Morale hit hard by air war

Los Angeles Times

WASHINGTON -- In the past week, Yugoslav army officials began to shift from President Slobodan Milosevic's unwavering stand on the Kosovo war toward open rebellion, forcing him to accept NATO's peace terms, U.S. officials believe.

The allied bombardment, which caused more damage in its last seven days than in the first two months of airstrikes, reawakened old frictions between Milosevic and an army establishment that had never fully trusted him, the U.S. officials say, though they wouldn't disclose their sources. A key moment in the Yugoslav military's disillusionment came this week as thousands of troops, lured into the open by ethnic Albanian rebels near Mount Pastric in western Kosovo, took their most concentrated pummeling from NATO warplanes since the air war began March 24, said the officials, who requested anonymity. The other pivotal element, say the officials, was pressure on the Yugoslav oligarchy from the bombing of utilities and economic targets near the Yugoslav capital, Belgrade -- a tactic that some in NATO strongly opposed. Airstrikes on economic targets were threatening to bankrupt Milosevic's family and friends, while pounding of the electrical system raised the possibility that Belgrade would be freezing this winter as ethnic Albanian refugees in the south warmed themselves with NATO-supplied stoves. These cumulative pressures brought the turning point, one U.S. official said, convincing Milosevic that suddenly "time was on the West's side." Although the U.S. officials didn't disclose the source of their information on divisions within the Yugoslav army, they are known to be receiving intelligence reports from sources that include electronic intercepts. They discussed Milosevic's apparent change of heart at a time when Pentagon officials are beginning to think about gathering data for the "after-action reviews," analyses they undertake after each war. NATO and Pentagon officials have boasted about the increasing pace of their air campaign since late March. But the most dramatic expansion of strike power has come since the end of May, as improved weather allowed more attacks and hundreds of new warplanes arrived. A NATO force that had been sending out about 50 bombing sorties a day in late March has recently been dispatching more than seven times that number. And, defense officials said, the "forward air controllers" who direct pilots to targets are now very familiar with the Kosovo theater, sharpening the lethal impact of the operation. The battle between Yugoslav forces and the Kosovo Liberation Army near Mount Pastric has provided one of the clearest demonstrations for Milosevic's army of the damage NATO's 1,082 planes can inflict. A Yugoslav armored brigade, based in Prizren, emerged from camouflaged positions at the beginning of the week to block the rebels' advance with troops, tanks, personnel carriers and artillery. They needed to concentrate their forces to hold off the rebels' advance; yet because they were in the open, they gave NATO "the best opportunity so far in the air campaign to hit Serb forces hard," German Maj. Gen. Walter Jertz, a NATO spokesman, said in Brussels, Belgium. On Wednesday alone, NATO hit the brigade with nearly 150 sorties, knocking out 32 artillery pieces, nine armored personnel carriers, six armored vehicles and eight mortar positions. But one defense official said that the Mount Pastric fight only was part of the beating that Yugoslav forces have taken in recent days. Asked to explain the Yugoslav leadership's turnabout on a peace deal, Kenneth H. Bacon, the chief Pentagon spokesman, said Friday that "the pounding (Milosevic's) forces took during the past week had to have a huge impact on his determination to continue the fight. We know that it had a big impact on the morale of the forces."

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