A perception in the minds of the public has developed that the bombing of Yugoslavia was in response to aggressive action by Yugoslav forces. That is not how it was. The talks at Rambouillet were not about Serbs retaliating against the KLA and civilians fleeing in terror because that was not the issue. They were about the nature of the administration and power-sharing in the Yugoslav Province of Kosovo. The bombing was in response to the fact that Mr Milosevic would not sign the Rambouillet document. The deal offered by Madeleine Albright to Hashim Thaci, the KLA leader of the Kosovo Albanian delegation, was “You sign; the Serbs don’t sign: we bomb. You sign; the Serbs sign: you have NATO in.” (24) It could not be clearer that the bombing was the punishment for Mr Milosevic’s refusal to sign the Rambouillet document.

On 22 March - two days before the start of the bombing - Richard Holbrooke flew to Belgrade to see Mr Milosevic for one last attempt at a deal, he reported his conversation with Mr Milosevic. “I said, ‘You understand what will happen if you don’t agree to negotiate and accept Rambouillet as the basis of negotiation?’ And he said, ‘Yes, you will bomb us.’ ” No mention of ethnic cleansing.

The NATO press briefing weekly update of 30 March 1999 stated, “NATO’s decision to resort to the use of force was taken only after it became clear that all efforts to achieve a negotiated, political solution to the Kosovo crisis had failed.”

To recap on the situation early in 1999, between January and mid March 1999 the KLA had kept up its attacks on Serbs in Kosovo and eventually the limited manpower of the Yugoslav police responded with force to these attacks, principally in a small-scale battle in Racak. As mentioned at the start of this pamphlet, Robin Cook reported that the KLA were the main source of the trouble up to mid January at least, and the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees acknowledged in his report to the House of Commons’ International Development Committee, “By early 1999, some Serb civilians in Kosovo were also in need of protection, from the KLA.”

NATO military build-up and the recall of embassy staff and foreign nationals from Yugoslavia began on 20 February. On 12 March General Wesley Clark threatened a “vast air armada.” In response to NATO’s threats and military preparations Yugoslav troops began to build up inside and outside Serbia’s province of Kosovo. The Pentagon drew attention to this on 17 March.

On Saturday 20 March the OSCE Kosovo Verification Mission observers left Kosovo early in the morning and Yugoslav troops entered northern Kosovo to drive out the KLA. William Walker reported that the Serb offensive “kicked off immediately.” Chris Bird, the same day, reporting for the Guardian from Srbica in Kosovo anticipated the forthcoming strikes against NATO’s proxy army, the KLA. Notice the date and the use of the future tense. “The departure of international monitors from Kosovo will spur a humanitarian crisis in the Serbian province as tens of thousands of ethnic Albanians flee their villages fearing that a Serbian offensive will now be unleashed.” Within three days, according to local estimates, about 20,000 people had fled from the violence. (22)

On 23 March Tony Blair looked forward to preventing refugees fleeing a conflict. He told parliament, “Britain stands ready with its NATO allies to take military action . . . to avert what would otherwise be a humanitarian disaster in Kosovo.” The same day the UN refugee team (UNHCR) and their co-workers from non-governmental organisations (NGOs) left Kosovo and removed themselves to Skopje in Macedonia.

On 24 March NATO began its bombing and the number of people in desperate flight from the war began to increase.

The exodus from Kosovo was not immediate. At the 25 March United Nations press briefing Manoel de Almeida e Silva, Deputy Spokesman for the Secretary-General, said, “From Skopje, UNHCR staff report that the border with Kosovo was quiet today and that no significant movements of refugees have been recorded.”

The same day, in an interview with the BBC, James Rubin, US State Department spokesman said, “If NATO had not acted you would have had hundreds of thousands crossing the border.” (26)

On 26 March Tony Blair presented his view about what the bombing would do in a BBC interview. "Fail to act now . . . and we would have to deal with . . . hundreds of thousands of refugees."

Hardly any refugees passed into Albania for a couple of days after the start of the bombing. According to a statement in the Fourth Special Report by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees to the House of Commons’ International Development Committee, “On 26 March 1999, the UNHCR Representative in Tirana convened a meeting at UNDP's offices to brief embassies and UN agencies on the few recent arrivals (none that day) and UNHCR's preparedness. Among participants were the UK and US Ambassadors, representatives of Austria, France, FR of Germany, Italy and Switzerland, and the Director of the Albanian Government's Office for Refugees. No particpant warned of what it is now known was by then already happening.”

But things were developing rapidly. At the UN press briefing on 30 March a spokesman for the Secretary-General, Fred Eckhard said, “Around 100,000 refugees have fled Kosovo since March 24.” The massive exodus of refugees was the direct consequence of the battle inside Kosovo - NATO bombing on behalf of the KLA and the struggle on the ground between Serbs and the KLA.

Of course, the refugees were mainly the Kosovo Albanians because they were the great majority of the population of Kosovo. Many were driven out directly by Yugoslav forces, others by NATO bombing, many by fear, many because the KLA told them to go. (27) The effect of the action by Yugoslavia against the KLA was ethnic cleansing. This had not been the intention or result of the Yugoslav action against the KLA in 1998. In 1999 the bombing made the difference.

A US Congressional Mission which visited Yugoslavia between the 18 and 21 April 1999 concluded that approximately one third of all refugees, including Albanians and other ethnic groups, were fleeing from the KLA into central Serbia, unnoticed by observers who were situated mainly on the external borders of Kosovo. Some 100,000 Kosovo Serbs fled from the KLA and the bombing and headed north, further into Yugoslavia - As with the Kosovo Albanians, approaching 50 per cent of their population fled the province - unknown to world media and the sympathies of almost all charitable agencies.

Of course, NATO bombed not only the Kosovo province of Yugoslavia, but also central Serbia and the northern province of Vojvodina. At least 30,000 people fled north into Hungary from Vojvodina. (28)

After the war the return of the refugees was claimed as a vindication of the bombing. When the bombing stopped the refugees were able to return to where they were when the Rambouillet talks were halted by Robert Cook and Hubert Vedrine. If the bombing had never been threatened and prepared for it is likely that there would have been only a handful of refugees, and none if the KLA had not waged a campaign of provocation. The sequence of events shows clearly that, in addition to the immense suffering caused directly by the bombing, the threat of bombing and especially the bombing itself provoked humanitarian disasters, the enormous flood of refugees.

The total indifference and non-interference of NATO powers in the affairs of Kosovo and the rest of Yugoslavia would have been an immense blessing to the people of this troubled region. The term “humanitarian intervention” has been shown to be a pathetic cloak for incompetent, meddlesome, patronising, violent, exploitive, arrogant, self-congratulatory, hugely expensive, socially destructive and tragic interference in the affairs of other countries. “Humanitarian intervention” brought terror, death, destruction, economic ruin, a huge refugee tragedy, and ecological catastrophe.

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