western help, it might have raised the “Iron Curtain” and ended the East-West Cold War 33 years before the dismantling of the Berlin Wall did the same thing.

At the time, U.S. Secretary of State John Foster Dulles told Eisenhower it was “nothing less than tragic that at this very time when we are on the point of winning an immense and long-hoped-for victory over Soviet colonialism in Eastern Europe,” Middle East events had split the U.S. and its allies.

Later Eisenhower mused in his memoirs, “I still wonder what would have been my recommendation to the Congress and the American people had Hungary been accessible by sea or through the territory of allies who might have agreed to react positively to the tragic fate of the Hungarian people. As it was, however, Britain and France could not possibly have moved with us into Hungary.”

It was not the last time the Israeli-Palestinian impasse—still unsettled solely because of American domestic politics—would cripple U.S. diplomatic initiatives elsewhere, particularly with Middle Eastern allies. As the Desert Shield buildup was begun in 1990 to force Iraqi forces out of Kuwait, America’s greatest fear and Saddam Hussain’s greatest hope was that Israel would launch an airstrike against his forces, and very likely precipitate the withdrawal of most of the Muslim states from the Gulf war coalition. After the Desert Storm military operation was launched in 1991, the Iraqi president fired half of his Scud missiles not at coalition forces but at Israel in hopes its retaliation would fracture the alliance. Subsequently the U.S. nearly doubled its economic and military aid to Israel as a payoff for its “restraint.”

Kosovo is only the latest manifestation of the debilitating effect the unsettled business in Israel has on U.S. diplomacy. The U.S. and its NATO allies were blocked by the threat of a Russian veto from obtaining a U.N. Security Council resolution that would make the air strikes against Serbia seem a lot less like a reversion to gunboat diplomacy.

However, Russia would not have been able to stop a veto-proof U.N. General Assembly resolution in support of the NATO military action to reverse Serb ethnic cleansing in Kosovo. But the U.S. did not seek this diplomatic cover, which would provide a face-saving rationale for most non-NATO countries to cooperate, because this would reopen the matter of previous U.N. General Assembly “Uniting for Peace” resolutions—passed to halt illegal Israeli actions in the occupied territories—which Israel has continued and the U.S. has ignored.

Twice in the past four years U.S.-led NATO forces have used military force to halt a massacre by Serbian Christians of Balkan Muslims, first in Bosnia in 1996, when a number of Muslim countries joined the military campaign, and now in Kosovo, where Turkey is the only Muslim-majority country participating.

All Islamic countries deplore the ethnic cleansing in Kosovo, and both the leaders and the people in virtually all of those countries are actively engaged in getting humanitarian relief to the Kosovar refugees, and raising money for more.

But when it comes to political support for the NATO bombing, only the leaders of American Muslim organizations have dared to step forward, presumably along with Muslim leaders in the other NATO countries and a few individuals, not governments, in the Islamic world.

Although representatives of Muslim governments have been helpful behind the scenes at the United Nations, and perhaps would be helpful elsewhere if they were needed, not a single one of the 45 governments in Muslim or predominately Muslim countries has offered public support.

A few Muslim officials are apologetic. “We can’t,” say the most conciliatory Arab government leaders, “because of what you have done to the Palestinians, what you are doing right now to the Iraqi people, and the fear among our people that someday you’ll do it to the rest of us as well.”

Other Muslim government leaders are contemptuous. “Why should we support you over Kosovo,” they ask, “when we know you’ll only stay there so long as it pleases your Jewish lobby at home?”

And there are those, perhaps the great majority of less-educated citizens in the Islamic world, who believe domestic pressures have little to do with self-defeating American Middle East policy. It can only be explained, they maintain, by an American imperialistic desire to control the energy reserves of the Middle East, or perhaps to control the entire world. “We don’t know why you are doing this in Kosovo,” they maintain, “but it certainly isn’t to help the Albanian Muslims there.”

Are we really all that bad? Obviously Americans don’t think so, but so long as Americans are perceived as inconstant and unpredictable, or willing or unwitting dupes, or even modern, high-tech practitioners of old-fashioned gun-boat diplomacy, U.S. troubles will increase—and not just in the Middle East.

Ask people in Europe, Asia, Africa or Latin America about their perception of the United States and you may or may not get a little more charity, but you’ll certainly elicit a lot of the same assessments. An average-sized nation perceived as a bully is merely contemptible or pathetic. But an assertive or unpredictable superpower is very, very scary. It provides a made-to-order hate object on which to hang the blame for everyone’s frustrations everywhere.

In Kosovo, the U.S. has demonstrated that it can tell right from wrong, and that in deciding who’s the criminal and who’s the victim, neither religion nor ethnicity matters. Maybe afterward, the world’s only remaining superpower can follow its own example by abandoning double standards elsewhere, starting in Iraq and Palestine.

Richard Curtiss is the executive editor of the Washington Report.