Word: kosovo
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...neighbors and the European continent. The sight of thousands upon thousands of dazed, weeping refugees fleeing for their lives into the region's poorest, least stable states set off shock waves in the West. The states themselves--particularly Macedonia and Montenegro--trembled at the very real possibility that Kosovo's instability was contagious...
...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...
Perhaps the most astonishing reality to confront was that the largest NATO military action in the alliance's 50-year history offered scant relief for the crude savaging of Kosovo. Officials doggedly insisted the "cumulative effect" of NATO's bombardment was starting to tell on the Serb war machine. They also said the late-week strikes against Belgrade itself were only a beginning. Even though many in NATO were nervous 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...
Before a conflict, the military's job is to plan for the worst 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...
...Milosevic closed in on his objectives in Kosovo, he also turned his attention to Montenegro, Serbia's restive partner in the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. The state, which sits between landlocked Serbia and the Adriatic, has refused to support Milosevic. Late last week Milosevic replaced the state's top general with a loyal crony and threatened a military coup to unseat the pro-Western elected government. Montenegrins feared they too would be engulfed in civil...