On
12th March 2000, the BBC broadcast a programme entitled Moral Combat: NATO at War, which examined, amongst other things,
what happened in Kosovo in the period October 1998 to March 1999, including the
Racak incident. The journalist
responsible for it was Alan Little.
Little was a BBC correspondent in the Balkans during the break-up of
Yugoslavia. At that time he was far
from sympathetic to the Serbs.
A
transcript of the whole programme is available here. The following is the part of the transcript,
dealing with the situation on the ground in Kosovo after the Holbrooke
agreement in October 1998, in which Milosevic agreed to a ceasefire in Kosovo
and to reduce his forces there to pre-war levels. Specifically, it examines the incident at Racak, which was the
trigger for the Rambouillet conference and hence the war. Under the agreement, the Kosovo Verification
Mission (KVM), headed by US career diplomat, William Walker, was allowed into
Kosovo to monitor the ceasefire under the auspices of the Organisation for
Security Co-operation in Europe (OSCE).
Alan
Little (indicated by AL below) spoke the commentary and asked the questions.
AL: Walker's cease-fire monitors drove round Kosovo
in brightly- coloured orange vehicles.
Their job was to watch as Milosevic withdrew his police and returned his
troops to barracks. In the beginning, he complied. The German General Klaus Naumann
had helped broker the cease-fire deal
General
Klaus Naumann (Chairman, NATO Military Committee): He really did what he had asked him to do. He withdrew within 48 hours some 6000 police
officers [from Kosovo] and the military back into the barracks. This was also confirmed by the OSCE
verification mission.
AL: This [KLA activity] was much harder to monitor. Where the Serbs withdrew, the KLA moved
forward filling the vacuum. For the
cease-fire agreement had a fatal flaw.
It was one sided. It had
required nothing verifiable from the KLA.
General
Agim Ceku (KLA military leader): The
cease-fire was very useful to us. It
helped us to get organised, to consolidate, to grow.
Wolfgang
Petritsch (EU Special Envoy to Kosovo): They were really growing ever
stronger from day to day, and there was nobody to really stop them.
General
Agim Ceku (KLA military leader): We aimed to spread our units over as much
territory as possible, we wanted KLA units and cells across the whole of
Kosovo.
AL: At Podujevo, in
the north of Kosovo, the KLA now filled the very positions the Serbs had
vacated. The pattern was repeated across the province. William Walker's Deputy was a British
General. He and his colleagues could see what the KLA was doing, but had no
means of stopping or even discouraging it.
General
John Drewienkiewicz (Kosovo Verification Mission): The Kosovo
Liberation Army infiltrated forward.
Wolfgang
Petritsch (EU Special Envoy to Kosovo): The KLA basically came back into
its old positions that they held before the summer offensive.
General
Drewienkiewicz: And this started to be a factor in dealing with
the Serbs. Because the Serbs said to us, well hang on, the deal was that we
withdrew from these things, and you were going to police the agreement. So can
you just get these Kosovo Liberation Army out of the trenches that we were in a
month ago?
AL: But they
couldn't. At NATO headquarters there
was growing disquiet. We've obtained
confidential minutes of the North Atlantic Council or NAC, NATO's governing
body. They talk of the KLA as "the
main initiator of the violence and state…" It has launched what appears to
be a deliberate campaign of provocation".
This is how William walker himself reported the situation then, in
private.
General
Naumann: Ambassador Walker stated in the NAC that the majority of violations was
caused by the KLA.
AL: Walker didn't admit that in public at the
time. He still doesn't.
AL
to William Walker: You told the North Atlantic Council that it was
the KLA side who were largely responsible.
William
Walker: I would have to go back and re-read my notes. I don't remember. Most of the briefings I gave to the North
Atlantic Council was that both sides were in non-compliance. Both sides were doing things that were
wrong. Obviously it was easier [long
pause] to point at the government.
…
AL
to Madeleine Albright: There was no clear mechanism to punish them [the
KLA] if they failed to behave in what you
call a reasonable way?
Madeleine
Albright: Well, I think the punishment was that they would lose completely the
backing of er… the United States and the Contact Group.
AL: With US backing for the KLA now barely concealed,
Milosevic sent the army back into action to clear the KLA out of Podujevo. The
doomed procession to war with NATO had begun.
The KLA continued to smuggle arms over mountain passes from Albania.
Albanian civilians were press ganged
into service. Before dawn on the
fifteenth of December, they walked into a well prepared Serbian ambush. Most of those taken by surprise fled back into Albania. But 31
Albanian men were killed. Later on the same day in an apparent act of
revenge, what remained of ethnic co-existence in the city of Pec nearby, was to
be torn apart. A group of hooded, masked men drove up to this bar [picture
shown of Panda bar] which was popular with
young Serbs [6 of them were killed]
…
AL:
Walker condemned both the ambush on
the border and the killings in the bar in equal measure.
William
Walker: It really looked like this was a tit-for-tat again. The KLA hearing about their people being
killed up on the border had done this in Pec.
AL
to William Walker: There is a huge difference, isn't there, between
people killed in a legitimate military exchange and a bunch of hooded unknowns
walking into a bar and killing some teenagers?
William
Walker: I think the point is, we really didn't know what had happened in Pec. Yes
the government was saying it was KLA gangsters who had come in and sprayed this
bar. When you don't know what has happened, it's a lot more difficult to sort
of pronounce yourself.
AL: One month later
Walker was to break this rule to spectacular effect. He pronounced himself with
absolute certainty about a massacre that occurred here, in the village of
Racak. Even now, more than a year on,
important questions about what happened here remain unanswered. This is the story of that massacre, of the
political uses to which it was put, of how it galvanised the west to go to war, and of the pivotal role played by William
Walker. There is nothing remarkable about Racak. Except that by January 1999,
the KLA had moved in, most of the villagers had fled, and trenches had been dug
on the edge of the village.
Paula
Ghedini (UN Refugee Agency): We encountered many villages where the villagers
themselves told us in very clear terms that they would prefer to be left
completely alone. Often times they felt that if a KLA group were to come into
their village, that would put them under greater threat.
AL: From camouflaged
positions near Racak the KLA launched well prepared hit and run strikes against
Serb patrols. In early January, they killed four Serb policemen.
Zymer
Lubovci (KLA fighter): We saw them coming, so we prepared and opened
fire. But it was guaranteed that every
time we took action they would take revenge on civilians.
AL: Racak did not
have to wait long for the retaliation.
The attack began on the morning of January 15th.
Hasim
Thaci (KLA leader): A ferocious struggle took place. We suffered
heavy losses, but so did the Serbs. They
set out to commit atrocities, because a key KLA unit was based in this area.
AL: International
observers watched from safe high ground as Serb forces took control of the
village. They moved from house to house. Most were empty. The KLA had gone.
When the Serb forces pulled out in the afternoon, they announced they'd killed
15 KLA men in action. The international
monitors entered the village and reported nothing unusual. Only next morning
did the full force of Serb retaliation become apparent. William Walker went to
see for himself.
William
Walker: We progressed up the hill and about every 15 or 20 yards there was
another body as we kept going up the hill, and I don't know how many bodies we
passed before we got to a pile of bodies.
AL:
By the time
Walker arrived the KLA had retaken control of Racak.
William
Walker: [Archive: at Racak on 16th January 1999] I think its going to take me a few minutes to
determine what I really should say, and I'd like to hold a press conference in
Pristina later this afternoon.
William Walker: [Archive: at a press conference, later] The facts as verified by KVM include evidence of
arbitrary detentions, extra-judicial killings, and the mutilation of unarmed
civilians of Albanian ethnic origin in the village of Racak by the MUP and VJ.
AL: In other words,
he blamed the Serbian police and the Yugoslav army. Walker was supposed to be an independent international
official. But did he seek direct
instruction now from the Americans?
William
Walker: Without calling any of my capitals I told what I thought I had seen,
which was the end result of a massacre.
Richard
Holbrooke: William Walker, the head of the Kosovo Verification Mission, called me on
a cell phone from Racak.
AL
to William Walker: But you don’t
remember calling Washington at all?
William
Walker shook his head.
General
Wesley Clark (Supreme Allied Commander Europe): I got a call from Bill Walker. He said there’s a massacre. I’m standing here. I can see the bodies.
AL
to William Walker: And you
didn’t speak to General Clark or anybody like that?
William
Walker shook his head.
AL: Walker’s comments gave the green light to enter
Kosovo’s war. The KLA had pulled in its
mighty ally.
Labour
& Trade Union Review