In Kosovo, Allies Face an Iraq-Like Quagmire

As the Western allies prepare for mock airstrikes in the region, the escalating crisis over Kosovo has begun to take on eerie similarities to the world’s ongoing troubles with Iraq.

The flash points are almost identical, underlining why the outside world has opted in both cases to intervene. But so too are the risks of U.S. intervention, underlining why the Kosovo crisis, like the one involving Iraq, could become messy and prolonged.

Once again, the issue is aggression against a small and largely defenseless land, an action considered unacceptable in the post-Cold War world. In 1990, Iraq invaded Kuwait, claiming it as a province. In 1998, the Yugoslav army was unleashed in the contested Serbian province of Kosovo.

Once again, the culprit is one of the world’s last authoritarian leaders. In Iraq, it was President Saddam Hussein. In Yugoslavia, it’s President Slobodan Milosevic.

“Both are ultranationalists who want regional dominance--Saddam in the Persian Gulf, Milosevic in the Balkans,” said James R. Hooper, president of the Balkan Institute in Washington and a senior U.S. envoy to Kuwait shortly before Iraq’s invasion.

Once again, repressed ethnic groups are the main victims. Iraq killed thousands during rebellions by its own majority Shiite Muslims and minority Kurds shortly after the Persian Gulf War. Yugoslavia is involved in “ethnic cleansing” against the majority Albanian population in Kosovo.

Once again, various international sanctions have not been enough to force a powerful regional army to retreat. And once again, the United States and its European allies are threatening military might.

In 1990, the United States pulled together a military coalition of more than 30 countries for Operation Desert Storm. Last week, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization declared its willingness to intervene in Kosovo. Thirteen nations were set to launch the air exercises today code-named Operation Determined Falcon.

The similarities between Iraq and Yugoslavia offer important lessons, according to U.S. analysts.

“Iraq and Yugoslavia represent the kind of problem that we’re going to face again and again,” said Paul Williams, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington. “They also will again and again be the real tests for post-Cold War Western diplomacy.”

Indeed, as the world scrambles to prevent the Kosovo crisis from triggering a wider Balkan war, Russia once again has balked at the use of force and is instead offering last-ditch diplomacy to avert it.

In Iraq, Moscow tried to use its clout as a long-standing ally and arms supplier. In Yugoslavia, Moscow hopes to use its influence as a fellow Slavic nation when President Boris N. Yeltsin hosts Milosevic on Tuesday.

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But perhaps the most ominous parallel between Iraq and Yugoslavia is the danger, once again, that the use of allied force may not solve the core problem.

The immediate goal--on which all major parties agree--is to stop a bully’s aggressive behavior. That may be attainable, U.S. experts say. Either diplomatically or militarily, Milosevic can be forced to pull back his army, just as Saddam Hussein was forced to retreat from Kuwait.

Then could come the tricky part, with the international community trying to translate a short-term cease-fire into a long-term political solution.

Almost eight years after Iraq’s aggression, U.S. forces are still deployed in the Persian Gulf to press Hussein to honor the terms of the original cease-fire and to monitor treatment of his own Shiite and Kurdish populations.

Last year, the Clinton administration made it clear that a lasting solution is unlikely as long as Hussein is in power. Now, U.S. analysts are warning that in Yugoslavia, a long-term political solution to Kosovo also is likely to depend on a change in leadership in Belgrade, which is both the Serbian and the Yugoslav capital.

“The use of force in Kosovo may force the parties into a process that could lead to an interim agreement that reflects some of the minimal concerns of each side,” Hooper said. “But a final settlement that is acceptable to both sides is most unlikely as long as Milosevic is in power.”

There’s too much at stake for the Yugoslav leader to take the steps necessary to satisfy the Albanian majority in the province. Having suffered losses in conflicts with Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina, U.S. experts contend, Milosevic cannot afford to lose Kosovo, with which Serbs have cultural and religious ties dating back centuries.

“For Milosevic, holding on to Kosovo is important to holding on to power,” Williams said. “A democratic leader could work out a compromise that might keep Kosovo in Yugoslavia, but out of Serbia, perhaps at republic level. But Milosevic is not a democrat, and only an atmosphere of pluralism will make the Albanians have any trust in Belgrade.”

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Whether the Europeans share that view is debatable. And without allied unity, the Yugoslav leader--like his Iraqi counterpart--may be able to exploit differences to prolong his political life. Considered a short-timer after the war, Hussein is now widely expected to be around for the foreseeable future.

A further danger is that the outside world may be forced to return to Serbia again and again, just as it has been forced to do with Iraq.

“It’s not clear a little bit of force will do the trick,” said Richard Haass, director of foreign policy studies at the Brookings Institution. Haass was director of Mideast policy for the National Security Council during the Gulf War.

“The problem any time you use force coercively is that you leave the initiative in the hands of the target. We don’t have a lot of control,” he said. “We could get played like a yo-yo.”

In Iraq, the U.S.-led coalition has had to use force or redeploy tens of thousands of troops, at major expense and at high political cost, more than half a dozen times to convince Hussein to cooperate with U.N. resolutions he endorsed to end the Gulf War.