Throughout most of Allied Force, NATO and the KLA fought parallel but separate wars against VJ and MUP forces in Kosovo, and both the U.S. government and the KLA denied coordinating their operations in advance. NATO did acknowledge, however, that rebel attacks on the ground had helped flush out VJ troops and armor and to expose them to allied air strikes on at least a few occasions, and that Clark had authorized the communication of KLA target location information to attacking NATO aircrews indirectly through the ABCCC. The KLA further acknowledged that NATO air strikes had helped its ground operations.[101] Despite NATO denials throughout the air war that it was aiding the KLA, it became evident that cooperation between the two was considerably greater than had been previously admitted. As reported by KLA soldiers, the KLA had begun as early as May 10 to supply NATO with target intelligence and other battlefield information at NATO’s request, with the KLA’s chief of staff, Agim Ceku, working with NATO officers in northern Albania. While refusing to elaborate on specifics, KLA spokesmen admitted that Ceku had been the KLA’s principal point of contact with NATO. It was also Ceku who had participated in Croatia’s 1995 Operation Storm offensive that drove out the Krajina Serbs and helped end the fighting in Bosnia.[102]
Ultimately, VJ forces managed to repulse the KLA assault at Mount Pastrik. To do so, however, they had to come out of hiding and move in organized groups, making themselves potential targets, especially for A-10s, on those infrequent occasions when they were detected and approved for attack by the ABCCC or the CAOC.[103] When KLA actions forced VJ troops to concentrate enough tanks and artillery to defend themselves, NATO aircraft were occasionally able to detect and engage them. Enemy ground movements during the final two weeks were often first noted by the E-8 joint surveillance target attack radar system (Joint STARS) or other sensors, even though the VJ studiously sought to maneuver in small enough numbers to avoid being detected. The sensor operators would then transmit the coordinates of suspected enemy troop concentrations to airborne forward air controllers who, in turn, directed both unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) and fighters in for closer looks, and ultimately for attacks.[104] KLA ground movements were also displayed aboard the ABCCC, which was coordinating and controlling NATO attacks against VJ armored vehicles in Kosovo, deconflicting the attacking aircraft, and ensuring that KLA forces in close contact with the VJ were not inadvertently hit. Those operations represented classic instances of close air support, with KLA and enemy forces in close contact on the ground. The ABCCC and attacking NATO aircrews received commands directly from the allied CAOC in Vicenza, Italy, which, in at least one case, aborted an attack out of concern for hitting KLA fighters.[105]
Despite this heightened activity in the KEZ during the air war’s final days, however, the attacks did better at keeping VJ and MUP troops dispersed and hidden than they did at actually engaging and killing them in any significant numbers. Most attack sorties tasked to the KEZ did not release their weapons against valid military targets, but rather against so-called dump sites for jettisoning previously unexpended munitions, sites that were conveniently billed by NATO target planners as “assembly areas.” Even the B-52s and B-1s, for all the free-fall Mk 82 bombs they dropped during the final days, were tasked with delivering a high volume of munitions without causing any collateral damage. After the air war ended, it was never established that any of the bombs delivered by the B-52s and B-1s had achieved any militarily significant destructive effects, or that NATO’s cooperation with the KLA had yielded any results of real operational value. The steadily escalating attacks against infrastructure targets in and around Belgrade that were taking place at the same time, however, were beginning to produce a very different effect on Serb behavior.
THE ENDGAME
On June 2, with Operation Allied Force working at peak intensity and with weather and visibility for NATO aircrews steadily improving, Russia’s envoy to the Balkans, former Prime Minister Viktor Chernomyrdin, and Finland’s President Martti Ahtisaari, the European Union representative, flew to Belgrade to offer Milosevic a plan to bring the conflict to a close. Ahtisaari’s inclusion in the process was said by one informed observer to have grown out of a suggestion by Chernomyrdin that value might be gained from including a respected non-NATO player on his mission.[106] The same day, after the two emissaries had essentially served him with an ultimatum that had been worked out and agreed to previously by the United States, Russia, the European Union, and Ahtisaari, Milosevic accepted an international peace proposal. Under the terms of the proposed agreement, he would accede to NATO’s demands for a withdrawal of all VJ, MUP, and Serb paramilitary forces from Kosovo; a NATO-led security force in Kosovo; an unmolested return of the refugees to their homes; and the creation of a self-rule regime for the ethnic Albanian majority that acknowledged Yugoslavia’s continued sovereignty over Kosovo. NATO would continue bombing pending the implementation of a military-to-military understanding that had been worked out between NATO and Yugoslavia on the conditions of Yugoslavia’s force withdrawal. The agreement, which came on the 72nd day of the air effort, was ratified the day after, on June 3, by the Serb parliament and was rationalized by Milosevic’s Socialist Party of Serbia on the ground that it meant “peace and a halt to the evil bombing of our nation.”[107]
Milosevic later met with loyalist and opposition leaders to explain the reasons for his decision to accept the peace plan. That was as strong an indicator as any to date that the United States and NATO were at the brink of success in their effort to get Yugoslavia’s 40,000 troops removed from Kosovo, the Kosovar refugees returned to their homes, and NATO-dominated peacekeepers on Kosovo’s soil to ensure that the agreement was honored by Milosevic. The agreement stipulated that once all occupying VJ and MUP personnel had departed Kosovo, an agreed-upon contingent of Serbs—numbering only in the hundreds, not thousands—could return to Kosovo to provide liaison to the various peacekeeping entities commanded by British Army Lieutenant General Sir Michael Jackson, help clear the minefields that they had earlier laid, and protect Serb interests at religious sites and border crossings.
The two-page draft agreement further called for removing all Serb air defense equipment and weapons deployed within 15 miles of the Kosovo border by the first 48 hours so that NATO aircraft could verify the troop withdrawals unmolested by any threats. The plan envisaged a U.S. sector to be controlled, first, by 1,900 Marines with light vehicles and helicopters standing by aboard three ships in the Aegean and, later, by the full American force complement made up largely of Army tank and infantry units to be brought in from Germany. U.S. forces, including the Marines from the 26th Marine Expeditionary Unit at sea and three Army battalions from the 1st Infantry Division in Germany, would make up 15 percent of the overall Kosovo Force (KFOR). The agreement similarly provided for British, French, Italian, and German sectors.
101
Marjorie Miller, “KLA Vows to Disarm If NATO Occupies Kosovo,”
102
Matthew Kaminski and John Reed, “NATO Link to KLA Rebels May Have Helped Seal Victory,”
103
William Drozdiak and Anne Swardson, “Military, Diplomatic Offensives Bring About Accord,”
104
Tony Capaccio, “JSTARS Led Most Lethal Attacks on Serbs,”
105
Michael R. Gordon, “A War out of the Night Sky: 10 Hours with a Battle Team,”
106
Comments on an earlier draft by Ivo Daalder of the Brookings Institution, Washington, D.C., March 15, 2001. Daalder previously served as director for European affairs on the National Security Council staff in 1995 and 1996, where he was responsible for coordinating U.S. policy for Bosnia.
107
Daniel Williams and Bradley Graham, “Yugoslavs Yield to NATO Terms,”