Prospect of Ground War Strengthens in Balkans

As NATO military muscle and machinery mount daily in the Balkans, actions are speaking louder than words to make clear that a force is massing around embattled Kosovo that could be mobilized to wage a ground war against the defiant Serbs.

From the 32,000-strong Stabilization Force patrolling Bosnia-Herzegovina to the troops soon to number 50,000 near the Kosovo border to enforce a still-elusive peace accord, the balance of force in the region is quickly shifting in NATO’s favor despite its insistence that no land invasion is in the offing.

An additional 7,500 NATO troops are deployed for humanitarian work and Apache helicopter support here in Albania, the only Balkan nation to give formal approval for preparing a NATO ground action from its soil. And in Hungary, a new NATO member just north of Yugoslavia, 1,500 Italian troops and 500 pieces of equipment began a month of military maneuvers Wednesday that the alliance insists are unrelated to the conflict flaring just a few miles away.

Farther afield but still within military earshot, 2,200 combat-ready U.S. Marines are afloat on warships in the Adriatic Sea and 800 more are headed for Hungary to back up the deployment of 24 F/A-18 fighter aircraft to the Taszar air base near the Yugoslav border.

While the new troop deployments appear to testify to at least some thought toward ground actions, more definitive signs of creeping, multi-pronged preparations are visible on the rutted roads connecting Tirana, the Albanian capital, and the nearby port city of Durres to the mountain sites from which any push into Yugoslavia from Albania would have to be launched.

Small convoys of tanks, howitzers and mounted guns can be spotted daily making the 145-mile, 12-hour crawl from Durres to Kukes, near the Kosovo border. C-130 Hercules cargo aircraft that can carry troops and hardware also have been making regular runs between Tirana and the border since an airstrip was hastily built in Kukes by the United Arab Emirates two weeks ago.

Italian troops are at work widening and resurfacing the Durres-to-Kukes road, ostensibly to make aid deliveries easier to the mountain stronghold hosting more than 100,000 refugees from Kosovo. But the Office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees is pressing hard for relocation of the displaced Kosovo Albanians to safer ground in the Albanian interior, raising the question of why the infrastructure improvements are being made now.

Farther north from Kukes, around the town of Tropoje, which serves as a staging ground for incursions into Kosovo by rebels of the Kosovo Liberation Army, Danish troops from a communications battalion and British special forces have been seen by journalists in the region, where there is no declared NATO activity.

With top NATO officials and President Clinton still formally insisting that there are no plans for a ground invasion, alliance officers stationed in the Balkans have had to refrain from comment on ground force contingencies. But some acknowledge privately that all options, including a land invasion from Albania, are being explored.

“We’d be both stupid and irresponsible not to be planning for all eventualities,” said one Black Hawk helicopter pilot taking a smoking break at Rinas Airport, the cluttered nerve center of NATO activities in Tirana. “We’re just soldiers taking orders, but you can see for yourself that we’re not all just sitting here idle.”

He referred to the unofficially grounded Apache helicopters that were dispatched to Tirana in a blaze of Pentagon publicity in April.

Since their arrival, they have been parked along Rinas’ crowded runway, awaiting resolution of the silent standoff between the White House, which fears that the vaunted “tank killers” would be too vulnerable to Serbian antiaircraft guns without supporting ground troops, and NATO commander Gen. Wesley K. Clark, who called for the Apache deployment but has been dissuaded from actually using them in combat.

Two of the copters have crashed in separate training exercises in Albania; in one of the accidents, both pilots were killed.

In October, NATO planners estimated that 75,000 alliance troops could take Kosovo if forced to invade to bring peace to the separatist province and that up to 200,000 would be needed to subdue all of Yugoslavia. But NATO Secretary-General Javier Solana has asked for updated assessments of the forces needed since the start of the air campaign March 24.

Pentagon officials say they expect the updated report to conclude that NATO would need many more troops than first thought to invade Kosovo and perhaps as many as 150,000. This is because the Serbian forces have had an opportunity to dig defensive positions and mine roads and bridges to fend off NATO troops, Pentagon officials say.

NATO planners will also boost the estimate, they predict, because the nearly 10-week-old air campaign has demonstrated that the Serbs have a strong will to resist.

One military strategist cautioned that defenders always have the advantage of fighting on familiar territory and that the standard 3-to-1 ratio advised for any attack should be considered the minimum needed to subdue the estimated 40,000 Yugoslav army, police and paramilitary troops now in Kosovo.

That would mean a NATO invasion force of 120,000 or more--requiring even broader expansion than the buildup announced by the alliance in Brussels last Tuesday.

Beyond the numbers, the geography of the region poses problems for any ground force. All of the Albanian territory bordering western Kosovo is unrelentingly rugged, with towering mountains and rocky gorges presenting formidable obstacles to tanks and other tracked armor that would be used in a conventional invasion force.

“My personal opinion is that ground operations from Albania to Kosovo are not possible,” said Cmdr. Domenico Passaro of the Italian military contingent that has been helping to upgrade the Albanian armed services for the past two years as well as assist with the 2,600-troop Italian NATO contingent here.

He and other Italian officers remember their country’s failed push toward Yugoslavia from the same region in the lead-up to World War II, when the fascist forces of Italian dictator Benito Mussolini were trapped and defeated in the mountains east of the Albanian city of Shkodra.

But other NATO officers are of the opinion that modern technology and conviction could overcome the geographic obstacles in the alliance’s path.

“Where there’s a will, there’s a way,” Maj. Andy Paine, a U.S. Army communications officer at Rinas, said of the prospects for a successful push by NATO into Kosovo from Albania’s unforgiving terrain.

Some U.S. military analysts have suggested that the main thrust could come through Macedonia, with limited support from Albania.

Like many other U.S. officers stationed at the sprawling tent cities around Rinas, Paine insists that the NATO troops here are ready, willing and able to convert themselves for ground assaults as soon as their commanding officers give the orders.

“That’s what we came here to do, that’s what we want to do, and that’s what we will do when we get the word,” Paine said.

NATO’s decision last week to enlarge KFOR--the potential peacekeeping contingent for postwar Kosovo--to as many as 50,000 troops appeared to send a signal to Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic that the alliance is keeping its options open in the event a ground action is needed.

The new “KFOR Plus” will include some military units that could join an invasion force. But to build an organization capable of seizing territory, NATO would need many more troops, pieces of equipment and weeks of preparation, Pentagon officials say.

The forces earmarked for the first version of the Kosovo peacekeeping force include German, French and British tanks, armored personnel carriers, assault helicopters, self-propelled artillery and combat-equipped troops. But officials said most of the troops to be added to KFOR would be additional lightly armed military police, de-mining specialists, engineers and the “civil affairs” people who can help create a government.

Only about 14% of the expanded force is expected to be made up of U.S. troops, and alliance spokesman Jamie Shea said last week that NATO would also be asking some non-NATO countries, such as Sweden and Slovakia, to contribute to the buildup. Those forces would be unlikely to have any part in an aggressive action should any decision be taken to convert the NATO troops already in the Balkan theater for combat.

“This is not an invasion force, so there would have to be a lot of changes” to convert it to one, said one Pentagon official. “This force is being constructed for the specific mission statement of KFOR.”

Converting the force “would take considerable planning--of which there has so far been none,” the official said.

Converting KFOR to an invasion mission would take time because, among other things, field commanders like to carefully synchronize and rehearse such large troop movements before they begin them.

The slow movement of the American Apache helicopter gunships also hints at how much time could be required to bring the forces into the theater. The gunships and associated equipment and personnel required more than a month to reach Albania from Germany, though allied military commander Clark had given the Pentagon notice of his intentions weeks before the formal request was made.

NATO is likely to give important hints this week about its intentions for the Kosovo peacekeeping force. Alliance leaders are about to sit down to decide which military units they will begin sending to the region.

Senior officials acknowledge that there is little time to waste, noting that the first preparations for a ground invasion must come within the next two weeks or so if the invasion is to be carried out before the fog and snow of winter.

Macedonia is the chief site of the current NATO buildup in the Balkans, although its leaders have repeatedly said they would not want their country to be used as a staging ground for hostile actions against neighboring Yugoslavia.

Still, Pentagon officials insist that they are confident that the Macedonian government won’t be an obstacle to the assembling of a peacekeeping force that might, sometime later, become an invasion force. One asserted that the Pentagon views Macedonia as “solidly” in NATO’s corner despite its protests.

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Williams reported from Tirana and Richter from Washington.

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* STRIKE ON SANITARIUM: As NATO’s air war escalates, a third strike on civilians in two days kills at least 16. A10