Wolfowitz in Skopje – What Next for Macedonia?

A total eclipse of the full moon on Friday morning, street warfare between Macedonians and Albanians in Tetovo on Friday night – could these portentous events have had anything to do with the next day's visit from US Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz?

Über-hawk Wolfowitz touched down briefly in Skopje on the third leg of his Balkan tour. At his first stop (Sarajevo) Wolfowitz oversaw the signing of a treaty guaranteeing that Bosnia will never extradite an American soldier to the International Criminal Court (ICC) for war crimes. At the second stop, Kosovo's Camp Bondsteel, Wolfowitz inspected the troops at this all but forgotten imperial outpost.

Wolfowitz's trip to Macedonia was decidedly low-key, and lasted only a few hours. Officially, he came for the photo op and speech praising the Iraq-bound Macedonian conscripts. However, the fact that he also met in private with former NLA boss Ali Ahmeti, President Boris Trajkovski, and later with Prime Minister Branko Crvenkovski and Defense Minister Vlade Buchkovski seems to indicate that Rumsfeld's right-hand man came to talk business.

However, it is slightly unclear as to what that business was. Wolfowitz's entourage, which included US Ambassador Laurence Butler and the proverbial men in dark suits and sunglasses talking on mobile phones, were escorted briskly in and out of government buildings all morning, leaving little chance for interrogation. Although Wolfowitz answered two or three mundane questions in a mundane way when meeting with Trajkovski, no real explanation for his visit was given. And the US Embassy on Saturday claimed to have no one available who could speak on the matter.

Saturday's final photo op for Wolfowitz was the Macedonian Army's Ilinden barracks, a sprawling encampment situated on a high wooded bluff overlooking Skopje. Here Wolfowitz gave a short speech to the 39 Iraq-bound Macedonian soldiers. Among them are members of the Wolves (special forces), as well as army medics.

Flanked by officials, Wolfowitz stood opposite the neatly-arrayed Macedonian troops and thanked them for playing their part in the "liberation" of the Iraqi people from "…one of the worst dictators of modern history." He also alluded to the US-imposed Ohrid Agreement when praising the Macedonians for "settling issues by talking instead of by fighting." He then proceeded down the row, cordially shaking hands with each of the conscripts. Much snapping and flashing ensued from the thicket of cameras adjacent.

Glad you're back with us, if even under a new name!

Nope, I didn't say that. The 5,000-7,000 were from Storm and Flash combined, as I said before. And I didn't say anything at all about "cold blood." And I included those killed by the Bosnian Muslim 5th Corp. They had a real field day -- yech! -- as you can imagine! Remember the 70 dead sheep in a pile? 5th Corps slaughtered everyone on the little road which fed into the main Glina-Dvor road near Brubno and pretty much everyone and everything on "their" side of the Glina-Dvor road (the Western side, of course)all the way down. There was a bus full of refugees they torched near Brubno. It was ghastly. Totally incinerated (except, oddly, a set of very old and very fine china decorated with officers dressed in what looked to me like 18th century uniforms which was packed in a tin milking pail -- the china was in perfect condition ((unlike the totally cremated remains of the people)) -- very weird -- all I could think at the time was that china was meant to be fired at high temps, human beings, not).

BTW, did you know there are still wolves in that area? We heard them howling at dusk as we were investigating the Brubno well (no one will ever use that well again, I guess -stuffed with bodies and trash and stones -- the smell was horrific). It was a very sad and creepy place because of what 5th Corps had done there, but so cool to get to hear the wolves! The nature around there is quite beautiful. You Croats really have been Blessed with beautiful nature, you know.

I also include combatants (all sides) in that number, but that won't make all that much of a difference.

If you're really and truly interested in the number who perished, you can check with ICRC, as you're in-country -- what is the number of "missing never found" and "confirmed dead". Subtract out a percentage of the "missing never found." (I won't say what percentage to subtract -- you should gauge that by how "clean" the ICRC rep says the list is -- by now, it should be much cleaner, more reliable than when I was there, so you'll probably need to subtract a lesser percentage than I did.) If you do this, I would be interested in hearing back from what they're saying now.

You can also check with your fellow HV officers who were there (the Thunder and Tiger Brigades would be your best sources for Banija). Ask them what happened on the Dvor-Glina road and what happened on the Topusko-Glina road between Topusko and the final CFL, what happened in the areas overrun by 5th Corps (HV had to do a lot of clean-up after 5th Corps and they didn't much like it -- I don't blame them for that!) Also ask what happened in the villages between Petrinja and Glina and just south of Glina and in Glina itself.

If you add up all the people who were killed in the shelling of Knin, the people who were killed in the Dvor Massacre, the people who were killed by HV + 5th Corps in the crazy crossfire along almost the entire length of the Glina-Dvor road (this will account for a good percentage of those killed), those killed by the strafing of the refugee column along the Glina-Dvor road by Croat MiGs, those killed by nervous soldiers as they passed through villages (such as Luscani), those killed in the aftermath during looting sprees and by crazy people who just wanted to kill somebody and the situtian allowed it ... then add in the estimated killed during and after Op Flash, and you'll get something pretty close to my number.

No, it's not ridiculous if you stop and think about it. That's not really that many deaths when you consider the huge area "cleansed of Serbs" in Ops Flash and Storm and the lawlessness which reigned afterwards. I don't know offhand the number of square miles in former Sector West (Op Flash), but a Brit UNMO colleague of mine compared the square miles encompassed by former Sectors North and South (Op Storm), and the area was comparable to England (not UK, just England, of course). So, if an army's objective is to "cleanse" an area the size of England (plus another large area, formerly known as Sector West), then only 5,000 to 7,000 dead in the process is actually pretty good. It's even pretty good in terms of percentage of people "cleansed". Do the math. It's not at all ridiculous.

Some people died during the first 96 hours of action....that happens in war.

Yes, I agree. It does happen in war. In fact, I kind of wondered about the 12 elderly people who were mowed down by HV in the village of Luscani, south of Glina. They were attempting to flee into the forest (that's what the old people did, thinking things would calm down afterwards), and were cut down in their tracks. This happened at daybreak during Storm (the 5th or 6th or the 7th? I used to know, but don't recall anymore). I reasoned that green young soldiers, in the dawn, might have merely shot at anything that moved out of nervousness. Understandable. But then there was the body of a 71-year-old man, in his PJs, reclining on the summer bed of his verandah (summer sleeping porch) in Luscani, shot through the neck from above. I just can't really say what happened there, but something wasn't right about that old man. I kept notifying CROPOL about the body, that they needed to come and remove it, have it buried properly, as I was supposed to do, but they never did. I visited his body for the last time in mid-December, 1995. I saw a lot of bodies in Sector North, but his was the only one that was perfectly mummified. It was amazing. Still a perfect mummy in December. Another problem I had in that village was the teenage boy's body in the well. I don't know why he stayed behind with the old people, but he was shot on the front porch of a house and his body thrown into the well. The Croat family who owned the well was very upset their well was ruined, and I kept notifiying the Croat authorities the well needed cleaning up.

Oh, a littly funny, as you know the names of the various HV Brigades! One day in the fall of 1995 an HV came to my office to see me. He was a very polite young fellow, had served in Storm in the Lika area, and introduced himself to me(in English yet!) as belonging to the "Log Branch of the Termite Brigade." Well, I appreciated his practicing his English with me... but you can imagine how hard it was for me to keep a straight face!

Oh yes, the Veritas site does have the names of people reported missing... but... just looking through part of the A's, I saw the names of two elderly people I know were alive and well in the fall of 1995 after Storm (I delivered food to them), and one I know for certain was killed by 5th Corps in the woods west of the Dvor-Glina road. We found his decapitated body (he was in his seventies), his ID card was in his pocket, and the body wasn't far from where his widow had last seen him. We were quite sure this was the work of 5th Corps.

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