Word: ethnical
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...wonder weapons of air power looked futile against primitive "ethnic cleansers" with guns. The long-threatened bombing campaign failed to deter the rape of Kosovo and even appeared to be speeding it. Publicly, NATO insisted that the blame for the refugee flight lay solely with Milosevic, not Western bombs. But privately, officials offered a line that made more sense alongside the awful images. Military planners lamented that bad weather, clever Serb tactics, White House worries about collateral damage--and a reluctance to risk pilots' lives--kept them from hitting at Milosevic as hard as they wished. And diplomats complained that...
...about bombing a European capital, the images of Belgrade buildings on fire was the first p.r. victory for the allies--and it made them hungry for more. As planners unleashed a broader weekend bombing campaign, they still believed air power could keep Milosevic from sweeping the province clean of ethnic Albanians. But as the human tide continued to flood out of Kosovo, the alliance could offer little but grim hope that anything they were doing could stop...
...case. Yet obviously the minds behind Operation Allied Force didn't really think it would be as bad as this. After more than a week of NATO air raids, Kosovo was still hemorrhaging victims of horror. Ordered out of their homes at gunpoint, often separated from husbands and sons, ethnic Albanian women, children and old people were marched, bused, packed into trains. As the long columns stumbled into neighboring states, Serb soldiers stripped the refugees of passports, identity papers, even license plates to eradicate any trace of their claim to the province. No one knows how many have died...
...reiterated on Thursday. He and others say it was the very knowledge that Milosevic was marshaling his forces for just such an onslaught that helped precipitate NATO's decision to start bombing March 24. "By the time our first planes took off," said NATO spokesman Jamie Shea, "thousands of ethnic Albanians were already fleeing toward the borders...
...that no one predicted Milosevic would be so ferocious so fast. The CIA knew as far back as last autumn that Belgrade was planning Operation Horseshoe: when spring melted the snows, the Serbs would move in their tanks and artillery to destroy the Kosovo Liberation Army and drive many ethnic Albanians over the southern and western borders. At a village a day--the rate Milosevic calculated the West would tolerate--Serbia could methodically eliminate the Kosovar population over a number of months. Analysts knew Milosevic would intensify his purge if bombing started. But they believed his intent was to crush...