[PEN-L:7364] (Fwd) Guardian editorial: DISPLACED PEOPLE... HARASSED, BUT NO

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Date sent:      	Thu, 27 May 1999 15:32:34 -0700
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Subject:        	Guardian editorial: DISPLACED PEOPLE... HARASSED, BUT NOT
 	NECESSARILY WORSE

The Guardian (London and Manchester)		Wednesday May 26, 1999

Editorial:

DISPLACED PEOPLE... HARASSED, BUT NOT NECESSARILY WORSE

The recent UN mission to Kosovo represented an opportunity for
objective observers to test the truth of some of the allegations made
against the Serbs since the war began. Sergio Vieira de Mello, its
leader, will be reporting in full to the UN Secretary General, Kofi
Anan, later this week. The mission had just three days in Kosovo,
and members were not able to visit all the areas they had wished to
see, but they were able to talk to many displaced Kosovo
Albanians. The initial impression, voiced by de Mello at a press
conference in Montenegro earlier this week, is that 'there has been
an attempt at displacing internally and externally a shocking number
of civilians.' The arrival of yet more refugees at the Macedonian
border this week shows that this tragic displacement continues.
Indeed, whenever a pause in such departures leads to the hope that
the uprooting of Kosovans may have ended, it seems that a fresh
exodus is reported.

But the release by the Serbians at the weekend of a large number of
young men who had been presumed murdered underlines with what
care these issues should be treated. We do not yet know enough
about what has happened in Kosovo to throw about words like
'genocide' or to use the phrase 'ethnic cleansing' without
modification. Ethnic cleansing has certainly happened, but whether
all of it was fully willed by the Serbs must remain an open question.
At one end of the spectrum there is crude counter insurgency war,
in which villages in areas where there was Kosovo Liberation Army
activity were shelled, police and para-military units moved in, and
villagers fled, some of them not stopping until they reached a
foreign country. At the other, we have the Serbian authorities
laying on buses and trains to the border. What we know suggests
that for a year or more the Serbs were certainly ready to clear
people out of areas they wanted to deny to the KLA, and did not
much care where those people went. How the Nato bombing
campaign affected this strategy, apart from quickening the pace of
operations, is not clear. Yet it is probable that some of what
happened was inadvertent or unplanned. The Serbs cannot be
excused, but they should not be accused of crimes for which there
is so far no hard evidence. The worse that has been charged might
turn out to be true, but we ought to pause before assuming that
every accusation made against the Serbs is a proven thing.